OMD Project Management Essay

Background Information: OMD Project Management is a consultancy that provides construction project management for its clients. OMD Project Management was set up approximately eighteen months ago and has a staff of three. They have access to a large skill base, which may be called upon as required to satisfy project conditions. This helps to reduce overheads and increase profit ability. The works include the following services: * measured surveys, * Schedule of condition (report on the state of the building, identifying any areas that will incur rectification at the clients cost. * Lease appraisal (review legal documents on clients behalf) * Cost estimate of works. * Tender works to specialist contractors * Manage projects * Agree final costs of the project with contractors on behalf of client * Ensure statutory regulations are complied with (planning approvals building regulations and disabled discrimination act) Although OMD Project management is a small company it has a large client base. These vary from large multi-national companies to small private businesses. They specialise with the retail sector where they have at least twenty years of experience Problem: A current issue that the company has is invoicing. Invoicing currently can take up to an hour to complete. Invoicing is currently done by hand and on paper, this is not a very efficient way of doing this job because it takes up too much time and human error is often an issue. These errors can include charging too much or too little money. By providing an invoice system it would save the company large amounts of time an effort. It would also reduce the amount of human error and increase the accuracy of the invoice. Current Invoice System: OMD project management currently do all of their invoicing on paper. This means that the consultant will remember his hours his expenses and his hourly rate in his head and when it comes around to invoicing the client he will type all of these things up on to Microsoft word, print it off and give it to the client so the are able to pay the company. As you could gather this is a very inefficient way of invoicing the client. This can also lead to large amount of errors during the invoicing process, for example a client may be under charged or over charged. End User Skills: The main user of the document that I will create is of the older generation. He prefers to do things the ‘old fashioned’ way, this means that he likes to do his invoicing on paper using a calculator and a pen and it would currently take him longer to create an invoice on the computer than it would for him to do it on paper, however he is not total computer illiterate and he is able to use most word processing and spread sheet programmes. OMD Project Management would like to me to create an invoice system that is simple yet effective so that he is able to save time by moving his invoice system onto computer and they would also like me to create a system that is able to be used by everyone in the company. Requirements: General: * The invoice must be in Lucida sans console. * The text must be black in colour * The program must be user friendly * The company logo must be at the top of the invoice * The client’s address must be at the top left of the page but lower than the logo. * The invoice number should be on the left hand side of the page and below the address. * A breakdown of the invoice should be in the middle of the page just below the invoice number. * The total, in bold, will go underneath the invoice breakdown. * The company address will go at the bottom of the page. * It must look professional. Qualitative: * The program must be able to hold all of the different types of expenses. * The program must be able to hold different types of jobs. * The program must double up as an estimating system. * The program must produce an accurate invoice. * The program must hold different client addresses Quantitative: * From start to finish the invoice must only take 15 minutes. * The invoice must be able to hold 3 different types of jobs * The program must be able to hold at least 20 different client addresses Hardware and Software: There is a currently a huge amount of hardware available on the market. You can buy many different types of computer each one suitable for a different purpose, for example laptops are portable and can be taken anywhere, this can be very convenient as the user is able to do his work anywhere and also with the invention of wireless technology the user can connect to the internet anywhere that wireless internet is available. Another type of PC that is available is desktop PC. This is a PC that stays stationary. This type of PC gives you a lot more room to type etc and also has a mouse as standard, these can be permanently linked up to a printer and/or the internet. The current system that OMD Project management runs is a Compaq Presario with an Intel Pentium 4 processor. OMD Project Management feels that there is no need to purchase a new system because they feel that their current system is sufficient and suitable for the job in hand. There are many different types of software that is suitable for this project. I believe that the most appropriate is a spreadsheet package. This is because you are able to use the program to calculate lots of different things. With a bit of self teaching you are able to use the program to do lots of different processes. OMD Project Management already has Microsoft office XP installed on their system and they feel that I should use Microsoft Excel to create their invoice system. This is so that it is compatible with their system. I believe that this is a good choice as Excel is more than adequate for the task in hand. Input: Enter the job type code Enter all the things to with the amount of work done: * The number of days worked. * Enter the correct code that corresponds to the appropriate price paid per day Enter all the relevant expenses details: * The number of miles travelled and the number of nights stayed in a hotel. Enter the code for the desired client address Enter the client addresses. * Code number * Address line 1 * Address line 2 * postcode * contact number Process: Lookup the type of job according to the code and multiply the rate of pay by the number of days worked. Calculate the amount of expenses owed for travelling. Calculate the amount of expenses owed for staying in hotels. Calculate sub-total, VAT and the final total. Output: A full invoice with the amount owed for work done and the amount owed for expenses with sub-totals, VAT added and the final total at the end. It should also display the company logo, company address, company logo and the client address. It should look professional. Test Strategy: I will test my program in three different ways. I will ask my end user to use my new system and ask them to give me feedback on it so I am able to adjust it to their liking. Also I will devise tests that will be conducted during and after the implementation stage this will allow me to improve my system greatly and identify any errors that are in my system. Test Number Test Test Data Expected Outcome Actual Outcome Corrective Action 1a b c Check date Validation rule. Normal 10/08/05 Extreme 32/08/05 Erroneous 374hcbsi Will accept Data. Won’t accept the date. Should not accept this As expected As expected As expected 2 Check that the formula has worked to calculate the sub-total. N/A The sum of the total money owed for work and expenses. As expected 3 Check that the formula for working out the VAT works. N/A The product of the sub-total multiplied by 17.5%. As expected 4 Check that the formula for working out the total works. N/A The sum of the sub-total and the VAT. As expected 5 a b c Check the lookup function works for the job type code number. Normal 2 Extreme 4 Erroneous 224hsdnsg It should return à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½315.00. It comes up with an error message It should come up with an error message. As expected It comes up with à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½275 which is the value for 3 As expected Put a validation rule on it so that no number higher than 3 can be entered. 6 Check that the formula for working out the total amount of money owed for work done works. N/A The product of the price paid per day and the number of days worked. As expected 7 Check that formula for calculating travel expenses works. N/A The product of the price per mile and the number of miles travelled. As expected 8 Check that formula for calculating the amount of money owed for staying in hotels. N/A The product of the price paid per night and the number of nights stayed. As expected 9 Check that formula for calculating the total expenses owed for works. N/A The sum of the amount owed for travelling and the amount owed for hotels As expected 10 Check that the summary page macro button works. N/A The button takes you to the summary page. As expected 11 Check that the breakdown page macro button works. N/A The button takes you to the breakdown page. As expected 12 Check that the job type page macro button works. N/A The button takes you to the job type page. As expected 13 Check that the client address page macro button works. N/A The button takes you to client address page As expected 14 Check that the clear invoice/summary macro button works. N/A The button clears all of the entries that are on the invoice. As expected 15 Check that clear breakdown macro button works. N/A The button will clear all of the entries that are on the summary sheet. As expected 16 Check that the back to main menu macro button on the breakdown sheet works. N/A The button will take you back to the main menu page. As expected 17 Check that the back to main menu macro button on the job type sheet works. N/A The button will take you back to the main menu page. As expected 18 a b c Check data validation for D2:D14 on breakdown sheet to allow numbers only. Normal 30 Extreme D Erroneous dn8949 The program allows entry. It shows an error message to explain that no letters are allowed. As above. As expected As expected As expected 19 a b Test the lookup function for the client addresses Normal 3 Extreme 51 Erroneous 73hdhb. It will look up the client address with that code number. It shows N/A in the cell meaning there is an error in the formula. As above. As expected It comes up with zero As expected I will put a validation rule on the cell so that it will only allow numbers below 51. 20 Check that the back to main menu macro button on the client details sheet works. N/A The button will take you back to the main menu page. As expected 21 Give the program to OMD project Management for them to test it Implementation Log 17/11/05 The first stage of my implementation was to insert two worksheets. I then renamed my worksheets for easy reference; the sheets will be named Main Menu, Summary, Breakdown, Job Type and Client Details. Here I have entered all of the column headings for the client details addresses Here I have highlighted cells A1:F51 this allows the user to enter up to 50 different addresses as stated in the requirements. I then named the table Address. Here I have entered all the data for the different types of jobs. And here I have formatted the cells to currency so that the data in these cells is displayed as a currency. I highlighted cells B2:D5 and inserted a name. The table name is now jobs. Here I have entered all of the headings for this table and I have then highlighted cells A1:F15 and named them Breakdown. Here I have entered the vlookup formula, that will lookup the different rates that correspond to the code No. entered and put them onto this sheet. As you can see the vlookup formula has worked as it has entered the rate of pay. I have also put in the formula to workout amount of money owed. I have entered the formula to calculate the amount of money owed for travelling. Here I have entered the formulae to work out the total amount of money owed for expenses and to work out the money owed for staying in hotels. I have also formatted all the cells containing monetary values to currency. As you can see here I have entered all the text onto the summary sheet. Here I have entered a validation rule to the date cell on the invoice which only allows a date to be entered in the format 00/00/00 and it must be greater than 01/01/2000. I also added my own error message to inform the user of what the need to enter. Here I have entered the vlookup formula which will lookup each part of the address that corresponds to the code and the transfer them onto this sheet. I entered the same formula for the 4 cells below but each time increasing the column index number by one. This is the formula that copies the amount of money owed for work from the breakdown sheet onto the summary sheet. This formula is the same as above except that it copies the total amount of expenses owed instead of the amount of money owed for work Here is the formula to calculate the sub-total. And here is the formula to work out the VAT to be added. And finally the formula that will work out the total amount of money owed. This is me recording the macro that will take you from the main menu page to the breakdown page. I will do the same for each macro that is used for navigation. To create the macro button I used the forms toolbar and clicked on the button icon and I drew the button. I then right clicked it and assigned the appropriate macro to it. So now whenever I click the button it will take me to the specified page. Here I am assigning the macro to the macro button. I have recorded a macro that deletes all the entries that have been entered into the invoice breakdown sheet. This macro button clears all the information, on the invoice summary page, that changes. And for the addresses it changes the code so that a line is displayed instead of the client address. I did this each time I recorded a new macro and just chose a new name for it.