Company Background:
Glasgow college of accountancy and management was established in 1975 and is located in Glasgow it has one campus in Glasgow. College is offering many full time and part time courses for both national and international students. The college is offering ACCA, CAT, CIMA, Pgd MS, Pgd finance risk and management, Pgd IT, and also offers MBA. The college has almost 30 members of staff including 6 visiting lecturers.
College has good reputation for its innovation and quality education, this is goal of college to provide high quality of education and offer possible facilities that's why college is growing consistently and now they feel to improve the services of web site by introducing some new features in it. As a part of innovation they want to facilitate their students by introducing online library system. Student can access information from anywhere and anytime from internet. The digital library will allow the students to get access for online articles, course books and magazine, e-books, theses and images and videos. Mostly the data which is access able is not for general public, it means only valid students ID and password required to access the data. In addition to that students can find their required information and article by typing the author name, book title, article title, course name and ISBN number for the books and so on.
As we have mentioned earlier that the college is going to introduce the features of digital library in its website. For this purpose I am appointed as the project manager to look after and plan the entire proposal. I have to focus on all matters, aspects of the proposal such as what are the primary and secondary resources available for the project and what will be the budget spending and what are the advantages, threats and objectives and time frame for the completion for the project.
Objectives:
Advantages of the Digital Library:
Usually libraries are very limited according to the storage space. Digital libraries have prospective to store much more information because the digital storage requires very less physical space to store very huge date. It also requires very nominal maintenance cost then the traditional libraries such as in usual libraries you have to pay very staff salaries, book maintenance cost, rent of the building, and new book costs etc. While you do not have to pay these regular expenses in the digital libraries in short digital libraries are very economical than traditional libraries.
It is very easy to implement new innovations and technology in the digital libraries
Disadvantage:
There are few disadvantages of the digital libraries as well and we should have to focus on then as well. Following are some threats that digital libraries may faces.
Converting text form into PDF or software copy is time consuming process. It takes too much time to convert hard copies into soft copies.
Brain Storming:
Before introducing digital library for the college, we need to do some research. We must have clear vision about our services or new features that we are going to introduce, what goal we want to achieve? How we can make our processes better? How we can reduce the cost?
SWOT Analysis:
S.W.O.T (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis is an effective way to brainstorm the opportunities that may available for you online.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion it is conclude that digital library for the college has many advantages and few disadvantages as well. But infect advantages are more powerful than its threats but we have to keep in mind about the resources available for the projects and as well as its time frame. Through considering each and every aspect of proposal we will be able to overcome the problems and threats of the digital library.
Task 2
Project Requirements:
This feature helps to search the collection of books like all the books written by one writer or all the books or study material related to the required topic etc.
Required Resources:
To complete the project we have to discuss the resources that what are available and required. Either the project is economically suitable for the college or not. What types of the resources are required for the proposal?
We need finance to fund the proposal, we need human resource we need latest equipment of computers, we have to take care the time required for the project. All these factors are discussed in detailed below.
Budget:
System Development Cost: we have almost to bear the cost about 3000 pounds. This cost we have to pay we developers to develop new features in the web sites to update this.
Maintenance Cost: as the system is developed we have to pay the maintenance cost as well which is on monthly basis and it will be about 800 pounds per month.
Hardware Cost: for the implementation of the project we need about 2 computers and its equipments to transfer data into e-formats for this purpose we have to allocate about 1500 pounds.
Salary Cost: we have to appoint about five it professionals who will convert all data available into PDF or e-formats. Their salaries of about 2 peoples and their salaries is about 1000 pounds per month each.
Human Resource: For this purpose we have to appoint two data entry operators who can convert the hard copy into e-formats. And also categorize them and also give proper formatting them and will do other related work which is needed.
Hardware Requirements: we need two latest computer systems and scanner and some software which can convert the files into different formats. We need basic source of information as well most of them college has already in its traditional library few of them we have to purchase.
Location: we need a separate room which is corner of the library so that the staff can access easily the materials which they have to convert and return it easily. Library corner room is perfect place for this project.
Time Requirement: another important factor which is required for the project is time. We have to do proper planning and divide the task related to the time frame so we can analyse which task need how much time for completions.
Task 3:
Time Allocation:
The whole project will take 3 months for completion, we can also divide it in five different steps according to the phase of completion such as collection of information, feasibility, report, designing, testing and implementation now all these steps are discussed in detailed below.
Collection of Information: In first step we have to think what sort of information that we have required what type of features our web site may include and what type of books, articles, theses, research and other study material we have to include in our project. And then we have to decide that to from where we can get all the material. This whole process may complete within 2 weeks because collection of information is not a very difficult task. And also we have to decide what type of software is required and what are the specifications of the hardware devices should be needed for the project?
Feasibility Report: After getting all information now it is the time that we have to move towards second phase. In this phase we have to categorise all that books, articles, theses and researches into different groups, such as for the management we can select the different authors of books on same subject or topic into one group and similarly for accounts and other topics and subjects. Due to this we will enable to convert it into e-formats easily. And we become able to get flow of the phase. This part of the project requires 3 weeks for completions. We can categorize all the data into different group within three weeks easily. That is available in the library and that we have purchased new. The third phase of the project is designing, now we have to decide what will be the background them of the website and what will be its lay out, what type of searching options we should have and what type of encoding and programming we will use in our website. We have to summarised the data of all students and staff members of the college so that we are able to provide them ID and password. And what type of security measures we have to take.
Project Development: This is the time of designing and coding step, after getting all information and making feasibility report now our research work is al most done and now we have to take step towards creativity. This phase of the project will take long time then others because we have to do all the work on the programming and designing of the web site on all the features that we have to include and all other development work will be done in this step. This step will take about 7 weeks for accumulations. We have to develop the option of logging on for the staff members and registered students as well.
Testing: Forth step of the project is testing we have done almost done all research work and creative work now our project is ready for testing. In this step we will test our project from all the research that it is working properly or not, we will check all the features of the project if there are minor faults that will be fixed. This task will take about 2 weeks for the completions.
Implementation: This is the final step of our project after doing all the work and after testing and fixing all minor errors now we have to implement our the whole process. For implementation we have to configure all systems and then we will implement this. This process will take about 3 days. And our project will ready now we are able to issue ID and password to our registered students so that they can get benefit from new facility that is provided by the college.
Evaluation:
After implementing and issuing all the Ids to our staff and registered students and develop new features on the web site and putting all available data in the digital library now we have to evaluate that either all the job is done on the target time with in its allocated resources or not. We can also evaluate the progress of project side by side that how much target is completed and how much is left we have to analyze that all the work is going according to the plan or not if there is any diversity we can correct or rectify it immediately.
Gantt chart:
Monitoring:
While project we can also monitor the percentage of completion of project for this purpose we can view our Gantt chart of the project then we were able to analyze that which task is in progress and how many tasks are completed within the given time and how many tasks are completed before given time and which task required more time than its planned/ allocated time.
Sales Planning, Strategies, and Marketing:
Although is developing this project for its staff members and for its registered students, but college can earn some profit from this project, management can make some contract to different colleges and universities to share this facility to them by providing them link of website and also can ask web developer to create some secondary Ids for them so that they can get information from the college digital library through this college can earn profit and can recover initial project cost very soon.
College can also advertise this facility with the advertisement of the college website to fascinate national and international students. Through this college good will grows and it can make more profit.
Conclusion:
By summing up all the discussion above we can conclude that proposal of digital library for the college is very good and economical, college can earn more profit and can recover the initial cost of the project very soon. There is little risk that cannot be ignored but it has more advantages and through proper implementations we can overcome the risks. College can also make some contract with other colleges and universities and can allow them to use this feature of the college.
Recommendations:
In light of all above, being project manager I recommend that the college should start the digital library immediately as the potential in starting a digital library and its advantages (as discussed above) are in college's good interest. It is also highly recommended that the reading material in the library should be fully available and up to date. The software to be used for the library should have the features such as, Book Input form, incoming and outgoing books record keeper etc. It is very economical process for the college.
