Lean Project Management
The main determination of this essay is to focus on the development of a lean project management on the FIFA world cup 2018 in Russia. The FIFA world cup is a global event which comes once in four years and each year it brings something new. The governing body of the world cup regularly updates themselves according the latest trends as their business objective have been same over the year which is the maintenance of their higher standards both in terms of football and other related activities such as promotional purposes (Al Hattab & Hamzeh, 2015). In a way it can be said that this tournament requires great project management skills to get conducted. The importance of the lean project management in the FIFA world cup Russia is the main topic of discussion of this essay. The tournament is a global tournament involving almost all the football playing nation in the qualifying rounds of the game and the standard of project management offered by the FIFA council is same for both the qualifying rounds which generally happens two years before start of the world cup and also for the final rounds where 32 qualified nations play each other for the most decorative world title (Kerzner, 2017). The game of football is very much passionate and it has the capability to reach millions of people at a time through its viewership.
The lean project management of the FIFA world cup in Russia is done in such a way so that it maintains the good reputation in the market compared with the other bigger global sports events such as the Olympics and Commonwealth Games (Alias et al., 2014). The lean project management is done is such a way that it maintains the legacy of the world cup as well as it will be beneficial for the organisers of the world cup. This lean project management is written in such a way so that its maintains the growth and development of this game as well as some sort of footballing infrastructural development of the host nation, in this case it is Russia.
Located in Europe, Russia is one of the biggest country in the world with maximum number of timezone.The football tournament has return to the great cities of Russia such as the St. Petersburg, Rostov, Samara, Kazan, Kaliningrad and Moscow. Each city has a unique culture and a way of life. The most important clients regarding this project is the travelling fans from all over world, all the travelling teams with their back ground staffs, all the viewers, who see this world tournament in their personal devices such as televisions and social media platforms, other type of customer regarding this this project is the enthusiastic Russian who have a great knack for this game, even in the private fan park zones special screenings are conducted by local or FIFA affiliated governing bodies (Molloy & Chetty, 2015). The requirements of these entire clients needs to known in the first place of this lean project management so that they can be provide services which they wish for, as the client satisfaction is the most important criteria for any type of business projects (Ansah, Sorooshian & Mustafa, 2016). This huge project will be having millions of clients all over the over so roles and responsibilities of each of the stakeholder of this project should be properly sorted out so that there are no issues related with it.
Implementation of Lean Project Management
The lean project management of the FIFA world cup in Russia starts from the global promotions tours 3 years before the start of the tournament to the closing ceremony after the final match. The entire functionalities is needed to be predicted and based upon the implementation of the strategic panel of FIFA all the business decisions are needed to be taken. One of the most important challenges is the cultural differences between by the host nation Russia and the other 31 participating nations (Anholon & Sano, 2016). The needs and requirements of different nations are different so it is the unwritten policy of the FIFA to understand their requirements based upon their latest trends and prepare accordingly. This is one of the main reason of complexity in this lean project management (Liu et al., 2015). This lean project management will be helping to make this tournament in a much secured way and elimination all the potential risks involved in this project considering the satisfaction of the clients which is the main objective of this project.
The foremost determination of this section of the essay is to determine the impacts of all the customers of this project. The customers of this project includes all the local and travelling football fans who are watching the great game from the stands, fan amusement parks, clubs or from their home (Brioso, 2015). This tournament is a global tournament and it requires special efforts by all of its operational managers of each department for the completion of the project. The prime requirement of this project is to analyse and gather all the possible needs and requirements of the fans and the other associated sponsors who play a great role in different aspects of the project such as promotions and marketing. The service provided to the clients is the most important criteria of this lean project management (Conforto et al., 2016). The lean project management will be considered as a failure if it do not satisfy the needs and requirements of the clients s it is very much essential to know the exact requirements of this project before further proceedings (Dave et al., 2016). The clients can face numerous types of adverse situations and it is the responsibilities of the lean project managers to predict those issues and smoothly conduct the tournament. The most common issue faced by the international travelling fans is the currency issues and for that the project managers need to set up temporary organisations with the help of the local legislations so that the clients can enjoy their time and not worry about any kind financial troubles (Browning & Ramasesh, 2015). The other kind of problem can be like the work permit of a young travelling player who is making his debut with his national team so it’s the role of the floor managers to solve these issues in the first place with highest priority.
The prime determination of this unit of the paper is to focus on the requirements of the customers as it may keep on changing from the qualifying rounds to the final rounds of the tournaments. All the probable requirements need to be evaluated in this project. The needs and expectations of the clients keeps on changing so an effective strategic panel should be set up by the FIFA council in order to deal with different situations (Verzuh, 2015). Regarding any project, changes in the requirement section is its worst liability but in this case the issue should be predicted and analyzed and solved using the effective strategies. This huge project involves different types of requirement and each of those requirements is subjected to major changes at any point of time during the event (Ko, 2017). The different types of requirement of the clients can be broadly classified into two categories such as the movable and the unmovable category, it the responsibility of the floor managers to look up each of the category with highest priority and any challenge or issue might have a negative impact on the local as well as FIFA authority (Leach, 2014).
Cultural Differences
Considering smooth conduction of this project different internal stakeholders of this project such as the vendors, sponsors, associated sponsors, operational teams, marketing teams, media persons, quality assessment teams, ground staffs, technical staffs needs to have good compatibility among the them. The project managers of specific departments should be able to deal with problems such as the language problem with the help of software or manual interpreters people from different corners of the world will be visiting the country during that time (Sarhan et al., 2018). The data collection from the voice of customer needs to be managed by the higher authorities such as the operational managers.
This huge project involves different sorts of stakeholders such as the internal stakeholder and external stake holders and it is the role and responsibility of those stake holders to know about the actual requirement of the clients as there are possibilities that the FIFA council may gather wrong assumptions compared to the requirement part due to the involvement of the huge amount of people from all over the world (Sohi et al., 2016).
The quality of services provided to the clients should be always high since customer satisfaction is the most important area of this project. The internal parameters of this project are the flight journey of the travelling fans, their accommodation challenges and car bookings (de Carvalho, Patah & de Souza Bido, 2015). The different type of external parameters involved in this project is the relationship between the co-sponsors of the tournament. The quality of services provided by the event organizer should be very high. The service provided by the local authorities as well as the FIFA council needs to be updated during the events as requirements may keep on changing (Emblemsvåg, 2014). It is very important to control and improve all the possible parameters. The critical quality parameter should be identified prior to the starting of the project (Irina et al., 2016). The two major phases of the critical quality parameters are end product parameters and the associated process parameters which have the capability of determining the quality of the parameters.
Language Problem of the customers |
The data gathered from the international travelling fans from all around the globe should be managed with the help of multi linguistic experts as most of those people may use different languages and currencies. |
Quick response squads |
Effective teams should be there in stand by regarding managing the log of complaints from the fans and players during the tournament. |
Security and safety of clients |
Observation is one of the major parts of requirement gathering, due to this concern there is need of installing cctv cameras in every corner of the streets and other electronic gadgets which will be helping the governing bodies of the organiser to a significant extent. |
Table 1: Quality Parameters of this project
Created by the author
Lean thinking into the project management for arranging the FIFA World Cup 2018 cannot surpass any of the aspects that is related to a customer. Customers have the sole priority and in any kind of lean project management the requirements of a customer has to be met depending on the capability of the organizing committee. In every case to maintain the priority of the customers it is also been seen that engagement of a stakeholder also comes into place. In normal terms a stakeholder should not associate with fulfilling the requirements of a customer. However in the initial stages of arranging the FIFA World Cup 2018 it has been seen that stakeholders take the requirements of the customers into account by involving their own selves in gathering the data associated with the requirements of the customer. According to PMBOK the ways by which a stakeholder gets engaged in gathering data about a customer’s requirements is what lean project management means. This is the area where the organizing committee can implement the lean project management method to make sure that all the requirements of the customers are met since in this way the standard of the entire Sporting event can be maintained.
Potential Risks
When lean thinking is being applied to a grand event like the FIFA World Cup 2018 it is also to be kept in mind that this particular event vote gather the attention of the entire population of the world including media and social world. Therefore it is essentially necessary that set standard is maintained while delivering services to the customers. It is also known fact that due to the huge span of the event over time period the customer focus can change from time to time including the requirements they need from the organizing committee. This is well in project management thinking needs to be applied and according to the Lean Six Sigma this is where measurement of the services provided is absolutely necessary (Tripp, Saltz & Turk, 2018). Measuring the services provided can be done with respect to taking account of the initial stage when the request was made and then evaluating the delivery of services that have been made to the customer. Measuring the value for this services is done according to the above mentioned method. This means that all the services provided to the customers are taken in relevance with what the customers of actually Wanted. Adjusting the relevance from these two starting point and end point it has been identified that value of the deliverables are only maintained when no difference between the requirements and the deliverables are noticed.
Agility is the characteristics of the deliverables that definitely needs to be included in lean project management for FIFA World Cup 2018 and it is the aspect of providing services to the customers that lean project management should be implemented. This can be justified by saying that FIFA World Cup 2018 is a huge event spanning over a long period of time. On top of that there are many incidences in that period of time that the customer experiences changes in their own requirements. The organizing committee may have thought about some other way of approaching a customer’s requirement which at last hour needs drastic changing or absolute discarding. This is the portion where lean project management should be implemented to make the fulfilling of the requirements by the customer absolutely Agile or flexible so that the vulnerabilities noticed in the changeable requirements can be mitigated. As for example it can be said that and organizing committee needs to be at the ready to make their decisions for fulfilling the requirements of the clients as flexible as possible so that even the last minute changing want cost the committee much money and time. Money and time are the most important factors while organizing a grand event like FIFA World Cup 2018.
Providing services to the customer is not only the sole factors of project management methodology for FIFA World Cup 2018. Customer needs are important but it is also important to check the ability of the organizing committee to fulfill those requirements. Often it has been found that a customer makes a requirement that is much beyond the ability of the organizing committee. This is where the lean project management methodology comes in place where reporting and monitoring of the customer’s requirements as well as the capability of the organizing committee is monitored well and reported against. This process is followed by making the customers be aware of the company’s abilities so that they would not make any further request or requirements let me go beyond what the organizing committee already has (Trakulsunti & Antony, 2018). Therefore right from the initial point of time in the customer starts making the requirements, all of it should be monitored and reported accordingly with proper documentation so that with every requirements made and fulfilled the Inventory of the organizing committee can be measured and according to that they would be able to make the customers understand why do a certain limit they will be able to provide the services. Although it is equally important that the organizing committee makes use of that time economy and quality in such a way that more services can be delivered to the clients.
Voice of the Customer (VOC)
Checking the resources is not only enough for the organizing committee and this is also an aspect where lean project management comes into place. Managing the resources according to the needs of the customers is absolutely necessary since with every project delivered the inventory becomes reduced. The resources should not be utilized in such a way that for maintaining high quality of services the inventory is drastically affected. Therefore lean project management comes into place where intelligent use of the resources for fulfilling the demands of the customers is required. The least possible way to utilize the resources for producing the best possible Customer services is what in project management for FIFA World Cup 2018 would be helpful.
The main benefits of the application of PMBOK in FIFA world cup lean project management are as followings:
- Better use of the available resources which controls the flow of investment.
- Reduction of wastages and improving the quality of service
PRINCE2
The CTQ tree is the most significant constraint regarding the implementation of the PRINCE2. The CTQ directly alters the overall functionality of this project and helps in maintaining the straight values which are related to the basic values of this global project. The different types of steps which are required to be followed for the implementation of CTQ in PRINCE2 are stated below:
Step1: Client Requirement
The victory factor of the project will mainly depend upon the appropriate requirement of the project which is obtained from the customers (Tenera et al., 2014).
Step2: Driver management
Choosing an effective driver would surely lead to the desired level of success for this project.
The success rate of this huge project is dependent upon numerous factors which are related to the hosting of a major international tournament (Sohi et al., 2016). This huge project involving thousands of responsibilities and categories there will be different limitations attached to it but it is the responsibility of the project managers of each department to restrict those basic errors. The two fundamental techniques of the agile practices of the organisational lean project management are stated below:
Direct relation |
Indirect relation |
This is a business situation when the business is conducted without the help of numerous third parties in order to maintain efficiency and privacy of the project as we know that some of the activities in a FIFA world cup match such the performance artists in the opening and the closing ceremonies are sometimes not revealed by the organisers. Sometimes methods are directly given to the customers without any intervention from a middle person. This technique is followed in specific modules of the project where it is needed. |
This is a type of business situation which involves more employees in any specific tasks such as the amount of sponsors and co-sponsors as their marketing strategies will be helping the project to spread worldwide. More data will be spread in the world for this particular event more it will generate revenue for the investors. The business areas area of this project is not only limited to the hosting nations but other nations also who were participating in the event and this is a very important parameter for the success rate of the project. According to this concept, the retailer and the distributor are directly linked to the concept of service. |
Table1: Created by the author
The different specifications of the Lean Six Sigma in the lean project management involving the world cup in Russia are as described in this unit of the paper.
Visibility: This concept mainly involves the development of the risk matrix related to all the potential limitations of the project (Al Hattab & Hamzeh, 2015). The risk matrix related with this project is presented in a structured manner and followed so that all those possible risks can be identified in the first place and resolved with immediate effect. The visibility step will be helping to mitigate all the potential risks so that it do not have any adverse effect on the success rate of the project.
Client centric: The main advantage of the lean six sigma is its direct involvement of the requirements of the client. The methodology provides maximum focus on maintaining the basic requirement of the clients so that the final outcomes do not impact the desired success of the project (Furterer, 2016).
Requirement values: The amount of importance this methodology provides to the requirement of the clients is one of the most important features of all the projects which have been incorporated using this methodology. The prime feature of this methodology on the world cup tournament is to focus mainly on the satisfaction level of the international tourists.
Critical to Customer Requirement (CCR)
Agility: It is one of the main and the most important feature of this methodology which focuses on the quality of service provided by the world cup organisers to the international media and team who has come not only to participate in the event but also have plenty of social activities. Enhanced communication and customer engagement is one of the main agile properties of the DMAIC methodology (Sunder, 2016).
This essay focuses on the implementation of the lean project management on the FIFA world cup in Russia. The essay also focuses on the importance of different aspects in an international event such as the FIFA world cup like VOC, CCR and CTQ. The essay relates the different types of lean project management tools with the selected topic.
From the above paper, it can be concluded there are different types of factors which can have a positive and negative influence on a project. It is really significant to know all the potential threats and restrictions of the project before starting it. This paper also focuses on the significance of the different aspects of the lean project management which aids to understand certain professional situations and analyse them in a much better way.
The essay is written from the perspective of a project manager who has to classify certain aspects of this global tournament in such a way so that the project accomplishes its desired business intentions All the probable issues related with the lea project management is discussed in this paper which will be helping the readers to know more about the problems and challenges related to the organization of such as global event.
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