TCM490: Telecommunications Management Senior Project
Business/Technology Analysis

Introduction

Understanding how technology relates to and supports the business plan or objectives is an important aspect of telecommunication management. As a telecommunication manager, you will need the skill to sell technology to the non-technical management side of the business.

The Senior Project is a capstone course designed to combine the management and information technology concepts learned during the TCOM courses. This capstone course provides the final assessment point for the telecom program as a four-year college degree. This is not a pure technical course, but a management course that seeks to educate students to become a technical savvy manager with aptitudes appropriate for the telecommunications field.

Your knowledge from previous business, management and technical courses come together in your ability to relate and justify technology use in meeting and improving business goals and objectives. Tecnology, especially communications infrastructures, are no longer viewed as expenses, but are valuable corporate assesst that support the business in many critical areas. Being such, these assests require professional management in order to be maintained and grow to meet ever changing business needs.

Instructions

In developing your business/technology analysis, it is not your goal to do an all inclusive and extensive business plan, unless that is exclusively your project. Rather, it is your goal to understand the basic business plan and produce a specific business to technology analysis that effectively relates your project objectives to the needs of the client's business. This is a one to two page report that clearly describes the business problem that is solved by your project.

How does the project relate to and support the goals of the business? You will want to gear your writing to the non-technical, upper-level manager. Keep your analysis simple and effectively relate the project and/or technology to the client business goals, market, or competitive advantage. Use various models to define and relate the technology you are proposing to the business.

Start off by clearly defining the business and business goals of the client.

Provide an analysis of the project using the following models.

• The Top-Down Methodology for Network Analysis and Design. (fig-1)
• The Business Top-Down Model. (fig-1, fig-2)
• The Development Life Cycle Model. (fig-1)
• Shift in Industry Graph
• Virtual University Reference Model