Project Management Plan for Opening a New M&S Store in Australia

This report details a project management plan for opening a new Marks & Spencer (M&S) functional material store in Australia. It begins with an executive summary outlining the project's objectives, which include initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the project to meet specific goals. The report provides a project charter, defining the project's aim, scope, and objectives, followed by a work breakdown structure (WBS) to organize the project into manageable sections. A stakeholder register identifies and analyzes the roles, responsibilities, influence, and communication strategies for both internal and external stakeholders. The plan also includes a stakeholder management strategy and a communication plan. The aim is to analyze the Australian market to help M&S expand in Australia. The report emphasizes the importance of effective project management for the success of the new store. The report also provides a conclusion and references.

Project Management Plan
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Executive summary
This report focuses on a project management plan in order to open a new functional material
store of Marks & Spencer in Australia. The process of initiating the work, planning it, executing
the plans, controlling operations and finally closing the work in order to achieve specific
objectives and success at a particular time is known as project management. Project management
helps to improve the chances of meeting the objectives. It also helps in gaining a new perspective
on the project and makes us understand how this perspective fits with the business strategies.
Besides, an efficient project management plan controls and monitors the use of resources in
business. Therefore, in order to carry out this assignment, a project plan to open an M&S store in
Australia is made. It helps us to set the scope, budget and schedule from the beginning.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction..............................................................................................................................3
1.2 Background.......................................................................................................................3
2. Project Charter..........................................................................................................................4
2.1 Project Aim............................................................................................................................4
2.2 Project Scope.....................................................................................................................4
2.3 Project Objective....................................................................................................................5
3. Work Breakdown Structure......................................................................................................5
4. Stakeholder Register.................................................................................................................5
4.1 Identification of Stakeholders................................................................................................6
4.2 Roles and Responsibilities of Stakeholders......................................................................6
4.3 Stakeholder Management Strategy...................................................................................7
4.4 Stakeholder Communication Plan.....................................................................................8
5. Conclusion................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9
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1. Introduction
Marks and Spencer is a brand which resonates with its customers all over the world. Therefore,
enforcing a well-structured and regulated project management plan for the current business
approach of M&S would be in line with the business objective and approach.
1.2 Background
Marks and Spencer is a well-established organization of clothes, food and home decors. It is one
of the largest British multinational companies which have opened few stores on the east coast of
Australia in the year 2011, but still many parts of Australia need the opening of these stores.
People in Australia serve as a great customer to M&S stores (Larson et al. 2017). Therefore, the
company strategically planning to open a new store for Australians for the time being in order to
make their purchases. Today, Australia is considered as the largest online consumer of Marks &
Spencer’s products (Kerzner et al. 2017). The company had plans to open around 20 more stored
in Australia but has not executed its plans. This plan is to analyze in detail the scope, objectives,
costing, stakeholders and budget of opening a Marks & Spencer store (Shaari et al. 2018). With
the growth potential in the Australian market, the company will grow in the country. M&S has
stores all over the world, and it follows the concept of global reach to people which can be online
or offline (Janda et al. 2015).
Marks and Spencer take care of their customers. This can be seen because the company took
around two years to study the Australian market before initiating the business expansion policy
in Australian territory. The main focus of M&S is to establish new physical store in the
Australian market which would be beneficial for growth and sustainability perspective. M&S
knows that they do not have bricks store in Australia, so they make full efforts to make their
market reach to people (Janda et al. 2017).
2. Project Charter
This refers to the detailed statements of the objectives to be accomplished. This includes the aim
and participants of the project.
2.2 Project Aim
This assignment aims to plan out the strategies in order to open a material store of Marks and
Spencer in Australia. This focuses on analyzing the scope of the Australian market in order to
open the store. The plan includes knowing the stakeholders of the company and its management.
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Marks and Spencer have the aim of opening stores throughout the world to make their products
reachable globally.
2.3 Project Scope
The scope of the project includes gathering all sorts of information required to start the project as
the market analysis, the budget required, stakeholders, employees, the products to be sold
according to market demand. Analysis of problems with proper distribution, execution and
management of work is required (Schwalbe and K., 2015).
2.4 2.3 Project Objective
The main objectives of this assignment are to gather all sort of information necessary in order to
achieve the aim of the company. This includes making a plan and breaking down of the whole
work structure in order to be specific in achieving the targets. A list of stakeholders is defined in
the process which includes business partners to team members of the organization. Different
teams are created where each team is assigned a certain responsibility. The teams are then asked
to report on a daily and weekly basis. This is done to ensure the completion of the project on
time.
3. Work Breakdown Structure
WBS helped M&S to organize the teamwork in manageable sections. This divides the work into
smaller and more manageable sections. WBS serves as the outline of the project as it shows
different levels the project has (Robinson et al. 2018).
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Maintaining WBS
The main objective of the project manager is to control and monitor the project deliverables and
to make adjustments as per scheduling and progress. Project managers also conduct weekly
meetings with all leaders assigned task who gives the updates of the progress and assign re-tasks
when required. A brief meeting is conducted in order to ensure that all tasks are on track and any
reschedulings are allotted as needed. In the case of major reschedules, changes are brought to the
attention of the project team. With the approved changes WBS has updated accordingly (Ju et al.
2018).
4. Stakeholder Register
Both internal and external stakeholders play a vital role in the development and planning of the
project.
4.2 4.1 Identification of Stakeholders
The main stakeholders for the project are M&S itself, business partners of M&S, employees of
the organization, its vendor groups, technical advisors, legal advisors, project control board,
project manager, project leader and project teams (Eskerod et al. 2016).
4.3 Roles and Responsibilities of Stakeholders
Stakeholder Name Roles & Responsibilities Influence
Level (Low,
Contributi
on Level
Interest
Level (Low,
Stakeholder
Type
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Project
Management:
Starting a Retail
Business
Funding
Budgeting
Scheduling
Store Design &
Construction
Secure Offices
Bathrooms
Cashier Counters
Customer
Service Area
Employee Area
Secure
Storeroom
Communications
Network
Equipment
Purchase and
Acquisition
Cabling
Internet
Connectivity
Phone System
Application
Implementation
Point of Sale
Inventory
Management
Integrate SKU
data
Quality Review
Code
Compliance
Occupancy
Certificate
Head Office
Review
Staffing
Advertising
Interviewing
Hiring
Training
Merchandising
Assemble
Displays
Price Ticketing
SKU Scan
Display
Merchandise
Gift Cards / Gift
Certificates
Display Store
Policy
Marketing
Staff Business
Cards
Branded
Shopping Bags
New Location
Updates
Grand Opening
Special Guest
Invitations
Advertising
Catering
Entertainment

Medium,
High)
(Low,
Medium,
High)
Medium,
High)
(Internal/Ext
ernal)
Marks and
Spencer Corp.
The stakeholder will be
accountable for providing
funds to project and approvals
for the project
High High High External
Business Partners The group of these
stakeholders will provide
support in terms of the
information for gathering
requirements with the quality
guidelines.
High Medium High External
Vendor Groups These group of stakeholders
provide add-on features,
equipment and tools required
Low High Medium External
Employees of the
organization
(End-users)
The upgrading system of
project management tools like
PROOFHUB, NOTION and
Workzone etcetera are
utilized by these group of
stakeholders providing
valuable feedback
Medium Medium Medium External
Project Control
Board
This group of stakeholders
carry out monitoring and
control activities to ensure the
project is on track
High High High Internal
Project Team They execute the activities of
the project
Medium High Medium Internal
Technical/Legal This group of stakeholders High Medium Medium External
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Expert/Advisor provide recommendations and
advice from experts.
Project Leader/
Manager
They carry project handling
and management activities
High High High Internal
4.4 Stakeholder Management Strategy
Management strategy of stakeholders includes the plans they have made in order to accomplish
their goals. This highest level of stakeholders is business partners and the corporation itself. They
provide budgets in order to execute the tasks. Leaders of Marks and Spencer follow a democratic
strategy where they consult other people and employees for solutions in case of any disputes.
The project manager creates a common platform for sharing valuable views of project
stakeholders and initiates a decision-making process to maintain the progress of the project
effectively. Leaders here discuss the plan of establishing the store in Australia (Binder and J.,
2016). They look forward to market trends of Australia and check for their demand and style of
fashion. According to the analysis, regional manager decides to furnish Australian store with
trendy and market friendly products which eventually contributes to the initial market plan
developed for the market. This might increase the sales for the organization and contribute to the
overall business revenue generation (Eskerod et al. 2015).
Stakeholders play a vital role in the management of the project, and therefore it is essential to
manage stakeholders. In the case of the manager, inappropriate initiation and controlling of the
project will be resulting in delay in delivery, mismanagement of resources, political interference
of teams and many more.
4.5 Stakeholder Communication Plan
It is essential to make a chart in order to handle communication among different teams and
groups for efficient and effective development and project management.
Stakeholders need to aware of the defects, risks and progress of the project depending on the
type of stakeholders.
 Business Partners: The project risks, defects and closure report should be shared with
these partners.
 Vendor groups: After the completion of the planning stage the conceptual report is
shared with them.
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 Employees of M&S: Reports of weekly progress needs to be shared.
 Project control board: Weekly update of risks and updates of the project.
 Project team: They need to share daily progress of the report
 Technical advisor: Weekly updates with information about legal and technical
concerns.
 Project leader: progress of previous days and goals
5. Conclusion
It is important to have a plan to execute before to open stores of M&S in Australia. The company
is very big with its huge amount of products available. Studying the market of Australia and
making analysis will help the stakeholders to execute the plan accordingly. The whole project of
opening an M&S store is divided into subtasks. There is a number of stakeholders where each
stakeholder has a certain responsibility to execute. Proper plans are made, and reporting of tasks
by stakeholders is ensured at each level in order to avoid reschedules or problems. Project
management and its strategies helped in the assessment of the project in order to meet the
objectives of opening an M&S store in Australia.
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6. References
Binder, J., 2016. Global project management: communication, collaboration and management
across borders. Routledge.
Eskerod, P. and Jepsen, A.L., 2016. Project stakeholder management. Routledge.
Eskerod, P., Huemann, M. and Savage, G., 2015. Project stakeholder management—Past and
present. Project Management Journal, 46(6), pp.6-14.
Janda, K., Patrick, J., Granell, R., Bright, S., Wallom, D. and Layberry, R., 2015. A wicked
approach to the energy strategies in retail organisations. Energy for Sustainability, Coimbra,
available at: www. energy. ox. ac. UK/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/WICKED-for-
EfS-revised. pdf[Google Scholar].
Janda, K.B., Rotmann, S., Bulut, M. and Lenannder, S., 2017. Advances in green leases and
green leasing: evidence from Sweden, Australia, and the UK. In Proceedings of ECEEE Summer
Study (Vol. 2, pp. 349-358). European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ECEEE).
Ju, K.B., Seo, M.B. and Park, H.J., 2018. A Development of Work Breakdown Structure and
Link to Standard Estimation System for 3D Printing Building. Journal of the Korea Academia-
Industrial cooperation Society, 19(12), pp.702-708.
Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning,
scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Larson, E.W. and Gray, C.F., 2017. Project management: The managerial process. McGraw-Hill
Education.
Robinson, B., Ryan, M. and Abbasi, A., 2018. Analytical observations of work breakdown
structure parameters. In Systems Evaluation Test and Evaluation Conference 2018: Unlocking
the Future Through Systems Engineering: SETE 2018 (p. 427). Engineers Australia.
Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Shaari, A. and Hong, T.T., 2018. Evolution in Fashion Retail: Comparing Fashion Specialty
Store and Department Store in Malaysia. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC
RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, 8(9).
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