Project management .A

W.B.S.

1. Discuss:

3.W.S.B

4.Project Integration

The goal for the current project is to open a new retail location for Lellow’s Toys which will allow the company to expand sales and business into a new area of town. The company will sell educational toys and games to people of all ages and genders, disabilities, and conditions. It will allow children and people to grow and develop better skills.

In order to be successful, a full integration process will need to be implemented to help with completing the project successfully.

Integration Process:

Understand Who We Are:

Lellow’s Toys is a local retail educational toy store, with the potential to develop into something bigger than itself. Exactly what we expect our customers to do. The philosophy of Lellow’s Toys is not just to sell product to our customers, but educate them on the products that we sell and how they are unique to them. From creative play to cognitive development, Lellow’s Toys is about integrating education and fun – together.

Establish Location:

Athens, Georgia is the perfect location for Lellow’s Toy Store. The Oconee Connector Retail Locations are new, large in size, cost effective, and near largely developed neighborhoods. This will allow for great marketing and sales from local families.

Develop Store Needs and Finances

The toy store will need at least $200,000 in funding to completely accomplish its current goals for success. The budget is shown below for better understanding of the costs:

Decide Contractors and Design

Contractors are a vital part of the Lellow’s Toys integration. They will be what glues the product together so the retail location can be successful. Research on local contracting companies is the first step to this part of the process. Finally, selecting an organization to complete to required work. It was decided that the best contractor for this specific job would be ETL Construction. Their ratings, experience and quality of work seem to be excellent, and they specialize in retail specific construction.

Following this decision would be a meeting to discuss fine details such as color, shelving, floor layout, register area, etc. to make the store a unique design, yet permeable for people and strollers of various sizes.

Select Product and Vendors

The product that Lellow’s Toys wishes to sell are the following: Dolls, Plush, Toy Cars, Wooden Trains, Books, Workbooks, Wooden Toys, Ride on Toys, Interactive Toys, etc. Toys to build the brain, work with dexterity, cognitive skills, and help those to learn and develop themselves. The vendors are listed below that were carefully selected based upon their product, their Corporate Social Responsibility, and their Customer Service.

· Gund

· TY

· American Girl

· Scholastic

· Hasbro

· American Education

· Toysmith

· Playmobil

· Melissa and Dug

Market Materials

How will Lellow’s Toys Market their opening day and their product? Selecting a company that can assist with Marketing Materials will be beneficial to the organizations growth. Creating online social media outlets through Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter are helpful. Post card advertisements will be mailed to local neighborhoods, daycare facilities, schools and disability homes. Large banner “Coming Soon” will be placed near major roadway near building to show construction in progress, with website information for people to research.

Additionally, when Lellow’s Toys opens, to ensure employees come back they will have opportunities to join the mailing list for discounts and coupons, and also be able to use stamp reward cards for purchases. Birthday buckets with incentivized discount will also be an option for those looking to ‘register’ for their child’s birthday party.

Want to make sure we are measuring the status of consumers in and out, and identify those customers that will be continually consistent.

Interview and Train Staff

Staffing is another important factor when it comes to opening a new retail location. Applications will be searched through and then interviews will begin. The owner/project manager will complete the interview process of the new employees. There will be a total of 7 employees hired, 6 staff and 1 assistant manager to help the owner of the store.

Each employee will be given training materials and guidebooks, employee handbooks, and required to sign paperwork. The guidebooks for the employee will review the various types of toys and suggestions, and allow the employee to learn the location of the product, what the product does, how it benefits a person, and how to recommend the product. The toys are educational for all ages and types of people, some toys more suited for an individual than others. They should be able to answer the question “What should I get for a 5 year old autistic boy, who has trouble grabbing and holding onto things?”

Customers are what keep the store going, so customer service will be the next thing each employee would be trained on. How to keep customers happy, how to upsell, and how to continually manage themselves in a child friendly environment.

Giftwrapping and personalization will be another thing that we will personalize.

The POS (Point of Sale) system will be the final training experience each employee will encounter. Learning how to properly manage inventory as it comes in and out of the facility, how to properly ring up a customer, process discounts, sales, checks, cash and credit cards.

Open the Store

After everything has been completed, it will be time to finally open the store. Preparing an opening sale, preparing the staff and having activities ready for people to play would make it a special time for everyone to enjoy themselves, while also working.

5.Risk

This part of the Project Management Plan provides a general description for the approach taken for identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing the risks associated with the project. It describes the procedures for contingency planning and the methods used in tracking risks, evaluating changes in individual risk exposures, and responding to those changes. Includes a plan for ongoing risk identification throughout the project's life cycle. In the context of this section, project risk means risk to one of the project baselines (technical, cost, or schedule). Lellow’s Toys takes a proactive approach to risk in that everyone shares in the ownership of risk management. We believe open and constant communication and information flow is vital in identifying and mitigating risk. We facilitate this through mandatory meetings, daily email, weekly reports, concise documentation, face to face interaction, and timely maintenance and updates of a risk assessment and response database.

Risk Assessment Tools

The following primary tools will be used to conduct risk assessments:

Risk Assessment Matrix. The Risk Assessment Matrix consists of two elements: risk factors and risk ranking guidelines. The risk factors represent the topics considered to have the most influence on project risk. The risk ranking guidelines are qualitative statements assigned to a low-, medium-, and high-risk category. The risk ranking guidelines are used to determine the risk impact of each of the risk factors to the project baseline.

Risk Register/Assessment Data Sheet. The Risk/Register/Assessment Data Sheet is the tool used to document the results of any risk assessment, and is designed to be used in conjunction with the Risk Assessment Matrix to obtain a structured, consistent, and rigorous assessment and response to risks. These will be turned in and addressed at the twice weekly risk assessment/response meetings to be chaired by the project manager and documented by the assistant project manager. Any known or believed unknown risks of significance are to be brought to the attention of the project manager immediately.

Twice Weekly Risk Assessment/Response Meetings. Mandatory meeting twice weekly every Monday and Friday. Those in attendance shall be the owner, all contractors, project manager, assistant project manager, store manager, finance team.

Risk Probability of Occurrence

Probability Range Probability Numeric Score

91-99% Very Likely 5

61-90% Probable 4

41-60% May Occur 3

11-40% Unlikely 2

1-10% Very Unlikely 1

Risk Impact

Impact Description Numeric score

Would cause project failure 5

Would cause major cost/schedule increases 4

Would cause moderate cost/schedule increases 3

Would cause slight cost/schedule increases 2

Would cause very negligible cost/schedule increases 1

Risk Register/Assessment Data Sheet

The project’s risk register is located in the project manager’s office and identifies the following points.

1. Date Identified – The date the risk was identified.

2. Status – Identifies whether the risk is potential, active, or closed.

3. Risk Description – A description of the risk.

4. Risk Probability

5. Risk Impact – The effect of the project phase and overall project if the risk event occurs.

6. Risk Score – Reflects the severity of the risks effect on objectives. The risk score is determined by multiplying the risk probability and risk impact values.

7. Risk Assignment – Person(s) responsible for the risk if it should occur.

8. Agreed Response – The strategy that is most likely to be effective.

· Avoidance – Risk avoidance entails changing the project plan to eliminate the risk or condition or to protect the project objectives from its impact.

· Transference – Risk transference is seeking to shift the consequence of a risk to a third party together with ownership of the response.

· Mitigation – Risk mitigation seeks to reduce the probability and/or consequences of a risk event to an acceptable threshold.

· Acceptance – This technique indicates that the project team has decided not to change the project plan to deal with a risk or is unable to identify any other suitable response strategy.

9. Risk Response Plan – Specific actions to enhance opportunities and reduce threats to the project’s objectives.

Roles and Responsibilities

Owner

The owner has the ultimate responsibility for identifying, analyzing, mitigating, and controlling project risks, including acceptance of the project risks, or modification, or termination of the project—all of which are project risk management activities. Owner, along with finance director and project manager are responsible for all contingency planning and approval.

Project Manager

· Overall responsibility for the risk management plan.

· Responsible for formulating risk responses and facilitating changes with owner and stakeholder’s approval.

· Input and approval from owners regarding which course to take: Avoidance, Transference, Mitigation or Acceptance regarding risks.

· Maintains the Risk Management Data Base and distribution of updates

· Briefs the team on the status of risks and response times.

· Tracks efforts to reduce moderate and high risk to acceptable levels.

· Provides risk management training (ensuring everyone is familiar with probability scale, Impact scale, and how to properly fill out risk data sheet.

· Facilitates risk assessments and preparing risk briefings, reports, and documents required for project review meetings.

· Chairs mandatory twice weekly risk assessment/response meetings to be attended by, assistant project manager, contractors, store manager, and finance team.

· Communicate results of meetings to owner and all stakeholders’ weekly e-mail.

· Meet separately with owner and stakeholders with risk management update and status of possible future risks.

· Along with owner and stakeholders, review and revise risk management plan as needed.

Assistant Project Manager

· Assists project manager with overall administration of risk management plan.

· Primary liaison between team members and project manager.

· Ensure all project team members are prepared with input to weekly risk meetings.

· Assign risk responsibility/ownership to the appropriate team member.

· Ensure all risk data sheets are properly recorded to risk register database.

· Responsible for tracking and closing out of all risk data sheets with project manager sign off.

· Record minutes of twice weekly risk assessment meetings.

· Advising project manager of potential risks not identified by project team.

Project Team

· Frontline responsibility for identifying risks.

· Monitoring and tracking of risks assigned to them at last risk assessment meeting.

· Assist in assessing and assigning score to any real or perceived risks.

· Recommend any changes to the current risk assessments.

· Input regarding course of action to take regarding specific risks.

Contractors

· Attend twice weekly risk assessment meetings.

· Twice weekly status updates/progress reports, specifically in regards to:

· Design

· Site conditions

· Construction procedures

· Construction occupational safety

Store Manager

· Supports project manager regarding store layout and opening inventory issues/changes.

Finance Team

· Responsible for weekly updates of financial condition and payment status of all pertinent vendors and contractors.

· Approval and sign off of any risk assessments that may cause potential cost overruns.

· Input and approval of any agreed response strategy along with owner, project manager, and stakeholders.

6.Risk Management Plan

Description

Lellow’s Toys, a popular specialty toystore, is opening there second location in Athens, GA. Opening this new retail location will allow the company to expand sales and business into a new area of town. The company will sell educational toys and games to people of all ages and genders, disabilities, and conditions. It will allow children and people to grow and develop better skills.

Roles and responsibilities for mitigating risk

Owner: Hires management team, payroll and costs, creates contingency plan for management reserves, transfers risk to contractors, decides who is best suited for controlling activities, providing liability insurance, and approving project charter.

Project Manager: Plans and executes project, oversees the project, reconstruction on rental, holds meetings for the project, budget reserves such as allocating resources to project activities, ensures that the project is approved, processes and completes project in an orderly fashion, developing methods to assess and resolve technical uncertainties, and hiring the coordinators and contractors to assist with store grand opening.

Project Assistant Manager: Assists project manager with responsibilities, delegating tasks and responsibilities to contractors and coordinators, and acts as project manager when project manager is unavailable.

Contractors: Taking ownership by absorbing risks, identifying and documenting responsibility, does the actual work, coordinates their contributions with the project team, providing support to project scope, and completing segments by deadline.

Store Manager: Supports project manager, orders inventory and expenses, trains employees, delegating tasks to employees, following through with employees to ensure tasks are completed, communicates with store owner, ensuring customer satisfaction, and loss prevention.

Employees: Stocking shelves, merchandizes displays to planogram, hanging signage, cashiering, verifying correct prices, gift wrapping and personalizing toys, providing excellent customer service and experience.

Sales Marketer: Provides marketing tools, advertising, providing signage, creates planograms for merchandising, and ensures store managers are merchandising displays to planogram.

Finance Team: Processes, underwrites, and approves project plan, and finances project.

7.Budget

Total budget break down is listed below, followed by its risk analysis on page 7.

Total Budget $250,000