Essay Example: Speedy Services for Examination Results

Project Introduction and Description

The world today has become competitive in all areas due to technology advancement and innovation. In the business sector, competition is on a high notch, whereby customers are expecting and demanding a faster way of delivering services, and in a convenient manner. It is a norm in society today for people to have an understanding of the various technological advancements, and use of mobile phones is one of such technologies. In this respect, the demand prescribes that institutions ought to come up with new programmes and put in place resources that will increase efficiency and speed of executing these services and programmes. This is with the intention of helping the users react faster to the changing conditions.

The University Council therefore has the duty to offer speedy services to the students and all other stakeholders. Over the years, the council has been officiating programmes that allow for speedy delivery of services. One of these programmes is the introduction a technology that uses the mobile phone to release examination results. This project is being introduced and will be followed by the same technology to confirm registration details for all students within a particular academic year. The initiative to introduce the short message service (SMS) technology is based on the fact that students doing professional courses and other primary stakeholders are eager to receive the examination results. In the past, the students have been forced to wait and visit the relevant institutions or the university council offices to get their results. With the high mobile phone availability nowadays, which would deliver the same information immediately, the need to use SMS has become essential in delivering this information at the time when students are anxious. The use of Short Message Service technology will also ensure that students receive their registration detail which is aimed at curbing the tendency by institutions that receive registration fees, but fail to register the students. This technology is also aimed at ensuring that the students truth about the subjects they are expected to sit for throughout the examination period.

Project Scope Statement

The project goals and objectives is offer speedy services for examination results to students and other stakeholders and especially for the international students. The project also aims to introduce a service that ensures the reduction of anxiety by the customers who will not have to wait for long periods to receive their examination results. Consequently, the project will craft a secure and favorable agreement between the University council and the selected service vendor. In addition, the project resolves to reduce the increased numbers of unregistered examination candidates. Lastly, the project offers to offer a service that will help reduce the number of students seeking to change the papers they will sit for during the examination period.

Deliverable and Technical Requirements

The use of the Short Message Service (SMS) presents a user friendly and a more convenient way for students to check out their examination results and other registration details. This increases convenience for students because their results are delivered to them other than actively travelling to receive them or seeking them online. The process of providing registration and results on the SMS will comprise a number of stages and steps. Based on its IT expertise and a thorough research, a generic software will be prepared that will publish the registration and results which will be made available to the selected provider with the right guidelines to customize or use the software as per the different requirements of the varying examination results. It is important to ensure that the information delivered is accurate and that it reaches the intended recipient with minimum delay and effort. This is because exam results are a sensitive issue as the future careers of students hinges on these results.

The first step is to customize the software in terms of layout, registration number, name of the student, information requirement and the subject to be generated. The registration data and the results after being prepared in the digital form by the council will then be conveyed to the servers maintained by the service provider using the appropriate format. This invariably entails a sound infrastructure set up that will be geared towards meeting the huge projected traffic especially the day the results are released by the council. The infrastructure will also ensure that there is contingency and back up measures for the anticipated traffic. This simple exercise will take a lot of hard work and technical co-ordination from the implementation team, as well as seamless planning that will ensure that the increasing expectations of the stakeholders and the students are met. Immediately the results are announced, the students are expected to send an SMS containing their exam registration number and their names to a short SMS code. The service provider will then send a message to verify the mobile number and the identification number is right, and then the student confirms the details. Upon completion of the registration process, the users then receive their results on the mobile immediately after the official announcement by the council.

Milestones

The following will be the key milestones and the estimated completion dates:

MilestoneEstimated Completion Date

Initial Steering project committee meeting 14/05/2017

Creating the prototype 17/05/2017

System Evaluation 23/05/2017

SMS comparison04/06/2017

Testing 14/06/2017

Limitations

The project is likely to have several limitations and exclusions.

The project funding is limited and with no contingency.

Resource availability will also be inconsistent due to the nature of law enforcement.

Elimination of project funding

A limited bandwidth

Unavailability of mobile phone network and lack of user awareness

If any of these limitations or events occurs, then the project plan will automatically become invalid.

Project Priorities and Matrix

Criteria Weight Scoring Values Project

Required Service: Legal compliance, Customer satisfaction depend on it 5 0, 2, 4, 8

0-none is true

2-one is true

4-two are true

8- all are true

10

Value to Customer: Customers are students, parents and other education stakeholders like the government, funding institutions 4 0, 2, 4, 8

0- little value to the customers

2- some value to the customers

4-a lot of value to the customers

8- essential to the customers

32

Importance to Risk Alleviation: Will the customer be exposed to any risk if the service is not provided 3 0, 2, 4, 8

0-little risk to customer if the service is not offered

2- some risk to customer if the service not offered

4- much risk to customer if the service is not offered

8- high risk to the customer if the service not offered

6

Significance to the users(Students/Stakeholders) 2 0, 2, 4, 8

0- low effect, low number of users

2- low effect, high number of users

4-high effect, low number of users

8-high effect, high number of users

16

Full Disclosure of Project Costs: This includes the maintenance costs and the implementation costs 2 0, 2, 4, 8

0-The hidden costs are unknown

2-Some of the costs are known

4-Many of the costs are known

8-All project costs are known

8

Total Project Score 72

The concept of declaring examination results using the Short Message Service promotes an awareness and usage as compared to other convectional strategies. The whole process is sensitive and it creates a lot of anxiety. This in turn makes the exercise popular to international students and those in the adverse climatic and terrain conditions. This means they do not have to travel to the examination centre to collect their results when they can easily get the results by the touch of their mobile phones. This saves them travel and time expenses as well as the unnecessary anxiety.

In this regard, the whole process of project implementation will require a legal compliance. This is because the information being passed from the provider to the user is very sensitive and that the future careers of the students depend on it. However, customer satisfaction does not depend on it because there are other avenues a student can use to receive the examination results. This service is essential to all stakeholders because the benefits are enormous.

Consequently, the service is expected to have a high level of significance to the users. This is because of the benefits it offers befits such as it saves the students travel and time expenses as well as the unnecessary anxiety. Lastly, since the use of mobile phones as a technological innovation has been there for a while, the implementation team is able to disclose almost all the project costs. This information can be gathered from other researches done on the same topic.

Work Breakdown Structure

Cost Estimation Budget

Top down approach

In the top down approach, the budget is undifferentiated and favors one way kind of approach. The targets set in the budget are set by the executives. The employees follow the instructions given to them by the executives. This kind of approach takes too much time to be executed and accomplished. The approach has a weak impact on the companys status quo.

Bottom up approach

Development of the application = $ 15000

Testing the application= $ 3000

Paying the legal fee= $ 1500

Maintenance of the application (includes upgrades) = $90 000 per year

Time phased budget

MilestoneEstimated Completion Date Expenditure

Initial Steering project committee meeting 14/05/2017 $500

Creating the prototype17/05/2017 $10000

System Evaluation23/05/2017 $5000

SMS comparison04/06/2017 $4000

Testing 14/06/2017 $3000

Legal fee 14/7/2017 $1500

Total cost $ 24000