Project management of clothing store at gold coast

Table 1: Work breakdown structure of new shop project

(Source: Created by author)

The above table shows the work break down structure of the new shop of Indian clothing store. The work breakdown structure provides the deliverables of a project by segregating specific task individually. The period of a project is verified with activity logic by applying the valid work breakdown (Kloppenborg, 2015). The WBS helps to evaluate resource allocation for a project appropriately. Additionally, WBS is essential to understand the working activities through the milestones of a project. It is a communicating tool during a work with long duration. The WBS intends to communicate with the stakeholders of the projects. The WBS can help to resource planning and scheduling and cost management of every project (Pinto, 2014). The structure of a WBS can be of two types hierarchical and indented form. The first one provides information on activities under all the milestones whereas the latter one represents the breakdown at different stages. The indented work breakdown structure of new clothing store project is shown in the above table where all the sub-activities under the main activities are clearly shown to measure the schedule of the project. Additionally, this structure has depicted the resources of the project for every subactivity.

RACI chart

Table 2: RACI Matrix of new store in Gold Coast (Source: Created by author)

RACI matrix presents the responsibility assignments to each member of the project. Further, this matrix can evaluate the participation of each member of the project in different four constructs – responsibility, accountability, consulted and informed. These four constructs can define the role and responsibility of a new project or of a change management scenario in the business. The above table shows the role and responsibility of different activities of new store ranging from project manager to stakeholders. The constructs have defined that responsibility of people states to achieve the task by a member of the project. However, the member might not be suitable to answer regarding the end job of the project. Additionally, RACI matrix shows that the top management or the stakeholders are informed regarding the updates of the work. However, the stakeholders might have the responsibility to check the quality of the end job after completion of the project. Additionally, hired external people for various activities of the project of new store have responsibilities to complete the assigned task within time like painting, furniture installation and Electrical equipment installation. The majority of responsibility and accountability of the task of the project is associated with either project manager or project management team. However, the project manager can distribute the responsibility and accountability of several tasks to his team whereas he can control the operation with taking information only.

Schedule

Gantt chart

Activity node diagram

Budget

Progress reporting

The progress reporting is an important activity in project management. The team of the project normally informs about the progress of activity to the project manager. However, the intermediary report is not placed to the stakeholders or top management of the company. The project manager normally provides report to the stakeholders after meeting every milestone of a project (Pinto, 2014). In this way, the manager can control and communicate regarding different stages of a project. The milestone of a project is decided at the initial stage and scheduling of the job is carried out by maintaining the milestones. The matching date of milestone and end of schedule for every group of activity is necessary to complete the project at time. The following table shows the ten different milestones of this project of opening new clothing stores in Gold Coast. The project manager of this job has to report to the stakeholders every time after the milestone is crossed for reporting about the progress of the activities. The manager has to provide a brief report discussing on the progress of every milestone at this point. This progress report can provide any significant achievement or may discuss regarding any specific risk to complete the project work.

Risk management

The essence of risk management is associated with the entire work of the project as there are various types of risks are associated with a project. The different activities in a project enhance the chance of having more numbers of risks than that of single activity project. Therefore, Carrillo et al. (2012) has stated that multiple activities of a project has a normal risk of coordinating all the tasks of a project within a specific schedule. It is the responsibility of a project manager to identify all the risks related to activity as well as operational of a project. After identification of these risks, the manager tries to eliminate or reduce those risks related to several activities by his experience as well as changing the operating schedule of the activities. Further, the manager has to evaluate the acceptance level of risk as some risks cannot be eliminated by a manager. Hence, the reduced level of risk must target to attain the acceptance level of risk of the sponsor of the project (Kloppenborg, 2015). The current project has several risks like cost of the project. Further, the project has the risk of materials like furniture, paints and electric fixtures. The risk related to cost of the project holds the highest priority level in a project. Therefore, the project manager has to prepare a budget of a project before starting the work. The estimated budget of this project is considered$5000 whereas the budget has estimated to be $14770 for the entire project. However, the estimation of the project is concerned with the materials only whereas the salary of the project managing team and manager is not evaluated in that section. Therefore, the project manager has the budget of $8170 surpassing the estimation of the sponsor’s expenses around 60%. Thereby, the project manager cannot control the overall expenses of the work or reduce the cost within the limit of the stakeholders. Hence, he must produce this report to the stakeholders and take permission of more funds to complete the work. Further, the risk of designing of store is associated with the project as the design may fail due to operate the store properly. In this context, the manager must consider the size of the furniture before approving the final design of the store’s ambience. Additionally, this project is associated with the risk of availability of materials such as paints and electric fixtures. Thereby, the manager must design the store with several products so that it does not hamper due to unavailability of one branded material.

Change management

The uncertainties and risk are the main reasons of carrying out project planning by the managers (Kloppenborg, 2015). The risk neutralisation follows the experience of the managers regarding similar types of projects conducted in past. However, every project is different from each other. Thereby, the managers use change management to control the outcome as well as risk mitigation process. The change management helps them to control the change due to input of a project as well as outcome of the project shows the desired result. The change management helps a manager to meet the scope of the work.

Communication with stakeholders

The project has several stakeholders. However, a specific project must consider the promoter as the stakeholder for communicating from time to time. In this context, Carrillo et al. (2012) has observed that stakeholder’s communication is important activity for a project manager for obtaining clearance regarding any changes during the project. Further, a manager must administer the stakeholders regarding the future risk related to the activities so that precautions can be considered before starting the work. The project of opening new clothing store in Gold Coast needs to be communicated with the stakeholders for approval of the new cost of the project. The budget of the project manager has observed 60% high compared to the estimation that of the stakeholders. Thereby, the manager must approve the new cost before starting the work. Additionally, the manager must provide report to the stakeholder for achieving every milestone of the project. This is known as progress reporting.

Project closures

The last phase of a project is closing the project activity for starting the operation of the new product or establishment. In this context, the closure of the project is possible after the stakeholders have checked all the requirements and specifications of work of new store. In this case, the stakeholders must conduct the thorough checking of electrical lighting and equipment before opening the store for public. Additionally, the project closure needs the approval paper works from the stakeholders for completing the project by the manager. Thereby, technical and design specifications of the store must be checked by the stakeholders to allowing the project manager to send the final bill of works.

References

Carrillo, P., Harding, J. and Choudhary, A., 2012. Knowledge discovery from post-project reviews. Marketing Management and Economics.

Kloppenborg TJ 2015, Contemporary Project Management, 3^rd ed, Cengage Learning, USA.

Pinto, J., 2014. Project Management, governance, and the normalization of deviance.

International Journal of Project Management, 32(3), pp.376-387.