Implementing Lean Project Management for FIFA World Cup 2018 Event

This case study examines the application of lean project management principles to the FIFA World Cup 2018. It identifies and elaborates on key concepts such as Voice of the Customer (VOC), Critical to Customer Requirements (CCR), and Critical to Quality (CTQ) parameters, emphasizing their importance in event management. The study explores how lean project management could have been implemented to enhance the tournament, focusing on customer satisfaction, clear goal setting, role assignment, team formation, and performance analysis. Furthermore, it identifies and elaborates on relevant processes from PMBOK, PRINCE2, Organizational Project Management, Agile Practices, and Lean Six Sigma (DMAIC Methodology) to support lean project implementation, providing a comprehensive overview of strategies for optimizing the FIFA World Cup 2018.

Project Management
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Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
(I). Identify and elaborate the following terms with regards to the event............................................4
Voice of the customer.......................................................................................................................4
Critical to customer requirement......................................................................................................4
Critical to Quality parameters (CTQ)..................................................................................................5
(II) In what ways would you have implemented lean project management for this event?..................7
(III) Identify and elaborate processes from PMBOK, PRINCE2, Organisational Project Management,
Agile Practices and Lean Six Sigma......................................................................................................10
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................13
References...........................................................................................................................................14
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Introduction
Football is among one of the most played sport in the world and FIFA World
Cup can be considered as a most watched tournament in the world. FIFA
World cup took place after every four years and countries from a different
part of the world participate in this tournament which is selected on the
basis of qualifier round and FIFA rankings. This tournament is organized by
Fédération Internationale de Football Association which translate to
International Federation of Association Football in English. In the year 2018,
this tournament place in Russia an estimated cost of organizing the whole
tournament is estimated to be 14.2 billion dollars. The main objective of
preparing this report is to analyze customer need and requirements in
respect to a tournament organized on such a large scale. People all around
the world are coming to reach Russia especially to see this tournament so
there must be some expectation on part of customers that should be
identified and included in the services provided by management of
tournament. Various type of project management strategies will also be
discussed in this report that could be used by management for effective
execution of all the activities to be performed in this tournament.
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(I). Identify and elaborate the following terms with
regards to the event
Voice of the customer
As it is already discussed that it is very essential for any project to involve
needs and requirements of the customer before implementation of the
project. The customer is a very important key stakeholder in the Project
Management process, therefore it is important to include the participation
of the customer for any particular project. Voice of the customer can be
defined as the process of analyzing preferences and expectations of the
customer from a particular project with the help of Information Technology.
It can also be defined as a market research technique used by project
managers to analyze the current trend, demand or requirement of customer
in a particular area of business. For example, biscuit manufacturers can
conduct market research analysis to determine the new flavors that can be
started for production according to the current customer requirements. This
process of collecting and analyzing the data would be called a voice of the
customer (Takagi, Ema, Sumita, Hayashi & Okada, 2016).
In the case of FIFA World Cup 2018, people situation should collect the
information from the customer on how this tournament can be made
satisfactory and enjoyable for them. for the purpose of the voice of the
customer, management of the organizing committee can create a survey
that can help to management to analyze the most satisfactory activities or
function that can be included in project management plan to provide best
possible experience to the customer that are visiting from a different part of
the world (Roy & Kumar, 2017). In addition to that, feedback should also be
collected from people visiting the tournament so that improvements can be
made in the next tournament according to the feedback collected. This is a
constructive process that can be used by management for the improvement
of their services. This process of collecting feedback and bringing
improvement according to the feedback will help in making each
tournament spectacular and giving the best possible customer experience a
die-hard fan of the football.
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Critical to customer requirement
The final value of any particular product and services generally decided by
target customers. For example, various business organization conducts
market research to determine the price that they should put on a particular
product and service. Selling prices are selected by customers by analyzing
customer value quadrant that is cost, quality, features, and availability. All
of these factors contribute to putting a price on a particular product and
service. For example, if a product is not available in market and customer
might be willing to pay more than its usual selling price in order to acquire
the product which is very essential to him or her. In this manner, any of the
other three factors can also affect the overall price that the customer is
willing to pay for a particular product (Jin, Ji & Gu, 2015). In the case of FIFA
World Cup 2018, management of the project should also determine that
prices a customer will be willing to pay for attending the World Cup matches
by using critical to customer requirement analysis.
A small research group analysis or survey conducted by management for
setting prices for the tickets in the tournament. Customers describe a type
of services that will be provided in each of the game and customers should
be asked by management to price these services reasonably. Other
important factors i.e. cost, quality, features, and availability etc. will also be
explained by the management of the company to the selected research
group to arrive at correct pricing strategy for the ticket to be sold for the
tournament.
Critical to Quality parameters (CTQ)
Critical to quality parameters explain the quality of services and product to
be provided in a particular Project Management process. This quality of
services depends upon the total price of the product and service. Quality of
product will be higher for a particular service that has the highest selling
price as compared to other products and services. In other words, can be
said that critical to quality can be defined as characteristics of product and
services that should be included by management in order to satisfy customer
against the amount paid by them for such product or service. A critical to
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quality trees are prepared by the Project Management team in order to
satisfy need and requirement of the customer (Thangaiah, Sharma & Sundharam,
2018). Basic overview of this tree can be explained with the help of the
following diagram-
Information collected from the research analysis from the customer is
generally a broad requirement that is expected by a customer from a
particular project. Critical to quality tree helps in dividing this broad
requirement of the customer into specific customer requirements.
Management of FIFA World Cup 2018 could also prepare a critical to a
quality tree that will help management of the company to divide all the
tickets to be provided to audience into various categories. There is various
type of customers attend the full football game and their basic needs and
requirements are very different from each other. Some customers only want
to see the match and do not want to pay extra money for additional services.
Therefore for this type of customer is it is essential that categories of tickets
are made where the services provided are less and the price of the ticket is
also low.
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(II) In what ways would you have implemented lean
project management for this event?
Regular improvements in a particular project during the course of the
project can be defined as the main characteristic of lean project
management. Only planning and preparation of plan is not sufficient for
getting the desired outcome for a particular project. It is also essential that
management of a project regularly keep themselves updated about the
progress of the project so that improvement can be made on the way. This
would help in giving better customer satisfaction and desired outcome of a
project can be achieved easily. Lean project management strategies could
have been used in case of FIFA World Cup 2018. There are various
strategies that would have been adopted improving the quality of services
provided in the tournament to customers. Some of the strategies are as
follows-
Focus on customer satisfaction-
Football is one of the most popular sports in the world and this game has
many die-hard fans that love this game. In such a situation is very important
to focus on customers that are attending the tournament as customer
satisfaction is the most important thing in such tournaments. Availability of
the ticket is one of the most important factors that should be considered by
management (Kerzner and Kerzner, 2017). Amount of ticket for every match is
very limited and a number of people that are willing to attend such matches
are very high. Processing system should be on basis of First Come First
serve and no special preferences should be given in order to give tickets to
known people. This can create a lot of customer dissatisfaction and it will
also affect the reputation of FIFA.
Begin with the target in mind
It is very important for any project manager to start the project with specific
goals and targets in mind. This will help in giving a sense of direction to all
activities that are required to be performed in a particular Project
Management process. Top management of FIFA should have specific goals
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and objectives in mind before starting the process of planning football world
cup in Russia (Nicholas & Steyn, 2017). For example management of FIFA should
consider whether their main objective is to provide customer satisfaction or
earn money. The final objective of organizing the tournament should be
providing customer satisfaction along with earning money from each activity
but the main objective should be to provide customer satisfaction and
increasing that reputation of FIFA World Cup around the world.
Giving specific roles and responsibilities
FIFA tournament is a very reputed tournament that is organized on a large
platform and watched by millions of people around the world. Management
of such a large scale project can be very difficult which could result in
various problems during the process of execution. In such scenarios, it is
important that overall roles and responsibilities be performed by divided
into different categories and assigned to project managers. For example
division in FIFA World Cup tournament can be done on the basis of matches
or on the basis of teams. There were 32 teams that were participating in the
tournament. Airport 32 managers could have been appointed with separate
project management teams that will effectively conduct all the activities in
relation to there are signed national team (Larson et.al, 2014).
Formation of the high-performance project management team
Efficiency and effectiveness of any project are dependent on the skills and
experience are people that are conducting activities in such a project.
Recruitment and selection process should be very carefully designed so that
only skillful people are selected in the project management team (Golini,
Kalchschmidt & Landoni, 2015). This can be considered as one of the most
important factors that will lead to the achievement of project management
goals and objectives. In this given scenario it is important that some of the
project managers should be selected from the teams that were involved in
successful implementation of FIFA World Cup 2014. Experience is one of the
most important keys that would be essential for successful implementation
of the tournament. An experienced manager can handle the situation more
effectively as they might have faced a similar situation in previous
tournaments (Harrison & Lock, 2017).
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Analysing progress and performance
Another important factor that should be included in project management
activities is regular assessment of the performance of project management
teams. it is essential that each of the project managers assess their teams
after every match so that mistake conducted in the organisation of a
particular match can be improved in other activities that are required to be
performed in later part of the tournament. Bringing continuous
improvement and efficiency in activities is very important for successful
implementation of any tournament (Nejad & Ghollehzo, 2014). There are various
project management tools that can be used by project managers to assess
their performance efficiency and effectiveness. Taking help of information
technology is the best option available for a manager as it helps in quick
analysis and identification of problem areas.
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(III) Identify and elaborate processes from PMBOK,
PRINCE2, Organisational Project Management, Agile
Practices and Lean Six Sigma
There are various types of project management methodologies net can be
used for successful implementation of a particular project. The section of the
report will analyze some of the most important and commonly used project
management methodologies that could have been used for lean project
management of FIFA World Cup 2018.
PMBOK
There are five steps involved in principles of PMBOK that could have
resulted in lean project management of FIFA World Cup 2018. These 5 steps
are explained as follows-
Initiation - it is the most important step in principles given by PMBOK as it
tries to identify the needs and requirement of a particular project.
Management of FIFA should understand the goals and objective of the
tournament from the perspective of fans and National teams that are
participating in the tournament.
Planning - Planning process will require estimate all the activities that are
required to be done in execution of effective World Cup tournament selling
of tickets, providing basic facilities to customers, residential facilities for
every member of the football teams etc.
Execution- in this step all the activities are performed on the basic principles
given in the guidelines of PMBOK (Larson & Gray, 2015). Such execution should
be done on the basis of the best possible methods. For example, tickets
should be distributed online to save time and paper wastage.
Monitoring- Regular monitoring is also an essential step to be taken in
project management processes as it will help in making regular
improvements in the activities performed.
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Closing- At the end of the ceremony it should be analyzed whether all the
activities are effectively conducted and if such activities are completed
within the set resource limit or not. This will help in analyzing the extra cost
incurred in the tournament (Brioso, 2015).
Organisational project management
Organisational project management is a combination of portfolio
management, program management and project management that are used
for achievement of specific goals and objectives in a particular project.
Specific strategies are prepared in organizational project management in
order to effectively use of resources so that main focus can be given on is a
more important task. In FIFA World Cup 2018, management of the project
should be focused on more important such as bringing innovation in
activities to reduce resource utilization (Görög, 2016). This will help in bringing
the cost of project lower and money released from such effective use can be
contributed towards customer satisfaction. All activity can be divided by
management include various portfolios and programs and management
should be done for such individual portfolios. This would help increase the
efficiency of overall program and failure of one particular program will not
affect other programs very substantially. Chances of failure of the project
will be minimized with the help of organizational project management
Agile project management
Agile project management can be defined as the project management
approach in which the requirements of a particular projected are delivered
throughout the project management process. In simple word, it can be said
that the project is divided in such a manner that its progress can be
assessed on the basis of outcomes of a particular section of the project. In
simple words, it can be said that the overall requirements of the project are
divided into smaller requirements for better management of the project. The
increase of FIFA World Cup 2018, customer satisfaction can be checked by
the management of the company on regular basis irrespective of checking
customer satisfaction at the end of the tournament. In this manner,
management will be able to make changes in programs and strategies used
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in the project management process according to the feedback given by the
audience (Dybå, Dingsøyr & Moe, 2014).
Lean sigma six
Lean Six Sigma project management strategies that help in removing
activities that are resulting in wastage of resources utilization. This will help
the management of the company in bringing the overall cost of project lower
as compared to other project management strategies. The main focus of
Lean Six Sigma project management is on 8 key factors i.e. Defects, Over-
Production, Waiting, Non-Utilized Talent, Transportation, Inventory, Motion,
and Extra-Processing. The management team of FIFA World Cup 2018 can
also use the strategies to reduce the overall wastage of resources such as
financial resources for better management of the project (Furterer, 2016). This
type of strategy should be formulated by top management and conveyed to
each member of the all the project management is working towards
achievement of final goals.
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