Task 1

2) What is ‘Scope Management’ what would you include in your managing scope statement for the case study in Task 2. What tool could you use to show the subdivision of the scope of work?

3) What difference would it make if you plot out a full project Gantt chart and identify the critical path?

4) How would you decide if the project in the case study in Task 2 had been successful?

5) Throughout a project events may happen that necessitate minor or major changes to the project plan. How would you manage any changes in order to control the project in the case study in Task 2?

6) What methods (project evaluation, monitoring and control) would you introduce to ensure the project in Task 2 is completed successfully on-time and within budget?

Task 2:  Case Study:

JKB Bloggins Ltd is a company specialising in the design and manufacture of industrial Textiles for the automotive industry. The organisations they supply are major suppliers into various global car manufacturing plants. The company has been particularly successful since it started trading in the UK in 1980. Now, because of global competition, JKB Bloggins Ltd are looking to increase their competitiveness in the automotive industry market and as part of a strategy of expansion, introduce new technology and machinery into a new manufacturing site within the UK. JKB Bloggins Ltd has employed you as Project Manager to manage this one-off special project. The Project budget is £12 million pounds which includes the purchase and building of a manufacturing site, located directly off the North- East coast of England and open to all weather conditions. The new technology and machinery has to be transferred from Asia which will require training of staff and purchase of machines in Asia.

The team members are to be recruited from existing JKB Bloggins Ltd staff with some team members recruited externally. These members are required to train in Asia for potentially 12 months to gain knowledge, experience and assist the implementation of the new technology. This new technology project must be completed for March 2018 with production supplying new customer orders at this point in time.

As Project Manager responsible for the transfer and start-up of the new technology, you are required to prepare a report. From a project management perspective outline the activities required to successfully manage this new initiative, ensuring that it is on-time, and within budget.

The analysis should include the skills and competencies required by the Project Manager, along with the project management process. Use examples of the concerns, Project Life Cycle stages, processes, leadership, and administration and control problems associated with managing the lifecycle of this major project. 

Answers

Project Management: JKB Bloggins Ltd case study

Task 1

1. Different types of projects are there, such as:

• Construction
• Administrative
• Design a plan
• Equipment rather system installation project
• Relocation or events
• Maintenance for the process industries
• New product development project

After analyzing the details of JKB Bloggins Ltd Company and their current issues it is defined that in order to mitigate the competition based issues they are willing to introduce new technology and machineries. Considering the project details the project of this particular company is categorized in Equipment or system installation project. The steps those have been followed for implementing this project include project planning, design, testing, evaluation and finally implementation.

2. Scope management is referred to as a set of processes that ensures the scope or assumptions of a project those are exactly mapped or defines in the project initiation phase.  Only the correct and necessary works could be collected with the application of proper scope management tools and techniques. In addition to this, proper scope management engages the project manager and the supervisor to the work. A project scope include certain steps including: project planning, project controlling, project closing. In other words, the other steps that must be followed by the project head to meet the requirement of the consumer within estimated budget and time are as follows:

Defining the project requirement
Understanding the project goal and objectives
Estimating budget and time
Evaluation

Different project scope management tools are there those are widely used by the project managers are as follows:

• Development of group creativity technique
• Brainstorming
• Nominal group technique
• Multi criteria decision analysis

3. In order to reduce the workload from the project team members, schedule development is very much important. Gantt chart is the easiest way to schedule works and other activities. The detail report of the project progress could be tracked with the help of the Gantt chart. On the other hand, the project delay and even additional time requirements are also understood
by the project managers with the application of the Gantt chart. Each activity is not important thus priorities can be set with the help of the Gantt chart.  However, there is a difference between the Gantt chart and critical path.

Gantt chart is unable to show the task dependency, but with the help of Critical path method the tasks and on their dependencies could be easily identified.

4. Two basic measures regarding the project are provided in the case study, that is the project be completed within 2018 and the estimated project budget is be £12 Million. In order to make sure that the project is successful the project manager should check that whether the project is getting completed within the estimated budget ad time or not.

5. Change management plan is referred to as a set of defined activities those are needed to be adopted considering the project change, control and execution as well. The change management plans must be organized properly to avoid implementation and deployment issues. The steps that should be followed to make the necessary changes in the project are as follows:

• Demonstration of the reasons for necessary project changes
• Defining the type and the scope for changes
• Describing the support of the stakeholders
• Creation of the change management team
• Approach development considering the organization management
• Draw stakeholder requirements
• Communication plan development
• Resistance tracking
• Addressing all roadblocks

6. Different project implementation methods are there such as project evaluation, project monitoring and project control as well. However, among three of these methods monitoring approach will help to ensure that the task 2 or net technology implementation project has been completed within estimated budget and allotted time as well.

Task 2: Report 

Introduction

JKB Bloggins Ltd is a well known designing and manufacturing company that serves their service in different global car parts manufacturing enterprises. The global competencies and marketing of the company become measureable and valuable after it started trading in US in the year of 2018. However, currently due to the exponential growth of global competitiveness the company is willing to enhance their competitiveness within the automotive industry by serving new technical aspects. JKB Bloggins Ltd is willing to introduce new technology and machineries to expand the existing business strategies. It will also help the company to gain measurable success in the coming future.

In order to accomplish the project successfully a budget and respective time should be considered by the project manager. The other requirements of the project include proper leadership, motivation of the project manager. The project manager must have the professional leadership skills and knowledge so that he or she could meet the requirement of the consumers and employees each time. For reducing the work load from the employees based upon their experiences and skills the workload should be divided accordingly. It will motivate the employees and they would feel satisfied with their job roles and keep themselves engaged to their tasks. The processes followed for accomplishment of a project are elaborated. In addition to this, the administrative and control issues long with the processes of project life cycle are also illustrated in this report. 

Skills and competencies needed by the project manager

A project might be well conceived and accurately financed considering the resource s, specialists, other leading consultants with high level of experience but without the satisfied consumers no project would be able to gain measurable success from the competitive market. However the coordination and the efforts of the employees should be managed well by the project manager. Based on the size and complexity of the project the responsibility of the project managers expands . On the other hand, technical and financial qualities are the different things those the project manager of the JKB Bloggins Ltd, new technology development project must have.  The project professional skills and competencies that the project manager must possess are as follows:

Leadership skill: In order to become a professional and successful project manger leadership is the most important factor that must be possessed by the project manager. The responsibilities of the project developers is to lead the project team members by setting project vision, serving them proper motivation and coaching them with inspiration and influence as well. Both the strategic and operational aspects should be considered by the project manager to resolve intra organizational and inter organizational conflicts . In order to arrange all the project team members in one line the project managers should enforce different project management tools and skills as well. For creating positive vibes among the project team members the project manager should bring all the project team members together by creating a positive environment for them.  Rather than only management leadership is another quality that each project manager should possess to implement the project successfully .  This would be possible with serving proper project vision, roadmap and success empowerment as well.

Communication skill: Four different types of communication approaches like upward, downward, horizontal and open communication exist in the business. However, all of these approaches are not helpful from the business and managerial perspectives. Open communication is referred to as the most valuable and beneficial communication approach that must be followed to gain measurable success from the competitive market place .  Thus, it can be said that a project manager must have proper communication skills to engage and motivate their project team members together. For building any professionally successful relationship, communication act as a crux. The communication skill of a project manager does not impact the project team members but also the stakeholders associated to the project team . Without giving continuous project updates a project manager should focus more on creativity and new ideas. Continuous realignment and frequent innovation are other skills of project manager must have.  However, communication will never be highlighted as the effective one until or unless it could gather all the project team members and their ideas together in a single error free platform .  Moreover, it can be said that the project manager must have the skill to create a right channel for all the project team members so that they could share their point of views and innovative ideas to each other.

Planning skill: Planning is another important thing that the project manager must have to accomplish a professional project successfully . With the help of proper project management plan the members would be clear about the upcoming responsibilities.

Time management: In order to complete a project successfully within the estimated time and budget it is the responsibility of a project manager to divide the work load among the project team members wisely so that they do not feel over pressurized.

Risk management ability: Regardless of accurate circumstances and proper prevention mechanism, projects might face major issues . Thus the project manager should design exact risk management framework considering their frequency and consequences as well. However, if the project manager fails to do these then a project might face major level of financial loss.

Negotiation skills: This is another skill which is needed to be possessed by every project manager to meet the requirements of both the project team members and stakeholders as well .

Determining different project management processes

For any project manager the project development stages are very important things to consider. Based on the details and outline of the project a project manager should develop and consider proper stages for implementing the project. For this particular project the phases those have been deployed are as follows:

• Development of project strategy
• Project preparation
• Project design
• Project development and testing
• Project testing and business readiness
• Project support and profit realization
• Project closing

Project concerns

Project life cycle stages

 In order to complete project successfully different steps are there those are required to be followed by the project managers while developing a new Information Technology based project for JKB Bloggins Ltd, The following are the project life cycle steps:

Project initiation: Project initiation is the first phase for a project development. In this step the project manager is responsible to consider all the required raw data and resources.  In addition to this for accomplishing the project based on the requirements valuable and needful sponsors must be nominated for capital investment . Apart from this, at this phase only the finance manager also develops a feasibility study to ensure whether the project is successful or not. However, if the project is found to be not beneficial then required changes should also be done at this initiation phase only.

Project planning: In this phase according to the project initiation the project manager starts to plan the project. The roles and responsibilities of the team members are evaluated. In addition to this, the data are gathered and analyzed parallelly . Even the project time and budget are also estimated at this phase. For JKB Bloggins Ltd’s new technology based project the budget is estimated to be £12 Million and the time needed to complete the project is within 2018.

Project evaluation:  In this phase all the planning are required to be implemented without error. However, in most of the cases issues rises, for mitigating those issues final risk management, scope management, time management matrices should be evolved at this phase. 

Project control and monitoring: The project executives and the project managers are needed to monitor and control the project requirements . It would help the project manager to and the team members to gain effective and valuable resultant accordingly.

Project closure: This is the last phase of project life cycle. The three basic activities those are maintained in this phase are the final project documentation, stakeholder signoff and post project maintenance plan.

Processes needed to accomplish the project

After analyzing the project details it has been found that, JKB Bloggins Ltd, a manufacturing and industrial textile designing company is willing to overcome the global competitiveness by implementing accurate project development phases . However, for new technical incorporation the project team members must acquire needful technical skills, knowledge and experiences as well. They are willing to develop a new technology based project. In order to make this changes the steps that the project manager is needed to implement are as follows:

Identification of the technology: In this phase, after analyzing the existing issues, the technology that will help to resolve the issues are identified.

Preparation: Based on the technical requirements, resources and fund is needed to be estimated and allotted at this phase . It will help the project manager to prepare the project accurately as per the requirement.

Design: At this phase based upon the preparation the project should be designed by the technical experts.

Development and testing: In this phase project should be developed and tested

Benefit realization: Based on the ROI, changes should be incorporated by the project executives in this phase.

Required leadership traits 

Six different types of leadership theories are there such as:

• Great man theory
• Behavioral theory
• Transactional theory
• Trait theory
• Transformational theory
• Contingency theory

Among these theories, for this particular project the most applicable theory is the trait theory. With the help of this theory the required traits could be identified easily by the project team.

                                                                                 Figure 1: Trait leadership theory

                                                                                                   (Source: )

The leadership trait theory is developed considering both the successful and unsuccessful leaders of projects . With the help of this theory the effectiveness of the leadership in a successful business project can be measured easily. However, before identifying the required leadership traits it is necessary to understand the difference between the leadership and manager traits. Leadership is a gift that cannot be gained from learning it means that leaders can improve themselves but a manager cannot convert himself or herself to a leader easily with training and development programs.  However the basic traits that the project manager rather project leader must possess while developing JKB Bloggins Ltd new technology based project are as follows:

• Self management capability
• Strategic acting power
• Being an effective communicator
• Responsible and accountable at the same time
• Setting positive clear goal
• Persistence of achieving the project goal

Administration and control problems associated to the project management life cycle

There are some common challenges associated to the project administration and control which are required to be mitigated to successfully accomplish the new technology based project for JKB Bloggins Ltd. The problems are as follows:

Resource risks: At the project initiation phase, the project management team should ensure the assignment scope including the quality and quantitative needs . If the project manager fails to do these then during execution phase issues might rise regarding under staffs, under equipments and underfunding as well.

Financial risks: Project plan is always needed to be resilient and responsive as well. In context to the unexpected changes, other obstacles the project manager is needed to be agile in nature . In addition to this, at this stage of Project management economic requirements are need to be accurate.

Quality risks: All the associated project team members are required to perform their job roles professionally.  In both the project process and execution phases, the stakeholders should share their understandings regarding the project . However, each member of the project team needs proper direction, motivation, coaching and clear direction towards the project goal.

Risk management: The project manager must not wait till that time of completion of the project. Risks are building into the processes and the processes thus needed to be monitored accordingly .   

Closing risk: This is the last phase of project management thus in this phase the project manager should ideate different factors such as performance of the team members, improvement processes, securing the approval of the project deliverables.

Conclusion

From the overall discussion it can be concluded that for business growth and measurable profit customer satisfaction is the most valuable key matrices that is needed to be considered by the project managers and by the project team members. Dozens of factors are there which the leading contributing factors to the business success are. In order to make the business consumer loyal to the company and eventually to turn them towards the brand ambassadors, the project managers should work on each and individual factors. In other words it can be said that customer satisfaction is referred to as a marketing term that helps to measure the quality of the products and services served by a particular company. JKB Bloggins Ltd is a leading car parts manufacturing and supplier company which is facing high level issues due to lack of technical applications. In order to mitigate these issues the company is willing to develop their IT based application for retaining the consumers and make them loyal to their services. The leadership role or traits required making the consumers loyal to their work and the professional project life cycle processes that must be followed by the project managers are also elaborated in this report. It has been defined that with the help of the new technology project the supply and production rate of JKB Bloggins Ltd will automatically increase and the rate of technical errors will be reduced accordingly.

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