F/618/0223 Planning, Controlling and Leading a Project, Level 7 Diploma in Project Management

Learning Outcome 1: Understand the concepts and principles of project management in business.

Learning Outcome 2: Be able to design systems and plans for initiating and managing and leading projects.

Learning Outcome 3: Be able to evaluate the effectiveness of communication within a project management team.

Learning Outcome 4: Be able to design monitoring and controlling mechanisms for a project.

Learning Outcome 5: Understand how to close and review the completion of a project.

Aims: This unit aims to introduce learners to the realities of developing and managing a project. It will also introduce learners to the challenges of project management practice in the global business arena. It aims to promote thinking critically about project management as complex, process-based cultural systems and as constantly developing with the high performing team efforts. As increasing number of firms have project development and project management activities, understanding the efficient project management is of vital importance. Learners will learn about the roles and responsibilities of a project team members. Various levels of management skills will be studied with special focus on success factors, monitoring and control.

Case Scenario

You are employed as a Senior Office Manager in a call centre based in London. The company provides customer care services to a UK fashion retailer. Your company reduces operating cost by having remote call centre agents who are based in the UK but has got access to a network of computers, a call centre software, a headset and a reliable Internet connection. You maintain a team of 10 people, 6 of them are administrative clerks and 4 are senior managers who deal with customer complaints, retention and cancellation.

The Managing Director has announced that the offices will be relocated to the area around Salford, Manchester in order to reduce costs. He has asked you to lead a small team from the office and involve consultants to plan and execute this move. She wishes to retain the same size administrative team.

In his announcement, he also confirmed the three core targets associated with the move. These include:

Real-time Control System: Creation of several easy-to-read dashboards and quality heat maps which will help agents, supervisors and executives to understand current performance and how it relates to the team and overall goals. Ideally, the new system should be able to provide an aggregated view of real-time and historical data in addition to regular reports. Agent scorecards and recorded calls should also be accessible through the new system for easy drill down within the same tool.

Remote Trainings: The call centre agents need to be aware about changing industry trends and should be able to adapt according to the technological advancements. In a call centre industry, these upgradations or add-ons happen way too fast. Creating a mechanism to carefully hand-pick strategies to train all the remote call centre agents accordingly, via video, voice or chat modules.

Continuing Profitability: Continuing to grow business income by 10% annually by reducing the physical costs associated with business premises management, improving the IT systems for the business and minimising the human resource costs associated with the move particularly associated with redundancy, recruitment and training by using innovative cloud based solutions.

Task 1 Management Report

As a trusted and valued employee, the Managing Director (MD) has asked you to use your academic knowledge and professional skills to carry out a project that will achieve one of the three core targets that were announced.

He has asked you to prepare an initial report which should reassure the senior management team your capability in dealing with the project and its stakeholders.
Instructions

In your report, you must:
Examine the role of project management in achieving business objectives.
Explain the application of key concepts and principles of project management in different business environments.
Appraise business objectives in order to determine potential projects.

• Examine key leadership and management theories related to the project management.
• Develop role and responsibilities of the project manager for a project.
• Develop a project organogram identifying roles of key project team members.
• Determine sources of finance available for a project.
• Assess the feasibility of a proposed project.
• Prepare a detailed project plan with high level estimates of time, resources and costs that meet agreed milestones.

Explain the key contents of a project communication plan.
Evaluate the benefits of a project communication plan to stakeholders of a project.
Analyse the factors that can affect communication during a project's life span.

Task 2 Presentation and speaker notes

The Managing Director (MD) has read your report and agreed with the project specification and project communication plan. He has asked you to create a Prezi presentation for the senior management team to explain your contingency plans and closing phases of the project. You will provide speaker notes at the end of the session.

Instructions

In your Prezi presentation, you need to:

• Evaluate risk factors that may impede completion of your chosen project.
• Design systems and measures to monitor and appraise the status and progress of your chosen project.
• Develop contingency plans to help mitigate potential delays in the progress of your chosen project
• Explain the closing stages of your chosen project.
• Assess the importance of project evaluation.