CASE STUDYDonkey Haven App ProjectDonkey Haven is located in Daisy Hill, Victoria. Donkey Haven offers 16 acres of treed ruralfarmland, for guests to explore and enjoy. Guests can sit outside, listening to the wind in the trees,admire the many beautiful birds, kangaroos, koalas and for something very special, there areminiature donkeys on the property. Guests can spend their time with the donkeys, learning whatintelligent, friendly, affectionate animals they are. Each has a unique bray and personality. Guests canwalk in the paddock with the donkeys. Donkeys are very curious animals and love socialising withguests. Very therapeutic and quite a unique animal, very different to their equine cousins. There aremany books about donkeys, games and DVD’s for quiet time inside the cottages too.Donkey Haven Pty Ltd is managed by director, Donk Barlett. Donkey Haven has been experiencing areduction in bookings due to COVID-19, also a large conference centre recently opened creatingadditional completion. Donkey Haven has a basic web presence and has considered developing theirsite, along with traditional marketing approaches and an app, to help to promote and grow theirbusiness.You have been working for Jenny Development Inc. casually for the last three months in their mobileapp development department. As a virtual team specialist, your company has applied for a tender todevelop an app for Donkey Haven. Due to the importance of this project, the CEO of JennyDevelopment Inc, Jen Harris, and the Director of Mobile Development Julie Hillman have both madethis project a priority.The initial investment in the project is estimated to be $200,000 in year 0 of the project, $10,000 inyear 1, $10,000 in year 2, and $10,000 in year 3 a total of $230,000. Jenny Development Inc. requiresa discount rate of 8%. It is anticipated project future cash inflow as follows (Years 0 to 3): $80,000,$80,000, $80,000, and $80,000, a total of $320,000 The project will be expected to make at least a20% ROI, to conform to the Jenny Development Inc, business model.The goal of the project is to propose an app, which is optimised for iPhone and Android devices. Theapp should allow guests and potential guests to book and pay for accommodations, nature walks,introduction to donkey care, and advanced care lessons, also donkey harness lessons. Clients shouldbe able to subscribe to Donkey Haven newsletter and related upcoming events. There is also a smallcapacity conference room available for bookings. There should be access maps of all nature walks,and videos showcasing all the facilities. There should be a photo album for each donkey. The appshould provide users with an ability to provide an overall ranking of centre in terms of attractions andservices. Management believes it will take about four months (16 weeks) with a budget of $200,000for this important project. Harris aims for a budget contingency reserve of approximately 10%.Jen Harris and Julie Hillman have formed a search committee to find the best candidate for managingthe Donkey Haven App Development Project. After reviewing many strong candidates, they decidedto appoint you, to put together the business case for this critical project. Your previous job was with aconsultancy firm where you successfully implemented several android application developmentprojects for medium sized enterprises, using virtual teams. Since this is a high priority project thatshould be completed in four months, they felt it was appropriate to get the best candidate to puttogether a quality business case and project management plan. They are offering a premium for yourcontract at $95 p/hr for 2 d/wk, but a lot is at stake, Donkey Haven and similar businesses are likely torequest further mobile app development projects. Harris and Hillman propose to be joint projectsponsors, and have handpicked Harry Horden, to be the main internal IT liaison and Mel Hellson to bethe Donkey Haven liaison. They will let you as the new project manager form the rest of the projectteam if the tender bid is successful.In order to get the app developed in the time frame you propose to use Royce’s waterfall developmentapproach with the following stages: requirements, design, implementation, verification andmaintenance. Requirements will take 2 weeks commencing in week 1. Design, implementation, andverification will take 4 weeks each, while maintenance will take 2 weeks to complete. You will need ateam of two programmers and a digital image specialist working on the app. It is anticipated theprogrammers will spend the equivalent of half a day a week on project management related activities(e.g. completing status reports and attending meetings etc.) and the remaining 4.5 days ondevelopment. They will be paid at a rate of $82 p/hr, which is negotiable. You will also need to accessto a donkey consultant (Daisy Hemming). The consultant and liaison team members pay rates arenegotiable and will only be required for a maximum of one week.You anticipate several challenges if this tender bid is successful. Jenny Development originallyfocused on developing animal games apps for kids, but the CEO, Jen Harris, has emphasised the needto increase profits by tapping into other markets, including business marketing projects. The type ofpeople who work on kids gaming projects are often different from people working on the newbusiness marketing projects. They often have different educational backgrounds, skill sets, and ideals.Most of the people hired in the past year have been hired to support these new markets.The plan is to roll out review existing information, conduct research and gather new material. Detailedstoryboards, a prototype, alpha, beta and final version of the app will developed. The app will need tobe tested, and promoted prior to roll out. The project will be considered a success, if it comes in ontime, on budget, within scope and key stakeholders have been pleased with the communication andreporting processes.
