Scenario

You have been asked to be the project manager for the development of an information technology (IT) project. The system to be developed will allow a large company to coordinate and maintain records of the professional development of its employees. The company has over 30,000 employees who are located in four sites: Florida, Colorado, Illinois, and Texas. The system needs to allow employees to locate and schedule professional development activities that are relevant to their positions. Sophisticated search capabilities are required, and the ability to add scheduled events to the employees' calendars is desired. The system needs to support social networking to allow employees to determine who is attending conferences and events. This will promote fostering relationships and ensure coverage of conferences that are considered of high importance.

Once an activity has been completed, employees will use the system to submit the documentation. The system should support notifications to management personnel whenever their direct reports have submitted documentation. The system should also notify employees if their deadline to complete professional-development requirements is approaching and is not yet satisfied.

The goal is to get this system up and running at the start of the next fiscal year

For the given scenario, answer the following questions:

Provide your recommendation on how the project's status will be collected, analyzed, and distributed to the stakeholders.

Do you think a project manager can manage the project schedule if team members do not accurately report when they are behind? What are ways that a project manager can ensure that he or she is being given an accurate status report?

In what ways can organizational change that occurs during project execution impact the success of a project?

Discuss an experience you have had with a team that struggled and never really got to the point of functioning smoothly. Explain the factors that might have contributed based upon your understanding of team development methodologies such as Tuckman's stages of group development (Search AIU Library or the Internet if you do not know Tuckman's model).