The management process involves marketing, customizing the software and consultations with several other companies. It also involves working within the budget. The risks that can be encountered should also be considered in the whole process. The need to have the products served to an international market in different languages was imperative. This would make the product easy to use for people worldwide. The project manager was given lee-way to hand-pick his team and was expected to work with other companies on this project.
Management Objectives
Considering that the rental kind of business already existed in other companies especially dealing with movie rentals, the management decided to venture into this project based on the same ideals but with changes in mode of service delivery for their product. The market research and corporate values showed that sports related and educational video games should be the main focus for the company since there was a large untapped market. Several types of platforms could benefit from these video games. These include popular gaming systems, computers, and learning systems used in pre-schools and elementary schools.
However a plan was to be devised on how to also serve international markets by providing services and products in different languages. The system to be used had to be user friendly worldwide, enabling customers to search for specific games by platform and age. Also to be considered were gender appropriateness, customer reviews, sports and language preference. In addition, the registered customers must be able to order videos, track delivery and return of videos, pay online and provide reviews of the games. There was great need for the system to be able to track referrals to the site from corporate partners and customer referrals, display advertisements and customer usage patterns.
With all the above in view, the management was to implement a reasonable budget according to their views and priorities. It was assumed that the project would take twelve months to complete. Estimates generated from monthly costs to yearly benefits showed that there would be good profit thus the company accountant recommended a seven percent discount to the customers. However, having placed everything in order, the project had to be controlled to achieve the benefits.
Project controls
As the project set of, there were monthly reviews and quarterly progress reviews to check the balances of the assumptions made. After four months, the team had encountered several challenges. The cost set for software customization overshot the allocated budget. The purchasing specialist, Ryan, was very unreceptive and intolerant to the suppliers’ demands unlike the rest of the team who were content. Although initial projections on the $500,000 had indicated that about half of it would go into hardware, outsourced software and consulting services, Ryan was still very argumentative during meetings. He also breached protocol by forwarding reports regarding the supplier, directly to the senior management suggesting termination of the suppliers’ services without proper consultation. Ryan’s performance was reviewed as it was considered not in order
Four months into the project, the senior management approved a new budget and requested for the plans to be refined and the necessary software customization be acquired without exceeding the new budget. Also, revised estimates suggested the operating cost would be fifty percent more than the earlier projections. Ryan also was clarified to as to why he was replaced for his performance was a hindrance to the project growth. Mary, another internal purchasing specialist was welcomed on board and shown her duties.
Risk Management
There are several factors to be considered when venturing into a project. There are procedures to be followed in coming up with the budget. The company also has monthly reviews and meetings to ascertain if it’s worth doing or not. The senior management goes through all proposals for approval and also gives measures on how to operate. The management ensures they are within the stipulated budget.
The employees have to work as a team to achieve a common goal. Incase someone is deemed not to have team spirit, the individual may be replaced and bringing in someone who is willing to be a team player may help the company achieve its set targets.
Project Staffing
The top positions are the senior managers who are the decision makers. They are the ones who give the way forward on all the project analysis and expectations. The senior project manager is Max. He answers to the sponsor, Lori who is the company marketing VP. There are several people who answer to the project manager. These include Julie, the education specialist, an internal purchasing officer, two marketing specialists and two information technology professionals.
The organization structure is shown in detail below:
Technical processes
Many information technology projects rely on specific software development programs to run. Several companies or customers also have specific formats for technical documentation. Considering the project has two information technology professionals, a program has to be installed to the system for the customer’s satisfaction.
Work to be done
Regardless of the hurdles encountered in project management, the aims are attained whilst respecting the envisioned limitations. These limitations are mainly time constraints, the budget and scope of the project.
Major work packages
The project success criteria goal is to produce the system in less than 12 months at a cost of less than $500,000. The project needs to be well coordinated between the design team, marketing, and ABC Corporation from where the software is outsourced.
The work is done in packages from the first to the last step as follows; assessing the current software and finding out what can be done to improve it. The web application change proposal from the initial proposal is then submitted to ABC Corporation. They design a network infrastructure that is decided upon to support the desired support web-based application. The data base that’s able to sort the data in real time for clients is finalized once the web based application that is supported by the hardware is done.
A semi-final project plan is presented that shows how the infrastructure and the whole system relate to each other. With all these in place the final presentation is made to ABC Corporation including the changes and the payment structure with benefits and downfalls of each type. A test plan is then developed in order to test the software to find out the project measurement planning detail.
The conclusion is finalized by the security analysis of the payment systems on the precautionary plans with detailed methods used to ensure enhanced security. After this a list of referrals to the sites that will be on the website must be classified in to the essential and non-essential ones.
Key deliverables
The project management deliverables for the project is well pointed out by the intensive marketing. The charter and the kick-off meetings minutes were addressed by the allocation of more funds to the budget. The team structure was provided to all the employees and the scope statement was made clear to achieve the desired goal. Also, detailed work breakdown structure (WBS), schedule (Gantt chart), network diagram, responsibility assignment matrix (RAM), risk management plan and detailed budget were made available for a milestone report. Weekly status reports, weekly meeting minutes, change requests, lessons learned, cost baseline, status reports, the final project report, final project presentation and any other documents on the projects management were availed.
The market research suggested the way forward for the company, specifying on educational and sports related video games as being more marketable. The network infrastructure was designed and outsourced from ABC Corporation which was supported by the software and hardware to attain the projects targets.
Other
Going by the suppositions made by the accountant about the estimates of profit yearly, a profit of fifty percent was going to be realized which would be interpreted into a discount of seven percent that would be passed on to the customer.
Budget
The conjecture is that the project will take twelve months to complete at a cost of approximately $500, 000, with monthly operations costing roughly $50,000 the first year. The second and third year would cost $60,000 a piece. But the expenses include wages for the hand picked team plus operating costs for outsourcing software customization. The total budget for the entire project was based on estimates & projected figures from research and surveys carried out. The budget was given room for additional finances on a need be basis subject to approval from the sponsor.
Other
The estimated operating budget, by the fourth month, had surpassed the initial estimate by $100,000 necessitating budgetary adjustments. Therefore, the $500,000 budget for the whole project was altered since the assumptions were not exact. However, even though the profits were estimated to be at a million dollars for the first year and two million the following year, only the actual budget would ascertain this for sure.