The current internet service at Yoyob has failed to sufficiently serve the company due to low internet, data loss, failures, and poor connections resulting in delays and downtimes. Therefore, an additional ISP connection would improve the internet connection and eliminate delays and downtimes. Therefore, this project aimed at strengthening the network through an additional ISP connection. The project also focused on installing a cloud backup service to eliminate data loss. The post-implementation report summarized the project’s purpose, informative evaluations, and quality assurance. The project was launched on December 12th and completed on January 3rd. The project phases included requirement, design, implementation, testing, deployment and maintenance. The project began with understanding the requirements and then the design, which included striding the requirement specifications to prepare the system design. The implementation of the project included completing tasks such as installing the new ISP connection, the cloud backup service, the failover switch, and keeping track of the project progress. The formative evaluation began before the project design and implementation. The formative evaluation approaches included the Process Decision Program, RACI matrix and quality audit. The project relied on UAT to verify and accept the new ISP connection and cloud backup service before deployment. The test cases included the network load, security, and internet speed tests. The acceptance criteria were linked to the project objectives and anticipated project deliverables. The acceptance criteria used for this project were in line with the industry standard since the requirements were clear, concise, and relied on the user perspective.
Keywords: Quality Assurance, Project Review, and Formative Evaluation
Table of Contents
Formative Evaluation and QA Metrics. 4
Implementation Project Milestones. 15
Documentation Deliverables. 16
Formative Evaluation Results and Revisions. 18
Summative Evaluation Plan and Results. 19
Stakeholder Communication Plan and Reports. 20
Ongoing Support and Maintenance. 20
Resources for Post-Implementation Support 21
Short and Long Term Maintenance Plan. 21
Post-Implementation Project Summary. 21
Documentation Deliverables. 22
Success Criteria for Each Project Outcome. 22
Justification of Proposed versus Actual Project Outcomes. 23
The Post Implementation Report offers a high level of summary information needed in understanding the project context, including the scope, schedules, milestones, and implemented features. The quality assurance metrics and the formative evaluations will be used to examine the support activities needed to meet the project’s primary objective. The User Acceptance Testing helped demonstrate the required internet functions to the real-world situation.
Project quality management is a significant aspect of any project. It is broken down into three essential processes Quality assurance, Quality Control, and Quality planning (Pheng, 2018). The process of quality assurance is linked to process analysis and continuous improvement. Before verifying quality levels, it’s imperative to have accurate data. Therefore, every project manager has to perform a measurement system analysis to verify the integrity and accuracy of the measurement system and the data. Finally, the post-implementation report evaluated the actual projected outcome against the intended results.
Formative evaluation is used before the project design and implementation (Schuck-Zöller, Cortekar, and Jacob, 2017). It offers data on the significance and need of the program and creates a baseline for subsequent monitoring. Therefore, it helps in the identification of areas of improvement and offers insights on what are the priorities of the project. This enables the project manager to determine the areas of concern and increase stakeholders’ awareness. The formative evaluation approaches used for this project were the Process Decision Program Chart, Raci Matrix, and quality audit.
According to the PMBOK guide, the quality assurance process is considered auditing quality requirements. The outcomes or results from quality control measurements to guarantee appropriate operational definitions and standards have been used. Quality Assurance metrics were used to formally assess and make required corrections to ensure the project was successful. Quality metrics in project management are the key performance indicators vital in realizing a project (Kerzner, 2017). Considerably, if the project manager fails to control the critical performance indicators, the risk of going past the deadline or project failure rises drastically. During the implementation of this project, the quality metrics guided the project manager in making the right decisions regarding the project. The choice of quality metrics was undertaken through three significant steps. The first step was understanding the goal and purpose of the project. The second step was to determine the vital success factors of the project, and the third step was determining how to measure its fulfilment. The project relied on process decision program charts to identify the required steps to reach the goal. It also enabled the analysis of steps needed to identify potential pitfalls or issues before encountering the project. Therefore, the project manager was able to determine what went wrong during the implementation of the project, thus allowing the development of countermeasures to prevent the occurrence of the problems. Considerably, the process decision program chart allowed revising the project plan before implementation to avoid the issues and offer the best responses when an issue occurs. The project manager used the process decision program chart to check the proposed solution for the additional internet provider project. It will not have any consequences to the cost of IPS connection that might lead to impact analysis. The project management team also used the metrics to find errors with the plan while it’s being created, such as ensuring that the redundant internet has sufficient speed that will not disrupt the daily use. Speed is the most critical factor, determined by the volume of information per unit of time that the transmission medium can sustain. Identifying such potential issues allowed the project team to develop preventative measures such as speed tests that allowed the elimination of such errors during the implementation of the project. They had to ensure that the ISP connection offers the most suitable speed required (10GBPs).
The project also relied on matrix diagrams to illustrate the relationship between various factors. The Matrix based charts were used as a responsibility assignment matrix to document the roles of the responsibilities and duties of the project team members. The RACI matrix chart effectively listed the work and the resources assigned to work the various activities. The RACI matrix was effective since it showed every stakeholder’s responsibilities and levels of involvement against the corresponding milestone and tasks. This allowed the project manager to monitor the functions of each stakeholder in the project. Ideally, no matter how well detailed and complete the project plan is, omission and confusion of participants’ duties and roles may occur, leading to significant problems. Integration of the RACI matrix in the project lifecycle created a powerful synergy that enhanced and improved the project outcomes. The project manager delegated the tasks and ensured that the stakeholders were accountable for specific charges, reducing confusion and facilitating project success.
A quality audit was also conducted on the project as an independent review by the external auditors. The quality audit was performed on a regularly scheduled basis. The audit was a structured review of the quality management activities to realize best and promising practices and the lessons learned to use the current projects. The periodic review was significant since it included measurements and activities that assured the stakeholders that the right actions and quality processes were adhered to during the project. In addition, the project manager used the quality audit to identify best practices implemented in the project, the gaps of the project, shortcomings, and non-conformities. Therefore, this offered assistance to the project manager during quality assurance since it improved the implementation of varying processes used to raise the project team’s productivity.
The project relied on User Acceptance Testing, which ensured that the solution by the project met the non-function and functional requirements specified in the business needs (Dalton, 2019). The User Acceptance Testing was conducted in the final testing phase after the integration, functional, and system implementation. The actual users determined the use of the redundant internet to determine if it does what it was meant to do in real-world situations and assess changes and validate adherence to the business’s requirements. For instance, the internet connection can be completely functional from the technical point of view but still fail due to the conditions that are not effectively communicated or defined to the service provider. The User Acceptance Testing was used to safeguard against ineffective, unfinished, and faulty internet connections. The UAT test data covered all the network’s functional scenarios in real-world applications. The project manager focused on a well-designed, high-quality UAT test that reflected the user requirements accurately and identified issues that would go unnoticed. The UAT test ensured that the revised network functioned adequately throughout the organization. Therefore, UAT was used to check if the project’s purpose was achieved and whether the functionality was reached.
The Test Cases were scenarios developed to test and validate the Internet service through simple data. The outcome of the test case and methods were used to determine whether the test was successful or failed. Successful execution of the test scenarios implies that the business needs are met and that the project produced the desired outcomes. The test cases recorded specific processes and behaviours of the network, defined the performance of the web and the quality of service of the network. The test cases for the network performance included the upload and download speed test, security test, and network load test. The metrics used in the test cases were upload and download speed, throughput, network speed, data packet loss, and delays. The upload and download speeds were used to test the internet connection service performance. This was done to determine if something went wrong with the user or service provider. The internet speed test measured the upload and download speeds used to show the time it takes for the devices to receive data through requests after implementing the project. The security tests were conducted to demonstrate and identify any vulnerabilities and risks that would help in validating security defences and meeting the compliance mandates. The network load tests were used to determine if the computers and applications within the entire network could withhold high loads after adding another network service provider. During the network load testing, network stress testing was also conducted to reveal the breakpoints and areas of improvement on the network. This was done by putting the network under heavy load to determine the quality of service and scalability. The test cases and scenarios allowed for quantitative and qualitative assessment of the network performance by offering actionable data that would show any network performance issues.
Project acceptance criteria are the criteria that entail performance requirements and vital conditions which have to be met before the deliverables of the project are accepted. Ideally, they set out the end-users specific needs to get the final project output. The acceptance criteria used for this project were ensuring that User Acceptance Testing has been completed, the testing cases were successful in ensuring that the quality assurance has been conducted. The User Acceptance testing included the network load test, the download and upload speed tests, and the security tests. The industry standards of the acceptance criteria point out that the acceptance criteria need to be testable, criteria should be concise and clear, it should offer user perspective, and that everyone needs to understand the acceptance criteria. Therefore, for this project, the standards listed to characterize the specific requirements and conditions that need to be met included the network load test, the upload, download test, and the security test. In addition, the acceptance criteria were used to clarify the expected goals and outcomes of the project concretely.
The project review was conducted at the end of the project to identify the project’s current status. The project review aimed to identify the produced deliverables and determine whether the project could meet the set objectives (Kerzner, 2017). Therefore, the project review process was used to audit and examine the planned activities, tasks, procedures, and other work components to ensure that the project requirements were fully addressed. Project review allowed for improved decision-making and preventive actions since the members had examined the planned project activities and conducted an audit to understand better potential problems and issues in implementing the project rather than planning for corrective and reactive actions when some problems occur.
The central assumption for this project is that it will improve the internet connection and increase the speed of service, thus boosting productivity and customer satisfaction. It is assumed that Yoyob will eliminate latency and downtime caused by internet failure by adding another internet provider. It’s also thought that increasing the internet broadband to 10GBPs from the current 1GBPs will increase the internet speed within Yoyob. It’s also believed that the cloud-based service will prevent data loss through backup efforts. Considerably, the project resolved all the assumptions as expected since the internet connection improved after adding another internet service provider. The added internet connection acted as a redundant internet which boosted the users’ productivity by increasing employees’ morale. Considerably, increased speed played a significant role in improving employees’ morale since they could work efficiently without downtime and delays due to poor connection. The customers could receive better services due to eliminated data loss and the high speed of service. Increasing the internet broadband to 10GBPs increased the internet speed, thus boosting customer satisfaction. The backup efforts through the cloud-based services allowed the users to quickly retrieve lost data and backup data to prevent customer inconveniences from data loss. Good network performance will enable organizations to maintain their critical services running and provide their customers with high-quality service. The additional internet service provider eliminated interruptions and troubleshooting times, improving customer service and satisfaction. Avoiding outages and minimizing downtimes improved the business processes since it supported more computing processes.
The project phases included the requirements phase, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance. The requirement phase, the project’s first phase, began on December 12th and ended on December 16th. During the requirement phase, the project team gathered comprehensive information about the task required. The data was collected through interactive brainstorming. The requirements were written in a single document and used to describe each project stage, including assumptions, costs, risks, dependencies, timelines, and success metrics. The project goals and business needs were analyzed as they related to each project requirement. Before the design work begins, the planning and design phase offers a detailed briefing on the type of project being worked on. The design phase started on December 17th and ended on December 19th. The goal of the project plan was to create a foundational design that could be handed over to the network provider to bring the needs of the business to life. The project design included specifications, schedule, budget, and risk.
Additionally, the planning stage was completed successfully with a clear indication of the resource allocation, including the financial resources, time, labour, and equipment. The implementation plan was also created, and the timeline for completion was indicated. The project team was able to identify the hardware requirements for the network upgrade project and the service required. This allowed the network providers to understand and prepare a network that would meet the needs of the plan. The project team was able to specify the material that would help define the internet system architecture. However, there was a problem in identifying the exemplary cloud backup service and the budget of the project equipment. Some hardware equipment prices, such as the failover switch, were above the budget. This led to higher costs than the projected completion of the project. The implementation stage began on December 21st and ended on December 27th. The project team installed the new ISP connection, the failover switch, and the cloud backup service at the implementation stage. Time constraint was encountered at this stage since the implementation took more time due to errors during the technical execution. This influenced the timeline for the other remaining phases and the rollout date for the final deliverable. The testing phase was completed through User Acceptance testing, including network load tests, speed tests, and security tests. The testing phase took one additional day since the conducted tests took more time to complete. The time allocated for each trial was not enough since some of the tests required repeated to ensure that there were no loopholes in the internet connection. For instance, the network load test was repeated twice to ensure no data packet loss issues. The testing phase was completed on December 31st, 2021. The deployment phase was on January 3rd, 2022. At the deployment phase, the new ISP connection and the network backup were complete, and the project team had submitted the project deliverables to be released. The user reviews were given, and the change requests were made to ensure that the internet connection met the users’ needs. The project milestones for this project were the project phases. All the project milestones were met successfully and completed within the stipulated date and timeline.
The project had a timeline deviation since it was not completed on the stipulated date, which was December 31st, 2021. The project was completed on January 3rd, 2022. The project design took three days, while the projected timeline was four days. This shows that the project design took less time to complete. The project implementation took eight days, while the projected days were seven days. This means that the project took more time during the technical performance. The main reason for timeline deviations at the implementation stage was the essential corrections to meet the set expectations for the new ISP connection. The testing phase took an additional day since the project team required more time to carry out the three tests. Some of the tests had to be repeated to ensure that there were no issues after deploying the new ISP connection. These were the only timeline deviations that were encountered in the project.
The implementation of the project hinges on the approval by the management. The management has the final say on whether the project is worth it. Therefore, if they reject the project, the primary users’ employees will suffer due to problematic internet connections. The project was also dependent on the availability of financial resources, hardware equipment, project team, cost, budget, and risks. All these dependencies have a significant impact on the success of the project. For instance, cost constraints can influence the successful completion of the project. Likewise, equipment availability can affect the time of completion and quality of the project.
The project required resources that were used in carrying out the various tasks in the project. The required resources for this project included hardware equipment, people, funding, and time to complete the project activities. To ensure that the right resources for the project were identified, there was a clear brief before the project began, advanced planning, and confirmed resource availability to prevent project failure. The resource allocation plan was used to forecast the resources required in every project stage and schedule them accordingly. The personnel needed to complete the tasks were five project team members. The labour resources were used on the project design, analysis, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance. Thus, human resources were required in every stage of the project to facilitate the success of all tasks—the project financial resources necessary to finance the human resources and materials needed for the project. The finances were used to purchase the project materials and the remuneration of the project actors. The financial resources helped the project team meet the project’s budget and expenses. The material resources included the hardware equipment required for the internet connection. The materials were used in the implementation stage to put the project into action and meet the scope of work. For instance, the WAN dual router connected the two internet service providers, while the failover switch was used to control the internet failover automatically. The time resource included the designated time for completing the project tasks. Every project phase was allocated its completion time through the time management plan. The time management plan was used to determine what tasks needed to be adjusted and the timeline to reduce stress for the project team, thus facilitating the project’s success.
The major milestone for the first phase was the project conception which included a project charter. The project charter indicated the appointment of the project manager, designation of the proposed integrated project team, the objectives, scopes, and responsibilities that would allow approval of the project. The first phase began on December 12th and ended on December 16th. The second milestone was the project design marked by the design approval in the second phase. The design approval included agreement on the project specifications, schedule, budget, and risk. The second milestone began on December 17th and ended on December 19th. The third milestone was implementing the project, which started on December 21st to December 27th.
The milestone was achieved after the project was put into action. The new ISP connection and the back cloud services were functional. The milestone represented the completed work to meet the scope requirements and fulfil the project charter. The fourth milestone was the success of the project tests. This was done in the fourth phase, where the project was tested before deployment. The fourth milestone was from December 27th to December 31st. The last milestone was the project deployment, which entailed releasing the project to the end-user. This was done on January 3rd, 2022. The project’s milestones were essential since they kept the project team and the stakeholders about the progress. The project team was also motivated to envision success and offered them a sense of achievement at every project stage. The project milestones were also effective in helping the project manager keep track of the deadlines and schedules and achieve the critical performance indicators.
The project deliverables were the unique and verifiable hardware equipment and services used to complete the phases. The hardware deliverables provided for the project implementation phase were the WAN dual router and the failover switch used to connect the old ISP and the new ISP connection. The failover switch was to allow automated control of the internet failover. Other services provided for the completion of the project implementation phase were the ISP connection and the cloud backup service. The ISP connection offered an additional internet connection to reduce internet delays, while the backup cloud service offered backup efforts to minimize data loss. The project deliverables were intended to improve the network for the company as well as provide cloud backup services in order to enhance the productivity of employees and customer satisfaction.
The document deliverables included a communication plan, requirements definition, bill of materials, testing results, proposed schedule, and the work breakdown structure. The project deliverables were created throughout the project.
Considerably, communication plans matter since communication and interaction are vital for the success of a project. The figure above is a communication plan document that shows how important information will be communicated to the different stakeholders during the project. The communication plan will also determine who will receive certain information, how these stakeholders will receive it, when to receive it, and how often they should expect it. The communication plan was used to outline what will be done and how it will get across to the team members to reduce time wastage. The communication plan made it easy to maintain transparency across the stakeholders during project management to ensure the best decisions are made, thus translating to efficient project delivery.
The figure above shows a project scope statement used during the project. The project scope statement offered a detailed description of the work needed to deliver the project outcomes in time and within the budget. The project scope statement outlined the project description, justification, deliverables, objectives, risks, and assumptions to help the stakeholders measure the project’s success. In addition, the project scope statement guaranteed a clear and shared understanding of the project between the interested parties. Finally, it enabled the project manager to monitor the project in the right direction.
The project relied on the Process Decision Program chart designed to demonstrate and visualize the steps that needed to be followed throughout the project management. The Process Decision Program chart was used to keep track of the project since it guided the primary phases for the project from start to finish. In addition, the Process Decision Program chart was used to display the activities that were essential to meet the goals of a specific task in the most practical manner. The best thing about the flow chart is that it indicated all the activities that the project team was to complete, including the decision points, branching loops, and parallel paths. Additionally, the Process Decision Program chart helped the project manager evaluate, delegate, and task schedule to the project team members. Finally, some of the project changes included the project budget and the timeline for completing the project.
The QA measure used in the summative evaluation was the flowchart and the outcome-based review, which was used to identify the significant steps and increasingly offer a bigger picture of the project process. The flow chart helps in visualizing the necessary project steps. Considerably, the flowchart consisted of the roles, actions, input, and outputs for each step. Examining the sequential steps that needed to be completed allowed the project manager to understand what had been achieved and what was remaining before the deployment. Considerably, outcome-based evaluation entails measuring results through identifying observations that can increasingly illustrate the desirable outcomes and change. For instance, for this project, the outcome-based evaluation offered the effects on the productivity of employees and customer satisfaction about the current internet connection. In addition, it showed that there is high latency and downtime. Through this, the project manager articulated the project’s purpose since it indicated the intended changes within the organization. Additionally, the outcome-based assessed the program’s effectiveness in bringing change in the internet connection within Yoyob. The outcome-based evaluation helped the project stay on track since it allowed identification of the most efficient and valuable resources and offered necessary data to guide strategic planning and design of the project and enable effective allocation of resources.
The communication plan involved three communication techniques; emails, meetings, and teamgantt. The emails were used to communicate the project status report to the project team and sponsors. The project status report aimed to review the project and discuss the potential delays and issues in the project. The meetings were used to communicate with the project team and project sponsor. For instance, in the daily meetings, the project team would discuss what each team member could complete and any barriers encountered. The sessions also involved project review, which focused on the critical milestones to present the project deliverables, gather feedback. At the end of the project, a post-mortem meeting was also to assess what was successful and what failed to work and discuss the actionable takeaways. Finally, the teamgantt was used to show the task progress updates daily. The teamgantt shared the daily progress with the project team to understand what has been completed and needs to be completed in the project phases.
The internet project’s ongoing support and maintenance will focus on critical things linked to the ISP connection’s efficiency. The scheduled maintenance will be done every three months and will focus on network reliability, network efficiency, network security to prevent performance and outage issues. Speed tests will also be conducted every three months to ensure that the company gets the speed of service paid for. The test backups and restores will also be performed every three months to notify the backup fails and complete restoration of the system to prevent data loss. Considerably, evaluating the internet for efficiency, reliability, and security will keep the users happy and help contribute to the project’s success. The maintenance will also include checking for upgrades from the Internet Service Provider.
The speed testing and test backups and restores will require a support team to carry out the tasks every three months. Financial resources will also be required to get the right testing tools that will offer accurate data about the internet. The support team will review the expected deliverables and ensure they have been delivered to an acceptable level. During the maintenance, they will also identify the gaps and determine how they will be closed. The funds will also upgrade the network to ensure that the project outcomes match the desired objectives.
The short-term maintenance will include monitoring the expected deliverables after the deployed project. This will occur on 3/4/2022, three months after the project has been deployed. Reviewing the expected deliverables will ensure that the deliverables are functioning as expected. The long-term maintenance will include speed tests and testing backups and restores to ensure no problems with the internet reliability, network efficiency, network security. These will be conducted every year after three months to ensure the ISP connection is functioning correctly.
The post-implementation was conducted after the completion of the project to examine whether the project objectives and deliverables were met. This was done by reviewing the project deliverables and outcomes to determine the errors and benefits realized after the deployment. The main problem identified in the new ISP connection was the internet security issue. The network security breaches influenced the success of the project. The support team implemented measures such as security tools and security policies to reduce network vulnerability to eliminate the security issues. As a result, the security measures improved the network security and eliminated disruption.
The project outcomes are the changes that occurred after the implementation of the project. The project outcomes were improved internet connection, a high speed of service, and backups that eliminated data loss. The documents deliverables that will be used to provide evidence of implementation will include the network maintenance checklist and the project outcome report. The network maintenance checklist will include the network documentation update, speed tests, and test backups. The project outcome report will detail the changes on the internet system due to the project implementation.
The success of each project outcome was measured through the Objective and Key Results framework. The project objective was identified along with three key project outcomes to measure the performance or success of the project. The project objective was to improve internet connection through an additional network service provider to improve employee productivity and customer satisfaction. The critical project outcomes had to be precise and measurable. Therefore, these included improved internet connection, increased employee productivity and customer satisfaction, and ensuring that everyone in the project team was on the same paged and worked collectively to achieve the project led to a positive impact on the project outcomes.
The proposed project improved internet connection, employee productivity, and customer satisfaction. After the project implementation, Yoyob experienced high employee morale due to eliminating downtimes and latency, which improved their productivity. The customer services were better than before the project’s performance due to delays and data loss. The additional ISP connection and the cloud backup service improved customer service, boosting customer satisfaction. In addition, the other ISP connection improved the internet connection with high-speed broadband, which reduced the upload and download times.
Efficient cost management is essential to avoid problems and complications that projects face while striving for better outcomes. Budget issues were one of the biggest hurdles in the management of this project. Considerably, to prevent budget issues, it is essential to adopt a proper budgeting approach and realistic assumptions to avoid cost overruns. The budget limitations threatened the success of the project. Inadequate risk management was another major constraint for the project. Ideally, many projects fail to go as planned due to the internal and external variables that lead to unlimited possibilities. Therefore, there is a need to have alternate plans and a risk management system to help identify all risks and mitigate them. Lack of accountability can risk the entire project. Therefore, the project managers need to assign responsibilities to the team members and direct them towards the successful completion of the project. These lessons are practical since they can be used in future projects in the company to reduce the risk of failure.
