Essay Example on Project Management

Planning of the project

Several methodologies and strategies will be implemented to achieve the goals of this project. These methodologies were selected because they can deliver both in short-term and long-term. For this reason, the agile methodology has been identified as the most efficient approach. The agile approach derives main objectives from the customer which implies that the customer concerns will be included in the project. The approach also puts a lot of emphasis on collaboration to ensure that a project becomes applicable, reliable and sustainable. According to Wrike (n.d), the agile approach provides project developers with more flexibility during the various phases of project development. The flexibility allows modification of various aspects depending on suggestions from various stakeholders.

The project implementation process will be conducted in a manner that it will not have an impact on the current process of the company. The current software will continue to serve the various business operations while the new software is under development. The training sessions will also be conducted in shifts to ensure that the duties of various employees are not affected. Constant consultation and communication with stakeholders will form basic tool for collaboration. The collaboration will enhance project acceptance and reduce resistance during implementation as well as adoption.

Timeline

The project will be conducted within six weeks. The software development will be conducted within three weeks. These three weeks will involve the various stages of software development which are planning, analysis, design, implementation, testing, and maintenance. The first week will involve research to establish organizational needs and possible software developers with customizable software. Since the process will involve customization of existing software, the design period and implementation will be conducted within a week. The third week will involve testing the software to establish possible errors and areas of improvement.

The main processes during the fourth and fifth week will be training the staff on the application of the new software in the various business processes. At the same time, comments and reactions will be retrieved from the staff to establish further areas improvement. The sixth week will involve closing the project development phase by launching. Vigorous marketing will be expected to commence after two months.

Communication management plan

A Communication management plan will be established to ensure that the project is effectively implemented. The method will recognize three main categories of communication which are mandatory communication, informational communication, and marketing communication. Mandatory communication will be formal which involves relaying mandatory reports such as financial statements, project status, and legal reports. Informational releases will include both formal and informal upon request or intention of the project team. Other elements of communication that will be considered during project implementation include formal communication, informal communication, verbal communication and non-verbal communication. The technologies to be used to facilitate communication will include electronic messaging, letters, phone calls, meetings, and video-conferencing. The plan is represented in the table below.

Information Responsibility Formal/informal Mode of communication

Key decisions (executive and managerial level) Coordinator Formal e-mail, letter

Key reports, e.g., financial reports and milestone reports Coordinator Formal e-mail, letter, booklets

Office meeting/external meeting/internal meeting Coordinator Formal oral presentation

Website updates Coordinator/website administrator Formal and informal Written/audio-visual

Operational problem solving Team leader/coordinator Informal and formal Oral and written

Phase III: Evaluation

Monitoring and evaluation are very important in determining whether a project has been successfully implemented (Vindicia, 2012). According to Kerzner (2012), it is advisable for a company that has already been using financial metrics to incorporate project metric. Since the customer is the most important part of the company, several factors will be evaluated to establish whether they will have improved (Teau & Elena, 2015). These include unique visitors, registrations, conversion percentage, fraud rates, customer duration, average ticket and customer retention. It will be important to establish the number of new visitors per channel as well as biographical data about the visitors. This will also involve new registrations across every channel. Customer retention will be determined by the number of return visits. Customers lost the rate of customers lost, customer life-cycle, customer-back rate and the rate of new customers. To monitor sales, management tools for sales improvement will be adopted. In this case, the tool will be Key Performance Indicator (KPI). Cost, turnover, and profit are critical factors that will be accounted for to establish whether the sales will have increased. A growth development curve will also be adapted to measure decline or growth of the company.

The software is another important component that will be evaluated to establish its efficiency (Unit 11: Software Metrics, n.d). The upgraded software will be evaluated to establish whether it has increased communication between the customer and the companys staff. This is a technical area that will involve direct measurement, indirect measurement, and prediction. Other types of metric will include nominal, ordinal, ratio and interval. Product metrics (which include size, quality and complexity metrics), resource metrics, process metrics and project metrics will also be evaluated.

References

Kerzner, H. (2012). Project management metrics, KPIs, and dashboard: A guide to measuring and monitoring project performance. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Teau, A.-M., & Elena, C. (2015). Key Performance Indicators management tools for sales improvement. Retrieved from http://www.revistadestatistica.ro/supliment/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/RRSS_6_2015_A08.pdf

Unit 11: Software Metrics. (n.d). Retrieved from http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/A.Finkelstein/advmsc/11.pdf

Vindicia. (2012). Best practices for customer acquisition. Vindicia, Inc. Retrieved from http://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/showimage.do?id=34071

Wrike. (n.d). Beginners guide to project management methodologies. Wrike.com. Retrieved from https://www.wrike.com/download/the_beginners_guide_to_project_management_methodologies.pdf