A Post Implementation and Evaluation Report (PIER)

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeireho A project Post Implementation and Evaluation Report explaining and analyzing the major activities of the project and basing on such to give future recommendations Maurice Kabeireho Kaplan University Dr. Rhoda Chicone 1

Transcript of A Post Implementation and Evaluation Report (PIER)

A PIER of the project Maurice KabeirehoA project Post Implementation and Evaluation Report explaining

and analyzing the major activities of the project and basing on

such to give future recommendations

Maurice Kabeireho

Kaplan University

Dr. Rhoda Chicone

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeireho

Table of Contents

Executive Summary------------------------------------------------------------------3

Project Objectives-----------------------------------------------------------------------4

Business Areas --------------------------------------------------------------------------4

Project Personnel and organization --------------------------------------------------5

Project history and Timeline-----------------------------------------------------------6

Risk Assessment and Mitigation technics -------------------------------------------7

Change Control and Quality management Techniques-----------------------------8

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A PIER of the project Maurice KabeirehoProject

Communication-----------------------------------------------------------------9

Customer Expectations-----------------------------------------------------------------10

Project Results---------------------------------------------------------------------------11

Lessons Learned-------------------------------------------------------------------------14

Conclusion--------------------------------------------------------------------------------15

Executive Summary

The ACN cup App project was thought about after realizing that

there was a growing ground for people interested in the African

Cup of Nations as evidenced by the statistics from the Football

governing bodies like FIFA of the people who purchase the tickets

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeirehoto attend the tournament over the years. Therefore, this meant

that there was potential demand from people wishing to get more

information about the tournament.

The ACN cup App project thus sets out to provide the interested

viewers of the tournament with the latest and updated information

about the tournament in real time. It provides the users with the

opportunity to check the tournament statistics in regards to

participant’s positions in the table, goals, prayers statistics

as well as future fixtures in the tournament.

Generally, a Post Implementation Evaluation Report (PIER) serves

to document the successes and failures of the project by

providing a historical record of the originally planned and the

actual budget, scope and schedule.

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeireho

Project Objectives:

The project was intended to deliver a product that would provide

the users with an all in one App about information in the Africa

Cup of Nations tournament. It would provide the users with the

following;

To bring the Africa Cup of Nations tournament closer to the

fans by developing it on a mobile App platform.

To give users current tournament table statistics

To provide tournament Fixtures

To show the Prayer’s tournament Statistics

To provide real time goal scores in the games

To provide real time game statistics live as they happen

Any other News about the tournament

The business problem to be solved was how to market the App to

the intended users in the most secure manner that would ensure

information security issues are kept at minimum considering the

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeirehohigh level of hackers and cyber-attacks in the market today. This

was solved by negotiating with Apple to use its platform since

they products are more monitored in terms of security and

moreover does not use open source products on its platform that

would likely be easily compromised.

Business Areas:

The project customers would be all the people that are interested

in soccer and more particularly those interested in the Africa

Cup of Nations tournament. The project is expected to gain ground

because of the growing market for the Apple products in the

market and more especially on the African continent where the

majority of the users are expected to be located. Statistics from

FIFA, and some selected football governing bodies in the African

Nations show that there has been a growing number of the viewers

of the tournament over the years.

Project Personnel and Organization:

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A PIER of the project Maurice KabeirehoThe project employed a larger labor resource ranging from the top

managers to the project manager, departmental leads to team

members including the non-technical staff like administrative

officers such as drivers.

At the helm of the project was the Chief Executive officer (CEO),

followed by the General Manager, then Operations Manager,

followed by the Project Manager, Administrative officer,

Team/departmental leads, Team members and other non-technical

staff.

In a an organizational chart manner, this can be presented as

follows;

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeireho

Project History and Timeline:

The major activities of the project included Project planning

that formed the basis of all the other activities of the project,

Project designing that formed the shape of the project, Project

development, Project controlling that involves monitoring and

change updates, Project testing, Project implementation as well

as Project Implementation and maintenance.

All these activities were accomplished by allocating the

appropriate and optimal resources as shown in the Gantt chart

that would just be enough to efficiently do the required tasks in

the planned time. This thus meant that a well-trained team of

employees coupled with a robust project manager work together

with the support of top management to accomplish the project

activities.

The constant monitoring of the project the project manager to

detect any changes in the project variables which would then

trigger prompt action from management to bring them back to

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeirehonormal and thus keeping the project within its schedule, scope

and cost and thus being able to hit its Timeline.

Risk Assessment and Mitigation technics:

One of the risks that occurred during the project life time was

that one caused by stress amongst the team members; mainly caused

by their family problems. As a project manager, I tried to

mitigate this risk by availing counseling services to the team

members and encouraging them to open up to me whenever they had

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeirehopersonal issues. At one time, I would sometimes allow them to

work from home for a few hours so as to enable them take care of

some very critical family issues that I realize could cause them

stress and thus affecting their efficiency to work.

Another risk that occurred during the project was that one

technological changes as a result of the vibrant technology

improvements that occur each day. Such changes would imply that

the project technology could be outdated by the time of

completion and thus not be able to serve or compete favorably in

the market. This risk was mitigated by carrying out research

about the new technological developments in regard to the project

and constantly updating it so as to be in line with the new

technology in the market.

Power outage was one other risk that occurred during the course

of the project but this was mitigated by purchasing a standby

generator to cover up for power just in case of the outage and

thus keeping the project work running as scheduled.

Last but not least the risk of data loss mainly due to improper

system shutdowns or Denial Services attacks sometimes occurred

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeirehoduring the project lifetime. This risk was however, mitigated by

carrying out regular system backups that would help to restore

the system data whenever there was such a problem.

Change Control, Quality and Configuration Management Techniques:

The issues of quality, change control as well as configuration

management are very much important and crucial to every projects

success and thus must be kept a priority during the project life

time.

To ensure quality, constant monitoring of the project was done by

running regular reports about the project in regard to its cost,

schedule and scope and seriously analyzing and monitoring any

changes that occur than originally planned and thus avoiding such

things as scope creep that may lead to very high overruns and

thus the failure of the project in the long run.

Once such changes are noticed through generation and comparison

of project reports, it is documented and then discussed with the

top management and other stakeholders before a decision on the

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeirehochanges is made. This is very crucial in ensuring the changes

made are in line and agreement with the user’s demands and

expectations. Also the sponsors need be involved especially where

the changes proposed may require more funds into the project.

When the changes have been discussed and approved, then the

project manager documents such minutes to the approval of the

changes and then goes ahead to make changes in the system and

updates to the projects. Control changes and updates are very

crucial so as to help keep project within the planned variables.

It is crucial to note that in situations where it is major

changes to the project are made that may include change of

direction of the project, as a project manager you will need to

go back to the planning document and fit in such changes so as

the reflect the time, schedule and scope of the project.

Therefore, the regular running of the project reports and their

constant analysis, making timely change approvals as well as

ensuring that all the stakeholders were involved in the process

were some of the technics that were used and helpful in

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeirehocontrolling quality and successful change controls of the

project.

Project Communication:

Project communication is as important as the project itself and

its breakdown can easily lead to the failure of the project

because it is the only way through all important information

regarding the projects rich the appropriate parties. Project

communication was ensured through the following;

Sending out mass emails to all the employees through the

company server on any updates about the project so as to

keep all the stakeholders with updated information about the

project.

Weekly departmental meetings to review their progress and

document it and also to raise any issues that could have

occurred that required immediate attention.

A Weekly overall project meeting and status report by the

project manager to give the general status of the project

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeireho

and an update on all the major issues and upcoming events

including the foreseen risks to the project.

Use of project information/notice boards where important

updates, announcements and information about the project are

posted for all employees to view, usually targeted in the

hall ways or cafeteria area for easy access by the

employees.

In combination with all the above techniques, as a project

manager, being very simple and very approachable to all the

employees by others and having to make appropriate follow-ups on

issues is one big way to make the communication within the

project very effective.

Customer Expectations:

The customer’s expectation was the delivery of a fully

functional, all in one App, that would provide real time

information about the Africa Cup of Nations Tournament in terms

of accurate game statistics, result tables, fixtures as well the

news surrounding the tournament. Such expectations were

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeirehoidentified by carrying out research from the existing Football

governing bodies and also by inclusion of an option for a survey

questionnaire in the App from where customers can give their

feedback on its performance.

The technique used to achieve this was the inclusion in the App

an option for automatic updates that would enable it to keep up

with the real time and updated data about the tournament.

Also ensuring that the App does not experience a lot of downtime

and delays in delivering caused by viruses especially as a result

of uncontrolled platforms, the App was decided to be built on the

Apple IOS platform that cares so much about the security of the

software and does not allow any open source software that is

usually subject to viruses and can thus be easily attacked. Note

that this not to say that the App will never be infected but the

chances are small due to the constant monitoring by Apple of its

platform.

Also to ensure that information about the tournament flows to the

customers as expected, the App will be registered with FIFA and

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeirehothe Africa Cup of Nations governing body so as to allow live flow

of information and data from the tournament broadcasting.

Project Results:

Statistical/Financial Data;

The planned versus the Actual Data can be obtained by looking at

and analyzing the variance columns in the Gantt chat. This is

basically done by comparing the Baseline information with the

final/actual information about the project.

For example the schedule information/statistics would be got from

the following figure shown below;

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeireho

The resource usage and tracking of the planned/baseline and

actual data, this will be got by analyzing the table below;

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeireho

From the table above, it can be seen that the planned hours for

the planning and developing of the project plan was 80 and the

actual was also 80 hours.

It can also be seen that while the baseline/planned hours for the

entire project was 20,296.3 hours, the actual hours will be

19,976.3 hours and out of this, only 148.3 has so far been

utilized.

The planned versus the final cost, we can look at it from the

form table;

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeireho

It can be seen from the above table that the planned/baseline

cost of the project was US $ 839,592.27 and the actual cost of

the project was at US $ 810,301.91; thus with a variance of US $

29,200.36.

Lessons Learned:

One of the biggest lessons learned from the project is that each

project that is undertaken usually has a degree of uncertainty

either from the human resource side, technology side or be it

terms of the budget and schedule as it is difficult to make

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeirehoaccurate estimates of these variables at the planning process of

the project.

Therefore, for this reason, my advice and recommendation to any

future project manager is that he/she needs to be prepared right

from the point go on how to deal with such uncertainties and thus

be able to bring the project to its logical conclusion. Including

an emergence fund in the initial budget of the project, making

regular project monitoring, revealing weekly project status

updates to the all the stakeholders including the employees and

using good communication skills that make him closer to all

stakeholders especially the employees are some of the ways he can

deploy to work around such a situation.

Furthermore, as a project manager, it is crucial that you fully

understand your customer expectations and especially in terms of

budget, quality, scope as well the schedule of the project. This

will help you put more importance on such areas and thus help to

meet the expectations and making your project a success. For

example a customer may want as a matter of fact to hit a

particular time line for the product to be delivered even if this

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeirehowill cost him a little more to be accomplished. Therefore as a

project manager, it will be from your understanding to explain to

the owners/sponsors of the project such that their expectations

are met with success. Alternatively, some customers who put more

emphasis on the budget may be willing to do away with some

features in the product as long as this would not affect the

quality of the deliverable. Thus, understanding of these factors

by the project manager is very important for the successful

conclusion of the project.

Conclusion

In conclusion thus, a Post Implementation and Evaluation Report

(PIER) put all these facts in consideration by carefully looking

at the history of the project, making a review of the major

tasks, the risks that were involved, the success factors,

techniques used to ensure control before finally deriving lessons

from the project for future use and recommendations. Thus easy

to say, that a Post Implementation and Evaluation Report (PIER)

documents the failures and successes of the project and thereby

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A PIER of the project Maurice Kabeirehoproviding a basis for making future recommendations from the

learned lessons. Therefore one can say that a project is not yet

concluded until the PIER is made availed by the project manager.

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