All Star Cable Project Plan Map
Background:
With the deregulation of the cable industry, All-Star Cable emerged as a minor player in the cable television industry. The small cable company, which had always provided affordable cable television service in South Texas, used the transmission lines and equipment of the larger cable providers, allowing All-Star to offer excellent service and simple at a better price than the larger cable companies. Unfortunately, in the mid-1980s, the company’s growth stalled and the company faced bankruptcy, and All-Star quickly realized that this downturn was due to:
Your customer base is better off financially and therefore wants more options than All-Star could offer.
All-Star began to be perceived as a “cheap” company.
Their competitors began targeting their sales efforts at the All-Stars’ established customer base.
Changes in the cable television market forced All-Star Cable to reexamine its strategy, and in an effort to survive, All-Star’s newly hired marketing manager and information technology manager redesigned the cable television strategy. the company, which helped All-Star survive. All-Star’s first step was to focus on increasing business volume, contracting with its premium channel companies to offer the premium channels that its customers were looking for. All-Star’s second move was to reduce its operating expenses by implementing an automated billing system. Finally, All-Star’s third step is to invest in new equipment, upgrade its current equipment, and expand its IT department so that it can support the addition of a Pay-for-View service. With each strategic shift, All-Star rapidly expanded its market, eventually becoming the largest cable television provider in South Texas.
Definition of the project
The new direction for the company is to introduce a movie-on-demand service, which allows customers to select and watch movies whenever they want, as opposed to the pay-per-view option, which streams movies globally at set intervals. The movies-on-demand project required All-Star to create an information technology solution that needed to be available within six months and provided: The ability to store digital movies, A menu system that gives customers the ability to navigate and select movies based on title, actor/actress or genre using your checkbox, the ability to select and purchase movies using your checkbox, a billing system, which included the addition of a $6.00 per movie charge for the service of movies on demand, and additionally, there will be no discounts for large volume purchases.
The first stage of the definition stage is to conduct a comprehensive feasibility study. This is necessary to make an unbiased decision on whether or not to proceed, as the case may be, and generally defines the high-level needs of a project, the medium-term expectation of a project, and the smallest details (Evalica, 2004). Feasibility should be divided into four sections:
Technical: system can be developed
Operational: can the organization absorb the change?
Economic: can the expense be justified?
Schedule: the system can be implemented in the prescribed time (Álvarez, 2004).
The project is further defined by creating a work breakdown structure, which is a tree-like list of system sections and modules with general descriptions of functionality and interaction. This helps define project functionality specifications and detailed descriptions of system features and integration, which will be used to develop project scope, schedules, and cost (Evalica, 2004).
Execution
Once the feasibility of the project has been determined, the Execution phase can begin. In this phase, most of the Movies-On-Demand (MOD) project will materialize.
Prior to hardware/software acquisition, a System Requirements Specification (SRS) is completed to verify alignment of project requirements with those of software developers (Cygnet, 2004). After a thorough investigation of the newly hired IT staff in the previous phase of the project, it is considered very likely that the internal staff will be able to create a working system to implement the project.
They will start by modifying the billing system and refining the viewer menu options. Currently, the system allows the viewer to access their billing information, select pay-per-view movies, and access the Internet. New menus must be created to offer the new MOD service and bill properly. Since the current controller box will continue to be used for the new offering, the cost of the hardware to the end user does not change. Therefore, this basic software development (menu and billing system) will have a test for day 30 of the execution phase.
The acquisition ($9,100) of the three (3) servers ($1,250 each), the backup software for each server ($1,500 each), and the software/digital movies ($450,000) is completed within the first month (M1) at a total cost of $467,350.
Installation continues as Month 2 of the project begins. This phase is scheduled to last until month 4. The working system and software will be tested throughout each phase of the project. Software development and system integration will bear most of the manpower. Once the rights to offer and purchase the movies, installation and configuration phases of the software are completed, another extensive test will be administered to ensure that the software is working properly.
Control measures are established to identify the progress of the project.
Initially, the programmers will create a new menu system. They will then integrate the old system with the new offering. This allows the viewer to browse, select and purchase movies for $6.00 each.
Communication between the IT manager and the project manager continues on a daily basis. As the project passes expected milestones, the Project Manager updates the Director of Marketing to ensure timeline alignment. This will ensure that no time is wasted from the completion of the project to the advertising campaign.
Delivery
The new software is installed on the servers. The full system test is performed. Appropriate testing should be followed to verify the ability to handle the potential magnitude of use. Testing a simple system with low volumes will not be enough of a “green light” to proceed. Once the system efficiently handles high-volume testing, a final analysis and report is created and delivered to the president and chief marketing officer.
References
Cygnet-infotech pvt. limited. Copyright 2000– 2004 @ Cygnet Infotech Pvt. Ltd., India
Retrieved on January 18, 2005 from the World Wide Web:
[http://www.cygnet-infotech.com/pdf/projectmanagement]. PDF
Alvarez, PM, 2004. Feasibility analysis of a software project. Retrieved on January 19, 2005 from [http://delta.cs.cinvestav.mx/~pmejia/softeng/1]
Boehm, B., 1981. Project Management. Retrieved on January 19, 2005 from [http://www.bit.umkc.edu/burris/] pl/project-management/
Evalica, 2004. Retrieved January 19, 2005 from http://www.evalica.com/cm/about/methodology/feasibility_phase
