Brown Educational Gaming Company - Creating the Work Breakdown Structure - Case Study Example

Project Management Writer: Word Account: Content Part one……………………………………….. Part two……………………………………….. Task1…………………………………. Task2…………………………………. Task3…………………………………. Task4…………………………………. Task5 ………………………………… Case Study: Brown Educational Gaming Company (Application of Project Management) Part 1 Point of View Since the company is headed by Sally Peter as Managing Director, who is also founder of the Brown Educational Company (BEG), a UK-based educational gaming company specializing in young children’s educational games, she is now facing the responsibility of resolving the current problems emerging from the meeting of the top 10 managers in making strategic planning; thus, her point of view will be taken into consideration in the course of this study. Statement of the Problem Although, her top most managers/executives have a strong conviction to the intermediate as well as long term goal of the company, however, the manner of achieving it varies among the managers/executive. This creates conflicts of interest or politicking among the member of the executive boards particularly in terms of resource allocation of every new project. Also, most projects are having over budget and usually do not meet the target dates of execution. Furthermore, some executives are focusing in working on an international business game for college students that is quite off tangent to the company’s vision or market niche. These problems must be properly addressed as early as possible because of its detrimental impact to the status of the company. Internal Environment of BEG STREGTHS The company in its fourth year of operation is currently having high capital inflow through stock distribution to investment bank. Return of investment is relatively high considering that it is only new in gaming industry because of consumer’s eagerness in buying their product. Stakeholders are committed to innovation, continuous improvement and organizational learning. Continues expansion of the company in terms of size of the organization, number of new products and its marketing effort. WEAKNESSES Weakening of organizational solidarity in terms of strategic implementation because of frequent conflicts of interest. Unmet target dates in accomplishing most of the projects. Misalignment to the company’s vision of providing educational games for young children because most of the executives are focusing to international business game for college students. External Environment of BEG OPPORTUNITY Member of the 56-person firm is enthusiastic and looking forward to helping the firm grows to be the largest and best educational gaming company in the world. THREAT Competitors’ strategy particularly pirating key product development employees of BEG. Solution In order to solve the above mentioned problems, it is would be best to apply the Project Management Process. In this manner, the weaknesses as well as threats of the company will be lessening while reinforcing its strengths together with its opportunities. Project Management Process Project Management Process in the modern sense is a comprehensive step by step process in managing the core of any organization. In this process, any project must be carefully identified, together with its true characteristics of the project, first in order to avoid vagueness upon implementing it. A project will be gone through as series of stages, such as “Defining”, “Planning”, “Executing” and “Delivering”, in an overlapping timeframe to maximize the time used. A project manager having the task of using “right people at the right time” in addressing issues before making important decisions is usually designated. In this case, Sally Peter is considered the project manager of all projects proposed by the managers/executives. Furthermore, the project management of project generally balances the “Sociocultural” (Leadership, Problem Solving, Teamwork, Negotiation, Politics, and Costumer Expectations) as well as the Technical (Scope, WBS, Schedule, Resource Allocation, Baseline budgets and Status Reports) side of the company. It seems that in this manner, it encompasses the factors to be considered in the current status of BEG company. Project Manager in Focus Since the company is dynamic in nature due to many factors in relation to its project, certain changes or adjustment must be made by the project manager. In this instance, some of the projects are misalign with the BEG’ vision. Sally Peter as project manager has the sole responsibility in taking up appropriate actions to align the projects with the company’s vision. Part of strategic management is ensuring the relationship between goal/vision and project implementation. To further stratify, Sally Peter must clarify the company’s vision among the managers/executives; however, she must also allow a review on the vision if it is still feasible or realistic in the current situation of the company and the vision can still be characterized as SMART or (Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic and Time related). After setting long-range vision, she can now examine the strategies of different projects needed as well as how the project will be executed—a “project portfolio management” will be created. Project Portfolio Management The creation of this however creates further politicking and resource conflicts among the managers/executive which is why Peter Sally must considered her managers/executives in craft this portfolio. She must ensure that all managers/executives have fully understood the portfolio and agreed in adopting it. She can do this by emphasizing advantages of project portfolio Management. One is the discipline needed in the company in selecting projects and ensuring the linkage of projects to strategic metrics. Also, the prioritization of project proposals will be based on some criteria or qualifications in order to give fair treatment to everyone. Balancing the risk in all projects is also an important strategic management. If an unnecessary project must inevitably be disregarded, Sally Peter is required to justify it not only to affected area but also to the whole company though developed communication and supports agreement on the company’s vision. Portfolio Management System Simple steps of portfolio management system can be applied by Sally Peters in order to ease the conflict of interest. First is the assessment of both financial and non-financial of each project. The financial must include the payback, net present value and internal rate of return. The Payback model is the measure of time, with the aid of cash flows, in recuperating investment and a shorter payback means much beneficial to the company. However, this model only assumes cash inflows for thee investment period with considering future investment and overlooks he time value of money, thus, it cannot be equated to the profitability aspect of the projects. Another model is required which is the Net Present Value (NPV) model that considers the minimum desired rate-of-return or discount rate upon computation of present value of cash flows. A positive NPV means feasible project, otherwise means impractical project. Internal rate of return is also included and all financial data must be tabulated in order to see the comparison of different project proposals of the managers/executives. The non-financial data can provide importance in properly classifying projects. In project selection, “Multi-Weighted Scoring Models can be of great help with Sally Peter since it can decrease of the number of unproductive projects, recognize the objective of each project and can provide clear explanation why certain projects were chosen and others are rejected. Project Guidelines One way of preventive measure of the current predicament of the company is to provide clear guidelines in conducting project proposals especially to the future members of the organization as it expands its size in next few months. Getting straight to the bottom line of the problem will surely save time and effort since bigger problem in the top level management will be avoided. In the concept of project management, there are five simple steps to follow in crafting project such as the following: 1. Defining the Project Scope 2. Establishing Project Priorities 3. Creating the Work Breakdown Structure 4. Integrating the WBS with the Organization 5. Coding the WBS for the Information System Defining Project Scope The project scope primarily means the outcome of every project in which the target consumer is met. In Brown Educational Game (BEG) company, it aims to serve the demand of young children for educational games. Upon recognizing this scope, the problem of the company focusing in working on an international business game for college students will be avoided in the future. The definition of scope will also be advantages to the project per se since it can identify the right deliverable needed for its achievement with much focus on its objective. This can also be an instrument in gauging project success. The scope must consider some aspects such as project objective, deliverables, milestones, technical requirements, limits and exclusions and reviews with customer. Before proceeding with the project, the scope or work or (SOW) must be authorized first by Sally Peter, project manager, known as project charter for some projects scopes are subjected to project creep or the need of more time because of dynamic requirements, specifications, and priorities. Establishing Project Priorities Trade-off usually arises in every project because of modification or relative importance of criterions in terms of cost, time and performance constraint. In dealing with it, although a parameter is a fixed prerequisite, one can optimize the parameter from others or decreasing or avoiding it if necessary. It should not hinder the project to continue its completion and this can be done by setting priority among the trade offs. Creating the Work Breakdown Structure In order to facilitate the project, Work Breakdown Structure or (WBS) is needed. It is a hierarchal sketch or map that recognized the end result and labor elements needed in the project. Also, it distinguishes the association of deliverable to its subdeliverable specifically in work packages. It is considered an appropriate for design and build projects having substantial products and not to process-oriented projects. This could also be advantageous to Sally Peter since WBS can be of great assistance in analyzing cost, time as well as technical performance of the project. The information is well specified for each organizational level. With its proper assignments of individual units in the project, it assists the improvement of organization breakdown structure of (OBS) through proper communication and coordination of other aspects of the project. Thus, truly help Sally Peter in handling plan, schedule as well as budget. Integrating the WBS with the Organization As previously mentioned, the WBS facilitate Organizational Breakdown Structure, this can be done through proper integration of WBS within the organization. It illustrates the dispersal of work responsibilities in a project. It also presents structure a summary of organization work unit performance specifically in the packaging area. Moreover, organizational unit binds to the cost control accounts. Coding the WBS for the Information System In order to facilitate the use of data of information system of each project, it is advisable to encode the WBS in organized manner. It includes the different levels and elements of the WBS, organizational elements, work packages and budget and cost information. This facilitates the consolidation of reports of project at different level of the organization structure. Project Management Time and Cost Estimation Since Brown Educational Game (BEG) is also encountering over budgeted projects and unmet deadlines, Sally Peter must employ the estimation process of Project management. In this process, Sally Peter can have an assurance of correct estimates of each project being proposed. Although there a lot of capital inflow, the capital should be used properly and wisely rather than being wasted in over budgeted project. Estimating Project Estimating is defined as the way forecasting approximate time and cost to achieve project deliverables. Several factors such as planning horizon, project duration, people, project structure and organization, padding estimates, organization culture and other non-project factors affect the quality of estimate There two types of estimates in the project management. One is the Top-down or macro estimates and the other one is the Bottom-up or micro estimates. The former includes the consensus methods, ratio method, apportion method, function point methods for software and system projects and learning curves. The latter mainly focuses on template method, parametric procedures applied to specific tasks, detailed estimates for the WBS work packages, and phase estimating: a hybrid. Developing Budgets Sally Peter can adapt the time-phased budgets in which the time phasing starts upon estimation of time of the project. It projects the resources needed of the project. In order to ensure that the forecasted cost meet the actual cost, some types of cost are taken into consideration. These are direct costs for particular work package (e.g. labor, material, equipment and the like), direct overhead costs directly tied to an identifiable deliverable or work package (e.g. salary, rents, supplies), general and administrative overhead costs indirectly linked to particular package that are allocated to the project. Refining Estimates In order for the estimate to be more realistic, contingency funds and time buffers, and changing baseline schedule and budget are necessary to be taken into consideration. The former is made autonomously to counterbalance uncertainty and lessen the possibility of cost and completion time overruns for a project. The latter may be cause by unanticipated incident in course of the project implementation. Database for Estimating After the project has been properly estimated, appropriate database of estimate is needed in order for reference of each project as well as future use in future estimation especially related projects. The database must be well systematic way of the process for the purpose of unambiguous record for auditing as well as for future use. It should contain estimated value and actual value on labor, materials, equipment. Also the benchmarking ratios as well as Code of accounts are included. Lastly, it should be incorporated in the database of the whole process of project management making an open interrelation with other aspect of the project. 12-Month Action Plan At first, Sally Peter must assume the position of project manager since she has the authority to do so and there would be too much politics as compared if one of the managers/executives would take the position. On the first week, Sally Peter must be able to disseminate the information that project management process will be implemented because of the current problems encountering within the organization. Another week will be allotted to orient the new member of the organization as planned in the expansion of Brown Educational Game Company. Also on that first week guidelines in making project would be started since the organization will expand after a week. On the third week, guidelines in making projects will be disseminated and it will last for two weeks in order to ensure that all organizational units are well-informed and also the feedback from the organization will be addressed. On the fifth week, Sally Peter will start discussing the new method of estimating the budget for every project that would also last in two weeks time. After one and half month, the new project management will be started. This new method will take three months including the project estimation. One month will be allotted for the project management portfolio and another month for the new project guidelines. The remaining month would be the project estimation process. There will be three cycle of project management that would last up to the tenth and a half month. The remaining sixth weeks would be allotted for the annual assessment of the implemented new project management. This assessment must reflect whether the new system is able to address the problems of the company, if not, Sally Peter must make necessary reviews on the system. Reference: Module 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Gray, Clifford F. and Larson, E. W. Project Management The Managerial Process. Retrieved October 30, 2007 from, Gray, Clifford F. and Larson, E. W. Project Management The Managerial Process. Retrieved October 30, 2007 from Gray, Clifford F. and Larson, E. W. Project Management The Managerial Process. Retrieved October 30, 2007 from, . Gray, Clifford F. and Larson, E. W. Project Management The Managerial Process. Retrieved October 30, 2007 from, BEG Extension (Applying Project Management) Part 2 Task 1: Completion of the Project Theoretical / Conceptual Framework "Management science, or MS, is the discipline of using mathematics, and other analytical methods, to help make better business decisions. While often considered synonymous with Operations research (OR), MS is differentiated by being generally thought to have a more practical, rather than academic, bent. Some of the fields that are en-globed within Management Science include: decision analysis, optimization, simulation, forecasting, game theory, network/transportation forecasting models, mathematical modeling, data mining, probability and statistics, Morphological analysis, resources allocation, project management as well as many others."1 Project Management "Project Management is the discipline of organizing and managing resources (i.e. people) in such a way that the project is completed within defined scope, quality, time and cost constraints. A project is a temporary and one-time endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service, which brings about beneficial change or added value. This property of being a temporary and a one-time undertaking contrasts with processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent ongoing functional work to create the same product or service over and over again. The management of these two systems is often very different and requires varying technical skills and philosophy, hence requiring the development of project management. The first challenge of project management is to ensure that a project is delivered within defined constraints. The second, more ambitious challenge is the optimized allocation and integration of inputs needed to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, quality, risk, etc.) to meet the pre-defined objectives."2 Is project management a suitable method ? Due to the definition of five different management sciences above, It is completely obvious that the problem can be solved more suitably via "Project Management" method because our resources which are managers and employees must be so arranged so that any project is completed within defined scope, quality, time and cost constraints. We have the lack of management for one out of each three project or maybe the management for each project is not good enough (67% control of each project respected to the previous situation of the company in last three weeks). The other problem is placing the right designer/programmer at the right place regarding their expertise and profession in design and development of applications. This way projects would be done faster since for example person A who has a "profession"/"degree"/"previous work experience" in Job A will do the job faster that anyone else. One more issue would be the relation of time, number of taken projects and the service force (the employees). Project Management will take care of it and will help us know how to fill the gaps in the best way. If everything goes right with the schedule, the expected earliest time of the completion BEG extension would be May 22, 2008. A survey will be conducted from October 8, 2007 up to October 12 of the same year. Having the assumption that the project has available resources when required, soils report, traffic design and lot layout will be done at the same time after the survey is finished. Although the three activities have different required time to meet, it is necessary for the three to be completed first before proceeding to design approval. Since the traffic designs need longer time (30days) as compared to the other two, the prerequisites for design approval will be completed on November 26, 2007, thus, the design approval will be started November 27, 2007. Taken into consideration British bank holidays, in which work needs to stop, the design will be completed on March 26, 2008. Immediately after, illumination, drainage, landscape and signing will be started all of the same time. Since these four are prerequisites of the last activity, the longest time need among the four, which is the completion of the drainage, will be considered before the last step. That would be finished on May 8, 2008 and again with due consideration with British bank holidays, the ten days needed for bid proposal will be started May 9, 2008 and will be completed on May 22, 2008, the last activity in the project. Task 2: Cost of the Project The total cost to this project in regards only to the salary of people who will perform the activities would be £15,200. £ 2,000 will be paid to Junior Architect in conducting certain activities such as survey, lot layout and drainage. The project would need £ 800 to Soil Analyst for the completion of soils reports. Traffic Engineer would be responsible to traffic designs and illumination requiring a total of £ 3,150. Upon the approval of project design, Senior Architect will need £ 6,400 since it would take him 80 days of thorough examination of the design. In doing landscaping that would take 25 days, the project would require £ 1,250 for the person in charge. After that, £ 800 will be give to the signer of the project and another £ 800 to Senior Manager upon bid proposal. Table 1 Activities Predecessor Time (Days) Staff Rate Per Day Required Salary Survey None 5 Junior Architect 50 £ 250 Soils Reports A 20 Soil analyst 40 £ 800 Traffic Designs A 30 Traffic Engineer 70 £ 2100 Lot Layout A 5 Junior Architect 50 £ 250 Approve Design B,C.D 80 Senior Architect 80 £ 6400 Illumination E 15 Traffic Engineer 70 £ 1050 Drainage E 30 Junior Architect 50 £ 1500 Landscape E 25 Landscaper 50 £ 1250 Signing E 20 Signer 40 £ 800 Bid Proposal F,G,H,I 10 Senior Manager 80 £ 800 Total £ 15200 Task 3: Critical Path of the Project Soils Report Landscape Illumination Survey Layout Design Approve Design Bid Proposal Signing Traffic Design Drainage Timeline In analyzing the above critical path of the project, there are two paths or series of “connected” and “dependent activities”. One is completion of soils reports, layout design and traffic design before proceeding to the next activity which is the approval of design. Here, the longest one is the traffic design and the shortest one is the soils report—critical path. On the next is the completion of landscape, illumination, signing and drainage in order to continue the project to the bid proposal. The critical path here is the drainage which is the longest and illumination which is the shortest. Since activities such as approval of design and cannot be possibly start until such time that all the preceding activities will be completed, it can be a source of delay to the completion of the whole project and at the same time requiring additional cost in adjusting. Task 4: Solving Potential Risks of the Project The potential risk of this project is the two existing critical paths having many series of “connected and dependent activities”. If these activities have been delayed the completion of the next activity will also be delayed and the whole project itself. In addition, since the project will take almost six months in order to be completed, having already passed most numbers of British banking holidays, with the delay the project may still continue to incur much of the British banking holidays. This cannot be good to the project since they may continue to require more funds in order to sustain the project. In order to lessen the effect of the delay, proper and accurate execution of activities particularly within the critical path is necessary. If in any case this problem occurs, an extra effort in the proceeding activity must be done to compensate for the delayed time or the company can choose to use Saturday and Sunday and even holidays if possible. Though, this would mean additional cost on the project but further losses may be prevented given that in this event time must be properly maximized. Task 5: Implications of Delay With an increased of five working days in completing drainage and landscape activities, a delay on the whole project will be expected. Apparently, the delay is much rooted on the former rather than the latter since drainage is considered having the longest time needed in all the prerequisites of bid proposal activity. The schedule of bid proposal will only be started on May 16, 2008 instead of May 9, 2008 of the previous estimated project., thus, make the whole project to be completed on May 30, 2008. Furthermore, this kind of delay may imply higher cost in regards to salary of person assigned in the two activities. An additional cost of £ 500 will be faced by the project making its required budget to be £ 15, 700, not to mention the effects on other cost (e.g. machine, equipment among other) that are not considered in this study since this whole study was only focus on the labor aspect. Table 2 for Task 5 (Data Use in Microsoft Project 2007) Activities Predecessor Time (Days) Staff Rate Per Day Required Salary Survey None 5 Junior Architect 50 £ 250 Soils Reports A 20 Soil analyst 40 £ 800 Traffic Designs A 30 Traffic Engineer 70 £ 2100 Lot Layout A 5 Junior Architect 50 £ 250 Approve Design B,C.D 80 Senior Architect 80 £ 6400 Illumination E 15 Traffic Engineer 70 £ 1050 Drainage E 35 Junior Architect 50 £ 1750 Landscape E 30 Landscaper 50 £ 1500 Signing E 20 Signer 40 £ 800 Bid Proposal F,G,H,I 10 Senior Manager 80 £ 800 Total £ 15200 In addition, I papered a chart in below which can show the important role of Management in the studio/company. Here as you can see, the process of completion of projects is done through "Analysis", "Design" and "Development" the same as many other organizations or companies. In our game studio, one third of management power is lost and this caused the lack of good cooperation between the staffs and this causes huge problems if the company still gets the same amount of projects and /or does not wish to kick some of the unused staffs out. In order to analyze the workflow of the organization to identify the weaknesses in project management, we will analyze the GANTT chart of a game The above GANT chart has been designed by one of the two remained managers at the company. This manager has only asked the employees to follow this schedule to accomplish the project after some primary analysis. However after 30 days the chart looked like this: In this chart, the problem is related to design and development processes. The design process has been extended for 9 days and this shows that the designer has had serious problems with the order. In fact the designer has not been professional enough to handle this project. On the other hand, the development process has been extended for 5 more days which shows that the analysis and design processes has not been good enough or maybe the developers too have not had enough expertise on the subject they have been working. Reference: Module 4, 5, 6, 7 Gray, Clifford F. and Larson, E. W. Project Management The Managerial Process. Retrieved October 30, 2007 from, . Project Management Lifecycle, NYS Project Management Guidebook Release 2 Available to download from http://www.oft.state.ny.us/pmmp/guidebook2/index.htm WikiPedia, Management Science,27.06.2007 available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_science WikiPedia, Decision Analysis ,27.06.2007 available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_analysis WikiPedia, Project Management ,27.06.2007 available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management Read More