Risk Management Plan for A&D High Tech E-Commerce Project
This paper presents a risk management plan for A&D High Tech, a computer products retailer seeking to launch an online store before its peak Christmas sales season. The plan examines the feasibility of crashing the project schedule, originally spanning 967 days, to meet an accelerated deadline. It covers the company's background and ERP history, outlines the scope and components of the risk management plan, and identifies major risks including inaccurate task estimates, unforeseeable delays, and scope creep. The paper draws on IT project management literature to contextualize the high failure rates of software projects and emphasizes that effective risk planning is critical to sound cost-benefit decision-making for the accelerated schedule.
- Introduction to the Plan: Project overview, objectives, and crash schedule rationale
- Company Background: A&D High Tech history, ERP adoption, and operations
- Risk Planning: IT project failure data and importance of risk management
- Scope and Components of the Risk Management Plan: Plan scope, components, and team responsibilities
- Risk Identification and Analysis: Task durations, estimation risks, delays, and scope creep
- Risk Matrix, Corrective Action, and Monitoring: Risk matrix template, corrective plans, and reviews
- Results, Conclusion, and Follow-Up: Final findings, conclusions, and next steps
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its risk analysis in real statistics — citing a study of over 800 IT project managers — which gives the argument empirical weight and demonstrates engagement with academic literature.
- The structured, numbered section format mirrors professional project management documentation, making the paper both academically sound and practically applicable.
- The scenario is specific and concrete: a real business decision (crash scheduling before Christmas) anchors the risk discussion in tangible organizational stakes rather than abstract theory.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively applies the technique of translating theoretical frameworks (PMBOK risk components, Expected Monetary Value analysis) into a specific organizational context. Rather than simply defining risk management concepts, the author maps each component directly onto A&D High Tech's situation, showing how generic project management principles must be adapted to a particular business environment and timeline.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a formal project management report structure: an introduction establishing company background and business drivers, a scope and planning section defining the plan's components and responsibilities, and a risk identification section that catalogs and begins evaluating specific risks. Sections 4 through 6 provide headings for the risk matrix, corrective actions, and conclusions, which appear to be placeholders for a fuller draft. This outline-heavy structure is characteristic of a term project submitted in stages.
Introduction to the Plan
This project involves a company named A&D High Tech, which operates within the computer products industry and sells computer products, accessories, and services to consumers and small businesses. The organization found itself at a crossroads due to the fact that it had yet to enter the e-commerce segment of its industry. After identifying this issue with the help of a consultant, A&D High Tech's executive board committed to entering this segment as quickly as possible. The project was already in motion; however, the organization's busiest season was approaching fast, and the company called upon its top project management talent to recommend whether crashing the project schedule was feasible.
The two primary organizational objectives A&D is trying to achieve are increased sales and improved organizational effectiveness. An online store would give the organization greater consumer exposure while simultaneously opening up new markets. With the online store connected to the organization's enterprise resource planning (ERP) software on the backend, the system would also act to reduce costs while streamlining key business processes and increasing profit margins.
In designing the project, the company chose to build rather than buy an off-the-shelf platform. This decision was driven primarily by the need for customization, as an off-the-shelf system would not have been able to accommodate all of the requirements. The original project closure date was projected for sometime in May of the following year. However, since the executive directors were anxious to get the site up and running before the peak Christmas season, they tasked their top project manager with determining whether crashing the schedule was possible. Since most of the programming is outsourced through a third-party vendor, it seemed reasonable to expect that the schedule could be significantly reduced by simply adding more people to the project. However, this is not always the case — sometimes adding more people can actually extend the schedule rather than compress it. This risk management plan examines all relevant potential project paths for the online store and makes recommendations regarding feasibility.
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