32541 Project Management

Project Objectives

Any organization trying to change its business process would primarily ask for a project management plan that would be feasible enough to only help in adding benefits to the organization. Any project that do not satisfy this primary objective is not fit enough to be implemented. In case of Cornerstone Securities, the entire business process is in need of changing from being physically available to be available online and further into the cloud. The primary objective in this regard is to make the project plan for the change in business process according to a feasible budget plan and also within a considerable amount of time involving an appropriate set of people to work as a team. Furthermore, the objective of the project would be the correct implementation of the theoretical documented plans into action for the change in business process.

Project Stakeholders

Following are the enlisted project stakeholders that would actively be part of the entire project planning and implementation needed for the change in business process for Cornerstone Securities:

• Owners of the organization
• Project Directors
• Project Manager
• Employees involved in the Project
• Vendors
• Contractors
• Clients

Project Value Statement

The project management plan states that the entire shift of the business process of Cornerstone Securities from offline to online and further into cloud implementation would indeed need some drastic changes in the working structure of the organization as well as will take up a considerable amount of time, however, this would only benefit to the organization’s overall development. The implementation of this project would further help the organization into coping up with its competitors and also would include strategies so that they can be ahead of the competitors. The project would require a specific budget, however, it is ensured that the implementation is most likely to stay within the budget and would not cause any budgetary fluctuation to the funds of the organization. The project plan proposed has detailed description about the funds spent and the scope of the project after utilizing organizational resources. Thus, there is no chance of overusing the organizational resources and funds.

Project Constraints

In any project proposition, three significant constraints are noticeable. These are project scheduling, project scope and project budget. In this project proposition where the Cornerstone Software organization wants to change the business process from being available offline be available online and further to the cloud, these can become the main project constraints if any obstacle is noticed during the implementation of the project plan. Any change in the pre-decided plans would most likely make the project go ahead of the scheduled timing for the project, increasing the project budget in the process. Therefore, during the project planning, the risk mitigation plans should also be included beforehand. In this case as well, the project planning would include strategies to check the quality of the entire project during the time of its implementation as well as the project monitoring and controlling plans would be done during that time. This would help in noticing any obstacle during the implementation process and eradicating the risks so that it does not form any constraint to the project. In this way, the scope of the project would be kept intact along with the budget decided for the project and the pre-scheduled time required to complete the project.

Project Scope

The scope of this project for changing the business process for Cornerstone Securities into online services and further into cloud implementation only adds to the benefit of the organization. Having the offline services had made the scope of the organization limited. If online business process is implemented, this would enable unlimited scope for the organization. Online business process would enable the organization to reach a vast area of customers. This would include both the existing customers and the probable customers as well. The implementation of the business process available online would make the organization serve their customers and provide further support at any time, which was limited to specific time span given its physical existence. Therefore, there are unlimited scope of improvement with this project implementation which would make the organization be ahead of its competitors given the technological change is the business arena.

Task List

Project Budget

Project Time Estimate

Quality Management Process

The set of procedures that ensure the total deliverables of a team form the Quality Management Process of an organization. Quality Management ensures that the product or service of any organization is consistent. Any organization is bound to have four primary components including the quality planning, quality control, quality improvement and quality assurance. It is not only focused on the service and the product quality but is also focused primarily on the ways by which the products and services of the company is achieved. Quality assurance and control of processes as well as products are used by Quality Management to gain a much more consistent quality.

The Quality Management Process needs to undergo the International Standards for Quality Management or ISO 9001:2015 procedures to mitigate the management principles in order to implement the best guidelines for quality management to lead the organization into improved quality of products and services. This consists of seven principles of quality management applied in achieving the organizational improvement. The same quality management principles would be implemented by ABC organization for managing the quality of its products and services. The principles are enlisted in details as below:

• Customer Focus: For any organization, the primary focus is bound to be the needs of the customers. The customer range does not only remain confined in the existing customers but also extends its radar to the future prospective customers. This leads to the organization aligning their organizational activities with the customer expectations and needs. It is needed according to the principles that customer needs must be satisfied as well as there must a provision to measure the satisfaction levels of the customers. In addition, it is required that the customer relationship is well maintained by the organization. The organization is also expected to exceed the satisfaction levels of the customers.
• Leadership:There should be a vision and direction for the quality management led by an effective leader in the organization. This leader directing the quality management in the organization should set challenging goals during the product and service generation in the organization. He or she should also focus on how organizational values should be modelled. There is a clear disruption that can be noticed if there is lack of trust between the workforces of the organization. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the leadership enthusiast to establish trust within the workforces of the organization. The leaders should also focus on equipping and empowering employees and recognizing the contribution of each employee that have added to the production and services of the company.
• Engagement of people:To establish a successful quality management service, it is essential that the engagements of people are also taken into account. It is to be ensured that all the abilities of the people involved are used and valued. Every person involved must be made accountable and should be enabled for participation in a continual improvement. The individual performances must be evaluated for every person involved in the organization. In addition to this, learning and thorough knowledge transfer must be enabled amongst all the people involved in the organization. If any problems are faced by the workforce in the organization there should be a way by which the problems must be openly discussed and the constraints must be met.
• Process Approach:This principle suggests that every organization should manage the respective activities as processes. The capabilities of these activities must be measured to ensure the effectiveness of the activities. In addition to it, the linkage between these activities must be found to ensure effective process approach. All improvement opportunities must be identified and prioritized. The resources for the quality management should be utilized effectively by deploying the resources.
• Improvement:It is also required that to maintain quality management in an organization, organizational performance and organizational capabilities needs to undergo constant improvement. This could be effectively done by aligning the improvement activities by identifying on which levels the organizational properties can be improved in the organization. This is then should be transferred as organizational knowledge throughout the company within all the workforce levels. This would empower more and more people to effectively bring about improvements in the products and services. Furthermore, the improvements should be measured consistently and also the improvements must be celebrated in order to boost the morale of the employees so that they would bring about further improvements.
• Evidence-based decision-making: To bring about positive changes in quality management, it is necessary to ensure the accessibility of accurate and reliable data. Data analysing methods must be applied appropriately to ensure that effective decisions be taken leading to the improvement of the organization. It should also be kept in mind that the data thus analysed should have a thorough link with the practical experiences gathered during the processing of products and services of the organization. Therefore, it is necessary that the data analysis must have balance with the practical experiences.
• Relationship management:This states that suppliers must be identified in order to manage the organizational costs, create optimum value and effectively optimize the resources based on the selected supply management. Relationships should be established, taking into account the use of both the time span of short term and long term plans. Every business organization have partners to deal with, and it is essentially necessary that the expertises of the workforce of the organization, the knowledge and information about the organizational activities, the resources and the plans are thoroughly shared with the partners of the organization. The partners are expected to collaborate for the improvement and developmental activities and should be effective in recognizing the successes of the suppliers.

Thus, all these quality management procedures would be enlisted to put into action for the organization of Cornerstone Securities for improving the organizational services and products after implementing the IT services.

Risk Management Process

The systematic application of management policies, practises and procedures to establish the tasks of identifying, analysing, contesting, treating, assessing, monitoring and communicating is known as Risk Management in an organization. To establish proper risk management strategy and make it work effectively, it is necessary that a group be established to work upon the issue of establishing the risk management process in order to have a good understanding of the objectives being considered. Following are the process by which effective risk management strategies can be implied upon an organization in need of a change in business process:

• Risk identification: It is necessary that the risks that are prevailing in the organization that might inhibit the organization in meeting the objectives specified be identified in the first place. For this it is essential that the knowledge and information transfer be transferred throughout the organization. If there are chances that there is a delay in passing of information, there may be a failure in seizing a commercial opportunity that would have been essentially beneficial to the organization. The process by which the ability of meeting objectives can be enhanced must also be taken into account.
• Identification of causes:It is necessary to find out what might be the actual causes of the occurrence of risks in the organization.It could be possible that the person in position for identifying the risk is disillusioned with his or her position and might be head hunting for a different position elsewhere. Therefore the person on whom the organisation is relying might not provide the exact data or might be notoriously slow in supplying search data. Does there is a supervisor required for approving the commercialization undertaking that has a high chance of being in risk averse and might need an extra convincing before tackling the risk.
• Control Identification:There is a high chance of lowering risks in the likelihood in an organisation if all controls that are in place for completion of a task in the organisation is identified to be all at place. Controls of an organisation system is identified then if any risk offer it happens to reduce the impact of the consequences it bears. For example providing a friendly work environment in a team and applying multiple skills across all over the team may reduce the reliance the organisation hands on only one person and the stress of the need for the requirement of information to be supplied from time to time or sending reminders about the approaching deadline and provision of additional information channelizing to the supervisor.
• Establishing likelihood and consequence descriptors:During risk management in any organisation there are likelihood descriptors who are moderately generic however the consequence descriptors are the people who may depend upon the context of analysis over an organisational risk. This means that if a risk analysis relates to a work unit in an organisation any kind of financial loss or the loss of an important staff member will have a much larger impact on the entire work done or the what unit then it would have on the organisation all throughout. For example if the company in cause a loss of an amount of money it will have less impact on the organisation that it would for a work unit acting individually. It is needed to be established that these parameters in consultation with the people who are heading the unit of work done in the organisation.
• Establishing Risk Rating Descriptors:Risk management can only be done in a proper way if it is seen that the risks that may harm the organisation are arranged according to the extremity or moderation of the risk. Therefore an organisational risk management very likely have the decision upon the risks from the outside so that it could be arranged from low to high risk needs.
• Adding additional controls:Any risk for an organisation either rated high or extreme should possess additional controls that might be applied to it to reduce the rating to a level that might be acceptable for the organisation while incurring the risk factors. Sometimes the additional controls might become a question of being overly expensive for the organisation but according to the priority it might be placed on the risk management strategy since it determines in consultation with the organisational structure how to tackle any particular risk. The higher authorities in the organisational structure would help in strategizing how this additional controls might be used in the organisation.
• Making a decision or decision-making:Once all the above processes come to completion if there are some risks that are still remaining rated as high or extreme there has to be a decision made that would decide the fate of the activity of whether or not it will go ahead. Sometimes it could be seen that some risks have occurred in an organisation that possesses much higher extremity then is expected or preferred but there is nothing that can be done to mitigate the risk and benefit the organisation. In the situations it may be needed that the activity would still be carried out since the risk that have been witnessed is beyond control however measures are applied for managing the risk. It would definitely harm the organisation but there is nothing that could be done to eliminate the risk factor from the activity. In fact situations it is essentially needed that the activity is gone through severe monitoring and regular review essentially.
• Monitoring and reviewing:Effective risk management is only established if not only that its factors in an activity in an organisation is monitored throughout but a regular review of this risk profile also becomes the key part of the activity. Therefore it is necessary that risks that cannot be mitigated are monitored and a regular review of this risk profile is maintained.

Monitoring and Control

Amongst the project phases monitoring and controlling is an essential part of establishing of a process which consists of the requirements to review, track and orchestrate the performance and progress of a project. If any changes to the project management is required monitoring and controlling identifies those areas very clearly and also initiates the changes that are required to achieve the change management. The process of monitoring and controlling goes through a set of 11 processes which are to be completed to achieve an effective monitoring and controlling over a project. These processes are described in details as below:

• Monitoring and controlling the project: It is a generic process which helps in watching over or monitoring every activity in an organisation going through a change or handling a project and controlling all the other activities that fall under.
• Performing the integrated change control: These are the tasks that are involved in performing a change in a project planning. If there is a change according to the cost that has been pre-decided, the schedule of the tasks needs to be changed, or any other area in a management plan made for a project is necessary to be performed then definitely the plan needs to be changed as well as shall be re-approved by the sponsor of the project.
• Validating the scope: When the project deliverables are decided over, it needs to be approved to continue with the project deliverables.
• Scope controlling: This is the phase of monitoring and control process that ensures that however changes that have been there in the planning of the project management still it does not changes the scope of the project and that the entire project is devoid of any activities that are unauthorised as well as unfair. The control scope or scope controlling ensures that the entire project along with the changes needed are absolutely fair.
• Schedule controlling: This phase of monitoring and controlling a process or a project is involved with the insurance of the project work to be performed according to the pre decided schedule. This step will ensure that even though there have been few changes that have been unavoidable in the entire project yet there has been no added time scheduled in the pre decided time plan. Thus the schedule controlling ensures that even with the changes in the plan of the project the deadlines are met without omitting any activity as per the schedule.
• Cost controlling: It may occur that due to the changes that has occurred in the pre decided project management plan they might be addition of some external activities order deduction of some previously decided activities that might increase the pre decided budget of the entire project. They should be cost controlling done during the monitoring and control process to ensure that all the tasks that are involved within the Change management plan of the project would stay within the pre-approved budget as per the client’s choice. It is essentially necessary that the clients be insured about the cost that they have to incur. If after the changes that are made in a project the client see that the new changes are making them go overboard that be decided budget they might not entertain the changes that otherwise are absolutely necessary. Therefore it is very important to ensure the project costs are maintained in within the approved budget.
• Quality Control: It is very necessary to ensure that the quality that the project was previously going to deliver I even the same and according to the standards after the changes that have been made in the project management plan. Just not the cost schedule and scope but also the quality of deliverables matter a lot to the people in the organisation as well as the people who are at the receiving end of the products and services from the organisation. Therefore a standard quality needs to be maintained and this has to be monitored and control through the quality control process.
• Communications control: One of the main elements in an organisation is the communication on knowledge transfer. The passing off of general but essential information or knowledge about the business organisation to all the stakeholders of the company including the clients and the customer’s needs to be propagated throughout without fail. Does providing the communication means for each of the stakeholders of a project in the organisation is absolutely essential.
• Risk control: It is possible that even after the possible risks are identified and changes are made in a project management plan that could be no risk from unexpected events that may be seen while managing a project. Therefore a project needs to be safeguarding from these unexpected events that might again form a negative impact on the budget of the project the schedule of the projects the needs of the stakeholders in the organisation or any of the criteria that otherwise might be the reason of success for the project. Does while monitoring and controlling a project management plan it is of utmost importance that for the risks are controlled and eliminated or eradicated from occurring further in the project.
• Procurement control: As in this project the Cornerstone Securities is trying to change the business process from being offline to online there is a huge chance that the project would include number of subcontractors and vendors while for the propagation in future. Every projects of contractor and vendors has to ensure that they would meet the goal of the project. The monitoring and control process make sure that these subcontractors and vendors are monitored as well as controlled for the betterment of the project which will in turn benefit the organisation. Otherwise if the subcontractors and vendors are not monitored or controlled over there may be hazardous situations leading to the complete fall out of the project.
• Stakeholder engagement control: A successful project is only possible if all the stakeholders happily engaged in the respective works throughout the project. Just as is necessary for a project manager to entitle the appropriate stakeholder to be engaged in the project it is also the responsibility of the project manager to check for whether the stakeholder is in using entirely to the designated works. If stakeholder ensures being happy about the project work and are left satisfied what the work they are performing in the project it ensures that all the stakeholders of the organisation are engaged thoroughly throughout the project work benefiting to the organisation. Otherwise this would only be a matter of disruption in the organisation with haphazard situations.

Implementation Strategy

From the above project management plans set according to the organizational resources and budget, the implementation strategy should be made accordingly. The first and foremost implementation strategy would include restoring all the previous data of the offline business and storing it into the cloud environment. This would help in restoring the data about all the services provided to the previous clients including the client information. Following this, it would be absolutely essential to go exactly with the proposed plan without making any alterations. The process of implementation needs to be secured in every step to prevent any data from being mishandled, lost or hacked; since it is very likely that cloud storage environment is vast enough for incurring a data loss. If all these are maintained, then the implementation of the new business process would be easier to attain.

Recommendation(s) and Approvals

The changing of business process of Cornerstone Securities from offline services to online and further into the cloud environment has been approved by the Project Sponsor and the Executive Team. Therefore, the project would only require proper planning and implementation. It is recommended that it would be absolutely essential to go exactly with the proposed plan without making any alterations. The process of implementation needs to be secured in every step to prevent any data from being mishandled, lost or hacked; since it is very likely that cloud storage environment is vast enough for incurring a data loss. It is also recommended that the project needs to be monitored and checked regularly throughout the system implementation to look for any obstacles in between that would increase the project constraints. It will only then be possible to have a flawless project implementation.

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