Activities
Joshua, an SME that specializes in designing and supplying children clothing for kids between ages 0 to 6. The Company currently has a large warehouse of 24,000 square meters from where it operates its business. However, the company has recently acquired a building of 40,000 square meters and wishes to shift its operations to this location. This report explores the project life cycle of the project that involves shifting of the old office facilities to a new facilities, establishing of the set up at the office, and launch the new office facility for the organization.
The project activities can be formed into small work packages that have to be completed on the project and the same are presented in the Work Break Down structure below:
Certain skills and competencies would be required by the project manager to be able to smoothly execute the current project such as:
- Ability to manage all the activities required for office relocation
- A working understanding of development of a project management plan and ability to monitor activities against it
- Ability to coordinate with clients, partners, and service providers to ensure smooth workflow
- Ability to understand all project requirements including IT needs, office facilities requirements, and people needs.
- Interpersonal skills like verbal communication, conflict resolution, leadership, listening skills, people management
- A project manager needs to have integrity, consistency, and ethics in performance(Caltrans, 2007)
At this stage, the establishment would follow a series of processes including:
Data Gathering: At this stage, data on the need for establishment of the companies office would be gathered which would include data on clothing quantities, activities to be carried out in the new building, material to be transferred from the old office, furnishing required for new office, administrative material required in the new office, electronic items requirement, human resource requirement, and so on (BIS, 2010).
Identification of Needs: Based on the data gathered, certain needs for the project would be identified including resource requirements, goals of project, and the management needs (Wideman, 2004).
Resource Estimation: The human resource that would be required on the project is estimated at this stage. The human resources employed in this company would be same as in the earlier office that includes one general manager, 2 assistant managers, 6 admin staff, 8 sales people, and 4 warehouse staff.
Identification of Alternatives: There could be a list of alternatives for executing the project that involves shifting of old office resources to new office, establishing facilities in the new office and launching the new office operations from the new location. The organization can either take care of the operations itself or can outsource some part of the business to a third party service provider like movers and packers, transporters, interior designers, office planner, layout designing, and so on (Bright Hub Media, 2015).
Proposal and Approval for next stage: Once the approach to project management and office establishment is clear, the project would be given a go ahead by the project sponsor such that it can move to the next stage of development ( Changefirst Limited, 2009).
At this stage, the establishment would follow a series of development activities are carried out including:
Identification and appointment of project team: The project team would involve the internal staff who would be managing all the activities required to complete the project of office relocation, establishment and launch. On this project, there would be a project manager, IT manager, and office manager (FME, 2014).
Development of scope: The scope of this project includes description of the scope, acceptance criteria, key deliverables, exclusions, constrains, and assumptions.
Skills and competencies
Description: The scope of the project includes packing of the old office resources, relocation of the same into the new office, setting up of the new office, and launching the new office.
Acceptance: The project sponsor would be accepting the project to mark it as completed based on the number of deliverables met and the quality of their quality parameters. If all deliverables are completed with desired quality assured, the deliverables would be accepted and the project would be market as completed (Carley, et al., 2008).
Deliverables: Deliverables of this project include:
- Relocation of the old office resources, materials and facilities to new office
- Set-up of new office including interiors, exteriors and facilities
- Communication of new establishment going to all key stakeholders including public and customers(GDE, n.d.).
Exclusions: This project would not include the following activities –
- Construction of the office building or any part of it
- Feedback of the staff on the project management(Wawruck, 2009)
Constraints: the project also has some constraints that have to be taken care of such as –
- Project cannot exceed the budget of £250,000
- The relocation activities have to be completed within 6 months
- New staff can be hired for the new location other than those involved temporarily for the project management
Assumptions: The project management plan would succeed if certain assumptions that are made on this project are true such as:
- The sponsor would take care of all the fund requirements even if they exceed the budget
- The company has sufficient skills in the human resource involved on the project
- The activities planned can be successfully complete within the given time limit.
- The new office location has all the necessary construction, groundwork and layout done before the shifting is started(PDA, 2007)
Office establishment: The project involves establishing of a new set-up in the new office location spread across 40,000 square meter area which would include setting up of exteriors, interiors, equipments, and facilities.
Risk Assessment: the project can be faced with certain risks and if they are identified and a contingency plan is developed in advance then either they can be avoided or their impacts can be minimized in case of their occurrence. Thus, below is presented a table that identifies various project risks and presents a response plan for each (The Saylor Foundation , 2014) –
|
Risk |
Probability of Occurrence |
Impact |
Response plan |
|
The furniture delivered does not fit in as per the office design |
Low |
Moderate |
Avoid: Ensure that the furniture vendor is provided with the appropriate dimensions beforehand. Transfer: In case of the mistake from the vendor side, the risk can be transferred to the furniture vendor asking for delivery of new furniture as per requirement as replacement |
|
Cost Overrun |
High |
High |
Avoid: The project manager must keep monitoring the project activities and expenses so as to control it such that no expenses are made in unnecessary activities. Mitigate: If due to unavoidable circumstances, there are expenses exceeding budget, the project manager can use a contingency sum which should be kept intact as separate in advance. If the expenses even exceed the contingency sum then additional approval would be required from the sponsor to release additional funds to complete the work (Project Management Institute , 2000). |
|
Delays in deliverables |
Medium |
High |
Avoid: The project manager must keep monitoring the project activities against the project plan and take steps to ensure that no milestones are skipped. Mitigate: If due to unavoidable circumstances, there are delays, the project manager must use the remaining time more efficiently to speed up with work such that the final deliveries are not delayed and in case there is a chance of delay, the same may be informed to the management asking for extension of deadlines |
|
Material Damage during transit |
Medium |
Moderate |
Mitigate: insurance must be done for the material in transit such that in the case of damage, the compensation can be claimed. If the damage happens due to the fault of transport contractor, the insurance cost must be borne by the vendor (Time is Ltd, 2015). |
|
Lack of human resources |
Medium |
High |
Mitigate: Employees or team members can leave the project in between due to any personal or other reasons in which case, the project would fall short of the human resources. For such cases, the company must immediately hire a new employee and before the new person assumes work, the responsibilities can be split between remaining team members so that the work does not suffer. However, in the case work requires personal expertise, the work may be outsourced to an external consultant or freelancer immediately (Wawruck, 2009). |
At this stage, actual implementation of plan happens which includes following activities:
Office Set Up: The new office set-up would require following deliverables –
- Installation of furniture
- Unpacking and storage of administered material that is relocated in the new office
- Installation of personal computers, electronic items and networking equipments in the office
- Decoration of the interior as per the plan of the interior designer
- Installation of the office facilities including cubicles
- Establishing of sanitary and electrical facilities in the new location(WSDOT, 2015)
Team motivation: The team would be motivated to work on the new project with dedication only when they receive recognition or some form of benefit for their hard work. Thus, project manager would provide them recognition in the organization against the value of their work.
Procurement: A lot of activities would be outsourced to third party vendors or contractors including transportation, packaging, interior designing, furnishing,, plumbing, electrical installation, and physical security while there would be some items procured for the new establishment including electronic equipments like AC, IT systems like printers, scanners, and personal computers, stationary items, physical access, antivirus and malware software (University of Exeter, 2015).
Work Package Execution: The individual work packages are identified in the WBS and the same would be executed with a defined timeline using available resources. Upon execution of a set of work packages, a milestone is achieved which would mark the deliverables.
Monitoring and Control: The project would be monitored against the plan at the stage of every milestone such that the project would be judged on the deliveries made as per milestones. In case deliverables are not met as per the milestones, the project manager would take actions to speed up the work such that delays are controlled. A similar level of control would also be established over the costs such that the project manager would ensure that costs incurred do not go beyond the allotted budget (UniAssignment.com, 2015).
This would be the last stage of the project life cycle and it would include following processes:
Project life cycle stages
Finalization of office: After all the facilities are installed, interiors and exteriors are built; the office would be finalized as completed.
Review and establishment: The final office set-up would be reviewed by the project manager to ensure that all deliverables are met and the quality standards are also taken care of (Time is Ltd, 2015).
Transfer of product responsibility: the responsibility of managing the office would then be transferred to the General Manager after his approval of the new office setup.
Project Evaluation: Project would be evaluated on certain parameters that include number of deliverables met, quality of deliverables, delays in deliveries, and cost of establishment as compared to the budget.
Documenting of results: The details of deliverables, quality, project lessons learnt, and review would be documented for the sake of records as well as for the future use if a similar project is encountered (U.S. Department of the Interior , 2012).
Release of resources and Reassignment of project teams: Once the project is completed, all the temporary human resource hired would be released with an experience certificate provided. If the project team involved regular staff, the staff would be released from the project duties and would be consumed again in the routine activities (Iowa State Univrsity, 2014).
The office relocation, establishment and launch project would follow a certain process for management which would include following steps:
- Defining roles and responsibilities of project team
- Engaging stakeholders for gathering and refining project requirements
- Defining priorities of location and placements within the office
- Planning for project budget and timelines
- Office design and fit out finalization
- Relocation of office
- Office set up
- Communication to stakeholders(Lovell, 2015)
The project would be lead by the Project manager and thus, he would posses certain leadership qualities like:
- A project manager must be able to effectively communicate with project team and stakeholders
- Project manager must have shared vision which he must communicate to the project team such that the team is able to work in a coordinated manner to achieve results collectively
- Project manager must have a positive attitude towards possibilities and who a high level of commitment towards project(SAID, 2015)
- The project manager must demonstrate his capabilities to the team such that the team can have confidence in him
- The project manager must not panic in stressful situations but must be able to analyze problems and come up with solutions calmly.
- Project manage must possess problem solving skills that can be used on project effectively to resolve issues
- A project manager must lead the team and work to build individual skills and capabilities of people in the team to bring efficiencies
- Project manager should responsibly delegate tasks with responsibilities and accountability to team members
- Project manager must take critical decisions on the project and in case he cannot, he should have sufficient research done and come up with suggestions at least for the top management to take decisions(SPSU, 2015).
Conclusions
This report was prepared to analyse the case of office relocation, establishment and launch project of the kids garment selling organization that has a plan to shift its office from a 25,000 square feet office to 40,000 square feet office. The report explored the four phases of the project and outlined all activities required for finishing the project. The report also explores various skills and competencies required by the project manager for executing and leading the project.
References
Changefirst Limited, 2009. Change and project management , s.l.: ChangeFirst.
BIS, 2010. How to organise, plan and control Projects, s.l.: BIS.
Bright Hub Media, 2015. Constructing Powerful Scope Statements. [Online]
Available at: https://www.brighthubpm.com/project-planning/57950-example-and-evaluation-of-project-scope-statements/
Caltrans, 2007. Project Communication Handbook. s.l.:Caltrans.
Carley, J. et al., 2008. Slipstream Office Relocation Project, s.l.: UCBX.
CDC, 2006. CDC Unified Process Practices Guide: Projecct Charter, s.l.: CDC.
FME, 2014. Project Human Resources Management, s.l.: FME.
GDE, n.d. Project Management Methodology Guidelines. [Online]
Available at: https://www.chandleraz.gov/content/pm000pmmethodologygde.pdf
[Accessed 12 February 2015].
Iowa State Univrsity, 2014. Facilities Planning and Management Moving Guide , s.l.: Iowa State Univrsity.
Lovell, M., 2015. OFFICE RELOCATION CHECKLIST: YOUR STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO MANAGING THE COMPLEXITIES OF BUSINESS RELOCATION, s.l.: Morgan Lovell.
Metafuse, Inc.;Core Performance Concepts, 2015. Project Scheduling. [Online]
Available at: https://www.projectinsight.net/project-management-basics/project-management-schedule
PDA, 2007. Project Management: Project Justification and Planning. 1st: Scottish Qualifications Authority .
Project Management Institute , 2000. A guide to the Project Management Book of Knowledge , s.l.: Project Management Institute .
SAID, 2015. Major Projects Leadership Academy handbook, s.l.: Cabinet Office.
SPSU, 2015. Project Management Organization Structure & Culture, s.l.: Souther Polytechnic State University.
Team FME, 2014. Human Resource Management: Project Skill, s.l.: FME.
The Saylor Foundation , 2014. Project Management from Simple to Complex, s.l.: The Saylor Foundation .
The State of Maryland , 2015. PROJECT SCOPE STATEMENT, s.l.: s.n.
Time is Ltd, 2015. Evaluating a Project. [Online]
Available at: https://www.time-is-ltd.co.uk/Management/Promise/PMManual/Evaluating%20a%20Project.htm
U.S. Department of the Interior , 2012. Project Management Framework, s.l.: U.S. Department of the Interior .
UniAssignment.com, 2015. The Principles Behind Project Management Systems Information Technology Essay, s.l.: UniAssignment.com.
University of Exeter, 2015. C5: Post Project Appraisal and Evaluation. [Online]
Available at: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/finance/cpp/appraisal/appraisalandevaluation/
Wawruck, W., 2009. Scope Management – Important But Neglected, s.l.: Max Wideman .
Wideman, M., 2004. The Role of the Project Life Cycle (Life Span) in Project Management: A literature review by R. Max Wideman, Vancouver, BC : AEW Services.
WSDOT, 2015. Cost Estimating Manual for Projects , s.l.: Washington State Department of Transportation.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
