MBA 690: Operationalizing a Mobile App - A Project Management Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the project management and operationalization of a mobile application for Macy's. It includes an overview of the company, reasons for developing the online application, a timeline with key milestones presented in a Gantt chart, and a breakdown of potential costs associated with the venture. The report also identifies potential risks involved in operationalizing the mobile application, along with strategies for mitigating these risks, and discusses the potential benefits. A work breakdown structure (WBS) is developed and justified, outlining the tasks and subtasks necessary for the project. Finally, the report touches on the operations of the business organization, major trends in the industry, and the potential impact of the mobile application on the organization.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Project management
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Overview of the Company...............................................................................................................4
Reasons supporting the need for online application........................................................................5
Timeline to complete the project and Key Milestones....................................................................6
Table No 1: Timeline Table.........................................................................................................6
Figure No 1: Gantt chart..............................................................................................................7
Potential Costs of the new Business venture...................................................................................8
Table No 2: Potential costs Table................................................................................................8
Potential Risks of Operationalizing Mobile Application.................................................................9
Potential benefits of Operationalizing Mobile Application...........................................................12
Work Breakdown Structure...........................................................................................................13
Figure No 2: Work Breakdown Structure..................................................................................13
Narrative for Work Breakdown Structure.....................................................................................13
Risk mitigation Strategies for Operationalizing Mobile Application............................................14
Operations of the business organization........................................................................................15
Major Trends.................................................................................................................................16
Impact on the organization............................................................................................................16
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................16

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References......................................................................................................................................17

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Introduction
For the last several years it has been quite evident that each and everything in the
company will go mobile. This particular notion applies to each and every industry including the
retail industry. Different researches on the development of mobile and its global usage has
clearly shown the necessity of mobile in both daily lives and professional lives. Most of the
people have the tendency to spend more than 3 to 4 hours per day on their mobile devices. To be
more precise, most of the time on mobile is consumed by the use of the applications on the
mobile (Chou, Chuang & Shao, 2016). The following report has analyzed the idea on the
implementation of the plan and the management of the business operations after the changes will
be implemented as per the use of the mobile application of the organization. The following will
then be analyzed through the significant forces that will drive the strategy, the issues that might
arise, the proper running of the business operations, the established trends of the business and the
impact of the implementation of the mobile applications on the business organization.
Overview of the Company
Headquartered at Manhattan, USA, Macy’s is an American departmental store chain
founded in the year 1858. The company became a part of the Cincinnati based federated
departmental store in the year 1994(macysinc.com, 2019). The holding company was renamed as
Macy’s Inc in the year 2007. Considering the retail stores industry Macy’s has been consistently
the largest and the most popular retail stores in the USA. With more than 600 different full line
stores and 130,000 employees working for the organization, the stronghold of the company in the
retail industry can be well identified (macysinc.com, 2019). Apart from this figures the financial

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figure of the company is also appealing as the Business enterprise has around $24.8 billion
annual revenue.
Reasons supporting the need for online application
The mobile revolution has changed the way the retailers interact with their own
customers. The current trends of mobile applications has limited the need for billboard or printed
advertisements in order to display the products or any forms of exclusive discounts that are being
offered. Moreover mobile growth has impacted and changed the customers buying habits. The
customers nowadays always compare prices, search places, goods and analyze the reviews made
by other customers on the same brand. The following trends thus clearly highlight the
importance of mobile commerce and experts say that mobile commerce is slowly outpacing
different kinds of e-commerce. Mobile Applications for retail growth saw an outstanding growth
of more than 80% in the last few years. Different types of reports has highlighted that mobile
devices accounted for more than 55% of all the different types of shopping applications
(macysinc.com, 2019).
As mentioned in the previous part of the assignment, Macy’s retail stores is the oldest and
one of the most significant retail store chains in USA. The management of the company is thus in
search of exploring different types of business opportunities that can help the organization to
expand its business in the latest way and the best possible manner. According to, (Chou, Chuang
& Shao, 2016) the company has been trying to develop different plans that can be useful for the
organization to reach the goals of the marketing and also satisfy the customers of the business.
The more the expansion of the business, the more is the chance of the organization to reach out
to a large group of customers and provide them the service of the organization. Mobile

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Applications are gradually becoming more and more common in the retail sector. The
management of Macy thus has the same intention to stay updated with the best technologies and
ensure success for the organization. The development of the mobile applications has thus
gradually led to the development of the organization.
Timeline to complete the project and Key Milestones
Task Name Duration Start Finish
Project Macy 385 days Mon
3/4/19
Fri
8/21/20
Software
Development
60 days Mon
3/4/19
Fri
5/24/19
Project
Management
60 days Mon
3/4/19
Fri
5/24/19
Managing
Monitoring
25 days Mon
3/4/19
Fri 4/5/19
Next Iteration
Planning
35 days Mon
4/8/19
Fri
5/24/19
Requirements 100 days Mon
5/27/19
Fri
10/11/19
Prototype User
Interface
45 days Mon
5/27/19
Fri
7/26/19
Management of
the Changing
Requirements
25 days Mon
7/29/19
Fri
8/30/19
Refine System
Definition
30 days Mon
9/2/19
Fri
10/11/19
Architectural
Definition
95 days Mon
10/14/19
Fri
2/21/20
Define Candidate
Architecture
45 days Mon
10/14/19
Fri
12/13/19
Refine
Architecture
50 days Mon
12/16/19
Fri
2/21/20
Development
Support
130 days Mon
2/24/20
Fri
8/21/20
Integration and
Test Support
60 days Mon
2/24/20
Fri
5/15/20
Defect Fixing 45 days Mon
5/18/20
Fri
7/17/20
Development of 25 days Mon Fri

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Components/Feature
s
7/20/20 8/21/20
Table No 1: Timeline Table
Source: (As created by the Author)
The timeline shows that the project will take 385 days or sometime more than a year to
totally complete and execute the project. The project which will start from the 4th of March, 2019
will end on 21st of August, 2020. The Gantt chart of the project has been provided below.
Figure No 1: Gantt chart
Source: (As created by the Author)

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Potential Costs of the new Business venture
Resource
Name
Type Material
Label
Initials Group Cost/Use Accrue At Base
Calendar
Mobile
Application
Service
Provider Cost
Work M $100,000.00 Prorated Standard
IT team
Maintenance
Cost
Work I $50,000.00 Prorated Standard
Cost of Online
Copyright
Work C $45,000.00 Prorated Standard
Customer Care
HR
Work C $30,000.00 Prorated Standard
Cost of
Promotion
Work C $45,000.00 Prorated Standard
Total $270,000.00 d

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Table No 2: Potential costs Table
Source: (As created by the Author)
The potential costs of the new venture have been provided in the above table. There are
four major costs that will be involved in the following project. The total estimated cost of the
following project is around $270,000. The different steps of the potential cost includes Mobile
Application Service Provider Cost, Maintenance cost of Information technology team, Cost of
online copyright, cost of compensating customer care professionals, Cost of promotion of the
mobile application launched by Macy. The highest cost involved in this particular business
operation will be the cost of appointing and compensating the organization which will be
formulating the particular mobile application. An estimated cost of around $100,000 will be
needed for the particular task. Secondly the IT team which will be in charge of maintain the
particular application and will provide the necessary updates and hassle free facility will
consume an amount of approximately$50,000. The online copyright of the logo and the legal
costs will incur the company around $45,000 while the cost of compensating the Customer care
professionals will incur a cost of around $30,000. Lastly the cost of promotion of the different
articles will incur a cost of around $45,000.
Potential Risks of Operationalizing Mobile Application
The mobile application world has seen a significant hype in the recent past. Most of the
businesses enterprises have either already build mobile applications for their business or the plan
to build such business applications is at the top of their business strategy. The launch of the
Macy Mobile Application was followed by a detailed monitoring and constant review of the

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organization (Bassano, Piciocchi & Pietronudo, 2018). The company was in need of changes
within the application itself to make sure that it was comparable enough with the other mobile
applications of the competing retail businesses. The post launch pitfalls of the Mobile
Application can have a negative impact upon the business organization. The understanding of the
challenges and making strategic solutions are important for the businesses. The idea to introduce
the mobile application for Macy’s is a strategic plan that has the capability of making a huge
market for the business organization. However, the management has been facing a tough time in
recent days to implement the mobile application system within the organization as because a
number of issues has been developing in the business organization. Some of the major risks
faced by the management of the business organization to implement mobile applications are as
follows;
a. Economic Status- The economic problem in the company has been one of the major
issues that have bothered the organization for a long time. The economic status has
created a major problem for the organization to develop the mobile application
accordingly. According to, (Bassano, Piciocchi & Pietronudo, 2018) the failure of the
company to achieve the financial targets for a continuous span of time led to different
types of problems. This can be a major issue that will restrict the organization from
installing the Mobile application.
b. Slow Growth of the organization- The economic downfall of the organization in the last
few years has also led to a slow and unstable growth of the business organization. The
failure to achieve the projected growth of the organization also led to different kind of
problems. The financial instability was the main factor behind the poor growth rate of the
organization. Therefore the slow growth rate of the organization can lead to problems

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while the implementation of the mobile application. This is because the application will
not be able to gather the necessary resources needed to complete the formulation of the
mobile application in order to mark their presence in the contemporary business market.
c. Update and device compatibility- The first impression is one of the major factors for
each and every business while introducing something new for the customers. The future
of the application will depend on how much the customers will like it (Delia et al. 2015).
Apart from this the company has to ensure that they engage the best experts from the IT
market to provide them with the best teams that will be able to take care of the
maintenance and regular updates of the market.
d. Not Focusing on user engagement and retention- The management of the retail store
has failed to get the transparent idea of the market and thus were guilty of applying a
wrong marketing strategy. The paid user acquisition strategy was not the suitable strategy
for the company and thus pumping in a huge amount of money in the start of the
application attracted large scale downloads but failure to pay focus on user engagement
and customer retention proved to be the main problem for the company.
e. Update Problems- As mentioned earlier, the customers nowadays are equipped with
technological gadgets and thus they always have the detailed news on different kinds of
applications, products and quality of products and services offered to them by the
Company (Dhillon & Mahmoud, 2015). The users of Macy’s Mobile Application found
out about some serious problems with the new application. The application was based on
a outdated software that can create a large number of problems in the future.
f. Innovation- The Macy’s Mobile Application lacks proper and effective innovation which
has further downgraded the use of this particular app by the customers of the

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organization. Innovative features could have attracted new and modern customers to the
organization but the lack of innovation can lead to a loss of customers.
g. Proper Marketing- The absence of proper marketing and promotion of the mobile
application both before and after the launch of the mobile application has also not gone
down well in the marketing strategy of the business organization. The absence of a proper
promotion has made the customers unaware about the mobile application.
Potential benefits of Operationalizing Mobile Application
The major reasons behind the implementation of the Mobile retail application are given
below;
a. Business Expansion- The main reason behind the implementation of the Mobile
Application for the Company has been the expansion of the business. The management of
Macy’s has been trying to explore opportunities to expand the business and therefore
mobile application can be one of the best options for the same.
b. Transformation of traditional mindset- The transformation of the traditional mindset is
utmost essential for the retail business (Hoehle & Venkatesh, 2015). The use of the
modern technologies in marketing and the use of mobile based applications can help
transform the way the business advertises and promotes itself in the market.
c. Increase in customers- The management of Macy’s has experienced a large growth in
the customers for the last five years after it opened business stores in different areas of
USA, Puerto Rico and Guam (Kim, Hebeler, Yoon & Davis, 2018). The increase in the
stores thus led to the rise in the customers. The sprout of new customers who are new to