PM paper

Table of Content

1.0 Executive Summary………………………………………………………………….……....2

2.0 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..…....3

3.0 Scope…………………………………………………………………………………………..4

4.0 Sequence and Schedule………………………………………………………………....……5

5.0 Budget Estimation…………………………………………………………………………....7

6.0 Communication Management Plan & Matrix……………………………………………..8

7.0 Assumption and Risk…………………………………………………………………….......8

8.0 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………......12

References ……………………………………………………………………………………....14

Appendix A - Project Charter……………………………………………………………..…..15

Appendix B - Work Breakdown Structure…………………………………………………....21

Appendix C - Network Diagram……………………………………………………………….23

Appendix D - Microsoft Project Schedule………………………………………………….…24

Appendix E - Cost Manage Plan and Budget………………………………………….……...27

Appendix F - Communication Matrix…………………………………………………………29

Appendix G - Risk Management…………………………………………………...………….30

1.0 Executive Summary

Our service, Celebrate Your Day, gives customers the opportunity to have a memorable, meaningful, and surprising special day, such as anniversary, birthday, and ceremony. We plan and scheme for customers’ important days. Customers can purchase our suggested gift or place their own gifts into our gift crate. We will decorate the gift crate and deliver it by a costumed employee. We target to young people who would like to have a romance day and working people who don’t have time to plan their special days. Our service differentiate ourselves by combining costumed delivery with customized gift crate.

2.0 Introduction

Giving gifts and planning for important days is an important part between relationships. It dates back hundreds of years in human culture. Currently, people give gifts to those whom they share friendships or whom they really care about. This important culture and market need inspire us to create our service, which helps people to send a creative surprise to their loved ones. Our goal is to strengthen relationships between families, friends, and loved ones to have a memorable important day. We, Celebrate Your Day, fulfills their needs. We plan and scheme for customers special days including location, gift, and gift delivery. Customers can place the gift they want into a gift crate, and we decorate it based on the occasion. Or, they can purchase our designed gift package, including Romance, Birthday, or Holiday. In this paper, we analyze our service as a project. First, we analyze WBS to determine what tasks we need to consider. We decide that Preparing Work, Social Media, Team Members, Sponsors, and Project Manager are key factors to be successful. Second, we manage the schedule to estimate how long we are going to take from preparing to launching the service. Third, we estimate the cost of whole project to make sure we allocate budget to each task properly. Fourth, we analyze communication management. It is a significant part in the project because communication makes sure each department cooperates tightly, and keeps shareholder’s interest on the top. Fifth, we manage the risks we may face. The risk industry is very dependent on the economy. Giving gift is something that people do when they have disposable income. We need to consider about local economy to decide whether we have enough demand; We need to consider whether customers satisfy with our plan or gift crate; We need to consider if we can deliver the gift on the right time.

3.0 Scope

Our scope of this project is clearly defined under work breakdown structure (WBS), which included all the activities for the preparing stage of this project through the deployment stage. We help our customers to prepare unexpected surprise for their specific others, and our WBS will help us to make sure we can launch this project properly and smoothly.

3.1 Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

The project manager has the role of planning for the resources and the activities. They have to define the scope of the projects to prevent investing the scarce resources on unnecessary tasks (Maja, 2017). They also have to determine the available resources to decide the appropriate period and tasks for the venture. After that, they develop the WBS to guide their actions. The project management of celebrate your day project was able to develop a WBS (Maja, 2017). The document will guide the team on the activities to follow to ensure users celebrate their day with apps and online.

As project managers, we believe that the project can be divided into five primary activities. The first task is getting ready for the project. Therefore, we have to pick a location and storing of the layout (Maja, 2017). The preparation also entails training and acquiring of goods and customers for the proposed project. Second, it was also advisable to determine and hire the required team members for the endeavor. The members required were the planner, photographer, and driver. We also need to hire the packaging staff and the receptionists to assist the other members. The editor will also comprise part of the team to ensure the proposed project meets the expected standards.

The third task involves an investment on the social media development. We wished to design the website and create a logo to increase the customer experience (Maja, 2017). We also stipulated that the project would amass service information by surveying the users of the app. The rating would determine the appeal of the celebrate your day app to the users. The fourth step is communication with the sponsors. The first sponsor was Back Bay Florist while the second was Dana-Farber Gift. We would set an agreement with the sponsors regarding our commitments to the project. Eventually, there was the deployment phase where the users would receive the app. The deployment would start by soft launching the app to enable users to access it on the web. After that, the full launching would enable the users to enjoy all its services, and the firm will vehemently promote the product to ensure increased awareness of its existence.

4.0 Sequence and Schedule

To produce the project schedule, the team decompose scope into several detailed tasks, and place them sequentially, then focus on drawing network diagrams. The network diagram is a graphical representation of the project work packages, which are showing sequentially and connected by arrows, durations and dependencies, eventually finishing the project schedule.

4.1 Network Diagram and Schedule

The Network diagram shows the schedule and map of 21 tasks planned between November 5th, 2018 to March 27th, 2019 that make sure our service planned and launched. The Network diagram and Microsoft project schedule are Appendix C and Appendix D respectively. The Microsoft project schedule shows the duration and critical path of our project. The software helps us to adjust time conveniently. Once we put in the task name, duration, and predecessor, the start and end date will come up automatically. The predecessor indicates the sequence of tasks, which means one task has to happen next to the task before it. The sequence of tasks in pink means the critical path, which is the longest duration between start and end. The software can automatically adjust for any future change of duration or start/end time for the whole project. The other tasks that are not in the critical path have “slack”, which means the whole project will not be affected even those tasks have some delay.

4.2 Milestones

Milestones are important steps that we need to consider during the project, and below are our project Milestones.

Phase 1: Requirements Gathering

1. Randomly select different areas to do survey: Oct 14, 2018

2. Location and design based on customers need: Oct 30, 2018

3. End user surveys: Nov 12, 2018

4. Finalize requirements Nov 23, 2018

Phase 2: Development

1. Store and service design: Mar 20, 2019

2. Development and Advertising: Jun 6, 2019

3. Testing: Aug 1, 2019

4. Deployment: Aug 24, 2019

5. Post-deployment: Dec 28, 2019

5.0 Budgets Estimate

The project management also formulated the budgets estimates of the project. The estimates are useful in generating accuracy in the funds required (Lutzenberger, 2017). The inaccuracy of the estimates might not only lead to excessive wastage but also may hinder the completion of the project. The budgets estimates also help in decision making (Lutzenberger, 2017). The reason being, We will identify tasks which have consumed more funds than allocated and identify the reasons behind the practice.

Relating the expenses to the tasks in the WBS is essential. The first task, getting ready for the project had seven sub-tasks ranging from picking the location to designing the brochures. We estimated that the internal labor for the tasks would amount to $ 68,640. Moreover, the external labor would amount to $ 4,200. Thus, the total amount of money necessary was $72,840.

The second task was hiring of the team members. The members would earn a total of 130 dollars every hour. We assume that each of them would work eight hours every day. The fact that we hired all the members indicates that he would only incur an internal labor expenditure of $76,960. The third task was an investment on the social media development which we estimated that only the survey would cost the firm $7,280 to undertake internal labor. However, the external designers would cost the firm $ 6,760.

The fourth task required a total of $ 45,760 to facilitate the setting of the agreements with the two sponsors. Eventually, the last task was the deployment of the app. The soft launch would incur a total of $ 4,160. The grand opening could cost up to $ 7,280 while the promotion would cost $ 7,280. Therefore, the fifth task requires at least $ 18,720 to ensure the full launch of the app. The analysis shows that the project requires a total of $427,440 for internal labor. The project also needs external labor worth $ 10,960 and indirect costs and reserves totaling to $ 14, 000. The budget of the project shows that the project management was able to determine the funds required for each task.

6.0 Communication Management Plan & Matrix

The key to keeping your stakeholders in the loop is communicate, communicate, communicate (Perrin, 2008). After all, the communication plan is about disclosure of information based upon the channels described. It is important to know and understand your stakeholders, determine their needs, respect, and understand what causes them unease and listen to what they say so that the key communication output can be provided (Perrin, 2008). Different modes of communication, such as face to face meetings, email, social media, were incorporated into the communication plan. The project manager is responsible for updating the communication plan and disseminating it to the project team. The project manager reviews the communication plan whenever a milestone is reached or if there is a significant change in the project (Andler, 2016).

7.0 Assumptions and Risks

​ Risk is an inevitable element in business. Given our business plan, risk can occur in every business stage. One main concern is that we may have no market when we open the store. As one can image, it would be a complete disaster if we open the store and figure out that there is no market demand for our product, especially after all pre-investments and fixed-cost. Besides this biggest risk, once we built a stable customer pool, there is no guarantee we can have a profitable and stable business. With an increasing demand, it is possible that we do not have enough employee to fulfill all orders and to serve all consumers. Failure of key suppliers is another concern on this operation stage. Given the essence of our business idea, consumers may bring in various requirements, and it is impossible for us to keep all materials in store, hence our business mode will be order-driven. Once we receive an order, we start to contact our suppliers for materials we need to fulfill the order. In this sense, if things go wrong in our supply chain management, we may fail to complete the order. Problems with consumers could also rise if we are not able to come up with a service plan for a specific customer within the contract deadline. On the implementation stage, since most special-day-plans take place in a public location, it is almost inevitable that we may interrupt other people when we deliver the gift or surprise to our consumers. Moreover, many surprise-plans and gifts come can hardly be realized without proper cooperation of a group of other people, things could go wrong if those sponsors leave earlier during the delivery process. For each order we have, even though our service is completely based on information provided by the consumer and with the purpose to meet his/her need, miscommunication and poor understanding could still happen, which may result in customers not being satisfied with our service. In addition, one disadvantage of our business idea is its poor non-replicability, hence potential competitors can enter the same market at any time, creating a threat of new entries. Last but not the least, with the consideration of external risks, we need to always respond to new health and safety legislation throughout business operation because any failure in meeting those regulations would put our business under potential legal risks. ​Among all identified risk elements, three of them caught most of our attention: not having enough market, dissatisfaction of consumers, and threat of new entries. Using the risk analysis tool of heat map, we go on analyzing these three risks in details using two measures: impact and possibility. Results show that, the first risk “not enough market” is the one with lowest possibilities and smallest impact, so it is located on (3, 3) in the heat map. When it comes to the second risk, the risk that our customers are not satisfied with our service, this risk is relatively less possible to happen, but once happen, will dramatically affect our business performance, hence it ends up with a coordinate of (3, 4) in the heat map. Threat of new entries are of both high possibility and impact because it is not easy for us to prevent other sellers from entering into the market, and once they do, they would probably take away partial or most of our market share, so we label this risk as (4, 4) in the heat map. ​ After identifying and assessing key risks, naturally the next step is to propose alternative solutions. For risk A “not having enough market”, we plan to do market research before we actually open the store. If we have a better understanding of the market and our target customers, the possibility of this risk would be reduced. Another solution is to make advertisement of our service. With well-organized advertisement, we would like to promote our business idea to the market and reach to our target consumers as much as possible. With this approach, we should be able to lower both risk possibility and risk impact of “not having enough market”. For risk B “customers not satisfied with our plan”, a direct solution to decrease the possibility of this kind of risk is to improve our service quality. In order to achieve this goal, we will conduct a series of employee training programs including consumer analysis, technique training, and consumer behavior and psychology analysis and so on. In the worst case, if unfortunately this risk does occur that we receive complaints from consumer, to reduce the negative impact of this situation, we plan to offer make-up service for free in order to fix the situation as possible as we could. For risk C “competitors coming into the market”, we can decrease the impact of this risk by providing better service and adding more professional skills into our service to create a core competence. Since there is a big enough market out there and we are not aiming at become a monopoly, differentiating our service from our competitors would help to maintain our market share. Meanwhile, we can reduce this risk on both the possibility and impact aspects through choosing a better location where we could enjoy benefits of the first-mover strategy and could get access to a larger customer base. It is easier to build customer-loyalty with first-mover strategy, so this solution will help us maintain current customers when potential competitors enter into the market. Also, once competitors notice our existence and nice performance in a certain region, they would need to reconsider their decision of entering into the same region. ​With those proposed solutions, it is estimated that all three key risks could be effectively managed to a controllable level. As it is showed in the heat map, risk A “not enough market” is managed from (3, 3) to (1, 2), which means the possibility of not having enough market reduced by two units and the impact of this risk decreased by one unit. For risk B “customer not satisfied with our plan”, this risk in now at the coordinate of (2, 2) instead of its original position of (3, 4), indicating that the possibility of this risk is reduced from level 3 to level 2 and the possibility of this risk is managed from level 4 to level 2. For the last risk of “competitor coming into the market”, it is relocated from coordinate (4, 4) to (3, 2) with both possibility of risk reduced from 4 to 3 and impact of the risk reduced from 4 to 2.

8.0 Conclusion

The aim of the project is to help customers with busy working schedule plan a special occasion for the people they love. The event can be to celebrate a birthday, anniversary, or any special occasion in a loved one’s life. In other words, our main objective is to help people with tight working schedule plan special days for the people they love. This is done by helping customers buy and deliver gifts so that they can strengthen the relationship between their families and friends. So far we are optimistic that the project will be successful and we acknowledge that there are risks that come with managing a project. As a result, we have learnt that it is important to recognize and manage risks.

8.1 Lesson Learned

We understand that risk is the possibility that we may not achieve one or more of our objective because something unexpected can occur or something unplanned fails to occur. This is because predicting the future is not easy. The benefits of risk management in a project are many. For instance, dealing with a given situation such as inadequate employees can help us save money. In our case, employing part-time employees can help us not only save money in terms of the hourly wages paid to the employees, but also save time in terms of the hiring process. Secondly, risk management in projects helps in the delivery of the project on time and within the planned budget. As a result, we have learnt that it is important to make risk management part of our project. For instance, one of our project risks involves having few employees which might affect the delivery of gifts to our customers. We plan to mitigate this risk by hiring part-time employees. In addition, the risk of not having a market when we open the business can be mitigated by conducting a research to find out if people would like to pay for special days for their loved ones.

We have also learnt that it is important to identify risks that are present in the project. This is an approach that requires an open mindset and a project team that contains visionaries who can focus on the future and try to preempt risks that might affect the smooth running of the project. Therefore, two main sources that can be used to identify risks are people and paper. People are the project team members who bring along their professional expertise and personal experiences. Other people outside the project can be consulted especially experts with a track record of the type of project we are working on. These experts can reveal potential risks or even opportunities that come with managing certain risks.

The other lesson learnt is that it is important to communicate the risks. Each and every team member in the project must let everyone know if they find something that might affect the progression of the project. Therefore, the team leader in the project should encourage all the team members to communicate whatever they find. The best way to communicate risk is to include it in the tasks carried out on a daily basis. For, instance, if the teams meets once in a week, one of the default agenda should be communication of risks. This allows members to know that risk communication and hence management is important to the management of a project. The meetings also present team members with the opportunity to discuss the risks and report new ones. Additionally, it is important for the project manager and project sponsor to have open line of communication with regards to talking and discussing about risks. But the project sponsor is tasked with the responsibility of making decisions on the top risks because some risks exceed the mandate of the project manager.

References

Perrin, R. (2008). Real World Project Management Beyond Conventional Wisdom, Best Practices and Project Methodologies. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Andler, N. (2016). Tools for Project Management, Workshops and Consulting (Third ed.). (G. Seitfudem, Ed.) Erlangen, Germany: Publicis Publishing.

Lutzenberger, T. (2017, September 26). Why is it Important to Accurately Estimate Cost? Bizfluent Article. Np

Maja. (2017, April 5). Project Manager Roles and Responsibilities. Retrieved from https://activecollab.com/blog/project-management/project-manager-roles-and-responsibilities

Appendix A - Project Charter

A. General Information

B. Project Objectives:

F. Impact Statement

.

G. Roles and Responsibilities

H. Resources

I. Project Risks

J. Success Measurements

K. Approvals

Appendix B - Work Breakdown Structure

B.1 Neumeric Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Note: Because we are taking this project management class, so the project management column is not including in this WBS chart.

Celebrate Your Day

· 1.1 Get Ready

· 1.1.1 Pick Location

· 1.1.2 Store Layout/Design

· 1.1.3 Training

· 1.1.4 Acquire Goods

· 1.1.5 Acquire Costumes

· 1.1.6 Acquire Delivery Vehicle

· 1.1.7 Design Brochures

· 1.2 Team Members

· 1.2.1 Hire Planner

· 1.2.2 Hire Photographer

· 1.2.3 Hire Driver

· 1.2.4 Hire Packaging Staff/ Supply Buyer

· 1.2.5 Hire Reception

· 1.2.6 Hire Editor

· 1.3 Social Media

· 1.3.1 Design Web/App

· 1.3.2 Create Logo

· 1.3.3 Gather Service Survey/Rating

· 1.4 Sponsors

· 1.4.1 Set Agreement with Back Bay Florist

· 1.4.2 Set Agreement with Dana-Farber Gift Shop

· 1.5 Deployment

· 1.5.1 Soft Open/Launch Web/App

· 1.5.2 Grand Open/Launch Web/App

· 1.5.3 Promotion

B.2 Graphical Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Appendix C - Network Diagram

Note: A separate MS project file has been uploaded.

Appendix D - Microsoft Project Schedule

Note: A separate MS project file has been uploaded.

Appendix E - Cost Management and Budget

Note:

1. Contractor hours format =(number of people) * (number of days) * (8 hours a day)

2. Project team hours format =(number of days) * (8 hours a day)

Important Assumptions:

1. Budget in U.S. $

2. All project employees are assumed to be working 8 hour days

3. PM team consists of 3 people/the lead makes $50/hour, associates make $40/hour (total $130/hour)

4. Design team consists of up to 3 people/average cost of $35/hour.

5. All project employees are on a contract basis and only paid for time work

6. Social Media Design Team consists of 2 people paid 40/hour

7. Reserves estimated at 10% of overall budget to account for both unforeseen additive labor expenses and any additional overhead not anticipated at this time.

Appendix F - Communication Matrix

Appendix G - Risk Management

G.1 Risk Heat Map

BEFORE CONTROL

AFTER CONTROL