Titans Apparel Case Study

Project Plan, Titan Apparel(please change this name)

University of Phoenix

Project Planning and Implementation

CMGT 410

January 11, 2005

Background and Statement of Need

The name of this company is Titans Apparel. It is a large clothing manufacturing store with four major branches in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Miami. The amount of the business that they are accumulating is growing fast, and the current network that they use is not enough to keep up with consumer demand. This is costing the company major amounts of money, which, in turn, is making the company slowly fail in its mission. The network is becoming slower due to the demands brought on by the lack of networking update. If this networking update is completed the company will run faster and smoother to allow better communication and enable the company to communicate easier and faster between localities and through the consumer. This will help the company make money instead of losing money through there networking upgrades.

Project Objectives

In order to achieve business requirements, several objectives must be realized. We will be looking at the project’s objectives in terms of performance, budget, and timeframe. First the underlying symptom which deemed this project vital was the unacceptable system speeds. Because of antiquated equipment the infrastructure of Titan Apparel has severely limited its ability to do business effectively. As a benchmark for system performance, a two second delay to receive data requested is the maximum allowable wait time. This time extends for all intranet terminals, from the point of sale bar-coding system, through to the inventory tracking and shipping aspects of Titan Apparel. In addition, the system must retain its current functionality and redundancy structure while achieving processing delay acceptability.

This project concerns itself with the entire upgrade of the infrastructure at a pilot Titan Apparel location. Management has allocated a budget for this project of two hundred fifty thousand dollars. This includes all project expenditures, including procurement and personnel compensation.

The time frame for this project is six months, with final implementation realized by June 12th, 2005. Several milestone deadlines will be established to ensure project completion accountability, and will be detailed in the project plan.

Mission and Goals of the Project

Our mission and goals we hope to accomplish include the updating of an existing business technology. We have received a Request for Proposal to update the company’s already functional network with the latest and most innovative technology available to improve the flow of business and stay competitive in this ever-growing market. This would involve changing their current hubs for new and more productive switches, upgrading their current servers and computers with more efficient and faster processing power and basically overhauling their old and slow network with a new and much faster network. The tasks involved with creating this new network include, setting up a complete network in parallel to the existing one so that no productivity is lost during the crossover. With the implementation of new servers, computers, switches and cabling if necessary, the new network must be done in a way not to impede the current business processes. Our goal is to update the current network without interrupting the existing network.

Project Approach

To provide adequate bandwidth and reliability from each Titan department to centrally provided services. This minimum standard should take the form of a link running at a base speed of 100Mbps full duplex. Any equipment installed should have an upgrade path to 1Gbps and have a lifetime lasting for the foreseeable future although in computing this is ever changing. Current priorities will dictate that we ensure each 10Mbps link is upgraded to run at 100Mbps. At this stage each department will still maintain control and support of any pre-upgrade network equipment within their department. The method of approach is to purchase the network devices to meet the currently defined minimum standard and install into each departmental network link that at present does not meet the necessary speed requirements for future network developments.

Project Organization

Titans Apparel CEO, Scott Fonger, will be the main representation of the stakeholders for this project. If there are any