Stakeholders and Mendelow Matrix - Essay Example

?Project Scope ment Summary A project has to satisfy the needs of its stakeholders. It can be said that project scope ment provides the outline of the project to client describing what the project will deliver. Project scope statement also offers different types of work that will be required to deliver the project. In the project scope statement, the following sections are included: ·      Statement of client requirements specifies their expectations from the project. ·      Contract penalties cover monetary penalty for non-deliverance of project. ·      Regulatory controls include legal, environmental and government policies that may affect progress of the project. ·      Budget of the project covers financial aspect of the project. ·      Stakeholder analysis covers the interest of individuals and associations who may get affected by the project. ·      Internal control & contingency plan covers the alternative plan to address risk factors associated with the project. ·      Equipments needed in different phases of the project are being also covered in project scope statement. ·      Internal or external people requirements covers total human capital will be needed in the project. Explanation In context to marketing project, first phase of project scope statement starts with understanding client requirements. In client requirement statements, clients specify their expectations such as expanding distribution channel, asset integrity, establishing new infrastructure etc. In the project scope statement, next comes Contract penalties where is being mentioned. In regulatory controls, legal obligations, government policies and environmental policies regarding the project is being analyzed. In marketing projects, regulatory control section covers legal issues regarding advertising policies, product quality standards, environment standards regarding supply chain activities etc. In budget control section, issues regarding financial capital is being required in required in the advertising promotion, variable cost associated with the operation, cost of supply of resources for different marketing activities are being discussed. In project scope statement of marketing projects, stakeholder analysis covers the probable individuals and associations who will take interest or may get affected by the execution of the project. In Internal control & contingency plan for marketing projects, operational control over advertising activities, human resource movement, assessing risk of project failure and plan to mitigate risks are being discussed. In case of Equipments needed, marketing project manager design the plan for how many print material, TV commercial broadcasting, sales promotion materials, billboards, signage etc are being needed in the project. In case of project scope statement of marketing project, Internal or external people requirements cover total marketing employees are needed to execute the project and total numbers of external workers should be recruited to execute the marketing project. Mendelow’s Matrix can be used to understand stakeholder requirements regarding event management and marketing campaign of the client.         Table 2: Stakeholder Analysis (Mendelow’s Matrix) Stakeholder Power Index Low UK based customers who will buy retail merchandises of the German discount retailer. Project workers and marketing department of the client and in case of lack of understanding regarding among project members regarding project deliverables, they might create resistance in proposed marketing activities. High Top level management of the retail giant and regional heads of UK division. Financial organization that will provide capital support to client to fulfil its strategic objectives. Supply chain and investment partners might exercise their power in future circumstances. Low High Probability of power exercising Product scope description: in UK, the client offers huge range of product portfolio such as bakery items, beverages, non-alcoholic drinks, frozen food, healthcare products for infants, oral and facial beauty products etc. In UK, demand for all the items offered by the client is not symmetric hence revenue margin for the brand fluctuates across the product portfolio. As a result of the project, demand for all the merchandises offered by the discount retail chain will increase in symmetric manner and cross product portfolio revenue variance will decrease in significant manner. Acceptance criteria: German discount retailer should provide budgeted financial resources and required human resource support to the project team for implementing the marketing and event management plan. Regional marketing managers should conduct meeting with the project manager before setting project deliverables.    Deliverables: the project team will develop 360 degree promotional campaign consisting of 4 TV commercial, social media campaigns being updated once/week, at least 10 print media campaigns, 20 radio broadcasting/day, at least three electronic displays per retail stores, public events twice a month, 3 road shows/month, numerous billboards on road and sales promotion during festive seasons. The project will help the client to achieve two objectives such as rise market share by 5% and generate brand awareness among customers.           Project Exclusions: although, the project will accomplish marketing activities and event management activities but the project will not accomplish financial projection or predictive analysis of future demand for merchandises of the discount retailer in UK. Nature of the project will be operational while making strategic alteration or cover sustainability issues beyond the scope of this project.    Constraints: using project management scope triangle, three constraints such as resources, time and costs should be considered while making the project for the client. Uncertainty regarding financial resource allocation by the client during different phases of project may delay the project completion time. Delay in project completion time (exceeding 12 months) wills also increase fixed and variable cost associated with the project. The client spends 8% to 9% of its revenue (?3.9bn from UK operation in 2012). Therefore, estimated cost for marketing activity would be approximately ?350 million.          Assumptions: in order to avoid uncertainties regarding fluctuation in sourcing of resource, delay in project completion due to occurrence of uncertain events and rise in overall project cost, the project manager will negotiate with client in the initial phase of the project regarding sourcing and resource allocation. Critical Path Method (CPM) will be used to identify optimal time line (in critical path, delaying of particular activity might not delay the overall project completion time) for completing the marketing project for the discount retailer. Using network diagram will not only help the project team to complete the project within mentioned time but also control cost of the project. Certain portion of the project will be outsourced to known third party vendor of project management team in order to create risk buffer against fluctuation in resource allocation by client during contingent period. Evaluation - Benefits and Limitations Project scope statement offers benefits like rough outline of project deliverables to client, stakeholder interest assessment to project team and also provides idea about constraints that might delay the completion of the project. Setting project scope statement also helps client to understand resource requirement in the project. Project scope statement provides benefits like to ensure regulatory control over external uncertainties regarding the project. In case of Aldi, setting project scope statement has helped the company to understand various aspects such as resource requirements, tentative date of completions; financial capital required risk factors due to environmental uncertainties, total portfolio of advertising campaign required during the marketing project. Another thing is that project scope statement for the German discount chain has incorporated Christmas television promotions as advertising strategy and incorporation of such activities would expectedly help the client to influence customer purchase action. In terms of limitation, project scope statement does not provide predictive forecast of future uncertainties regarding the project and it becomes difficult to assess all the risk factors within brief form of project scope statement. As part of limitation, it can be said that ill define project scope statement increases risk factors associated with the project. Another limitation of project scope statement is that it does not focus on contingency planning. In case of Aldi, setting project scope statement without doing predictive and statistical forecasting would create limitations such lack of accurate measurement of resource requirement in the marketing project, lack of understanding of dynamic time series of project completion forecasting and lack of clarity in understanding of stakeholder requirement. On the other hand, project scope statement has not conducted detail network analysis for activities that are being required to push the German discount retailer. Such limitations have decreased the clarity of understanding regarding time period required for mentioned marketing activities for client. Read More