Posted: April 17th, 2015

Preliminary Risk Management Plan for a Web Application

 

 

ISYS90050 IT Project & Change Management

Preliminary Risk Management Plan for a Web Application

 

 

Business Case Background

Bernard Yee is the proud owner of ‘Hot Wok’, a Malaysian restaurant in the heart of the Melbourne CBD. The family-owned and operated restaurant has been running for close to ten years. Bernard runs the business like his father and his grandfather before him, cash-only and all business transactions are written down in pen. In fact, until six months ago, Bernard did not have an eftpos facility! Hot Wok is a popular destination for Melbourne’s Malaysian community. Patrons come from all walks of life – whitecollar workers from Melbourne’s CBD and business executives regularly hold corporate luncheons. Apparently, Malaysian VIPs flying in to Melbourne count on a meal at Hot Wok as an integral part of their visit. Hot Wok is busy throughout the year but especially so during Christmas and Chinese New Year celebrations.

 

Bernard plans to retire in the next six months and hand over Hot Wok to his eldest son Jason. Jason’s first act is to transform Hot Wok into a 21st century business. His primary aim is to replace the paper-driven transaction system at the heart of Hot Wok with a web application that harnesses the power of the Internet to deliver efficiency and speed to the Hot Wok brand. As part of his business plan, Jason wants to radically increase sales volume by introducing a home/office delivery service to reach a larger client base.

 

Jason manages the business but employs his younger brother, Tim and his younger sister Julia as well other cousins on a demand basis. Jason is well aware of the existing stakeholders in the business. The business already relies on cooks, cleaners, waiting staff, kitchen hands and reception staff. These will need to be augmented with telephone operators to take orders for the new home delivery system and couriers to dispatch the meals to the customers at the designated pickup point. Kitchen staff will have to be trained in using the web application system to print out orders, pack meals for delivery and mark off completed orders to keep customers informed on a real-time basis.

 

Hot Wok prepares special order meals as well as walk-in orders (and now on-demand phone orders). Estimating how much meat, vegetables, spices etc. to order in advance for the week’s operations was notoriously difficult. Bernard would do the calculations by hand and ring suppliers every Sunday to dictate the precise amounts of each ingredient. Unfortunately, such rough estimations meant that much food would go to waste and unexpectedly popular dishes would not be available when some key ingredients ran out. Jason believes the web application can make the process more efficient by (1) having kitchen managers enter special order meals into the web application, and (2) having all regular orders entered into the system so statistics can be collected to inform future estimations of ingredients. Further, rather than ringing suppliers on Sundays, the suppliers can simply login to the web application and have the application calculate how much of each ingredient is required. This would make the process more time efficient but also more cost- efficient as fewer orders would need to be placed with more accurate estimations of ingredients which would result in less wastage and more sales.

 

For the new home delivery business Jason doesn’t know if he has enough ‘manpower’ to handle all orders which involves cooking the meals, packing them, and delivering them to the pickup point. Also, a network of couriers will need to be organized and deliveries will need to be coordinated on

 

 

a real-time basis, as the meals must be delivered hot (or customers will start calling the business

‘Cold Wok’). These challenges are a source of considerable risk to the business.

 

Bernard used to take orders over the phone and in-person at the reception. Payments are currently made using eftpos facilities at the restaurant. Customers must be able to read the entire menu online and make their order using a web form.

 

Key Client Requirements

Jason would like you to, at a minimum:

1. A. Create an ecommerce web site to allow clients to view the Hot Wok menu including images of each product and pricing information
2. B. Allow current and potential clients to submit orders and make payments online
3. C. Add clients to the client database assigning them a user ID with a password for access to their current and previous orders which allows them to change their orders up until 30 minutes prior to delivery
4. D. Allow suppliers to login to the web solution to receive/check orders (meat, vegetables, spices, etc.)
5. E. Store all event data and make summary information available in a variety of formats
6. F. Run a training course on using the new web solution for Hot Wok staff and stakeholders

 

For the above requirements Jason is willing to pay a generous $500,000 in fees. The deadline for the web solution to ‘go live’ is 12 months from the start date.

 

 

 

 

You are required to submit a preliminary Risk Management Plan (RMP) to Jason prior to starting this project. The plan must comprise of four parts (see below) with a maximum of FIVE (5) pages (not including the title page, references and the Risk Register). Please note that each section must start on a new page. A high-level Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) has been provided on the last page of this project specification document.

 

 

 

Risk Management Plan Specification

 

Part 1 – Risk Process

1-1. In your own words, explain what the Risk Management Process is in the context of a project. What is the role of the Risk Management Process in this project? What are the benefits? (about ONE (1) page).

 

Part 2 – Context Establishment

2-1. Write a ‘Context Establishment’ section in which you describe the scope of your risk management exercise. What aspects of the Hot Wok business process and ecommerce web site project will be covered? Justify in about ONE (1) page.

 

Part 3 – Risk Identification

3-1. Identify as many sources of risks as possible. Describe the sources of risk in this section. Why are they relevant? Which sources of risks are likely to be significant in this project? (about ONE (1) page).

 

3-2. For each source of risk, identify as many risks as possible. Ensure these risks are written in simple, precise and succinct jargon-free language for Jason to understand.

 

Part 4 – Risk Assessment: Qualitative Estimation of Probability & Impact

4-1 In about ONE (1) page, explain how you plan to estimate probability and impact. What frequency scale will you use? What kinds of impacts might there be in this project? What weighting will you assign each kind of impact? For each risk identified in 3-2, speculate on the probability and impact using a qualitative system (e.g. Low, Medium, High).

 

4-2. In about ONE (1) page, justify your reasoning behind the relative probabilities and impacts assigned to the top TEN risks as ranked in Part 6.