Project Objectives and Overview
ABC organization is a small-scale Informational technology company that helps deliver project management along with software servicing to its customers. The company need to understand the severe loss of profit for the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic impacts that presented barriers to its operation and remote development. The existing infrastructure of the family can be challenged for operating on and protecting the organizational information.
Based on this understanding, the project aims for establishing an organizational cloud-based solution for helping the enterprise workforce, reducing operational costs, and increasing innovation and agility (Sahid, Maleh & Belaissaoui, 2020). The analysis is done to check the application of the enterprise-level hybrid cloud-based solution for being effective in supporting business objectives and processes for removing the gaps present in the organization.
The organization aims to grow its business meeting to a wide range of applications for maintaining cloud computing services to make progress on the commoditizing the desktop applications present (Jackson & Goessling, 2018). The organization has set its objectives to help its internal operation, expressing significant knowledge on the barriers and mitigation of remote work and data security and sensitivity management.
The company aims to improve its remote control of workflow and management of sensitive data by applying hybrid/private cloud implementation to the ABC organization. The operations lacked the existing infrastructure for managing their employees remotely and managing their data to support the business objectives to ensure the elimination of the gaps in the organization.
The cost-benefit analysis needs to state the budget, stating the completed budget of the project is $ 126300, and for five years, the project would offer $ 81,514.88 as Overall NPV and 0.6040 as Overall ROI. Thus, the budget done states that the project can be beneficial to be implemented in the ABC organization.
Cost-Benefit Analysis |
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Analysis Variables: |
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Discount Rate Used |
5.00% |
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Annual Benefits |
$ 50,000.00 |
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Annual Operational Costs |
$ 2,000.00 |
|||||||
One-Time Development Cost (including hardware, software and security solution cost) |
$ 126,300.00 |
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Year of Project |
|
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0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
TOTALS |
||
Economic Benefit |
$0.00 |
$ 50,000.00 |
$ 50,000.00 |
$ 50,000.00 |
$ 50,000.00 |
$ 50,000.00 |
||
Discount Rate |
1.0000 |
0.9524 |
0.9070 |
0.8638 |
0.8227 |
0.7835 |
||
PV of Benefits |
$0.00 |
$47,619.05 |
$45,351.47 |
$43,191.88 |
$41,135.12 |
$39,176.31 |
||
NPV of all BENEFITS |
$0.00 |
$ 47,619.05 |
$ 92,970.52 |
$ 136,162.40 |
$ 177,297.53 |
$ 216,473.83 |
$ 216,473.83 |
|
One-Time COSTS |
$ (126,300.00) |
|||||||
Recurring Costs |
$0.00 |
$ (2,000.00) |
$ (2,000.00) |
$ (2,000.00) |
$ (2,000.00) |
$ (2,000.00) |
||
Discount Rate |
1.0000 |
0.9524 |
0.9070 |
0.8638 |
0.8227 |
0.7835 |
||
PV of Recurring Costs |
$0.00 |
$ (1,904.76) |
$ (1,814.06) |
$ (1,727.68) |
$ (1,645.40) |
$ (1,567.05) |
||
NPV of all COSTS |
$ (126,300.00) |
$ (128,204.76) |
$ (130,018.82) |
$ (131,746.50) |
$ (133,391.90) |
$ (134,958.95) |
$ (134,958.95) |
|
Overall NPV |
$ 81,514.88 |
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Overall ROI |
|
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0.6040 |
Table 1: Cost-benefit estimation table of the project for the ABC organization
Source: Author 2022
The applicable legislation for the enterprise-level hybrid enterprise management cloud-based solutions for ABC organization is:
- Developing the business case for identifying visibilities and feasibilities of the cloud implementation project for implementing the hybrid cloud for the organization as a possible solution.
- The system’s effectiveness is tested for the hybrid deployment approach to be implemented as a project by the ABC organization for observing whether project can satisfy the business requirements.
- The primary model is developed in the preliminary step for describing an operational model for operational services
- The technological architecture needs to be identified to support the implementation of the solution for efficient data management.
- The complexities of the system are needed to be mitigated to mitigate the problems of remote workflow management and sensitive data storage.
- The organization must use the Hybrid cloud to unify and combine the private, public and physical infrastructure features to create a flexible, cost-optimal and singular IT infrastructure needed (WEKA, 2022).
- If circumstances change, the appropriate optimal computation environment might be created for segregating workflow, moving them among the present cloud.
- Cloud technology aims to enhance the legacy application with the rapid adaptation of the new technologies.
- The hybrid cloud can be used for resource optimization and saving costs.
The present requirements that are present in the enterprise-level hybrid cloud implementations for the ABC enterprises for developing the system:
- Appropriate software implementation
- AWS cloud solution, hybrid or multiple private clouds (Cloud4C, 2022).
- Hardware optimization
- Human resource management
The process of scope evaluation for checking the scope of the project for implementing the hybrid cloud in the ABC enterprise:
- The clarification is made on the scope to be evaluated
- The theory of the change is stated in there is a need
- The primary users are targeted to understand their perspective of use
- The key question is derived for the evaluation procedures, deciding on the time of the necessary evaluation.
- The evaluation must be conducted internally or outsourced externally by the team responsible.
- The quality of the evaluators is needed to be checked thoroughly.
- The resources are identified that are needed to be evaluated perfectly to complete the evaluation and check the alignment of the scope with the business requirements.
The approval is taken from the higher management by understanding their perspective of approving the project’s scope. The cost-benefit analysis shows the business to be profitable within the next 5 years. Thus, the idea on which the project is established or the hybrid cloud implementation needs to be understood thoroughly. Once the scope evaluation is completed after the generation of the scope, the scope gets approved to be further communicated between the members of the ABC organization. The higher management needs to understand the perspective of the customers and the business’s objective to provide a better range of services aligned with the implementation of the new system. The evaluations done helps to validate the system functionalities and operational performance. The customers provide insight on the actual need of the product for completion, selecting targeted demographics and their perception of the use of the new system. If the charter is valid, it is further sent to higher management or the customers to approve the functionalities and workflow of the project.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Implementing a new enterprise-level cloud-based system allows the team members to understand the project scope with proper medias for communicating the various issues that continuously rise in the system before or after the project implementation. The project team allows the project members to meet regularly to give opportunities for understanding the objective of the business aligning it with the project (“6 proven project team communication strategies”, 2022). There must be a communication plan in place to coordinate the project kick-off. There must be transparency among the project member and the higher authority to produce the desired outcomes. The scope is needed to be reviewed and communicated to the stakeholders to trace the following requirements of the system. The communication done with the project member needs to understand initial and detailed requirements to mitigate the issues that rises, presenting the opportunities that come from the possibilities of using the hybrid cloud on ABC organization affecting their operational capabilities.
The ABC organization needs to engage its stakeholders and senior executives. Their leadership development in the organization is taken as a priority for the ABC organization to understand the project scope with urgency. The stakeholders have sets of expectations for lining the managers, and they are held accountable for making key decisions for designing the key factors and making the discussions accordingly (Burton, 2022). The agreements align with business issues enforcing compliance with other stakeholder perceptions. The senior management aligns the project scope with institutional strategies. The senior manager needs to understand how the decisions are needed to be committed and supported decision-making.
The sponsor of implementing the hybrid cloud infrastructure for the ABC organization are the higher authorities or senior executives. The sponsors can simultaneously be involved with multiple projects, guiding and aligning the project objectives and business goals with proper objectives and strategies (Projectmanager, 2022). The project sponsors also do the project’s governance, ensuring the project deployment and execution to produce efficient shared value for managing the project changes and risks to ensure project qualities.
The project needs the key decision-makers to implement the hybrid cloud in the ABC organization to optimize organizational performance and proper decisions. The key decision-makers that decide the properties of the system are:
- Project manager
- System developers
- System designers
- Policy regulator
- The cloud vendors
- Cloud Auditor
- Network manager
- Third-party application providers
- Cloud Admin
- Business analyst
- Trainer
- HR manager
The service level agreements, SLA and contracts are contractual arrangements that specify a set of cloud services and their associated costs. The cloud infrastructure needs to be outsourced from a vendor; thus, the agreement becomes vital for the system (Datamation, 2022). The SLA has complied with the scope statement to define the various service parameters, set expectations from the project and agree to the estimated costs.
The SLA helps to avoid confusion among the cloud vendor and the project parties agreeing through a legal document defining the acceptable qualities of the system, measuring the technical qualities and total productivity to increase project efficiency and make accurate judgments.
- The schedule of the tasks and the responsibilities must be adhered to improve the scheduling procedures to increase project efficiency, productivity, and costs.
- The schedule management is needed to be done to keep the workflow organized organizing the tasks (Balance and Ltd, 2022)
- The client details are needed to understand among the employees to reduce the chances of deadline miss and align with the business objectives.
- The employees are needed to focus so that the schedule is well communicated to reduce the chances of confusion.
- The workflow of the project is managed with care by schedule management.
References:
Jackson, K. L., & Goessling, S. (2018). Architecting Cloud Computing Solutions: Build cloud strategies that align technology and economics while effectively managing risk. Packt Publishing Ltd.
Sahid, A., Maleh, Y., & Belaissaoui, M. (2020). Cloud computing as a drive for strategic agility in organizations. In Strategic information system agility: From theory to practices. Emerald Publishing Limited.
WEKA. (2022). Hybrid Cloud Storage [Building a Solution for Modern Data] | WEKA. [online] Available at:
<https://www.weka.io/blog/hybrid-cloud-storage/> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
Cloud4C. (2022). Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Solutions and Managed Services | Cloud4C. [online] Available at:
<https://www.cloud4c.com/hybrid-cloud> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
Ballance, M. and Ltd, S., (2022). Top 5 Benefits of Scheduling Software for Employees and Managers. [online] www.scheduleit.com. Available at: <https://www.scheduleit.com/blog/10384/top-5-benefits-of-scheduling-software-for-employees-and-managers> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
Datamation. (2022). Cloud Computing and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) | Datamation. [online] Available at:
<https://www.datamation.com/cloud/cloud-computing-and-service-level-agreements-slas/> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
Projectmanager (2022). [online] Available at: <https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/what-is-a-project-sponsor> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
Burton, G. and Burton, G. (2022). The Benefits of Assurance Reporting | Assure UK. [online] Assure UK. Available at:
<https://www.assureuk.co.uk/the-benefits-of-assurance-reporting/> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
6 proven project team communication strategies. (2022). Retrieved 29 April 2022, from https://www.cio.com/article/238521/6-proven-project-team-communication-strategies-2.html