Treat Your Own Back Assignment Brief

Treat Your Own Back App Project

Treat Your Own Back assignment brief is an easy-to-follow book presents over 80 pages of education and clinically proven exercises. The simple and effective self-help exercises in Robin McKenzie's Treat Your Own Back have helped thousands worldwide find relief from common low back and neck pain. This book helps the reader understand the causes and treatments, along with a system of exercises that can help relieve pain and prevent recurrence. Treat Your Own Back Pty Ltd is managed by director (and author), Robin McKenzie. McKenzie currently sells the book and associated DVD’s through Amazon. A website containing short video and text instructions is also available. McKenzie wishes to tap into the mobile market developing an app designed to promote and grow the sales of the book, DVD’s and to promote self-help healing techniques.

You have been working for Body Care Software Inc. casually for the last three months in their mobile application development department. As a virtual team specialist, your company has applied for a tender to develop the app for Treat Your Own Back Pty Ltd. Due to the importance of this project the CEO of Body Care Software Inc, Dawn Bell, and the Director of Mobile Development Charlie Harris have both made this project a priority

The initial investment in the project is estimated to be $120,000 in year 0 of the project, $14,000 in year 1, $18,000 in year 2, and $18,000 in year 3 a total of $170,000. Body Care Software Inc. requires a discount rate of 12%. It is anticipated project future cash inflow as follows (Years 0 to 3): $0, $110,000, $110,000, and $110,000, a total of $330,000 The project will be expected to make at least a 25% ROI, to conform to the Body Care Software Inc, business model

The goal of the project is to propose an app, which is optimised for iPhone and Android devices. The app should allow readers and potential readers to subscribe and pay for access a database of back injuries, a range of associated treatment plans, and book individual online consultations. Readers should be able to subscribe to the Treat Your Own Back newsletter and related upcoming events. There should be access charts detailing back anatomy, and videos showcasing all the treatment approaches. There should be a photo album for each practitioner. The app should provide users with an ability to provide an overall ranking of Treat Your Own Back in terms of quality of information and services. Management believes it will take about four months (16 weeks) with a budget of $170,000 for this important project. Bell aims for a budget contingency reserve of approximately 10%

                                                           

                                                                                                    

Dawn Bell and Charlie Harris have formed a search committee to find the best candidate for managing the Treat Your Own Back App Project. After reviewing many strong candidates, they decided to appoint you, to put together the business case for this critical project. Your previous job was with a consultancy firm where you successfully implemented several android application development projects for medium sized enterprises, using virtual teams. Since this is a high priority project that should be completed in four months, they felt it was appropriate to get the best candidate to put together a quality business case and project management plan. They are offering a premium for your contract at $110 p/hr for 2 d/wk, but a lot is at stake, Treat Your Own Back and similar businesses are likely to request further mobile app development projects. Bell and Harris propose to be joint project sponsors, and have handpicked Joel Goren, to be the main internal IT liaison and Maggie Lin to be the Treat Your Own Back liaison. They will let you as the new project manager form the rest of the project team if the tender bid is successful.

In order to get the app developed in the time frame you propose to use Royce’s well known waterfall development approach. It is anticipated the requirements and operations phases will take 2 weeks each, and the other phases approximately 3 weeks each. Your team consists of two programmers and a digital image specialist. The three team members 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 on development. They will be paid at a rate of $65 p/hr. You will also need to access to a Lumbar/Spinal consultant (Alex Reid). The consultant and liaison pay rates are negotiable and will only be required for a maximum of one week

You anticipate several challenges if this tender bid is successful. Body Care Software originally focused on developing medically based learning games apps for kids, but the CEO, Dawn Bell, has emphasized the need to increase profits by tapping into other markets, including medical marketing projects. The type of people who work on kids gaming projects are often different from people working on the new medical 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. Even though you and the Treat Your Own Back project team tried to do a good job managing key stakeholders, there are some difficulties with several employees who disagree with the company’s new marketing strategies

The plan is to roll out review existing information, conduct research and gather new material. Detailed storyboards, a prototype, alpha, beta and final version of the app will developed. The app will need to be tested, and promoted prior to roll out. The project will be considered a success, if it comes in on time, on budget, within scope and key stakeholders have been pleased with the communication and reporting processes.