Background
Critical Analysis Report on Project Management.
This report is a critical analysis report is based on the topic that is management of a project which can be considered as a mature practice in various sector at present days. Project management is an important thing in order to manage a business with proper precision (Hornstein et al., 2014). It can be done by the large scale of knowledgewhich can able to do the management of the project by providing support using the main aims & objectives of a particular business project for getting a successful delivery of the project within the time frame (Schwalbe, 2015). There are also requirement of certain tools, knowledge, skill set in order to perform a successful project management (Khamooshi and Golafshani, 2014). As we know from the fact that delivery of a project in many sectors still in a level of un-satisfaction& as per the various reports, it can be stated that 50% of the projects fail due to do not meet the delivery time which has been targeted. And due to this reason the project management professionals and practitioners continues their research work in which the main aim is to get the most efficientsolution for persistent delivery of the project on time.
The main purpose of this report is to assess the elements which are used in the purpose of project management & establishment of the skill set that has been used in the process of management of the project by using different concepts, principles, theories and arguments in order to execute the project on time (Turner, 2016).It is all about controlling the whole system by preventing the generation of the worse outputs from the project.
In this critical analysis of the report based on the project management, we are going to discuss about all the issues with respect to a case study of Myers Online Shopping Disaster. Myers shopping store is based on Australia& this company is one of the biggest departmental stores of Australia (Leach et al., 2014).The management of this store that is Myer has invested near about tens of millions of dollars in order to build awebsite for getting entrance to the online shopping market by boosting the sales in online. But this project is not successful as when the customer is going to access the online website of the Myers shopping store, it gets busy each & every time or either crashed. In spite ofthis, stock clearance sales have also been afflicted by this system & after all this happenings, on the Boxing Day in the year 2013 the entire website has been collapsed (Your Project Manager, 2018). The management department is also disappointed for the incident &acknowledge to the customers as well but the stakeholders has given a statement that the profit is not affected by this incident (Hörisch et al., 2014). Though the failure of the project has its impacts on the market as tens of millions of dollars was invested in this project (Shital and Nilesh, 2015). And the project management professionals and practitionerssaid that due to the presence of an appropriate project management system this project has been fall down. They also have done a critical analysis of the project management issues behind its failures as well which are discussed in the below sections.
Explanation of the range of control systems that has been usedin terms of cost, schedule, quality and scope
Key issue of this Myers Online Shopping Disaster is the mismanagement of the project which is here analyzed in terms of many factors which are directly & also indirectly related to the procedure of project management respectively (Larsen et al., 2015). The main objective of this assignment is to get solution by using the concept of management of project from the view point of project management professionals & expertise as well which is discussed in the below section with the context of the Myers Online Shopping (Jingfeng et al., 2010).
There are a range of control systems which has been used for managing cost of a project, schedule, quality of the project and lastly the scope of the project for the management of the project (Camilleri, 2016). In the process of project management to control the overall project effectively. Among all other factors cost is one of the most important factors within operational process by maintaining its effectiveness as-it-is (Sanchez and Terlizzi, 2017). It also should be vital for the organizational management as well in order to pay attention on making cost management plan (Boardman et al., 2017). In this context ofMyers Online Shopping Disaster, a proper cost management plan is required as the management team of this organization has invested approx. tens of millions of dollars for building a website of this company which is a huge amount & the failure of this project is also a cause of overall loss though the stakeholder team has said that it did not affect (Leach and L.P., 2014). Cost management plan mainly includes the budget settings, estimation of the budget level accuracy and all kind of unit level measurement, which can be done in corrective manner by properly analyzing and measuring availability of resources within organizational settings (Shermon, 2017). Here schedule refers to the management of time which is also very much important. As we know that, 50% of the project has fallen down because of they are unable to meet the target in terms of time frame which is previously mentioned already (Mir and Pinnington, 2014). “Time is equal to money” which is a very common phrase that indicates a proper time management and utilization of time with proper precision which is the best way to achieve desirable success from any project management plan. By paying maximum attention on framing time management plan for getting desirable outcome from the implementation of the project respectively. By paying maximum attention on framing time management plan for getting desirable outcome from the implementation process equipments and strategies within existing operational process in order to make a trial version & after a few months, further changes can be carried out to get better outcome.In order to acquire and retain customer over a long period of time, the organisation that is Myers departmental stores had the necessity to pay maximum attention on preparing quality management plan of their existing project that is website building project for the organization to push the online salesin an effective manner (Price, 2017). An effective and precise quality management plan can provide ample of scope to an organisation through which the quality of the service can be maintained and managed properly. As we can see here that the website is very slow for accessing information which also raises a question regarding the service quality of the organization as well.In broader respect the growth and development of business depends upon the quality of service of the organisation to a greater extent. Another important factor is scope which is an essential element in the process of the project management in this context of Myers Online Shopping Disaster, departmental stores which has a big market in Australia (Lock, 2017). Scope management refers to the concept of “WBS or Work Break Down structure” which is not properly done in this case of website generation process.The work breakdown structure is considered as the key element of scope management plan (Harrison and Lock, 2017). As per the definition work breakdown structure can be defined as deliverable-oriented breakdown process of a business project into several small parts, which in turn may help in order to manage project to arrange or organize the specific tasks that is building a website in the name of Myers Online Shopping into a manageable section. This management of scope also helps to expand the business by creating opportunity to a greater extent such as online marketing & sales in this context.
An analysis of the reasons that explain the cost and/or time overruns encountered during the project
In context of Myers Online Shopping Disaster, the project management had certain loopholes due to which there was an emergence of failure. The online shopping site had strong marketing and advertising campaigns but due to the flaws in the management of the project the company was unable to manage the traffic of the site and as a result the entire project confronted a huge failure and the company incurred losses to a great extent. In context of this project, cost and time overruns were encountered. An analysis of the reasons behind the time and cost overruns can be discussed as follows:
Estimates- The inaccuracy of the estimates was one of the major causes behind the cost and the time overruns encountered during the project. The actual cost that was incurred during the project was much more than what it had been estimated during the planning of the project budget. In case of time overruns the reason is similar (Shermon, 2017). A failure to estimate the time adequately resulted in the time overrun of this project. The company was unable to handle the traffic and thus delays were caused in taking the orders, executing them and delivering them to the customers. The incorrect estimates had contributed to the failure of the entire project.
Scope- Another reason that caused the cost and time overruns in the project was the changes in the scope of supply. As new additions were made to the inventory, the cost of the supplies increased. These costs were not specified during the phase of estimation. Also, there were delays in placing the orders for new inventory which caused the time overruns in the project. These changes in the scope of supply caused delays in execution of certain functions and also increased the total cost incurred in the project (Larsen et al., 2015).
Design- The design of the project that was prepared was not realistic as per the circumstances or conditions that prevailed in the company. The company had certain faults in its digital systems and in comparison, to that the traffic was more which the company was unable to manage. There was an incorrect arrangement or scheduling of the work or the activities which caused the cost and time overruns in the project (Schwalbe, 2015). The execution the project was not done in accordance with the design which had resulted in extra costs and time.
Planning- The planning of the project is the most crucial step of the entire project. If the project is well planned the progress of the project takes place in accordance with the project plan then the success of the project can be assured. In context of this project, the work breakdown structure of the project was not properly done (Turner, 2016). As a result of this, the activities associated with the successful completion of the project were not specified. The estimation of time and cost was not done in accordance with the specified activities of the project which caused cost and time overruns.
Complexity- The complexity of the project also contributed to the cost and time overruns caused. The project management team could not interpret and understand the complexity in the project. The promotion of the ecommerce site was done extensively in order to increase the sales without understanding the complexity of handling the traffic that the site would face after the promotions of the project. As a result of this, the entire site collapsed on the day of Boxing in the year 2013. Thus, the complexity in the plans and the schedules led to cost and time overruns (Chen et al., 2015).
The project execution team includes the project manager who is responsible for monitoring the entire project work and also for developing the plan of the project. It also includes the team members who conducts the various activities associated with the project thus contributing to the fulfilment of the project objectives. In this case of the considered project, the project execution team can be held responsible for the failure caused but not all the charges for failure can be blamed upon the project execution team. It was the responsibility of the key personnel of the company to look after the progress of the project (Nasir et al., 2016). Since the project was planned and executed in order to in crease the sales and the profitability of the entire organization, key personnel such as the project head, the marketing head and the finance head must have taken care of the activities conducted in association with the project. But the project execution team can be held responsible toa great extent here. This is because the basic planning of the project was done by the project manager and the project execution team which involved certain loopholes in the basic planning as well as in the estimates of cost and time of the project. One of the main responsibilities of the project manager is to report the project updates to the upper level of management (Serrador and Pinto, 2015). In this case the management was not aware of the activities associated with the project and this caused basic defects in the entire management of the project. The recruitment of the project staff was not properly done by the project manager which ultimately resulted in the failure of the project. Due to the improper and inefficient preparation of the work breakdown structures by the project team members, the project manager was unable to understand the activities related to the project as well as the schedule of the project activities. This led to the inappropriate estimation of time and cost required in each of the activities and ultimately it contributed to the failure of the project. In order to make the project a successful one, the proper monitoring of the project activities is necessary. In case of the estimates of time and cost that are made in the beginning of the project a review must have been done before placing orders to determine if any mistakes were made in the estimation. A proper review would have provided an opportunity to adjust the extra requirements as well as adjust the costs by seeking out low cost suppliers. This would also help in the proper planning and design of the project. Thus, it can be said that the project execution team could perform better which could result in the success of the project (Sanchez and Terlizzi, 2017). This analysis is done with respect to the case study of Myers online shopping disaster.
Stakeholders generally refer to the specific persons who mainly have great impact on the management of project along with interest in the development of the project as well (P Mostafa and Nora, 2014). The needs and influence of the stakeholders are included internal or external, positive or negative along with high power or low power etc. In the successful process of the completion of any project there are always an important fact of managing the processes by the stakeholders and fulfilling their expectations for the project management as in this context, tens of millions of dollars has been invested by the stakeholder of the organization for building a website of Myers Online Shopping which is a huge amount (Binder, 2016).
The fundamental way of management of a project is also management of stakeholders which consists of change management procedures to develop a set of methods that can be used in the changing atmosphere of the project which may have some diverse impact on the delivery. As the activities of engaging stakeholders in a project sometimes declared to be difficult as the process of implementation helps to overcome the needs of time and resources to emphasize the change in the approach of management.
After encountering a situational hazard within any organization in terms of project management, the various stakeholders of that company should be necessarily involved in that particular process. The customers who are the primary beneficiary with respect to the output of that particular project of the organization are found to be handled with expertise and kept out of the direct negative impacts of the issues related to the project management of that particular project of the organization (Serrador and Pinto, 2015). The goal or the aim of the project should be kept in prime focus. The project sponsors or in other words the stakeholders are tried to be contacted so that immediate effects can be achieved by replacing things without any kind of delay. The monetary support should be obtained effectually by the Project Managers by managing the sponsors or the stakeholders. The executive managers of the organization are used effectively in order to lay out an effective strategy for attaining the path to achieve the goal (Kendrick, 2015). The organizational strategies shall be improved and implemented with immediate effect to get rapid results. The resource managers are also enriched with all the necessary information which shall help them to initiate support to provide all the necessary resources for handling the current situation.
As per the above made discussion of the identification of the problem in this particular project management of Myers Online Shopping website generation which is failed due mismanagement of the project, we have to link the relationship in between the problems and the needs and influence of the stakeholders in order to resolve the problems for getting a better project management which could defeat the failure of the project (Joslin and Müller, 2015). It has been seen here the stakeholders of this organization is very much co-operative as they had given a statement that this failure of the project will not impact in terms of the profitability in the organization which is a big achievement because they have invested a lot of amount behind this project. In this kind of situation, the organization needs support of the stakeholders by which the impact of the project failure will be cover up in easy way which is expected as well. But if the stakeholders provided efforts in order to make the project successful then the failure of the project has not taken place. Influences from the stakeholders is also act as an agent to put the project in motion to make it successful which was required very much in this particular case.
As per the above discussion, it can be stated that before investing lot of money & time behind a project, the implementation of the project, strategy & the approach of the project should be in a thorough observation in order to manage the project in an efficient manner by opposing several risk factors related to the project (Fleming and Koppelman, 2016). It also helps to get a control on the running project as well as the stakeholders in terms of expanding markets of the organization or increasing the no. of stakeholders as well. The risk related to the project of Myers Online Shopping website generation would be minimized by implementing less complex strategy of the project & a trial version of the website before launching it to the customer should be tested for few days in order to observe & analysis the problem which are generated at the time of surfing the site by several users such as getting slow, or not taking online orders etc. (Haimes, 2015). If this process would applied by the team of the project in this case of Myers, it would be helpful & could resist the disaster in this context.
First of all, a proper planning of the project is required which contains the cost management, time management as well. At the time of planning, the plan organizer should also require to keep mind the level of complexity which should be maintained throughout the project. Analysis of designing of the project is also an important part of the management of the project. These all issues have been already discussed with respect to the topic. As a part of project management communication management is also be a major part which is not mentioned previously. Here the communication refers to the communication between project team & the management of the organization or the stakeholders (Todorovi?, 2015). The soft skills such as communication, emotional intelligence, leadership quality of the workforce owns a very high degree of significant for the resource management of the project (Kerzner, 2017). The principles of visibility enable management personnel to keep the balance between the facts that motivates a team and the degree of performances that they are providing. Effective visibility also helps in the identification of the entire field that seeks urgent attention which again sounds to be helpful for the overall management of the project. And the collaboration in the working place effectively increases the productivity of the project (Heagney, 2016). Transparency is also fact which should be maintained in this by using three steps which are setting clear priority of the tasks, making proper estimation of the time & cost and lastly the risk awareness analysis. All of these are very much important in the purpose of project management. Lack of transparency can cause the repeated use of same resources leading to the waste of time and capital. Hence transparency must be maintained. All these point should be analyzed in the case of Myers website development project for the purpose of online shopping or rather say in order to digitalize the project as per the situation of the competitive market in the digital era.
Conclusion
In order to conclude the report, it can be said that the above discussion is effective which has taken into account various factors to evaluate the project management procedure with respect to the case study of Myers online shopping disaster. It can also be stated that project management is not a easy task and it consist of so many vital and crucial steps such as time management, cost management, planning, monitoring, reporting, maintenance. The entire report has also revealed the fact that the performance of the project greatly lies on the leadership capability of project management head and on the collaboration of all team members (Mir and Pinnington, 2014). Most important thing found form this entire report is that the responsibly and usability of a project report does not ends just after the completion of the project, moreover the report serves as the key basis for the similar case types.
It is very much clear that the proper management of the project has huge effects in order to develop the project within time by managing all the factors of the business environment and in terms of organizational developments by implementing the sustainability of developing the planning systems and maintenance of the project. All the positive and negative impact of the implementation of this project which is the generation of the website for online shopping for Myers, an Australian big departmental store organization within the workplace settings should be analyzed as per the above discussion. This topic could be developed in the form of the research work for the organizational developments in this competitive market with several approaches which can help to resist any kind of project failure such as Myers online shopping disaster in Australia
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