MGMT 645 Week 2 Project Charter and Proposal Example

Project Charter and Proposal: A Six-Week Secure Client Portal Rollout for a Twelve-Person CPA Firm Before Tax Season

Project Information

Project title: Secure Client Portal Rollout. Sponsor: the firm's managing partner. Project manager: the firm's operations manager. Start date: December 1. Completion date: January 12, one week before the firm begins preparing returns. Budget: $14,500, covering the first year of portal software licenses for twelve users, setup and data migration support from the vendor, and staff time for training and client outreach. By approving this charter, the managing partner authorizes the project manager to use firm staff time and the approved budget to complete the project described below.

Business Case

The firm prepares about 1,150 individual and 140 business tax returns each season. Last season, clients sent roughly 4,100 documents by email, often as phone photographs, and staff saved them by hand into client folders. Three problems followed. First, about 24 percent of returns stalled at least once while staff waited for a missing form, and the average stalled return waited nine days. Second, two documents were saved to the wrong client's folder, and one of them was sent to the wrong client in a document request, which required a notification to the affected client. Third, emailing tax documents exposes clients' Social Security numbers and income information to interception, a risk the firm's insurer has asked it to reduce.

A secure portal addresses all three. Clients upload documents directly into their own encrypted folder, the portal shows each client a checklist based on last year's return so missing forms are visible before the client finishes, and staff no longer save attachments by hand. The firm expects to reduce stalled returns, eliminate misfiled documents and meet its insurer's request before renewal.

Project Goals

The project has three goals. First, configure and launch the portal with a folder for every active client, a document checklist for each client type and secure messaging enabled. Second, invite every active client, about 1,050 households and businesses, and provide simple instructions, a short video and phone help for those who need it. Third, train all twelve staff members to receive, review and file documents through the portal, and retire the practice of accepting tax documents by email.

Success Criteria

The project will be judged successful if, by January 12, the portal is live with all active client folders created; at least 80 percent of active clients have logged in at least once; all twelve staff have completed training and processed a test client; and the firm has stopped accepting documents by email except through a documented exception. Two quality criteria will be measured during the first four weeks of the filing season: at least 85 percent of clients' document sets complete on first upload, measured against each client's checklist, and zero documents filed to the wrong client.

High-Level Risks

Assumptions

The project assumes that the portal vendor can complete setup and migration within two weeks of contract signing, that client contact information in the practice management system is current for most clients, that staff can give about two hours a week each to training and testing in December, and that most clients have an email address and a smartphone or computer.

Limitations

The project cannot move its completion date, because the filing season begins on schedule. Its budget is fixed at $14,500. It will not change the firm's tax software, its billing system or its engagement letters, and it does not include building a paperless archive of prior years' records, which the partners have deferred to the summer.

Project Team

The operations manager leads the project. The firm's office administrator manages client invitations and the help line. A senior accountant builds and checks the document checklists. The vendor's implementation specialist configures the portal and migrates client data. The managing partner, as sponsor, approves changes and announces the new policy to clients.

Milestone Summary

Quality From the Beginning

Rose (2014) argues that quality in projects is achieved mainly through planning and prevention rather than inspection at the end. This charter applies that idea in three ways. It defines the project's two most important defects, an incomplete document set and a misfiled document, before any work begins. It builds prevention into the product itself, since the checklist shows clients what is missing and the portal files each document into the right folder automatically. And it plans a pilot with 30 clients in week three, so problems are found while they are still cheap to fix. The PMBOK Guide places quality planning alongside scope and schedule planning rather than after them (Project Management Institute, 2017), and research on quality management supports the approach: in a survey of U.S. firms, Kaynak (2003) traced links from quality practices to operating results, some running straight through and some passing from one practice to another, which suggests that quality planned into the process pays off in results. For this firm, quality means a client's return is never held up by a document no one asked for, and no client ever receives another client's records.

References

Kaynak, H. (2003). The relationship between total quality management practices and their effects on firm performance. Journal of Operations Management, 21(4), 405-435. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0272-6963(03)00004-4

Project Management Institute. (2017). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (6th ed.).

Rose, K. H. (2014). Project quality management: Why, what and how (2nd ed.). J. Ross Publishing.