Point-of-Sale Replacement Across 14 Retail Stores: Scope Baseline, Schedule Network, and a Risk-Driven Deployment Decision
[Author Name]
Department of Business, Southern New Hampshire University
QSO 340: Project Management
Module 5 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
August 11, 2026
Original model document written as a teaching example. The retailer, the figures and the risk entries are illustrative composites; no real company, vendor or employee is described.
Project Scope and Acceptance Criteria
Riverbend Outfitters is a composite outdoor retail chain with 14 stores in two states and 62 checkout lanes. The board approved $410,000 to replace point-of-sale hardware and software in every store within one fiscal year, and the sponsor is the vice president of retail operations. The objective is written so it can be measured rather than argued: all 62 lanes running the new release, 214 associates trained to a documented standard, two legacy servers decommissioned, and average checkout time no worse than the 41 seconds recorded across a two-day baseline in March. A core team of five people carries the work, with two installation crews contracted for evening cutovers. The charter fixes the budget and the objective; the analysis below fixes the schedule and shows the exposure the plan carries.
Scope is written as two lists so the boundary is visible to everyone who signs. In scope: replacing 62 lanes of hardware, configuring and testing the software release, obtaining payment terminal certification from the acquirer, training 214 associates, and 30 business days of elevated support after the last store opens on the new release. Out of scope: the warehouse inventory system, the online checkout, a loyalty program redesign, and any store remodeling. Three acceptance criteria decide whether a store counts as finished. Each store passes a 20-transaction verification script with zero payment failures, every terminal holds current certification from the acquirer, and register downtime during cutover stays under 90 minutes. Anything that changes those three sentences changes the baseline and travels through the change log rather than through a hallway conversation.
The work breakdown structure carries five elements at the second level: project management, infrastructure readiness, software configuration and certification, store deployment, and training with elevated support. Those elements decompose into 38 work packages, none shorter than two days and none longer than eight, each with a single owner and one deliverable that can be handed over and checked. The scope baseline is the scope statement, the structure and its dictionary together, which is the form change control acts on (Project Management Institute, 2021). Two constraints shape everything downstream: no store may cut over in the last 10 business days of a quarter, and network circuits at two stores still run on legacy lines. That second constraint reappears further down as a register entry with an owner attached to it.
Schedule Network and Critical Path
Seven activities carry the chartered plan, with durations in business days and finish-to-start logic throughout. A, charter and planning, 10 days, no predecessor. B, circuit upgrades at the two legacy stores, 25 days, after A. C, software build and configuration, 18 days, after A. D, payment terminal certification with the acquirer, 30 days, after C. E, training content and train-the-trainer sessions, 12 days, after C. F, deployment of all 14 stores in a single wave, 18 days, after B, D and E. G, elevated support and legacy decommission, 8 days, after F. The deployment duration comes from the resource constraint rather than from a guess, since two crews working evenings can finish two stores a night and verification takes the following morning.
The forward pass puts the early finish of D at day 58, of B at day 35 and of E at day 40, so F cannot start before day 58 and the plan finishes on day 84. The critical path is A, C, D, F, G, and certification alone consumes 30 of those 84 days. Total float is 23 days on the circuit upgrades and 18 days on training, which is information rather than slack to be spent. It says the infrastructure manager can lose three of four contracted installation dates without moving the finish, while a two-day slip inside certification moves everything behind it. Milestones are placed where an external party or a decision sits: certification granted, pilot accepted, last store live, decommission complete.
Certification was estimated at 30 days rather than the 21 days the vendor quoted, because the acquirer's three most recent certifications for comparable retailers took 22, 31 and 38 days. Estimating from a set of comparable finished cases rather than from an inside view of this one is the correction the project research recommends for optimistic durations (Flyvbjerg, 2014). A schedule reserve of six days sits at the end of the plan under the project manager's control and is released only against a named delay, never against general lateness. Activity durations are held separately from that reserve so padding stays visible, which is what keeps variance reporting readable once the plan is being executed (Larson & Gray, 2021).
Risk Register with Response Owners
Five entries passed the register threshold, each written as a cause, an event and an effect so the response has something to act on. R-01: because the acquirer's certification queue lengthens at quarter end, certification may be granted after day 58, delaying every store behind it. Probability 0.40, impact $48,000, expected value $19,200. Response, mitigate: submit the package on day 40 and hold a booked review slot. Owner, the integration lead. R-02: because two stores remain on legacy circuits, a crew may arrive at a store that cannot carry card traffic. Probability 0.30, impact $26,000, expected value $7,800. Response, mitigate: sequence those two stores last and stage a cellular failover kit. Owner, the infrastructure manager. R-03: because rehearsal happens only once, downtime may pass the 90-minute criterion and cost trading hours. Probability 0.25, impact $60,000, expected value $15,000. Response, mitigate through rehearsal and a rollback inside 30 minutes. Owner, the deployment lead.
R-04: because seasonal turnover runs near 18 percent a quarter, associates may reach the first trading day untrained, slowing lanes and pushing customers toward fewer registers. Probability 0.35, impact $22,000, expected value $7,700. Response, mitigate with train-the-trainer coverage in every store and a 12-minute refresher at the start of each shift for the first 10 days. Owner, the retail training manager. R-05: because the acquirer may change its firmware requirement while the project runs, certified terminals could need rework. Probability 0.15, impact $40,000, expected value $6,000. Response, accept actively, with $18,000 of contingency reserve and a change clause in the vendor contract. Owner, the sponsor, since only the sponsor can release reserve. Every entry names one person, because a response that belongs to the team belongs to nobody. The five entries total $55,700 of expected value against a $410,000 budget, and the register is reviewed twice each month (Project Management Institute, 2019).
The Decision the Analysis Drives
The schedule and the register together answer a question the charter left open: whether to move all 14 stores in one wave. Three options were costed. Option 1, the chartered single wave, finishes on day 84 and carries $55,700 of expected risk value. Option 2 inserts a three-store pilot of 10 days after certification, then moves the remaining 11 stores in one 14-day wave and finishes on day 90; rehearsing on three stores lowers R-03 to a probability of 0.15 against an $18,000 impact and R-04 to 0.20 against $9,000, which brings the total to $37,500. Option 3 splits the 11 stores into two further waves, finishes on day 98 and reaches $35,500. Delay costs $1,850 a business day, the published rate for running two support models and extending vendor cover.
On those numbers Option 2 is the recommendation. Six extra days cost $11,100 and remove $18,200 of expected value, a net gain near $7,100 before anyone counts the reputational cost of a failed cutover in a trading store. Option 3 is rejected on its own arithmetic: eight further days cost $14,800 and remove only $2,000 more expected value. The recommendation carries a decision point rather than an assumption. The sponsor confirms or cancels the pilot at the certification milestone on day 58, and the decision reverses if certification lands more than five days late, since at that point the six-day reserve and the pilot cannot both be afforded. Buying information from a small first group before full commitment is ordinary deployment governance rather than caution for its own sake (Kerzner, 2022).
References
Flyvbjerg, B. (2014). What you should know about megaprojects and why: An overview. Project Management Journal, 45(2), 6-19.
Kerzner, H. (2022). Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling (13th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Larson, E. W., & Gray, C. F. (2021). Project management: The managerial process (8th ed.). McGraw Hill.
Project Management Institute. (2019). The standard for risk management in portfolios, programs, and projects. Project Management Institute.
Project Management Institute. (2021). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (7th ed.). Project Management Institute.
How this QSO 340 Module 5 example is structured
In many sections this module asks for an applied planning analysis rather than an essay about planning; your classroom's instructions and rubric decide the exact form, and whether the deliverable is called a milestone, an assignment or a journal is set inside the classroom at Southern New Hampshire University. Students searching QSO 340 Module 5 usually want to see the artifacts, so the paper shows them in the order a sponsor reads them. Scope comes first, because a schedule built on an unfixed boundary is a guess. The network and the critical path come second, since float is what makes the risk conversation concrete. The register comes third, with probability, impact, response and owner on every line. The decision comes last, costed against three options, because analysis that ends without a recommendation has not finished.
QSO 340 Module 5 questions, answered
What does a QSO 340 Module 5 project analysis include?
A scope baseline with acceptance criteria, schedule logic that a reader can rebuild, a risk register with probability, impact, response and an owner on every line, and a recommendation the analysis actually supports. The example on this page shows all four, with numbers carried from one section into the next. Your classroom rubric sets the weighting.
How do I show a critical path without submitting a diagram?
List each activity with its duration and its predecessors, then state the forward pass results and the finish date. Name the critical path by activity letters and report total float on the paths that are not critical. A reader can then verify the arithmetic, which a picture alone never allows, and the float figures give the risk section something concrete to work with.
How detailed should risk register entries be?
Detailed enough to act on. Write cause, event and effect in one sentence, then probability, an impact in dollars, the response strategy, and one named owner rather than a department. Vague entries such as scope creep cannot be priced or assigned, so they survive every review unchanged and quietly make the register look complete while it protects nothing.
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