QA Higher Education (QAHE) London Campus Event Project Management Plan

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This project details event management at QAHE.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Task 1.........................................................................................................................................4
Task 2.........................................................................................................................................7
Task 3.........................................................................................................................................9
Task 4.......................................................................................................................................11
Conclusion................................................................................................................................14
Reference..................................................................................................................................15
Appendices...............................................................................................................................17
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Introduction
Project management is an important component of business organization heading out for new
ventures in the market. There are various elements and stages in project management, which
helps in its successful completion. The project manager is the one who is responsible for
handling the project responsibly. The QA Higher Education (QAHE) has refurbished the
computer labs and teaching rooms. In order to publicise the new happenings in the London
Campus and to attract more students, a major event needs to be planned and organized. This
event will be planned by the project manager. A proper budget, risk assessment, breakdown
of the events and project management theories required to conduct the project will be drafted
in this project with intricate detailing.
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Task 1
Project Initiation Document
Objectives: The objectives of the project are to publicise the major changes that have been
brought to the QAHE London Campus. In the QAHE London campus, the teaching rooms
and computer labs have been installed in the latest technological advancements. In addition to
this, the objective of the project is to celebrate the successful completion of the refurbishment
process (excerpted from case study). The event will take place during September, when the
college celebrates its Fresher’s Week. The project is being undertaken to attract more
students to the university in order to win more market share and competitive advantage
Budgetary Information: Budgeting contains the elements that will be required in the project
and the costs incurred against it. According to the management of QAHE London Campus, a
budget of £50,000 has been allocated for the project.
Brief Budget Division for the Event
Elements or Activities Estimated Cost (£)
Venue Charges 7,000
Decoration Charges 4,500
Food and Beverage 10,000
Entertainment 5,000
Event documentation 1,500
Services of the Guests 1,500
Registrations 2,000
Communication 2,000
Advertising and Marketing 9,500
Logistics 4,500
Welcome Kits 1,500
Others 1,000
Total Expenses: £50,000
Table 1: Budget Breakdown for the Event
(Source: Created by the learner)
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Timescales: The planning of the project will start from 15th of July, 2019 and will end on 10th
of September, 2019. The main event will be held on 15th of September 2019. Therefore, 60
days will be required to conduct all the activities related to the organizing the event
successfully
Project Sponsor: The main sponsor for the event will be the Managing Director (MD) of
the QAHE London Campus
Project Manager: The project manager will be the Director of Operations
Approach: The above stated objectives of the business project needs to have some specific
approach in order to complete it successfully. The project manager has chosen the Waterfall
project management theory in order to successfully plan the different elements of the project
(Pace, 2019).
Risk Identification at the initial stage of project: In the initial phase of the project, the
project manager with his team was not able to find out the effective marketing technique to
publicise the news of the refurbishment. With the help of external marketing agencies, this
risk was partly encountered
Key staff: The main sponsor will be the Managing Director. Further, the project manager
will be the Director of Operations. The key staffs in the project are as follows:
 Marketing Executives
 Advertising Executives
 Operational Executive and employees
 Designers for designing the decoration for the venue and the welcome kits
 Employees handling the food and the beverage department
 People in logistics and registration
 Resource Allocation officer
Stakeholder Analysis Table:
Name of the Stakeholder Interest of the stakeholders
in the project
Ways used to manage
the stakeholders
throughout the project
life cycle
QAHE College Authorities College Authorities are the College Authorities
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most important stakeholders
as they need to publicise the
new improvements in college
should have control over
the project throughout
the project lifecycle
Suppliers Suppliers will be responsible
for providing the different
items required for decoration,
food and beverages
Suppliers need to be
communicated daily in
order to acknowledge
them with the demands
of the project
Director of Operations Director of Operations is the
one who is responsible
regarding the completion of
the project
The Director of
Operations needs to have
proper knowledge on
every task in the project
Employees Employees need to maintain
their interest in the project to
deliver quality work
Effective leadership
styles from the project
manager will help in
maintaining interest
among the employees
Table 2: Stakeholder Analysis
(Source: Created by the learner)
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Task 2
Risk Identification
Risk Name and
Identification
Impact and Likelihood of
the Risk
Ways adopted to minimize
the impact of risk
Specific marketing
techniques could not be
identified
This risk limited the
awareness regarding the
event
A well known marketing
consultancy was contacted
to identify the effective
marketing techniques (Fahy
and Jobber,2015)
Effective human resource
was not available
This risk had a major impact
on the implementation of the
activities. This risk could
detoriate the quality of the
event
External recruitment was
done to employ effective
labour (Farndale et al.,
2018)
In the initial stage of the
project, the agile method
of project management
was used
This restricted the flow of
work in the planning stage.
This had major impacts on
the project quality
Waterfall project
management was used to
conduct the project
The suppliers of the
decorations priced all the
items highly
This created a pressure on
the budget of the project
which made the project
manager reduce the cost of
other elements
Different suppliers were
contacted in order to get the
supplies at the lowest rate
In the initial phase of the
project, the college only
provided fund of £35,000
No specific sponsors were
identified and this created
restraints
The college allocated
£15,000 more to the event in
order to remove the financial
restraints
No CSR activities were
included in the event
This made the event receive
some backlashes from the
other educational society in
the neighbourhood
A CSR activity of giving out
books to the underprivileged
was included in the event
The project in the initial This had major The project manager
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stage used a lot of plastic
materials in decorating the
venue
environmental implications
after the completion of the
event
however decided to use
environment friendly
materials to decorate the hall
Table 3: Risk Register
(Source: Created by learner)
Demonstrate the use of Risk Register with examples of good practice from other
published works
Risk management is divided into three elements namely, identification of the risk, analysis of
the risk and response to the risk. Risk register is one of the most effective techniques used by
the project managers in order to encounter the risks that might crop up. Risk registers help in
logging the risk in a tabular format so that; the risks can be quantified based on impact,
probability and consequence (Centaur.reading.ac.uk, 2019). Project management and risk
analysis goes hand in hand. In other words, it can be said that proper analysis of the risks in
the correct time, help in successful completion of the project in a timely manner. The
effectiveness of using a risk register is; it helps in identification of risks along with the ways
to curb it.
Small scale as well as multinational corporations use risk registers in order to mitigate the
potential risk. Tesco always use risk registers to mitigate the risks in their organizations. The
risk register is often divided in to three components namely risk management framework, risk
movement, key controls, and mitigating factors (Tescoplc.com, 2019). In addition to this,
Primark, which is one of the reputed retailers in the UK market, used the risk register to curb
away the reputation harm it had in the market in the year of 2014. The reputation risk made
an impact on the standing of the brand in the market among the other competitive retail
organizations. Using the risk register, reputational risks were curbed (Fmglobal-
touchpoints.co.uk, 2019).
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Task 3
Work Breakdown Structure
Activity Start Date Duration End Date
1.Project Planning 15.07.2019 20 days 07.08.2019
1a. Determining the
theme of the event
15.07.19 3 days 18.07.19
1b. Understanding
the objectives of the
event
18.07.19 4 days 22.07.19
1c. Recruiting
employees for the
project
22.07.19 5 days 27.07.19
1d. Contacting the
suppliers
27.07.19 8 days 07.08.19
2. Implementation
of the Different
Resources
07.08.19 28 days 5.09.19
2a. Allocation of
financial funds
07.08.19 5 days 12.08.19
2b. Identifying the
marketing techniques
12.08.19 8 days 20.08.19
2c. Advertising the
event
20.08.19 15 days 05.09.19
3. Final Tasks for
the Event
05.09.19 15 days 15.09.19
3a. Printing the
welcome kits
05.09.19 3 days 08.09.19
3b. decorating the
venue
08.09.19 3 days 11.09.19
3c. contacting the
stakeholders for their
11.09.19 4 days 15.09.19
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effective
participation
Table 4: Work Breakdown Structure
(Source: Created by the learner)
State the Milestones that needs to be achieved and the dependent tasks
The milestones that need to be reached are as follows:
 The planning needs to be completed within 20 days
 The implementation phase will have a duration of 28 days
 The final tasks needs to be closed within a time frame of 12 days
Describe the importance of a WBS and further provide an explanation on the
importance of critical path analysis
The importance of using Work Breakdown Structure is as follows:
 WBS helps in keeping a track the progress of project
 Cost can be easily allocated to different task
 With the help of WBS, independent and measurable tasks can be created
 The scope of the project can be easily defined with WBS (Harrison and Lock, 2017)
 WBS helps in assigning the responsibility of the task to the different employees
Critical Path Analysis is also an important element of project management. The importances
of critical path analysis are as follows:
 CPA helps in scheduling the tasks (Lock, 2017)
 It helps in understanding the basics of the desired project
 CPA helps the project manager to manage and control the costs of the project
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Task 4
a) An explanation on the need of quality leadership in a project
The entire project in an organization is supervised by the project manager. Project managers
need to have good leadership traits in order to complete the project on time. In other words, it
can be said that leading a project towards success is done by the project manager where the
individual has to lead the employees effectively and efficiently (Kouzes and Posner, 2017). A
project manager needs to have clear vision regarding the objectives that needs to be achieved.
Application of management and leadership is usually a dependent factor on the life cycle and
type of the project. The project manager or leader needs to analyse the potential in each
employee and assign him or her tasks. Additionally, good leadership quality helps the
manager to align the acquired resources to the completion of the event. The project manager
needs to a controller as well as administrator.
State the roles a successful project manager plays
Some key leadership traits need to be present in the project manager in order to conduct the
project successfully. The roles played by a project manager are as follows:
 A project manager needs to have effective communication skills. With effective
communication skills, a project manager can efficiently deliver the key objectives of
the project that needs to be achieved (Jabar et al., 2018)
 It is immensely important for a project manager to be resilient in nature and this is
developed from having a positive attitude. This attribute of having a positive attitude
should be instilled in the members of the project. This helps the project manager have
efficient employees in the organization
 A project manager should be a team builder and problem solver as well. This will
ensure all the members are well coordinated along the entire lifecycle of the project
and the workflow is unhindered.
Discuss the value of strong leadership on a project
A strong leadership always helps in achieving success in a project. The project manager of
the QAHE project should implement the democratic style of leadership in order to lead and
guide the employees in an effective manner. Democratic leadership helps in developing a
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positive attitude in the employees. In addition to this, this style of leadership helps in
increasing the involvement of the project (Laufer et al., 2015).
b) Provide an analysis and critic of methodologies that might be used to run the case
study project
Project management methods are methodologies that are used to conduct a project
successfully. There are different project management methodologies such as Waterfall, Agile
methodology, PRINCE2 and PMBOK (Muller, 2017). It needs to be noted that, there are
varied differences between the project management styles mentioned above which makes
them effective in different kind of project.
Explain the strength and weakness of the methodologies mentioned
There are some severe differences between the methodologies of project management stated
above:
Element of
Difference
Waterfall
Methodology
Agile Methodology PRINCE2
Methodology
Flexibility Waterfall has a
methodological
approach towards
project management,
which is flexible in
its approach (Rajan
and Santhoshi, 2018.)
Agile methodology is
rigid in its nature and
cannot be used in
different variety of
projects
PRINCE2 style of
project management
can be
complimentary used
to the waterfall
method (Cooke,
2016)
Criteria of Usage The methodology of
waterfall can be used
for project related to
planning and event
with the help of
human labour
The agile is mainly
used in projects that
require development
of software (Serrador
and Pinto, 2015)
PRINCE2 can be
used for event as well
as projects related to
software
development
Cost Effectiveness Deviations are
common in waterfall
methodologies.
Therefore, this is not
Deviations are not
catered here.
Therefore, it can be
considered that, agile
Cost effectiveness is
a forte for PRINCE2
project management
methodology which
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