Widgets 'R Us Project: A Detailed Project Management Plan

This report outlines a project management plan for Widgets 'R Us (WRU), a medium-sized firm specializing in widget design and manufacturing. Faced with declining market performance and communication issues, the plan aims to enhance market activities and gain a competitive advantage. The report evaluates alternative project selection methods, recommending the Weighted Scoring Model and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementation. It details the project concept, feasibility analysis, stakeholder management, schedule, cost, quality, risk, and procurement management. The project concept focuses on aligning with customer needs and improving communication, while feasibility analysis ensures the project's viability. Key deliverables include developing and implementing software to enhance information collection, product planning, and competitive advantage. The ERP system will help in analyzing the performance of staff and product in the market, addressing issues such as slow product development and poor communication.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN

Table of Contents
1. BACKGROUND....................................................................................................................1
2. EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVE...................................................................................1
3. PROJECT CONCEPT............................................................................................................3
4. PROJECT FEASIBILITY......................................................................................................5
5. PROJECT STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT...................................................................7
6. PROJECT SCHEDULE MANAGEMENT...........................................................................9
7. PROJECT COST MANAGEMENT....................................................................................10
8. PROJECT QUALITY MANAGEMENT............................................................................11
9. RISK MANAGEMENT.......................................................................................................12
10. PROJECT PROCUREMENT MANAGEMENT..............................................................14
11. CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................15
REFERENCES.........................................................................................................................16

List of tables
Table 1: Weight scoring model..................................................................................................2
Table 2: Stakeholder management.............................................................................................7
Table 3: Project Gantt chart.......................................................................................................9
Table 4: Cost of the project......................................................................................................10
Table 5: Risk register...............................................................................................................12

List of figure
Figure 1: Project concept...........................................................................................................4
Figure 2: Organizational chart...................................................................................................8

Executive summary
Project management is the practices of initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and
closing the work of a team that helps to achieve the specific goals and meets specific success
criteria at the specified time. The project selection methods that WRU can use for managing
current project activities involve benefit measurement method or constrained optimization
method. For the current project of managing communication and craft improvement in the
market activities of the company to gain the competitive advantage, the management can use
the Weighted Scoring Model. The project management team will try to encounter the issues
by using the project concept and support to implement the ERP system that will help in
analyzing the performance of staff and product in the market.

1. BACKGROUND
Widgets ’R Us Widgets ’R Us (WRU) is a medium-sized firm specializing in the
design and manufacturing of quality widgets. The market for widgets has been stable. WRU
has had a functional organization design with four departments: accounting, sales,
production, and engineering. This design has served the company well, and it has been able to
compete by being the low-priced company in the industry. However, the demand for widgets
is high in the market but the company was unable to maintain the successful run in the highly
competitive market. The average life cycle of a newly released widget is 12–15 months.
Unfortunately, WRU is finding itself unable to compete successfully in this new, dynamic
market. The CEO has noted a number of problems. Products are slow to market and
organization is facing many issues that affecting the business. The major issues that
organization has involve poor communication, negative market position and performance.
The report will focus on the development of project management plan for WRU to increase
the market activities and overcome the issues that cause problems. The report will analyze
different tools and techniques for managing project activities to gain the competitive
advantage. It will discuss project concept, feasibility analysis, stakeholder management and
scheduling. Moreover, the report will provide information about risk management tools and
approaches that would be used for quality management.
2. EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVE
Project management is the practices of initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and
closing the work of a team that helps to achieve the specific goals and meets specific success
criteria at the specified time. There are different types of tools and techniques are available
for managing the project and implementing the changes in existing organizational approach
to add more value and improve the effectiveness. The organizations are undertaking project
management tools and techniques according to their needs and requirements. For WRU
organization use of project management tools and techniques is essential for maintaining the
flow of information and craft improvement in the market position. The consideration of
project management will be essential and helpful for organization to define a plan and
organizes chaos, enforce and encourage the teamwork, maximize the resources and control
the cost (Kerzner and Kerzner, 2017). The project management approach and tools will help
WRU to develop a clear path from start to finish the actions that could help to meet the goals
1

of the organization. Apart from that, use of project management techniques is useful for the
organization to increase the communication and coordination among the staff members and
make the collective effort to achieve the goals and objectives.
The project selection methods that WRU can use for managing current project
activities involve benefit measurement method or constrained optimization method. The
benefit measurement method involves tools and techniques like the use of economic value,
payback period, opportunity cost scoring model and consideration of cost ratio for the project
management. For the current project of managing communication and craft improvement in
the market activities of the company to gain the competitive advantage, the management can
use the Weighted Scoring Model (Schwalbe, 2015). The model refers to find the solutions
against a prioritize requirement list that helps to determine the best option for project
management. The Weighted Scoring model will involve following steps:
 Identification of requirements: The major requirements of WRU to utilize the market
opportunities to gain the competitive advantage and craft improvement in the features
of products and services that can be use for sustain the market position. Moreover,
organization needs software for managing smooth flow of communication and
tracking of the information to ensure quality.
 Rank software based on criteria: The scoring model will help management to analyze
the ranking of each software and technique that could be beneficial for encouraging
the performance of company. The major software that organization could use involves
Decision support system, Customer relationship management and Enterprise resource
planning. The selection team will give weight and score to software according to
usability and effectiveness (Harrison, and Lock, 2017).
 Assign score to selected software: In this process the numeric values will be assigned
to software and multiplied by corresponding criteria weight. The highest total score
software will be selected for implementing for WRU company.
Table 1: Weight scoring model
Criteria Weight Decision support
system
Customer
relationship
management
Enterprise
resource planning
Value 40% 32 30 33
2

Risk 25% 12 15 20
Stakeholder 12% 7 6 10
Success 15% 8 10 9
Difficulty 8% 4 4 3
Total 100% 63 65 75
The selection criteria that used for managing internal and external activities of WRU
the Enterprise resource planning system is more appropriate according to Weight scoring
model. The weights are given as per usability and different criteria that used for scoring the
software. The Enterprise resource planning system is having good score compared to other
software in success, value, and stakeholder as well difficulty level. The WRU management
could implement this system for managing the internal operation and analyze the external
market activities to gain the competitive advantage (Heagney, 2016). For an organization,
this system will also help in conducting the analysis of sales and customer needs by
collecting their feedback. This kind of approach will support organization to design and
introduce new products as well make changes in the existing products to sustain the market
position.
3. PROJECT CONCEPT
Project concept refers to needs and mission of the project that is agreed upon the
facilities idea. The phases that project concept involve are developing the project mission,
undertaking the need assessment, brainstorming for the solution to the problems and
development of a planning team that proceed with the plan for the project. For WRU the
project concept will focus on these elements to develop a sustainable plan which helps to
achieve the desired goals and support to encourage the performance. By using this approach
for managing the project the management would be able to implement the software within the
organization to achieve the goals (Binder, 2016). This approach offer assurance for working
on expectation and maintaining the relationship with the stakeholder to minimize the
confusions and fulfill the criteria.
3

Figure 1: Project concept
(Source: Project concept, 2018)
According to project concept, the project management team will determine the
requirements for developing the project activities and set the deliverables through the selected
approach. The major requirements of WRU organization are to increase the market
performance and communication level by focusing on needs and expectation of customer in
Widgets. The technical tools become outdated in 11-12 months which affect the performance
of the company and influence the decisions of the customer to switch to other products. The
project management team for WRU will analyze the market conditions and buy behavior of
customers to develop a strategy for WRU to improve the design and development process for
products (Turner, 2016). The development and selection of ERP system will support WRU to
collect and analyze the information from market and make the decisions according to meet
the satisfaction level of the customer by making changes in the products and services.
The market information and analysis through ERP system will help WRU in design
and development of the best solution for widgets that suits the needs of customers. The
mission of this project management planning and implementation is to encourage the market
position of the company. The current market position of the company is poor and there are
various issues that causing problems for WRU (Mir, and Pinnington, 2014). The project
management team will try to encounter the issues by using the project concept and support to
implement the ERP system that will help in analyzing the performance of staff and product in
the market. The key objectives of the project plan for WRU are as follows:
4

 To encourage the market performance of WRU
 To improve level of communication
 To maintain good relation with customers
 To design and develop innovative products to satisfied the needs of customer
 To gain the competitive advantage
Requirements and deliverables:
The requirements of WRU from this project involve analysis of issues and develop
the best solutions to meet the objectives. According to given scenario, the organization is
facing issues in product development and gaining the competitive advantage. In addition to
this, the company is also lacking in the communication of information and implementation of
the plan that proposed by the top management. By undertaking the project management plan
the management look to overcome these issues (Ronen and et al., 2017). The key deliverables
for project team for WRU are development and implementation of software that increase the
collection of information, planning of products and services as per the needs of customers
and maintain the competitive advantage in the market.
KPIs:
 To complete the design and development tasks of products in 1 month
 To maintain the level of budget in development of products up to $40000
 To produce quality products and services as per the ISO standards
 To analyze the returns in the period of one month
 To track the information flow considering the deadline of product delivery
4. PROJECT FEASIBILITY
Project feasibility study is important for determining the viability of an idea such as
ensuring the project legally and technically feasible as well as economically justifiable. The
project management team conduct the feasibility analysis before investment and identify that
the project is beneficial for them or not. The project feasibility study is a document that
contains the detail description of the project that drives the success and failure. For the
current project is about crafting improvement in the market performance of WRU and
increase the internal communication level. For that, the project management team will
conduct the market feasibility analysis of the organizational product. According to analysis,
5

the strength of the organization is innovative products that are based on the needs and current
technical aspects of the entertainment and communication. In order to maintain the success in
the market, the organization requires anticipating the changes in the technology and market
functions to design and develop the new products (McNeil and et al., 2015). If the
organization assume that customer will pay for the product then it is necessary for
management to ensure the quality and availability of products. However, the other
organizations from the same industry are offering the products at a lower price that affecting
the market performance of WRU. Hence, the changes and management system that proposed
by the project management team will be helpful for managing the money and resources to
meet the goals and objectives. The ERP system will help the organization to collect and
analyze the market information and implement the changes in the manufacturing strategy to
increase the level of innovation in product. This system will be useful in decision making and
determine the budget for improvement in the future sales and marketing (Pritchard and PMP,
2014).
The project team will discuss time, cost and requirements which going to be consider
for the project and take the approval from the top management of WRU. This kind of
approach is essential for implementing the plan for project management and processed with
the changes in the infrastructure and strategies of organization. The top management will
review the documents of project plan and analyze the cost of the activities to craft
improvement in the market performance (Kerzner, 2018).
Project assumptions
Following are the key assumptions for the current project for WRU:
 All the project member will be available
 The vendor deliver the resources on time
 Accuracy of project will be according to scheduled date
 Project manager will ensure the performance of each member
 Vendor performance issues
Constraints:
 Budget of WRU for changes
 Availability of resources for managing activities
 Lack of time to complete the project
6

 Changes in the scope of project
 Lack of monitoring of milestone
Possible improvement:
 Prepare the outline of project
 Proper management of time
 Prioritizing goals
 Good communication among team members
 Minimization of cost in project functions
5. PROJECT STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT
For the current project of WRU organization performance improvement and
enhancement of communication level the role of stakeholders is critical to develop and
implement the plan successfully. The major stakeholders for project are owner, employee,
project team, and vendor as well the government authorities. The project manager will
analyze the role and objectives of these stakeholders to improve the effectiveness of project.
Table 2: Stakeholder management
Stakeholder Category
(i.e.
Sponsor /
Supplier /
User)
Description of Interest Description of Influence
1 Owner Sponsor To encourage the value
and market performance
of organization
In decision making and
offering the funds for
managing project activities
2 Staff User Support the organization
as a active member
To encourage the support
for implementing the ERP
and marketing functions
3 Project team Supplier To provide best possible
solution for managing the
Cost and timing of the
delivery of the services.
7