Project Charter: Redesign Wiz — An interest-based social networking Android App

Duration: Mar. 2017 — Aug. 2017

This project charter defines key aspects of the Wiz Android application redesign project and formally authorizes the project to initiate and allows the mobilization of the required resources to begin.

1. Suggested Project Name

Wiz — an interest-based social networking Android mobile application redesign project.

2. Brief project description

Wiz is an interest-based social networking application in order to help target users grow their network via interests and blend into local communities. The Waterloo-based startup team already launched the app’s beta version to the Android phone market last September. For the beta release, the team mainly focused on user groups like college students. The niche marketing strategy worked out successfully. Up to last December, the user amount of Wiz accumulated to 1,000,000. This January, the startup team accepted $200,000 in the capital financing from Kik Interactive, an IT company working on mobile application business located in Waterloo.

While the Wiz has a constant increasing user amount, the user retention rate and user’s engagement duration both showed a downward trend according to the data collected this January. Along with users feedbacks and lesson learned from the beta version on Android market, the team intended to redesign the android application. To better serve target users to grow their interest, the redesign will be aimed to enhance the app’s user experience and improve its compatibility with lower versions of Android systems. This project is expected to attract more target users and increase user retention and engagement after further marketing initiatives and launching.

3. Project Sponsor

The organization that is sponsoring this project is Kik Interactive. The key stakeholder within Kik Interactive for this Wiz redesign project is an investment manager called Kevin. He’s responsible for following the project and ensuring that the design decisions of Wiz align with Kik Interactive’s expectations. Meanwhile, Kevin would also offer the Wiz team consulting services on entrepreneurship and software development. Another sponsor would be the founder of Wiz called William. With $100,000 prepared by himself to support the redesign project, he will serve as the project manager ensuring that the project is planned and executed with high efficiency and well-understood communication within the team and with Kik Interactive via Kevin.

4. Objective(s)

This project will address the startup team’s business needs to identify potential niche user groups, redefine target user groups, clarify users’ underserved needs and stakeholder’s expectations. With the research-supported requirements collected and documented, it’s beneficial for the team’s internal communication on redesigning and developing the app to create a better user experience for primary users. Based on the requirements documents, designers could create and leverage more engaging interactions to increase the user retention on the app to nurture the interest-based social networking in a healthy manner. For developers, they will deal with the compatibility issues identified in the beta version on lower versions of Android system. Meanwhile, several bugs will be fixed in the development phase. Under endeavours from the whole team, the redesigned app could bring optimized user experience to the users without many usability issues. More opportunities may be introduced on the success of the project. With redesigned interaction to engage users, the Wiz app could embed more native advertisements aiming certain user groups identified through users’ interests in the future. This could potentially bring about sustainable revenues for the startup team. Meanwhile, the ice-breaking interactions on the app could have an implication on team-building for international companies, which make it possible to develop a business version with charges in the future.

5. Goals

To help measure the project success or failure, here are three main goals written following SMART principles: The first goal is to collect and clarify needs of target user groups in several big cities of Ontario, which could be measured by the user research report and related deliverables like questionnaires data and survey notes. Hopefully, this goal could be achieved by a user researcher by the end of this April.

The second goal is to deliver the Wiz application with enhanced usability and user experience accepted by the target user groups, which could be achieved by the UI designer and user researcher in the design and usability testing phases hopefully in Mid-May. The goal could be measured by the low-fidelity, high-fidelity prototypes, usability testing protocol and reports.

The third goal is to develop a more compatible application that could operate on Android platforms higher than Android 5.0, which is planned to be achieved by the technical lead and the developer in the end of July. This goal could be measured by the testing documentation of developer and the final Android application.

6. Project Scope

Here are general features that will be included in the result of the Wiz App redesign project:

• The user research will be carried out within Ontario. The three main target user groups to be approached include college students, master students, and high school international students in cities like Ottawa, Toronto, and Waterloo.
• The high-fidelity prototypes will include features like interest tags, interest groups, feeds, and profile pages inherited from the beta version. Also, six new interaction features should be presented on the topic of interest-based social networking.
• The usability testing workshops will be held among 100 undergraduate students from University of Waterloo.
• The final application should be tested on at least 5 current models of Android phones for coherent interactions and system compatibility.
• The interest tags on the final product will focus on IT, healthcare, finance, lifestyle, languages for now. The feeds for each interest tag will be prepared accordingly.

The redesigned Wiz app’s marketing, launching, and related documentation or events organization will be out of this project’s scope.

7. Deliverables

In order to achieve the objectives of the project, 5 key deliverables are specified below: A user requirement report with data collected from target user groups stated above, including user characteristics, personas, top scenarios, and preliminary requirements from users and stakeholders. A clickable high-fidelity prototype with inherited features from the beta versions, and new interaction designs. A usability testing report generated from usability workshop sessions with 100 students from University of Waterloo, including the testing protocol, designed scenarios, data analysis, and recommendations for further design and development. A development documentation which includes the bugs solved and features development processes written in a legible and well-understood manner. A ready-to-launch Android application where users from at least 5 different Android phones can communicate and receive feeds within interest groups smoothly almost without compatibility issues.

8. Milestone schedule.

Here is a table of milestone schedules categorized according to different stages of the project, namely research, design, development, and delivery.

9. Size and Make‐up of the Project Team

The Wiz Redesign project team will consist of 7 members. Their respective responsibilities and engagement are specified in the following table.

10. Interdependencies

First and foremost, the startup team has a marketing person. As the redesign could affect the market plan of Wiz, though the marketing would be out of the project scope, it’s still beneficial to involve the marketing person in the planning or delivery stages to reach a consensus within the team. Also, since the Wiz startup accepted the $50,000 funds from Kik Interactive, the design decisions on the Wiz app should also be discussed with Kevin from Kik Interactive. Besides, the startup settled the workplace at Accelerator Centre in University of Waterloo with monthly rentals. In turn, the incubator will provide the team with supports on entrepreneurship on employees recruiting, finance management, and networking.

11. Budget

The estimated budget for this project is around $80,000. The budget allocations are shown below. Research fees like survey and questionnaires rewards, usability testing facilities rental: $2,500 Design softwares fees: $2,500 Development fees on softwares and hardwares expenses, like databases, servers, debugging softwares: $5,000 Human resources fees: $60,000, separated by 6 team members. Workplace rental fees: $5,000 Fees for coordinating: $5,000

12. Time

The starting date for the project is February 10th, 2017, and the ending date is August 10th, 2017. The project duration will be 6 months. The first two months are for initializing the project and user research; the following one month will be dedicated to UI design and usability testing; another two months will be used to develop, test, and debug the Android application; the remaining month is for content filling and delivery preparation.

13. Resources

The available resources will mainly come from the Accelerator Centre and Wiz’s investor Kik Interactive, ranging from people, equipment, and information. As a startup incubator, Accelerator Centre can provide the workplace, usability testing equipment and space, and entrepreneurship tutorials. Meanwhile, Kevin from Kik Interactive will serve as an advisor on Android development and project management. The project is likely to be constrained by limited personnel. However, the constraint could be mitigated by possible personnel lending from Kik Interactive.

14. Trade Offs

Given the three project dimensions of Time, Scope, and Cost: Time is constrained as there’re similar social networking apps springing up every day, thus the time duration of the project is set to 6 months; Scope of the project could be enhanced if possible, like the user research can expand to Montreal, and more usability testing sessions could be held; Budget can sometimes be changed if necessary, as there are available funds.

15. Risks

Risks can happen throughout the projects in terms of budget, time, technical or human resources. Firstly, it’s possible that the developer can’t deliver the redesigned app’s beta version in time; Secondly, there may be an Android OS update in our development stage, which may require the developer to learn more (Pollock, 2010). Besides, the server or databases we used may be down unexpectedly. Finally, if there’re personnel change throughout the project, it will cost the team more time and expenses to find a new employee and bring them onboard the project. Foreseeing these risks, plans to manage the risks will be developed.

16. References

• Szigeti. S. (2017). Lecture 3: Selecting, Managing and Scoping A Project. [Powerpoint Presentation] Retrieved from https://portal.utoronto.ca/bbcswebdav/pid-5647805-dt-content-rid-36416415_2/courses/Winter-2017-INF2040H-S-LEC0101/INF2040_Winter2017_Class3.pdf
• Swati, B. (2014, February 11). Mobile App Development — Project Management Process. Retrieved February 06, 2017, from http://www.slideshare.net/swatibagaria/project-management-rocess
• Pollock, C. (2010). The Mobile App Top 10 Risks. Retrieved February 06, 2017, from https://www.owasp.org/images/9/94/MobileTopTen.pdf
• Accelerator Centre. (n.d.). Retrieved February 06, 2017, from http://acceleratorcentre.com