MGMT 645 Week 3 Project Management Plan Example

Project Management Plan: The CPA Firm's Secure Client Portal Rollout

Purpose and Background

This plan describes how the firm will deliver the secure client portal approved in the project charter. The project will move the firm's client document intake from email to an encrypted portal between December 1 and January 12, so that the filing season begins with every active client invited, every staff member trained and a document checklist guiding each upload. The charter's goals, success criteria, budget and dates are carried into this plan unchanged, and the sections below explain how each will be met.

Scope and Work Breakdown Structure

The project's scope covers configuring the portal, building client folders and checklists, training staff, inviting and supporting clients, and retiring email intake. It excludes changes to tax software, billing and engagement letters, and the digitizing of prior years' records.

Schedule

The schedule follows the charter's six-week milestone plan. In week one, the vendor contract is signed and the portal configured. In week two, folders and checklists are built and the first staff training held. Week three is the pilot with 30 clients chosen to represent individual, business and older clients, followed by checklist corrections and the second training session. Invitations go out in two waves during week four, over the holidays, with the help line open. In week five, the office administrator calls clients who have not logged in, and the email policy takes effect. Week six is the launch review on January 12. The critical path runs through the checklist build and the pilot, because invitations cannot go out until the checklists are corrected.

Cost Baseline

Quality Management Plan

The quality management plan follows PMBOK Guide section 8.1, which calls for identifying the quality requirements and standards for the project and its deliverables and documenting how the project will demonstrate compliance (Project Management Institute, 2017). Rose (2014) stresses that quality is planned in and that prevention costs less than correction, and the plan is organized around preventing the two defects the charter identified.

Quality standards. A document set is complete when every item on the client's checklist has been uploaded or marked not applicable. A document is correctly filed when it sits in the folder of the client who uploaded it and carries the right tax year and form type. Every client checklist must match the forms on the client's prior-year return.

Quality metrics. The plan tracks four metrics: the percentage of checklists that pass senior review without correction, with a target of 95 percent before invitations; the percentage of pilot clients who complete an upload without calling for help, target 75 percent; the percentage of document sets complete on first upload during the first four weeks of the season, target 85 percent; and the number of misfiled documents, target zero.

Quality assurance. The senior accountant reviews the process for building checklists before they are built, confirming that the import from the practice management system pulls every form type. The pilot in week three is the main assurance step: it tests the entire process, invitation, login, upload and staff review, with real clients before the full rollout. The operations manager reviews pilot results and decides whether the process is ready.

Quality control. The senior accountant checks every business client's checklist and a random 10 percent of individual checklists against prior-year returns. During the season, staff confirm each completed document set against its checklist before preparing the return, and any document found in the wrong folder is logged and reported to the operations manager the same day.

Responsibilities. The operations manager owns the quality plan and reports the metrics weekly. The senior accountant owns checklist quality. The office administrator tracks pilot help calls. Each staff member owns the completeness check for returns assigned to them.

Sousa and Voss (2002), reviewing the quality management literature, organize the field around how quality management is defined, how it affects performance and how it is implemented, and their review supports tailoring quality practices to an organization's situation rather than adopting a standard list. This plan is deliberately small, four metrics and three checkpoints, because the firm is small and the project is short.

Roles and Responsibilities

As sponsor, the managing partner signs off on changes and tells clients about the new policy. The operations manager plans and controls the work and reports weekly. The office administrator handles invitations, the help line and follow-up calls. The senior accountant builds and reviews checklists. Portal setup and the client data import belong to the vendor's implementation specialist. Each staff member completes training and processes a test client.

Communication Plan

The project team meets for fifteen minutes every Monday morning during the six weeks, and the operations manager sends the managing partner a one-page status note every Friday with progress against the milestones and the quality metrics. Clients receive an announcement letter from the managing partner in week three, an invitation email in week four, a reminder after seven days and a follow-up call in week five if they have not logged in. Staff receive the procedures guide after the first training session.

Risk Management

The charter's five high-level risks are carried into a risk register kept by the operations manager and reviewed at each Monday meeting. The two highest risks, older clients struggling with the portal and staff continuing to accept email, have owners and responses: the office administrator offers phone help and office drop-off scanning, and the managing partner's announcement and an email auto-reply reinforce the new policy. New risks found during the pilot will be added and scored.

Procurement

The project makes one purchase, the portal subscription and setup services. The operations manager compared three vendors on security certifications, ease of client use and integration with the firm's practice management system, and recommends the vendor already used by two peer firms. The contract will include a setup completion date of December 12 and a named implementation contact.

Stakeholder Engagement

Clients are the stakeholders most affected. Long-time clients over seventy, about 180 households, will receive a printed guide and a personal phone call rather than an email invitation. Business clients' bookkeepers will be invited directly with the owner's permission. Staff concerns about extra work during the holidays will be addressed by scheduling training before December 20 and paying overtime for help line hours.

Change Control

Because the completion date cannot move, any change that would delay January 12 must be approved by the managing partner and offset by a reduction elsewhere in scope. The operations manager may approve changes costing less than $250 that do not affect the schedule. All changes are recorded in a change log with their reason and effect. In a six-week project with a fixed finish, the quality plan and the change rules protect the same thing: a filing season that starts clean.

References

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.

Sousa, R., & Voss, C. A. (2002). Quality management re-visited: A reflective review and agenda for future research. Journal of Operations Management, 20(1), 91-109. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0272-6963(01)00088-2