Project Management Reflective Report

This reflective report is based on a project management case study where the writer was involved in developing a mobile application. The project was completed on time, with good teamwork and coordination among team members. The writer gained significant learning from the task, improving their time management, problem-solving, and communication skills. The report highlights the importance of teamwork, analytical thinking, and effective communication in project management.

Project Closure Report
Development of Mobile application:
Buy, Pay and Collect (BPC)

Table of Contents
1Executive Summary.................................................................................3
1.1Project Overview..................................................................................................... 3
1.2Project Performance Summary...............................................................................3
1.3Follow-on Actions.................................................................................................... 3
1.4Lessons Learned..................................................................................................... 3
2Project Performance................................................................................5
2.1Financial Status...................................................................................................... 5
2.2Schedule Performance ........................................................................................... 6
................................................................................................................................... 7
3Achievement of Scope............................................................................................... 8
3.1Variances from Original Business Case...................................................................8
3.2Lessons Learned..................................................................................................... 8
43. Project Reports....................................................................................1
4.13.1 Project Manager................................................................................................ 1
3.1.1 Project Summary................................................................................................ 1
4.23.1.2 Events that effects which affected the performance of the project...............2
4.33.1.3 Team Performance........................................................................................ 2
REFLECTION..............................................................................................3
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1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1.1 Project Overview
The project is related with development of a mobile application under the name of Buy,
pay and collect [BPC] for the the retail store ASDA. The application is developed to provide special
services to the present and prospective consumers of ASDA. The service is related with providing
a convenient delivery options to consumers where they can shop online and collect the parcel at
any time as per their convenience at later time (Lock, 2017 ). The mobile application BPC allows
customers to add local outlets of ASDA in their network for collecting their shopped articled from
a place near them. This application have a motive to enable customers to pick up their parcel when
and where it is convenient to the. The application is developed particular for ASDA to provide their
special services to present and future consumers of this retail chain. The project is over
development of this particular BCP mobile application for ASDA where consumers can purchase
and pay items and then collect to physically at the time when it is convenient to them.
1.2 Project Performance Summary
The project is assigned a budget of $90000 to develop a mobile application under the name
of BCP. Also the schedule for development of this application was set as 3.5 months and 15 days
for trial by the client and its customer and 15 days to fix the bug and any improvements made in the
course 15 days trial period. For this a team of 7 people was made including 3 IT person for
developing the program, 2 graphic designer and 2 to see the accounting and scheduling for
developing the mobile application and one of them working as a projec manger (Schwalbe, 2015).
The over all performance of the project regarding the financial, scheduling and team work can be
rated as excellent. As the project was completed in the stipulate with satisfactory performance and
with an effective team performance. Also the mobile application was not developed with the set
budgets with getting a bit over budget. There were minor variances were seen in the performance of
the project with going over budget and others.
1.3 Follow-on Actions
The client was present with a basis of the application within 1 month were they given
certain suggestion over the user interface and icon on the application. For this s the graphic
designers were consulted to make changes accordingly. The management of ASDA was presented
application before launch. With completion of 15 days trial each feedback ad suggestion from client
as well as its consumers was considered for the same effective and significant changes were made.
1.4 Lessons Learned
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From this project of mobile application development an insight have been gained over
making plan for development of a project and setting the budgets and time scheduled for the same.
The learning are taken that to complete a project budget is of key importance as well as working
under a team is essential (Larson and Gray, 2017). The need and requirement of planning and
scheduling for a project is understood as this ensure effective and significant completion of project
with excellent performance and results.
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2 PROJECT PERFORMANCE
2.1 Financial Status
The financial status of this project over development of mobile application of BPC is set to
be at $90000. This is set as developing a mobile application is costly, take time and cumbersome.
Some of the cost and expenses can be seen on the fact of project such as salary, software purchase,
IT application and equipment purchased (Fleming and Koppelman, 2016). But there are certain cost
which are hidden and this includes development tools, libraries and support, the app update
submission and others. The main cost elements of the cost budget of this project over development
of application includes Platform, purpose of function and feature, Integration, UL elements,
hardware features and the salary the people working on the project.
Project
Name
Section Description
Developme
nt of the
mobile
application
BPC for
ASDA
Budget Performance The project manager have carefully and
regularly monitored the project budget was by
the. The final cost of the project budget is
$96,257, with $ 6257 cost incurred over he
budget ($4,000 for salary, $2,257 for non-
salary). The figures include all budget
adjustments made throughout the Initiation,
Planning and Execution phases. However, it
should be noted that some software and
equipments purchased for this project was not
charged against the project budget, but rather
uses to Upgrade budget.
For this project the overall financial performance is not satisfactory as for paying salary and
not salary expenses the set budgets was crossed by $6257. The amount is not too huge so it can be
sated that was a over budgeted but there was a slight increment in he budgeted cost but still the
effective achievement of the project was done.
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2.2 Schedule Performance
The schedule of the present over for developing mobile application BCP was set for 4
months. The scheduled was decided into three phases and then sub phases under that. Three main
phase were development, trial and final changes before Launce (,Heagney, 2016). The sub phase
induces getting feed backs and suggestions over the application and further improvisation that can
be made.
Task Name Duration Budgets Cost
(£) Actual cost Variance
Initiation and
selection of suitable
project
days 13000 13000 0
generation of idea 3 days 4000 4000 -
Discussions with
the team members 3 days 3000 3500 -500
Listing out the
requirement of
client
5 days 4000 3500 500
Market research
over determining
the present
preference of
consumers and user
7 2000 2000 -
Planning 90 days 60000 62000 -2000
Setting up goals and
objectives 3 days 2500 2600 -100
Developing of
application 27 days 20000 21000 -1000
Trial of the
application by client 3 days 15000 15200 -200
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Fixation of bugs and
further development
and improvements
27 days 5000 5400 -400
Trial of the
application by client 3 days 10000 10300 -300
Fixation of bugs and
further development
and improvements
27 7500 7500 -
Execution 15 15000 19000
Setting the
application into trial
face to Client as well
as consumers
15 days 15000 19000 -4000
Controlling 10 days 7000 7257
Executing
monitoring and
controlling activities
and setting the bugs
10 days 7000 7527 -275
Closure 5 day 5000 5000 0
Winding up of the
Project 5 day 5000 5000 0
Main Phase Duration Sub phase Duration Feedbacks and
suggestions
Application
development
3 months Trial at the end of
each month under
development phase
End for each
month for 3 days
Form the
management of
ASDA
Trial 15 days From both
management of
ASDA as well a
consumers of the
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retail store.
Final changes 15 days
Total 4 months
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This can be stated that for the development of the mobile application a time of 3 months was
taken after than 1 month is taken in making the development and fixing the bugs (Walker, 2015).
The application was developed on time without any lag and not delay were made in launching the
application. All the work was completed within the schedule with minor variation at internal level.
Also after the launch of he application for 6 months the follow up will be taken I every 15 days
and after that in every month follow up will be taken.
2.2 Achievement of Scope
The scope of the present project was set as development of mobile application and taking
up the follow up after launching the app BPC. The scope was set under three main categories that is
budgets, schedule and team work. The set scope was achieved from two prospective of time and
team work but the expenses got over the actual budget. Also the project is a great success as the all
the activates have been completed on tie with minor changes.
2.3 Variances from Original Business Case
The table above shoes the variance in the budgets which as set for the present project
development of mobile application. There is no variance in the time scheduled can be seen and this
was due to effective team management. The team have worked hard and smartly to out rule any
possibility of lag and delay in launching of the application (Kerzner, 2018). The over budgeting
though not too high was a result of wrong estimation of certain elements of planning , execution
and controllably phase. Under the execution face major fluctuation was seen this is due to the fact
that the fact of us of equipment and changes was not considered by the team while applying the
application BPC in real practice.
2.4 Lessons Learned
With this project development different learning are taken which shows that the financial
planning was weak as the cost related with salary were not estimated correctly which lead the
cost going over the budget (Verzuh, 2015). Also, the effective management is a compulsory
requirement which lead this project to a success despite incurring cost beyond the budgeted
expenses. This is evident from this project that affective planning is must for the completion and
success of a project.
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3 PROJECT REPORTS
3.1 3.1 Project Manager
Project Manager is the head of the project and entire responsibility of the project remains
under the Project Manager of developing this app. This project is very important for the
organisation which could help the organisation in gaining the competitive advantage and growth.
Project manager has to managed the entire project and had to important decisions. Project
manage had to constantly evaluate the performance of the project in order to ensure that there is
no variance in the project. Project manager has to take decisions on budgeting i.e. how much
budget should be allocated for the project so that there in neither excess nor lack of budget for
the project (Kerzner and Kerzner, 2017). Also, Project manager has to face number of challenges
during the project and had to address the challenges in an effective manner so that project gets
completed on time with out any delay. Project manager has also testify the App before putting in
the market and had to personally satisfied with the app. Also, it has to check the quality of
project whether it is capable for earning profit for the organisation or not and has to minimise the
errors which occurred during the development of app. Project manager had also take the
feedback from the clients and various employee involved in the project which helped in effective
development of app for ASDA which will prove successful for the organisation. Project manager
had to play an important role in bring the concept of app development in to reality.
3.1.1 Project Summary
ASDA in order to improve their business performance and efficiency within the markets,
it took up the new project of developing an app which was named as Buy, pay and collect (BCP).
The main aim of developing this app is to provide the effective service to customers by providing
the convenient delivery options to customers and they can buy any product of ASDA online at oe
time and can collect the parcel at any time. There are various features added in the app for the
customers in order to increase the sale of the products of ASDA (Heagney, 2016). Entire project
is budget with $90,000 in order to develop the mobile application for both Android and IOS.
This project has to be completed within a time period of 3.5 months with 15 days of trial in order
to check the errors and providing the procedures of removing it. In order to initiate the project
total 10 people were chosen for different purposes like developing a program, graphic designing,
accounting and scheduling of the mobile application. Each and every member in a team put their
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efforts in building successful app for the organisation and have worked hard to complete the
project on time. Due to hard work from the team members and the people involved in the project,
projected was completed on time with the satisfactory level of results from developing the app
and performance of the team. But only thing which did not went according to plan was that
project get a bit over budget and this resulted in making changes in the planned budget of the
project.
3.2 3.1.2 Events that effects which affected the performance of the project
During the many events took place which has helped in completing the project and
making it a success but also there were some events which hampered the performance of the
project and has brought complications. One of the major event which took place during the event
was that, 2 graphic designers where arguing with each over a particular issue and it want so far
that they stopped to work which each other for more than 3 days. It was the one of the major set
back of the project but after 3 day Projected manager convinced them and motivated them to
work as a team and to work towards the common goal of developing app for the organisation
(Kerzner, 2019). Another event which took place during the event was that, Project manager
realised that the budget of project is getting over the set budget which led the set back for the
project. So, project manager has to reframe the budgeted plan for developing the app in order to
get the project developed on the time and try to complete the project within the set budget. Also
another even which affected the performance of the project was that while developing a program
for app a small technical errors was made the programmers which gave wrong results and it took
them a while to identify the error and to clear it. Despite of all these events may have slowed the
performance of the project but team able to develop good app for ASDA.
3.3 3.1.3 Team Performance
During the project many challenges were faced by the team of ASDA and there were
various ups and downs for the team during the project. Overall performance of the team has been
good and have worked hard to develop the effective app for the organisation. Each and every
member of team were stick to their roles and responsibilities which were assigned to them. There
was a proper communication and team work among the team members and were supportive each
at every level in order to make the project success (Lock, 2017). There were also certain
problems which were faced by the team members which has lowered the performance of the
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project like there were arguments among the team members, errors were committed and
misinterpretations were made. But team overcome these challenges and developed an effective
plan and were focused towards the objectives of the project and supported each other at every
level. All the team members during the project maintained the collaboration and proper
communication which resulted in the success of the project.
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3.4 Project Sponsor
Project sponsor is an individual who is responsible for the overall project. He mainly
looks for the following dimensions of the project – Time, Budget and Quality (West, 2017).
For the mobile application development project, a company is sponsoring this project.
The main objective of sponsoring this project is to ensure that project is able to give benefits to
the agreed business for whom company is sponsoring the project. Company is focusing on the
quality, speed, pricing of project within a given time limit. During the sponsoring of the project,
project sponsor notices that the team is effectively doing their work. The project is complete on
the time given by the organisation for whom company is developing mobile application. But,
sponsor is not able to control the budget which cause company to bear more costs on the
development of the project. Project sponsor also noticed that speed and quality of mobile
application is good and required timely modification as per the requirements of the client
company. The mobile application is user friendly and its features are easily understandable and
easily used (Young, 2016). Also, project sponsor had to ensure that there is no conflict between
any department regarding funds and resources. For that project sponsor himself did allocation of
the funds and resources.
REFLECTION
The project has proven to be very learning for. Since our project was completed on time
and a good team work was demonstrated during the project I gained significant learning from the
task. It helped me to increase my team work skills and to work in coordination with the other
team members. For the professional work front team work and accomplishment of tasks on time
is very crucial. It helps me to improve my time management skills. While developing mobile
application I also got an opportunity to learn some technical aspects which enhances my
professional capabilities. Through these learning I will be able to perform better in my future
within organisational teams. During the development of mobile application, my team faced some
issues regarding budget. I caught that issues on time and solve the issues quickly, this helped me
to improve my problem solving skills as it is related to the projects which is generally
complicated in the nature. Thus, understanding this complexity, analysing the issues and solve
the issues helped me to think analytical and logical. It also helped me in improving my
communication skills as I had to give report time to time regarding project to the boards of
directors of my company as well as client company. Overall it helped me to improved my

interpersonal skills and knowledge regarding company as well as mobile application. Also, it
helped me in building network which is very important for any professional person.
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