Task Description

Background

United Enterprises (a hypothetical organisation, see attachment) is a telecommunications company that provides consumers with landline and mobile access to both telephone and Internet resources. The CEO of United Enterprises, Mr Simon Young, has recently delivered a new strategic plan to the board. In this plan the company has identified a number of issues with its infrastructure and is seeking to update, replace or improve its operations in the following areas:

- upgrade of all desktop hardware used by employees across the company

- delivery of mobile handsets and an associated suite of applications for senior managers

- upgrade of servers used to support finance, HR, and client services

- use of open-source applications to replace the proprietary (UE and third-party developed) software used throughout the organisation

- development of a new application to allow customers to retrieve their account and invoice information online.

You are employed within United Enterprises working in the Information Technology Division as a Team Leader in the Service Control Group. Your manager, Ms Shilpa Jaswal, has asked you to prepare a plan for one of the tasks above. Your plan will form the basis of a proposal being developed for the CEO to implement the strategic plan over the 2014-2015 financial year.

Information about the hypothetical company United Enterprises that will be used as the basis for this project

Tasks

Choose one of the targets listed above. You are to write a planning report for your selected project. You will need to define your chosen project clearly as part of the "Background" section of the report. You may choose to define the project in your own terms based on the information provided.

Research at least three planning techniques such as Critical Success Factors, Business Systems Planning, SWOT analysis and brainstorming that can be used for IT planning. Choose a technique that can be used effectively to plan the implementation of your chosen project. List the techniques you researched and explain why you chose the selected technique over the others. Document how you would use your chosen planning method to plan the proposed project. Draw a flow diagram to illustrate the stages of planning. Present all this information and your analysis as a report.

Note: You do not have to plan the project itself. All you need to do is to explain how you would develop the plan and how you would justify your selected technique.

Requirements

The report must be in PDF format, and approximately four pages in length excluding bibliography with 12 point Times New Roman font and 1.5 line spacing.

Background What is the problem you are trying to solve? What are the benefitsthe company if the problem is solved? What are the risks to be faced if the problemnot solved?

Goals What are the goals of the proposed project?

Planning Techniques Provide an overview of the three planning techniques thcould be used. Make sure that you summarise these in your own words. Do not cothe overview from another source. Use the referencing skills discussed in the tutorias a guide.

Selected Method State the planning technique that you intend to use. What are advantages and disadvantages over the other techniques? What are the critifactors that will ensure that the technique will produce successful outcomes?

Planning Process Explain the steps you would take in the planning process usiyour selected technique. Give examples of the issues that you might face implementing the technique on your chosen project.

Discuss how you would overcome some of these issues in your implementation. What timeframe do you recommend for your process?

Conclusions/Recommendations How would you advise your manager to proceed?

Bibliography What references did you use to complete your assignment?

Task Description

Overview

Your textbook (Frenzel and Frenzel 2004) discusses the theoretical framework for SLAs in Chapter 12 - Developing and Managing Customer Expectations.

Microsoft has a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for Office365, which can be located by the following URL:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/library/office-365-service-level-agreement. aspx

In this assignment you are to compare the MS-SLA document with the theoretical framework discussed in the textbook. You will need to present your comparison in the form of a report.

2.2. TASK DESCRIPTION

Requirements

The report must be in PDF format, and approximately four pages in length excluding cover sheets and bibliography with 12 point Times New Roman font and 1.5 line spacing.

You should choose an appropriate format for the report based on how you wish to perform the comparison. Your report should include at least the following analysis:

- What does the textbook identify as part of an SLA that is missing from the MS- SLA? What reasons can you identify for why Microsoft might not include these aspects?

- What parts of the MS-SLA are not found in the textbook description of an SLA? Provide reasons why you think Microsoft found them necessary, yet the book didnt.

- Draw some conclusions as to the effectiveness of this SLA from the perspective of ITSD and from the customers.