Opening Strategy of A New Building for Moss - Essay Example

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SectionTitlePage

1Project Title and Description1

2.Organizational Strategic Plans and Business Need1

3.Project Justification1

4.Project Sponsor and Management Responsibility1

5.Project Manager and Assigned Level of Authority1

6.Project Objectives1

7.Project Scope1

8.Project Deliverables and Acceptance Criteria2

9.Project Duration2

10.Pre-assigned Resources2

11.Project Selection Criteria and Investment Analysis2

12.Project Assumptions and Constraints3

13.Project Funding3

14.Stakeholder Identification3

15.Communication Requirements3

16.Personnel Administration4

17.Financial Controls Procedures4

18.Issue and Defect Management Procedures4

19.Change Control Procedures4

20.Project Risks and Risk Control Procedures4

21.Project Life Cycle5

22.Management of Projects5

22.1Scope Control5

22.2Schedule Control6

22.3Cost Control6

22.4Quality Control6

22.5Manage Team7

22.6Manage Stakeholders8

22.7Risk Monitoring and Control8

22.8Contract Administration and Control9

23.Conclusion9

LIST OF FIGURES

FigureTitlePage

Figure 1Project Life Cycle5

1Project Title and Description – Opening of A New Building for Moss Ltd.

Moss Ltd is a SME company specializing in the design and supply of promotional brochures. Moss Ltd initiated a project for opening of a recently acquired building measuring 75,000 square meters area as part of its strategic plans.

2.Organizational Strategic Plans and Business Need

Organization has a strategic plan to respond market expansion. For this purpose, company decided to expand its existing infrastructure of 50,000 square meters to 75,000 square meter new building. This would facilitate the company to accommodate exiting and addition work load to effectively meet large global customer satisfaction.

3.Project Justification

It is expected that by undertaking the project and expanding the existing infrastructure company would be in a position to handle market expansion by responding the existing and potential customers at domestic and global level. With the increase in services provided to customers, it is expected that company revenue would increase by $200,000 by first year. As a side benefit, company hopes that the project would generate more ideas to improve customer satisfaction.

4.Project Sponsor and Management Responsibility

CEO of Moss Ltd., Mr. XYZ, would be sponsoring the project and is mainly responsible for providing the project statement of work and scope statement and issuing of project charter.

5.Project Manager and Assigned Level of Authority

Mr. ABC has been assigned as project manager for the project in discussion and has the authority to select project team and determine the final budget for project completion.

6.Project Objectives

The final objective of the project is the opening and functioning of a new building for Moss Ltd. to expand its existing operations.

7.Project Scope

The scope of the project is opening and functioning of a new building. Any other activity that is not relevant to opening and functioning of the new acquired building is not within the scope of the project. All the activities would be mutually agreed upon by all stakeholders and authorized by project sponsor for clear description of the project scope.

8.Project Deliverables and Acceptance Criteria

The deliverable of the project would be newly acquired building opened and housing all functions of the Moss Ltd to support its expansion plans. The acceptance criteria for the project deliverable would if it is completed with in time and budget constraints.

9.Project Duration

Moss Ltd wants to start its newly acquired facility before Christmas this year so as to undertake new service requests by the global customers. The likely project duration would be 62 working days. Assuming a five days working week and no other holidays, if started on September 5, 2011, it is expected that the project would end up by November 29, 2011.

10.Pre-assigned Resources

Mr. ABC is a assigned as a project manager, while Stephen and James of production department have already been dedicated to the project due to their expertise in opening the first building of the project. Other resources would be determined by the project manager during the planning and execution phases.

11.Project Selection Criteria and Investment Analysis

Accounting standards like Net Present Value, Opportunity Cost, Payback Period and Benefit Cost Ratio were used to carry out investment analysis and layout project selection criteria (Graves 2003).

• Net Present Value - is the present value of the total benefits (income or revenue) less the costs over many time periods. From the analysis, it was determined that the project has a net present value of $200,000 with first year of its completion.

• Payback Period - The number of time periods it takes to recover your investment in the project before you start accumulating profit. It is likely that the project would payback its cost within six months of its completion and after the operations have started in the newly acquired building.

• Benefit Cost Ratio - done. This ratio compares the benefits to the costs of the project. Calculations showed that the benefit cost ratio is greater than 1 so project should be selected.

• Opportunity Cost - The cost of an opportunity given by selecting one project over decision of not selecting the project. The opportunity cost of selecting the project over not selecting the project is $200,000.

12.Project Assumptions and Constraints

Project should be completed before Christmas by December 5, 2011 and its cost should not increase more than $100,000. It is also assumed that John would assist the project manager during the project in handling the project management software.

13.Project Funding

Project funding would be ensured by the project sponsor and would be agreed upon during initial phases of the project. Any changes to the project cost would be intimated to the sponsor and would be enforced after formal approval process.

14.Stakeholder Identification

All the individuals and organizations that directly and indirectly either effect or are affected by the project fall within the definition of the stakeholders.

15.Communication Requirements

Communication requirements like form and type of communications, to whom and what to be communicated, media of communication to stakeholders needs to be identified in a more clear and structured manner. This information would ne documented in the final project management plan. It is expected that the presently available advanced digital technology including email, facebook, web meetings and conventional methods like face to face meetings, correspondence and verbal communication would be used where ever required and appropriate to the situation.

16.Personnel Administration

Hiring and firing guidelines, employee performance reviews, and training records would all be carried out during the project as per existing procedures and policies of the Moss Ltd.

17.Financial Controls Procedures

Time reporting, required expenditure and disbursement reviews, accounting codes, and standard contract provisions would be followed on the basis of existing procedures and policies and company guidelines.

18.Issue and Defect Management Procedures

Issue and defect management procedures defining issue and defect controls, issue and defect identification and resolution, and action item tracking is the responsibility of the project manager and must be contained in the final project management plan. These procedures must be clear and transparent and must be communicated to all the stakeholders and team members to avoid any ambiguity during the project.

19.Change Control Procedures

Change control procedures, including the steps by which official company standards, policies, plans, and procedures—or any project documents—will be modified, and how any changes will be approved and validated would be included in the configuration management system, a part of final project management plan. Project manager and project team is mainly responsible to identify the change control procedures at all level and their inclusion in the plan.

20.Project Risks and Risk Control Procedures

Risk control procedures, including risk categories, probability definition and impact, and probability and impact matrix, risk quantitative and qualitative analysis, risk responses and risk register would be made part of risk management plan. All the information relevant to the risks and the changes required to be implemented due to a particular risk or its impact would be included in the risk register and is the responsibility of the project manager.

21.Project Life Cycle

Most likely phases of the project that would comprise the project life cycle is given below (PMBOK 2004).

Project Life Cycle

Figure 1

22.Management of Project

In order to effectively manage, administer and control the project, project manager and project management team need to equip themselves with certain skills and competencies and apply those concepts appropriate to a certain situation discussed below.

22.1Scope Control

In order to control changes to project, project manager should control changes to scope and it if happens then the impact of these scope changes on other project knowledge areas should also be monitored and controlled. It is important to think from where changes can come to the project and how to control them. For this purpose, project scope statement and work breakdown structure (WBS) should be clearly defined and then the scope performance should be measured against the scope baselines. Any changes needed should be updated to project management plan through recommended corrective and preventive actions. Change control system, variance analysis, configuration management system and replanning are the tools that can help the project manager and project team to control the project scope. In our project, introduction of new technology, any additional staffing rather than mirror staffing from original facility and requirements by any imposed regulatory or government requirement may compel to change the scope of project. Also changes in the schedule and funding may change the scope of project (Sebastian 2007).

22.2Schedule Control

Project manager must measure how the project is progressing and should control the factors that may delay the project by implementing the recommended corrective and preventive actions. To monitor and control the project schedule, project management team can apply tools like progress reporting, schedule change control system, performance measurement, variance analysis and schedule comparison bars. Any delays especially in the intermediate activities like deciding the building layout, provisioning of electricity, wall painting, woodworks or security may cause the project to delay (James 2008).

22.3Cost Control

It is critical to monitor and control the overall project cost like in our case sudden rise in prices of paint, wood or electrical accessories may cause the project cost to slip. It is important to measure the project cost throughout the project and control it against the baseline. Tools like cost change control system, performance measurement analysis, forecasting and variance management can be used to effectively monitor and control project cost. Earned value technique is a method to measure project performance against project cost baseline by comparing planned values against actual results and indicate any potential deviation (Taylor 2008).

22.4Quality Control

An important aspect of project management is to maintain high standards of quality through process like quality assurance and quality control. Project management team must monitor specific project results to determine whether they comply with relevant quality standards and identify ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory results. For this project management team can employ tools like cause and effect diagram, control charts, flow charting, histogram, pareto chart, run chart, scatter diagram, statistical sampling, inspection and defect repair review to ensure high standard of quality control. In our case, cause and effect diagram can help determine the potential defects that may affect the project quality. Inspection and sampling of wood works, electrical accessories being installed and security and fire warning system can be introduced to monitor the quality throughout the project (Kloppenborg & Petrick 2002).

22.5Manage Team

Managing the team is critical to the project success so that team is focused on performing only those activities that fall within the scope of the project. To do this project manager must observe the situations, use issue log, keep in touch with all members of the team, raise performance appraisals and above all must participate in activities that need escalation if the team cannot solve these problems at its own for conflict management. Project manager must understand how to use which of his formal, reward, penalty, expert and referent powers appropriate to any situation for resolving conflicts. Also project manager must understanding that which leadership style of directing, facilitating, coaching, supporting, autocratic, participative and consensus would be most appropriate in a given project phase since no single style is the best one and can yield the ultimate results (Mulcahy 2005). To obtain best results from the project team, project manager has to adopt different leadership style throughout the project.

22.6Managing Stakeholders

A project manager must understand that managing stakeholders and meeting their demands, requirements and expectations is crucial part of successful project management. Like in our case, when Stephen and James are taken off from the production department to work on the project assignments, it is likely to effect the working of the production department. Here, production manager, a stakeholder can be interested in knowing how this would be affecting his part of work (PMBOK 2004). Also he might like to know when these people would and would not be available to him during the project so he can plan his part of production. For this an update on biweekly basis containing information on concerns of production manager may help to resolve any potential conflict. Maintaining issue logs and adopting effective communication methods may help to manage stakeholders more effectively (Mulcahy 2005).

22.7Risk Monitoring and Control

According to Barkley (2004), risk is an uncertainty that has been defined and is a way of thinking through and planning a project. Monitoring and controlling a risk is a question of identifying key risk milestones or points in the project schedule where risk decisions need to be made. To effectively manage, monitor and control risks throughout the project, project manager and project management team must be conversant with and engaged in performing following activities (Mulcahy 2005):-

• Look for the occurrence of risk triggers
• Monitor residual risks
• Identify, analyze and plan for new risks
• Ensure the execution of risk management plans
• Evaluate the effectiveness of risk management plans
• Develop new risk responses
• Collect and communicate risk status
• Communicate with stakeholders about risks
• Determine if assumptions are still valid
• Ensure proper risk management procedures are being followed
• Revisit the watchlist to see if additional risk responses need to be determined
• Implement corrective actions to adjust to the severity of actual risk events
• Look for any unexpected effects or consequences of risk events
• Reevaluate risk identification, qualitative and quantitative risk analysis when the project deviates from the baseline
• Update risk management and response plans

22.8Contract Administration and Control

For a successful project, it is important to meet all contractual and obligatory requirements. Project manager must know what to do and complete all parts of a contract how small these may be and not just the project scope (Kerzner 2009). To do so, project manager must be involved in following activities:-

• Verifying the invoices
• Recommend and implement changes
• Authorize payments
• Identify what is included in the contract
• Resolve conflicts among parties
• Hold meetings where appropriate
• Performance reporting
• Monitor cost, schedule and technical performance against the contract
• Know the legal implications of an action taken
• Verify integrity and status of claims
• Keep and update records

23.Conclusion

The importance and prospective benefit of acquiring and opening a new building are undeniably high. Definitely, there is a growing demand in global market presenting numerous opportunities to the company for expanding globally. This project would enable Moss Ltd. to effectively handle the increasing service requirements of the customers and increase its revenue many folds say $200,000 by first year. Another important aspect is that the project has a short payback time as the cost incurred in the project would reach breakeven within six months of operations. The project is not only interesting but also challenging considering the constraints of time and cost. Based on the analysis of feasibility study conducted, it can safely be concluded that project is worth undertaking endeavor in view of Moss Ltd.’s strategy to expand. Project manager and his team is highly equipped with the required skills and competencies to undertake the project assignment.