Project Management - Case Study Report of Fix Computer Services

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5W’s and 1H’s point of view of the project is illustrated in Appendix I

6 Phases of Project is illustrated in Appendix II.

- Project structure

One factor that affects projects outcome is the culture, style and structure of the organization. Project is planned to me monitored and controlled by a dedicated project manager and a project team.

For smooth execution of project manager (PM) need to have a team that covers all functional areas. In addition PM need talented set of technical expertise to drive the technical aspects of the project. Department such as finance, procurement, after sales support, software engineering and hardware implementation needed to be integrated together towards a common goal, which is the project success.

It is recommend a mixture of matrix organization structure and Projectized organization structure is the as the most suited project structure. PM needs his dedicated project team but in the same time he needs to have a strong coordination between each functional manager for various tasks. Please refer figure 2.1 for an illustration of proposed structure.

Figure 2.1: Project structure of FIX[pic 1]

[pic 2]

In selected project structure

- PM has high authority over his/her staff

- Resource availability is high

- PM as well as functional managers involves in budget controlling. So that the PM has a moderate authority over aspects such as finance.

- PM and his staff plays a fulltime role

- PM has to coordinate with respective functional managers to work project related work on their respective departments.

- WBS, CPD analysis

- Work breakdown structure (WBS )

WBS is the hierarchical decomposition of the total project and will be used to separate or breakdown the total project in to sub-components or activities. This helps FIX to allocate resources, responsibility and time accordingly and monitor the progress of each activity. Further if there is any delay or deviation from the WBS plan, corrective actions can be taken immediately to mitigate such. Work breakdown structure of FIX Project illustrated in Appendix III.

- Critical Path Diagram (CPD)

As per the sum of the total time of the list of activities, it will take 36 weeks to complete the project. But after preparation of the network diagram it is possible to identify the critical path which is 15 weeks to complete the project. There are some independent activities which can be started simultaneously with other activities since there are no dependencies. Therefore, it facilitates to complete the project within 15 weeks as per the Critical Path Analysis

Figure 3.2: Critical Path Diagram of FIX Project

[pic 3][pic 4]

- Gantt chart

Gantt chart and of the project is shown below.

Figure 4.1: Gantt chart of FIX Project

[pic 5]

[pic 6][pic 7]

- Stakeholder management chart

The stakeholder management will be critical element in order to make the project a success, especially because the weight towards the marketing / sales aspect is significantly high in this project. Further, as the IT (whether it is hardware or software) knowledge is not equally available at the customers ends, and also due to the lack of knowledge on IT with the supply chain members and their administrators, the close monitoring and relationship with the relevant stakeholders (both internal and external) is a vital feature of the project.

The key stakeholder groups are illustrated in Appendix IV

Some of the external stakeholders here represent the general public. As Fix is focusing on client entities with very higher number of employees and where they have a higher say in taking decisions, the perception and PR factors with stakeholder are also become critical.

The below diagram illustrates the relative power factor and the influencing ability of each stakeholder.

Table 5.1: Relative power factor and the influencing ability of each stakeholder

Influence

High

Project Team

Project Manager

Employees of the customer sites

Fix administration

Transport & other service providers

Hardware & software suppliers

Low

Regional teams of the clients

Fix cross functional teams

Third party legal entities

Regional teams of the firm

Administration of the clients

Policy makers on the IT industry

Pressure groups on IT industry

Low

High

[pic 8]

Power

The below table evaluate the very critical stakeholders in the context of their existing commitment, desired commitment, the gap, influence and control.

Table 5.2: evaluate the critical stakeholders

Fully

Committed

Generally

Positive

Neutral

Generally

Opposed

Totally

Against