Pearl equestrian Centre App Project

Pearl Equestrian Centre offers a full service boarding facility geared towards the needs of riders and their equestrian desires. The 100 acre facility is home to multiple trainers and clinicians. Pearl offers an excellent lesson program covering all disciplines of riding, and houses multiple arenas including dressage and jumping, round yard, horse wash, stables and much more. In addition Pearl offers trail riding and a full dude ranch experience.

Pearl Pty Ltd is managed by director, Jim Jackson. Pearl has been experiencing a reduction in boarding horses, private lessons and retraining of difficult horses after one highly respected trainer left for a position overseas, and a large horse training centre recently opened creating additional completion. Pearl has a basic web presence and has considered developing their site, along with traditional marketing approaches and an app, to help to promote and grow their business.

You have been working for Minerva Solutions casually for the last three months in their mobile app development department. As a virtual team specialist, your company has applied for a tender to develop an app for Pearl. Due to the importance of this project, the CEO of Minerva Solutions, Peter Morris, and the Director of Mobile Development Lisa Stillman have both made this project a priority.

The initial investment in the project is estimated to be $240,000 in year 0 of the project, $15,000 in year 1, $25,000 in year 2, and $20,000 in year 3 a total of $300,000. Minerva Solutions requires a discount rate of 10%. It is anticipated project future cash inflow as follows (Years 0 to 3): $0, $150,000, $150,000, and $150,000, a total of $450,000.The project will be expected to make at least a 25% ROI, to conform to the Minerva Solutions, business model.

The goal of the project is to propose an app, which is optimized for iPhone and Android devices. The app should allow client and potential clients to enroll and pay for riding lessons, horse boarding, re-training, booking trail rides and dude ranch reservations. Clients should be able to subscribe to Pearl newsletter and related upcoming events. There should be access maps of all trail rides, and videos showcasing all the facilities. There should be a photo album for each horse and trainer. The app should provide users with an ability to provide an overall ranking of equestrian centre in terms of attractions and services. Management believes it will take about five months (20 weeks) with a budget of $300,000 for this important project. Morris aims for a budget contingency reserve of approximately 10%.

Peter Morris and Lisa Stillman have formed a search committee to find the best candidate for managing the Pearl App Development Project. After reviewing many strong candidates, they decided to appoint you, to put together the business case for this critical project. Your previous job was with a consultancy firm where you successfully implemented several android application development projects for medium sized enterprises, using virtual teams. Since this is a high priority project that should be completed in five months, they felt it was appropriate to get the best candidate to put together a quality business case and project management plan. They are offering a premium for your contract at $130 p/hr for 2 d/wk, but a lot is at stake, Pearl and similar businesses are likely to request further mobile app development projects. Morris and Stillman propose to be joint project sponsors, and have handpicked Ty Borden, to be the main internal IT liaison and Mallory Wells to be the Pearl liaison. They will let you as the new project manager form the rest of the project team if the tender bid is successful.

In order to get the app developed in the time frame you propose to use an agile development approach with a team of two programmers and a digital image specialist working on the app. It is anticipated the programmers will spend the equivalent of half a day a week on project management related activities (e.g. completing status reports and attending meetings etc.) and the remaining 4.5 days on development. They will be paid at a rate of $95 p/hr, which is negotiable. You will also need access to an Minerva Solutions consultant (Amy Flemming). The consultant and liaison team members pay rates are negotiable and will only be required for a maximum of one week.

You anticipate several challenges if this tender bid is successful. Minerva Solutions originally focused on developing horse games apps for kids, but the CEO, Peter Morris, has emphasized the need to increase profits by tapping into other markets, including business marketing projects. The type of people who work on kids gaming projects are often different from people working on the new business marketing projects. They often have different educational backgrounds, skill sets, and ideals. Most of the people hired in the past year have been hired to support these new markets. Even though you and the Pearl Development project team tried to do a good job managing key stakeholders, there are some difficulties with several employees who disagree with the company's new market strategies.

The plan is to roll out review existing information, conduct research and gather new material. Detailed storyboards, a prototype, alpha, beta and final version of the app will developed. The app will need to be tested, and promoted prior to roll out. The project will be considered a success, if it comes in on time, on budget, within scope and key stakeholders have been pleased with the communication and reporting processes.