Chapter Exercises

Exercise 1

You are the project manager for Ogden Underwriters Insurance Company. This company has offices in Chicago, Des Moines, Seattle, Lincoln, and Atlanta.

You have been tasked with managing the rollout of a new web-based training program. You are to interview several members of your company to find out what their goals for the project are and work those into your plan as much as possible. As this is a simulated exercise, you ll find quotes from several key personnel in the following table.

To complete this exercise, analyze persons being interviewed, list their concerns about the project, and then record the objective of each.

Person	Title	Concerns	Objectives
Nancy Gordon	Chief Executive Officer	I am very excited about this project. All employees should have access to the web site, no matter where they are located in the country. The training should supplement our existing classroom training and provide new information as needed. I would also like to see videos of common tasks for quick review. Finally, the web-based training must be searchable, user friendly, and easy for learners to stop and resume lessons with ease. Have fun!
Cory Owens	Accountant	Will this thing really work? Our network seems pretty slow already. I don t have time to be waiting on images to load, downloads, and other stuff like that. My computer is so old, and so is everyone else s in this department, that we can t take another software upgrade if we have to. By the way, when are we going to get new computers? Mine at home is faster than the one here at work. Sigh.
Sarah Sullivan	Claims Adjuster	This is a great idea; I just hope I have time to use it. I get interrupted a lot so I d need to be able to pause and restart if necessary. Will this web-based training work with my computer? I m using Linux here and Windows NT at home. I will be able to access it from home, won t I?
Michael Bogner	Chief Information Officer	Web-based training will allow for training on demand in modular pieces. The thing to remember though is that all users will need computers with at least an 800 MHz, 128MB RAM, and the latest version of Internet Explorer or Netscape to take advantage of this. In fact, there are 240 PCs that need to be replaced in six months. Go ahead and work that into your budget and your plan. They ll need to use Windows XP. I guess that ll mean these folks will need training on XP, too.
Jill Vaughn	Web Design Manager	I ve wanted to do WBT (web-based training) forever. My team will be using Macromedia s ColdFusion, Flash, Authorware, and Fireworks for everything. Make certain all the users have the correct plug-ins for their browsers.
Jackson Dahl	Web Integrations Team Leader	We can do it ”if a few things come true. We ll need a fatter pipe to our ISP if we re going to host the pages here. Of course, if users are coming from all over the country to this thing, we re going to need to talk about security, authentication, and types of access. We ll probably need another server for Jill s ColdFusion database.

Exercise 2

Now that you ve gleaned the key pieces of information from each of the key staff members, you need to write a charter for the project. Your sponsor for this project is Nancy Gordon. Here are some facts that must be included in your project charter:

• Official project name (use your imagination )

• Project goal

• Business case for the project

• High-level results of the project

• A basic timeline of how your team will implement the plan

• Required resources for the project (If you would like to find the prices of the new computers, software, and operating systems, you may, but they are not required for this exercise.)