The Course Project for PROJ585 is an individual project. It assumes that you have already acquired proficiency in the skills of a project’s work decomposition, estimation, scheduling, resource planning, and tracking as a result of having fulfilled the PROJ585 course prerequisite of PROJ586. It is not the intention of this Course Project to focus your efforts on the details of these kinds of tasks. Instead, you will be expected to function and think as if you were a project manager assigned to managing a project team responsible for the planning, estimating, scheduling, implementation, delivery, and overall project management of an IT project.
All deliverables are additive. This means when you submit the second assignment, the updates from the first assignment should be included in the submission. In other words, weekly updates will be added to the same project report document throughout the entire course. Ensure that all information is submitted in one document.
A well-thought-out, documented, and utilized project management plan is a key requisite to the success of nearly all projects of any consequence or size. Therefore, the project management plan will be the primary framework for focusing your efforts for this Course Project. In other words, you will complete all suggested sections of the project plan by documenting your approach to the topics covered in these sections of the plan.
The deliverable this week is the Course Project: Project Charter, which should provide readers with a high-level description of your project. It is a nontechnical description of the opportunity or problem, goals, objectives, success criteria, risks, assumptions, and obstacles of the project. The main purpose of the project charter is to secure senior management approval and the resources needed to develop a detailed project plan. Bear in mind that you are the project manager of this IT project.
At a minimum, the project charter should contain the following.
· The purpose of the project
· The goals of the project
· The project scope
· The high-level budget
· The high-level time estimate
· The project assumptions, constraints, and exclusions
· A description of mapping between the project management life cycle (PMLC) and your proposed steps, phases, or stages of project execution
WEEK 1 PROJECT SELECTION
Course Project: Project Selection
For my course project, I have selected Option 9: Switching to a Cloud-Based Email system. This project focuses on transitioning a small career college from a locally hosted email server to a modern cloud-based email service such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. This change is necessary due to the increasing demand for reliability, accessibility, and reduced IT overhead. I chose this project because cloud migration is a very timely and relevant topic in the current IT landscape, especially for educational institutions that need to enhance communication while managing limited budgets and technical staff.
This project will involve several stages, including the assessment of the existing infrastructure, planning the migration path, executing the data migration, configuring user accounts, and ensuring security protocols are in place. Additional tasks may include user training and post-migration support. These activities provide realistic experience of managing technical tasks, stakeholder communication, and risk mitigation in a live IT setting. Cloud based systems offer numerous advantages such as automatic updates, built-in redundancy, enhanced security, and the flexibility of accessing email from any device, which is ideal for students, faculty, and administrative staff alike.
By completing this project, I hope to deepen my understanding of IT project planning and execution in the context of cloud technologies. This initiative not only helps streamline operations for the organization but also aligns with broader trends in digital transformation across sectors.
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