Technology is ever-changing, and it is very expensive to keep up with the rapid

Technology is ever-changing, and it is very expensive to keep up with the rapid development and requirements for the architectures we have in our organizations. It is expensive for a mid-size campus to install or replace the Wi-Fi systems to support students, employees, and visitors. Organizations often think that the systems will sustain our needs without further investments, and it is hard to understand that these systems must be updated and replaced routinely. Ongoing maintenance, support, upgrades, and lifecycle replacement must be considered when investing in any technology, and wireless internet is no exception.
In this case study, you are a CEO for an organization. The IT department is not something you are very familiar with, but that department reports to you. You decide to get involved to a WiFi Upgrade project due to the complaints you have heard from various people within the organization.
During the kickoff meeting the team you are informed that there have been complaints since the day the system was installed just a few years ago. The team agrees that we have all experienced frustrations. You brainstorm issues and want to ensure the expenses requested to replace a system will meet our requirements. The previous project was not adequately engineered or managed. Maybe it wasn’t installed correctly when we purchased the system or had the right team involved from the start.
After investigating, you determine that the original project did not follow basic rules of project management, and discovered that the assessment selection and implementation did not take into consideration the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) process.
We first need to assess the legacy Wi-Fi systems and understand where the limitations occurred when implementing this system. During the first two weeks of the project, you bring in a team to talk about the key issues we outlined above. Slow Internet/Intranet speeds for employees, dropping connections and wireless coverage issues are what we determine are the key complaints about the end-users.
For slow Internet speeds, you have a sub-team analyze the reasons why this is occurring, and they determine congestion on the network. With the software was accidentally not purchased originally, you also determine higher bandwidths from Internet carriers can alleviate constraints and improve performance. You then put a sub-team together to analyze dropping connections and coverage areas. They determine these two issues are related and discovered.
Now that we have defined the key issues for the constraints through our analysis, we decide to move forward with upgrading the legacy Wi-Fi software and hardware instead of replacing the legacy system with a complete changeout. As the project progresses into the development phase, you pay for the software updates, complete a wireless assessment/heatmap study, and connect additional Internet Carrier capacity. The wireless assessment heatmap determines the 10% increase in the AP additions and placement. The software purchase, SD-WAN technology defined the additional need for the carrier capacity as well as prioritizing end-user bandwidth paths needed to improve throughput.
Sample Heatmap
To round out our project, you must ensure the project team knows that maintenance is one of the crucial pieces to success. Software and firmware must be updated routinely, and we must pay for maintaining our technology if we wish to meet the routine changes in the technology of companies like Cisco, Apple, Dell, Samsung, and other end-user devices that are associated on the network. As their software updates with weekly security patches, we must be able to patch our Wi-Fi systems to keep up with the vendors relying on the network.
Watch this video before answering the questions below:
System Development Life Cycle
How can using a project management approach ease frustrations and improve communications across the organization? Explain your answer with research.
As the CEO you are working on the next big IT deployment, what did you learn from the Wi-Fi upgrade? What will you do differently in your next project?