Max Tennyson is a small business owner, specializing in renting vacation cottages in Europe and Africa. Up to now, his business, Tennyson’s Travel, has been manageable with spreadsheets and manual
records. All business has been conducted in the travel office or on the phone. TT has been experiencing phenomenal growth, at a rate of 25% a year. Max has only 3 employees currently but is now
looking to expand the operations, up to 10 employees. He knows that he needs to automate the records and is unsure where to start. He also believes that he needs to create a website. Keep in
mind that both the travel agents and customers would like to search the inventory using criteria, such as price, location, property type, number of bedrooms and how many people total can sleep in
property.
Max hires you to analyze his business/industry and come up with a plan to automate his small business.
Where to start:
Second work
 Work up a spreadsheet how much it would cost to create the new system from scratch and compare your numbers against the purchase price for a pre-programmed software package. Assume that
the company currently only owns Office 2010 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Project – COST ESTIMATE).
 Create a task list and schedule for your project. The travel company needs this implemented no later than September 30, 2017, in order to be fully operational for the busy winter break
vacation season. Use either Excel or Project. Show durations of each task, task dependency and total project length. Use an expected task estimate formula. This can be done by hand. Print out
your task list with 3 columns next to it (best-case, worst-case, and probable-case time estimates then you can show your formula by hand (or in an Excel spreadsheet.) (TIME ESTIMATES)
 From your task list, either printout a network diagram from Project or create in Word/Visio a PERT/CPM diagram similar to the ones shown in your textbook. It does NOT have to look exactly
like these. (NETWORK DIAGRAM)
 Make or buy decision – justify your decision in a PowerPoint presentation to Max (your customer.) Make it a convincing decision. Make sure that your decision has met all the feasibility
requirements (operational, technical, economic, and schedule.) Also, take into account the total cost of ownership (both the tangible and intangible costs.) (MAKE VS BUY)
 Create a screen mockup of the final system. Either create the mockup in Word, Visio, Access (forms), HTML, or use Visual Basic. Show at least one of the data entry and one of the output
screens. Explain what can’t be seen, such as data validation and other data entry controls. (MOCKUP)
 Detail your plan for software testing and rollout in Word memo. (ROLLOUT PLAN)

1. Cost Estimate
2. Time Estimate
3. Network Diagram (name can be hand-written in footer)
4. Rollout Plan