6.4 The Project Pyramid

---

6.4 The Project Pyramid

From a planning perspective, you can visualize this in a couple of ways. I prefer the project pyramid. The vendor management pyramid would look like the one displayed in Exhibit 4.

Exhibit 4: Vendor Management Implementation Pyramid

The base represents both the starting point and the foundation of the project. In this case, these are the two locations dictated by the implementation strategy. The main site houses the call center, while the backup site has an operations site plus the backup or DR computing system. The pyramid's "point" represents both the schedule end point and the focal point of the project.

For this part of our project, the focal point is functionality performed by the end users at the call center. The lower layers are the enablers of end-user function. In this case, the enablers are the two applications that run on the supporting infrastucture, i.e., the data center equipment. This would be the LAN, platform, and wide area network (WAN). The term "computing platform" indicates the systems, such as computers and tape backup libraries. In essence, the platform supports the applications that empower the end users to do their jobs.

This project had other pyramids separate and distinct from this one. These other pyramids are the two Web sites, where the "point" would be the customer logging in for reports or procurement activities. Two future pyramids, one for automated data transactions with suppliers, the other for the "customer-facing processes" would also have to be derived.

---