Assignment: Using Agile Project Management to Implement a Complex Marketing Campaign System

Imagine you are the project manager for a critical project for an organization. The organization wants to implement a state of the art real-time marketing campaign system. This system has many components.

• First, it has to get data from its front-end systems via the middle-ware component.

• Second, it has its own database system that stores the shopping history, credit information, billing address and shipping address, and so on.

• Third, it has a marketing rules engine that needs to be customized for various campaigns.

• Finally, it has an analytical platform that leverages data warehouse and analytics tools, such as SAS to test marketing strategies and assess campaign effectiveness.

In addition, your company already has some stand-alone applications supporting marketing campaigns and analytics. Due to this project, your executives want IT to retire the legacy applications as part of the project. Although your executives plan to have this new system in production in twelve to fourteen months, they want to see the results as soon as possible, so they can enable more business capabilities, such as real-time decisions for up-selling and cross-selling. The executives also want to save costs by using offshore resources even though your organization does not currently have experience with this. Other troubles with the organization include problems controlling the scope of projects and inexperience to initiatives of this size. To further complicate the situation, you are aware that some of the business executives have had bad experiences with IT delivery in the past and you heard numerous complains about IT projects being late without meeting project expectations.

Section 1: Written Project Plan

1. Write a ten page paper in which you:

a. Suggest an Agile project management framework to the sponsors and justify why the framework you suggested is best suited for this project.

b. Develop a release plan through the use of graphical tools in Microsoft Word or Visio, or an open source alternative such as Dia. Note: The graphically depicted solution is not included in the required page length.

c. Explain how to use Agile methods to scale the release plan you developed for retiring the legacy applications.

d. Explain how to use Agile methods to establish the scope for the project and determine the methods to control the scope to ensure the business values will be delivered.

e. Choose at least two Agile techniques to monitor this project and explain the reasons why you chose those two techniques.

f. Suggest Agile strategies to develop product vision and product architecture.

g. Create a diagram to show the overall systems architecture through the use of graphical tools in Microsoft Word or Visio, or an open source alternative such as Dia. Note: The graphically depicted solution is not included in the required page length.

h. Determine the roles of the Agile project team in this project and determine the coaching methods to build a high-performance team.

i. Determine the Agile techniques to manage conflicts and facilitate collaboration throughout the project. Provide examples to support your response.

j. Explain how to set the right expectation with the business.

k. Take a position on whether or not offshore resources should be used in this project and explain why or why not.

l. Speculate on the ethical challenges in this project and explain how to resolve them.

m. Identify the key differences and speculate on the consequences if managing / governing the same project with a traditional waterfall project management approach instead of using Agile strategies.

n. Suggest the Agile methods to control the quality of work among the project team.

o. Explain how to encourage more innovative ways to accomplish this project.

p. Explain how to use Agile methods to handle the documentation in this project that would satisfy both short-term project needs and long-term maintenance needs.

q. Use at least five quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not qualify as quality resources.

Section 1 of your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

• Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.

• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the professor's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

• Include charts or diagrams created in Visio or Dia. The completed diagrams / charts must be imported into the Word document before the paper is submitted.