XYZ Human Resource Information System Program and Training.

XYZ Human Resource Information System Program and Training.

XYZ Human Resource Information System Program and Training.

Document Management

Distribution List
Name     Position     Signature     Date
A     X
B     Y

Project Registration

Project Name

XYZ Human Resource Information System Program and Training.

Creation Date

25/6/2011

Sponsor/Client

Name of the client/sponsor

Project Manager

Name of the manager

Executive Summary

Rationale

The HRIS or the Human Resource Information System is basically the system which is used to maintain the information and/or data about all the employees working in the organization from top to the bottom level usually in the form of the database or the series of the related and interconnected databases. (Reh, 2011) It can more generally be referred to as the collection of those systems and the processes which comes into the picture where the intersection between the human resource management and the information technology occurs in an organization. This concept is all about the merging up of the various HR practices and planning with the evolving technologies of computer science so as to develop those effective tools by which the valuable human resource can be better managed. (Heathfield, 2011) The main purpose of this project would be to transform most of the processes related to keep the records of the various types of the information related to the employees who are being done manually in many of the organization into the automated machine dependent techniques which can make the work faster, effective, cheaper and with reduced chances of errors.

Business Drivers

The main business driver related to this project is the need of automating the functions of the organization. The development and the maintenance of the effective information practices for the management of the human resource may bring a lot of benefits to the organization in the near as well as the far future. The current need of matching up with the growing technologies which would be dominating the future is another important driver of the HRIS. The various manually done processes includes the accounting of the payroll, management of work time, deciding the appraisal on the basis of performance, evaluating the performance of the employees, various processes related to the recruitment, managing the employees learning and training, keeping the record of performance of employees on the basis of amount of work done, punctuality, etc, and finally the various types of the self-services of employees. The carrying out these tasks with the help of an integrated system would not only benefit the management in the several ways but also would standardise all these processes and there would be much more transparency in the work which is essential for the satisfaction of the employees.

Key Objectives

The main objectives of this project are listed below:

To develop an all new human management information system by using the latest technologies of the database management system, client-server applications, simulation software, smart interface, and user friendly environment.
To automate the various business processes related to the HR practices like employee’s history, capabilities, skills, salaries, accomplishments, etc.
To minimize the word load on the manual handling of these administrative processes by introducing the automated human resource management system.
To develop the modules for the business needs which are mentioned in the previous section?
Designing and testing the effectiveness of the online recruitment as the part of the human resource information system.
To generate the online learning and training feature by collecting relevant details and material required for this and testing it for its efficiency in comparison to the manual training and learning.
To train the managers involved in managing the human resource for the use of the developed system.
To evaluate the implementation of the system and take the feedbacks from the different people of the organization for the improvement in future.

Benefits

Some of the identified benefits that will be measured throughout and/ or after the project are listed below:

The difficult and time consuming processes like generations of the reports, etc would be better handled.
The processing of the information would be much faster and the various processes which take hours to get finished may be done in fractions of a second.
A greater accuracy in the information may be achieved with lesser efforts.
The programs, planning and decisions on the aspects related to the human resource will be better managed in a more time and cost effective way.
The communication between the employees would improve and they will be having a better relationship with the management.

Impacts

The impacts of the HRIS on the business activity, organisational capability and the processes are described as below:

The adoption of the human resource information system designed as per this project would centralize the data storage and integrate the various work processes which would bring drastic effects on the current working procedures of the organization where these processes are handled in a distributed way.
The business activities of the organization would become more transparent and standardized for all the employees and there would be the fewer instances of partiality, etc.
The things would be grasped in a much thorough way which would be a great asset for the capability of the organization.
This project would obviously make the HR practices of the company much more effective than before which would be having the positive impact on the performance of the employees and more indirectly the retention of the talented capital.
Another impact on the organization would be a better coordination between the various departments.
There may be the instances of opposition of the implementation of the HRIS in the business processes as the structural and the cultural changes in the organization may be difficult aspects to get adopted with.

Project Information

1 Integration Management

1.1 Methodology

The project would be concentrating on a well formulated and structured methodology for the evolution of the described system taking care that each of the objectives are well achieved. The focus will be made that the project is carried out with the bottom-up approach. (Metagora, 2011) The development will be based on prototyping each of the feature and making the iterative development with the controlled and systematic approach.

Firstly, the requirements would be described in a great detail by interviewing the various HR managers of the organization along with the employees containing all the external as well as the internal users of the proposed human resource information system. Then, the initial design of the system would be building up and presented before the executive level management of the organization or the decisive authority and the initial feedbacks will be taken along with the discussions with them for the feasibility of those feedbacks. After the initial design of the system and the evaluation of this with respect to its strengths, weaknesses along with the risks involved, the requirements for the further requirements would be taken so as to develop the first working prototype of the HRIS. This would involve the best of the planning and implementation of the strategies with the help of the best available technologies and facilities available at the disposal.

The intense training of how to use the system, along with the detailed description of how the different modules would be given, and the other small or big queries would be answered related to the use of this new human resource information system. This prototype would be tested for its efficiency and effectiveness of the existing processes and this time the feedback from the actual users of the system along with the top authority of the organization will be taken. Based, on all these suggestions which are achieved from the various sources and the analysis of these suggestions for the additions, deletions and/or modification of the features in light of feasibility and the other aspects like cost overruns, etc, the final prototype will be prepared which will be implemented in the organization for the same tests. Again, the training for the new features would be given to each of the user and if everything goes correct and in the order as decided, the system would finally be implemented replacing the older system gradually.

The components and the elements required for this project would be collected from two of the sources namely the primary and secondary. The primary source would include the elements collected by the feedbacks, suggestions, etc with the potential users of the system along with the interactions with the experts while the secondary source would include the study of the existing human resource information systems, theories and concepts available in the books, journals, magazines, etc. (Eamon, 2010)

1.2 Change Control

The following steps would be adopted in proposing, assessing and authorising the changes in scope:

The major meeting with the stakeholders, the key HR managers, and the executive level management will be made after the completion of the each of the stage of the project where the changes can be proposed and discussed.
The meetings will also be arranged after the regular periods of time like on the monthly or half-monthly basis in which the changes may be suggested and discussed.
After each prototype, the system would be available to all the users which can suggest the changes in the form of feedbacks. The important changes would be discussed with the related authorities through the meetings.
A proper justification to support the change should be there with the proposal of change.
The major changes would be analysed with respect to the various related aspects like the feasibility, risks, cost effectiveness, etc after which they would be incorporated in the project or else rejected with proper justification.

1.3 Performance Reporting

The following procedure would be adopted for the measurement and reporting of the performance:

The system would be implemented for the real time use after the final and approved prototype is ready and the performance of the system would be measured time to time.
The quantitative performance would be evaluated on both absolute as well as the relative basis.
The absolute performance would be measured with the help of the criteria like the time the new system is conserving in comparison to the older system, the rounded off estimates of the saving up of the costs related to the operations being done by the system.
The relative performance would be measured by comparison of the same criteria with the performance of some of the popular HRIS.
The qualitative measurement of the performance would be done on the basis of the feedbacks received from the stakeholders, users of the new HRIS, as well as the employees on the varied weightages.
The feedbacks on the training would be another important consideration of the performance evaluation of this project.
The instances of the errors or the malfunctioning of the system would also be included in the performance report.
All the measurements would be documented in the form of a well structured report and would be presented and kept for the future uses.

1.4 Audit

The following independent process of auditing will be followed to monitor and verify all project related work:

The time to time verification of the issue that whether the work is being carried out in compliance to the guidelines decided and discussed with the stakeholders.
The time factor for the completion of the project will be one of the most important considerations of the project.
The organization would be requested to assign the work of checking whether the system is being well understood by the users or not to the independent managers.
All the progress in the work will be well documented and presented before the stakeholders and the key managers on every scheduled meeting which can be audited by them.
The performance evaluation will be timely made and presented before the stakeholders.

1.5 Dependencies

All the related and or inter-dependent projects impacting the performance and delivery of the project are listed below:

The system analysis of the requirement and the design.
The collection of the data relevant to the whole development.
The design and formulation of the different modules for the system.
The technical programming and the integration of the technologies to develop the whole system.
The specifications of the training to be given to the employees which requires the designs of the different training modules for the different types of the users of the HRIS.
The feedback and suggestions from the various users of the system.

2 Scope Management

2.1 Deliverables

This project would be consisting of the following deliverables which will be given during and after the project:

The individual and independent modules of the human resource information system to handle the independent tasks of handling the employee’s history, payroll, application to handle employee’s check-in check-out, performance evaluation of employees, online training module, online recruitment assistance module and the employee’s record.
The full-fledged training to all the users who would be using this HRIS.
The web portal for all the employees working in the organization where the various information related to the employees will be given with the separate sessions defined for each of the employee by which it can enter his/her information and access his/her profile whenever required.

2.2 Inclusions

Following will be explicitly included in the specification for the project:

Employee’s relation module including the features for recording the employee’s history, skill’s set performance, achievements, etc.
Employee’s payroll module to handle the accounts for the payment of the employees, etc.
Learning and training module which would contain the learning and training features such as the video lectures, tutorials, etc. This module will have an easy to update feature.
The online recruitment module which would contain the features like online aptitude and knowledge test, video conferencing features for interviews, etc.
The web portal with the mail server for sharing up of the information related to the employees also facilitating the profile fill-up and other information by the employees and using the email system of new HRIS portal.
The training required for the users on how to use the features of the system, troubleshooting the problems in the system in the future, etc.
All the source codes and the designs of the working of each of the module.
Support and maintenance of the system for one month of trial and testing phase.

2.3 Exclusions

The exclusions of this project are the future support and maintenance of this new HRIS including the troubleshoot in case of the problems after the final version of the system is implemented and tested for the period of one month and all these would be dealt separately however we would look for the further contract with the organization for the maintenance of the system in the future.

2.4 Handover

There would be the following main provisions in order to ensure that the deliverable can be handed over to the client on the finalisation of the project:

All the rights over the project would be transferred to the organization giving it the authority to change, modify or delete its parts as per its requirements in the future.
The entire source codes, designs of the implementation, testing and training data, and other details and components developed and/or used in the project would also be handed over to the organization.
A formal approval letter from the CEO or the assigned project coordinator from the side of the organization specifying that the requirements have been completed and delivered on time along with the NOC and closure of the project would be taken on the delivery of the project.

3 Time Management

3.1 Schedule

Major stages:

Project initiation phase

Development Phase

Implementation phase

3.2 Milestones

All the milestones forecasted for the implementation of this project are described in the following table along with their respective deadlines and tentative duration.
Deadline     Tentative Duration     Milestone to be achieved
September 1, 2011     10 days     Analysis of the current methods and practices being carried out in the organization for handling the different aspects which are going to be covered in the new HRIS.
September 11, 2011     7 days     Discussion of the requirements of the new HRIS and feasibility of them under the budget and cost constrains including the discussions over each of the derivable of the project.
September 26, 2011     15 days     Development of the initial design and layout of the HRIS including the web portal.
September 29, 2011     3 days     Detailed discussion over the initial design and recommendations for the changes (if required).
October 29, 2011     1 month     Development of the fully functional prototype including each and every module and the web portal.
November 14, 2011     15 days     Real time implementation of the first prototype of the whole system with the brief training and/or demonstration on how to use it.
November 14, 2011     15 days     Opening the prototype for the suggestions and feedbacks and the simultaneous analysis of these feedbacks and suggestions.
November 17, 2011     3 days     The second major meeting with the stakeholders to give them the overview report on the basis of the feedbacks received after the implementation of the first prototype. This would follow the intense discussions on the changes, modifications, etc along with their feasibility.
December 17, 2011     1 month     Development of the second and final prototype inclusive of all the recommendations and suggestions.
January 17, 2011     2 months     Implementation of this final prototype in the real time working environment of the organization.(continual with the operations mentioned below)
January 17, 2011     1 month     The in-depth training of the HR users for the use of this final prototype which may be regarded as the new HRIS in the various sub-phases like the training of the employee’s relationship managers, training and development managers, accounting managers, recruitment managers, etc.
February 17, 2011     1 month     The project implemented on the one month trial and the major suggestions will also be entertained.
February 20, 2011     3 days     Final meeting with the stakeholders and handing over the system solely to the organization.

4 Cost Management

4.1 Budget

The required budget of the project is indicated as below:
Sl. No.     Entities/Components     Estimated Cost per entity or component     Number of entities/components     Total Estimated Cost
1     Salaries to HR specialists     AED 25000     4     AED 100000
2     Salaries to technicians     AED 15000     10     AED 150000
3     Salaries to reviewers/trainers     AED 15000     6     AED 90000
4     Storage devices (300 GB server)     AED 100000     2     AED 200000
5     Web Space     AED 1000 per year     1     AED 1000
6     Database software     AED 6000     5     AED 30000
7     Application management suite     AED 25000     5     AED 125000
8     Other software requirement     AED 20000     1     AED 20000
9     Thumb Punching Attendance Machine     AED 2500     4     AED 10000
Total             AED 726000

4.2 Estimating methodology

The methodology used for estimating the budget is mainly done through the secondary sources. The salaries mentioned above are the average salaries asked by the professionals who are hired on contractual basis. The numbers of entities or components are the estimated figures calculated for the optimal performance and completion of project on the due time. The number of HR specialists, IT professionals and the reviewers/trainers to be hired are 4, 10 and 6 respectively. The number of storage servers would be 2 although only one would be required for use and the other one would be kept for back-up of data and will be put to use later on in the future when the space needed to store data would increase. The costs of the software like the database management software, application management software, etc are taken from the official website of Oracle. The cost of Thumb Punching Attendance machine is also explored through the secondary sources from which its average cost is taken.

4.3 Confidence level

The figures are expected to be 90% correct as they are mostly taken from the secondary sources and there may 10% chances of up or down in the estimates.

4.4 Contingency

Though the figures are recorded after doing enough analysis of the suppliers through the secondary sources yet a contingency fund ranging from 3 to 5% would be enough to tackle any ups or downs in the rates. The contingency funds are required to be allocated and would be surrendered if it could not be used.

4.5 Source of Funds

The funds may be incurred through the investors and even loan from the banks on the presentation of the documents like facts and figures of the funds required along with their justification, guarantee of return of amount taken, and the contract of the time duration in which the amount has to be returned along with the contracted interests.

5 Human Resource Management

5.1 Stakeholders

The details of the roles, responsibility, information needs of all stakeholders for the project are described in the following table:
Stake holder     Roles and Responsibilities     Information needs
CEO     Consultation, presiding the meetings on the project, final approval of the project, ensures the proper fulfilment of the requirements, giving the relevant advice on the project.     The ongoing progress report on the project, recommendations and suggestion passed on from the HR managers, any other queries which he feels important.
HR director     Consultation, participation in the meetings, advising on the relevant matters, taking the important decisions over the various aspects of the project, appointing the managers for the inspection of the performance, approving the quality and performance of the overall project and finally giving recommendation report to the CEO for approval.     Proposal analysis from the sub-ordinate HR managers, the quality and performance report of the project from the head of various HR departments like accounts, recruitment, etc, description and details of the various modules of the project(is asked).
General Manager, accounts     Suggesting the details of the needs for the HRIS as per the accounting, giving quality and performance report on the features concerning the accounts and approving the accounting module of the new system.     Details of the working and features of the new HRIS related to the accounts and feedbacks from subordinate accounts managers on the accounting module.
General manager, training and development     Giving details on the needs and requirements of the learning & training module of the HRIS, giving progress reports along with the recommendations on the training and development aspects of the HRIS, finally approving the learning and training module. He/she would also be responsible for properly guiding the training process to be given for the various users of the new system.     Details of the working and features used to solve the problems specific to learning and training module of the HRIS and feedbacks from the subordinate training and development managers on it.
General Manager, manager, recruitment     Specifying the details and requirements of the online recruitment module in the HRIS, evaluating the development process of this module time to time, and finally approving the same module after the final prototype is prepared.     The reports and proposals specifying the benefits of this new concept, details of the available solutions and features which can be built, feedbacks and suggestions from the subordinates of recruitment department.
HR manager, employee’s relation     Specifying the details and the requirements for the employee’s relation module of the HRIS which includes the history of the employee, skills and performance set, employee’s self-service, employee’s check-in check-out, etc, checking and evaluating the development process of the module and giving the final approval to the module for the operations.     The proposal report on the type of the features that can be incorporated to provide the best solution, details of the features incorporated and how each feature works, and the suggestions and feedbacks from the subordinate managers.
Managers, HR department     Assisting in the preparations of the reports along with the feedbacks and suggestions to the upper authority, checking and testing the system, and giving the suggestions whenever asked.     Training for how to use and run the system and the feedbacks from the employees.
Employees (existing and new)     Giving feedbacks and suggestions on the new system.     Training wherever required on how to use the services of new HRIS.

5.2 Resource Capability

The resource capabilities required for the project is indicated below:

The meetings are required with the stakeholders, the hired IT professionals, designing and operational team and the coordinator.
The main requirements would include the desktop computers, office, fast speed internet, training rooms, internal server, and web space for uploading the portal.
The continuous interaction with the users is required time to time so as to suggest their opinions when needed.
The work would be done during the normal office hours of the organization.
The training may be given either during the office hours or some additional hours after the office schedule.

6 Communications Management

6.1 Organisational Structure

Following flow diagram indicates the appropriate and tentative organisational structure:

6.2 Escalation

There would be the following mentioned procedures to handle conflict and dispute resolution:

In case of any conflict within the structure, complain may be moved to the upper authority describing the details of the conflict.
The immediate meeting would be arranged in which the disputed parties may be called by the by that authority where the dispute may be resolved.
If the dispute doesn’t get resolved there then a major meeting comprising of the related stakeholders will be called where the issues can be resolved.
The decisions over the issues will be recorded in order to avoid any other related dispute in the future.

7 Procurement and Contracts Management

There are the following planning related to the procurement and contract management to be adopted for this project:

The entities to be procure by the organization includes the web servers, database storage space, database management system, desktop computers, punching devices, space for the training, projectors and demonstrating devices, web space for hosting web portal, etc. The majority of these requirements may already be available with the organization which can be used for the purpose of this project.
The project also needs to hire some IT professionals and other technicians to do the development part of the application.
The components and the required entities needs to be purchased by the organization from the reliable sources like oracle for the database management system, web server from the Microsoft, etc.
The responsibilities and roles of the stakeholders along with the project coordinator will be well documented with all the legal entities are to be completed before the start of the project.
The initial contract and the promise of the quality statement will be signed by both the client as well as the provider.
The contract will close after the final meeting in which all the rights and required aspects in the contracts are handed over to the company after the complete satisfaction of the stakeholders.

8 Risk Management

8.1 Constraints

There may be the following constraints that will restrict the performance and delivery of the project along with the possible treatment strategies:

Reaction of the HR managers in implementing the HRIS to completely replace the existing practices is the most important constrain which would impact the performance and delivery of the project. The possible treatment would be preparing the managers beforehand about a major change in the HR strategy of the organization.
Another problem would be the lack of assistance of the managers of the one or more department which may lead to the weakening of some of the modules of the project. For this, the managers should always be highly encouraged to take this as an extremely important issue which would affect their working in the future.
The lack of the cooperation may be another constrain for which they are needed to be properly demonstrated and encouraged to take the deep interest in the training.

8.2 Assumptions

There are the following assumptions (accepted as correct) that will impact the performance and delivery of the project:

The organization is well prepared for the implementation of HRIS.
All the policies and requites of the project will be incurred on time by the management.
Additional staff mainly consisting of the middle level managers will be easily made available.
Employees and the managers would effectively participate in giving suggestions and feedback.
There would be no resistance whatsoever to the change in the HR strategies in the organization.

8.3 Potential Issues

There may be the following issues which may arise during the project:

Undesirable delay in work due to unanticipated lack or absence of technicians, managers, employees, etc.
Undesirable error in the system.
Lack of required communication between the various entities of the project.

8.4 Risk

There are the following potential risks involved with the project:

The biggest risk involved with this project is that the prototype or the design being rejected as whole or requiring major changes which may delay the delivery. The probability of this risk is though quite low as the major discussions would be scheduled before each design and prototype, yet it would be better if we frame some strategy beforehand to handle this risk. The strategy would be delivering the prototype in the various informal sub-stages prior to the prototype being presented as a whole and thus the suggestions would be acquired at each of the sub-stage.
The employees and the other HR users may find the system a bit tough or difficult to handle due to the lack of the technical knowledge and hence the in-depth training would be required before the main training of the specific use of the HRIS starts.
After the implementation, a there is a weak probability that some major issue arise due to some blunder mistake in the data administration. For this, some of the trained IT professionals are required to be hired to maintain the system. The time to time back-up of the data will also be a good option to mitigate this risk.

9 Quality Management

The following measures would be taken to get the best quality management of this project:

The main motive of the quality planning for this project is to get the better implementations of the HR practices being currently adopted by the organization and to maximize its assistance with the use of latest technology and developments.
We assure that implementation of this project would bring huge amount of satisfaction among the employees as well as the managers by making the processes much more easier, reliable and less time consuming.
The best possible focus would be made on complying with each and every requirement of the stakeholders with the best of efforts to accomplish them.
The continuous improvement would be a major task to be done throughout this project with giving equal importance to each of the suggestion and feedback coming from the side of not only the key managers but also from the employees.

10 Recommendation

There are the following recommendations for the organization:

The organization should move ahead with its HR policies with the help of the latest developments in this technology which can be very well achieved by the implementation of this latest HRIS proposed.
The components like training, the scope of feedback and improvements on the basis of suggestions by iterative prototyping makes it superior to other HRIS as it would be extremely customizable as per the needs of the management of the organization.

11 References

Eamon, M. (2010, May 27). Defining Primary and Secondary Sources. Retrieved June 24, 2011, from Collections Canada: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/education/008-3010-e.html
Heathfield, S. M. (2011). Human Resources Information System (HRIS). Retrieved June 24, 2011, from About.com: http://humanresources.about.com/od/glossaryh/a/hris.htm
Metagora. (2011). Bottom-up Approach. Retrieved June 24, 2011, from Metagora: http://www.metagora.org/training/encyclopedia/bua.html
Reh, F. J. (2011). HRIS. Retrieved June 23, 2011, from About.com: http://management.about.com/cs/peoplemanagement/g/HRIS.htm