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For my project management class we have been proposed with a case and have been asked to come up with a proposed solution. I am not quite sure how to approach this, or what the best solution might be. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

*** You are migrating the Accounts Payable Department to a new software product that the company has purchased. As the Project Manager, you will need to lead the installation, testing and implementation of this new software. Assume your infrastructure is in place (servers, network, security, and database)

During the execution phase (Testing), the team has informed you that the current database version of Oracle is not compatible with your new software. The DB manager informed you it will take 2 months to upgrade. You only have 3 months left before your scheduled to Go Live and you have 10 weeks of work. What will you do? How will you communicate this to the team? How will you communicate this to management? What are options that your team can suggest?***

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  • Is there additional context? As it is, this is an "it depends" sort of thing, and real-world scenarios rarely have anything to do with guessing what your teacher thinks is the "correct" answer.
    – Todd A. Jacobs ♦
    Oct 8, 2015 at 21:44
  • I realize this and that is the issue. There is no further defined context. There are so many what ifs and different scenarios that can be proposed. I'm not entirely sure how to approach it.
    – iceren12
    Oct 8, 2015 at 23:08
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    Without additional context, this question may be closed as Too Broad. I'll let it sit a few days before voting on it, though; perhaps someone else will think of a way to make this question answerable in a canonical way.
    – Todd A. Jacobs ♦
    Oct 9, 2015 at 1:05

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It isn't clear to me whether or not there is an issue.

  • If you need the DB upgraded before other work can complete you have a net ~6 week overage in your schedule (~12 weeks remaining minus 10 weeks of work minus 8 weeks to upgrade the DB gives minus 6 weeks).
  • If the DB upgrade can be done concurrently with and independent of the other work you have no issue with schedule, though you've probably increased project risk.

Regardless, there is missing information around management priorities. How firmly wedded are they to the go-live date compared to budget, scope, risk, benefits, etc etc? For example, more work needs to be done which will boost your costs. Is there still sufficient business value to make continuing worthwhile?

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  • I upvoted because I like the answer, even though the OP's question as currently posed is really unanswerable in a canonical way. It would be stronger as an answer if the last paragraph were an action item (e.g. "You should go ask management these things.") rather than an attempt to clarify the original question, because that's really the domain of comments. Just my $0.02 for improving this for posterity.
    – Todd A. Jacobs ♦
    Nov 8, 2015 at 17:18

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