Part 1. Project Justification & Structures
As the leading home appliances company in the country, Firm X wants to evaluate the number of several proposals that would support it in extending its business and production throughout Asia. Currently, Firm X has the main office in the UK. There are 20 stores available for sales and after-sales services across Europe. Firm X has enjoyed a steady position for almost 15 years. The growths were never increased nor reduced dramatically. However, last year, there was an indication of growing sales of 17% or about 25.2 billion pounds. These opportunities triggered them to expand the business scale by selecting one of five available potential projects.
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Project Selection
Five projects are available, and management should be selected as the priority as the master project this year. They are a smart robot vacuum cleaner (project 1), electric cattle (project 2), an electric digital roaster (project 3), an electric stand fan (project 4), and an electric food processor (project 5). Each project has plusses and minuses. The management must decide the best project to implement in this first year.
The managing director must and wants establishes criteria to help management choose the best project. Three must objectives should be complied with by all the projects:
- The project should meet legal, safe, low energy consumption, and environmental standards.
- The project should receive and/or be eligible for the CE marking.
- The project should not adversely affect the company’s current or planned operations.
Meanwhile, the company also establishes the wants criteria followed by its contribution to overall decision-making. First, the project should have the opportunity to be nominated for and win the UK Home appliances award of the year (point 60). Second, the project should have the opportunity to create and attach strong media attention (point 20). Third, the project should have an appropriate time of completion. The project duration should be below seven months for better outcomes (point 50). Fourth, the project should be able to generate a profit greater than 20% (point 80). The assessment is relied on at this criterion’s highest probability of success. Fifth, the project has contributed to advancing state of the art in home appliances innovations and the firm’s reputation (point 40). Sixth, the project provides the basis for developing a new home appliance product (point 20).
All the projects are assessed using the must and want criteria to determine their rank and priority. Table 1 shows the assessment process and results. It can be seen that project 3 has the highest score in wants criteria, but there are two must criteria that are not applicable due to lack of information. Meanwhile, in the second lead, project 1 scored slightly lower than project 3. However, project 1 complies with the two must criteria. Therefore, careful considerations should be made to make a sound and best decision according to the company’s vision.
The main differences between project three and project 1 are the eligibility to receive CE marking and the project durations. Cheng (2020) defined the CE marking as the mandatory mark for compliance, indicating that all EU regulations have complied. It includes low voltage, toy safety, personal protective equipment, medical, and machinery directives. Project 3, the highest score in the wants criteria, does not have information about the CE marking eligibility. However, the product has low energy and has a personal protective equipment directive. It indicates that project 3 has a strong potential to comply with all the CE markings. Therefore, a careful requirement should be embedded when implementing the project. Meanwhile, the project duration is expected to be conducted within seven months. However, project one is estimated to be completed in more than one year.
| Must Objectives | Must meet if impacts | P.1 | P.2 | P.3 | P.4 | P.5 |
| Meets all legal, safety, energy-consuming, and environmental standards | Y = Yes N = No N/A = Not applicable | Y | Y | Y | N | Y |
| Receiving or eligible for CE marking | Y = Yes N = No N/A = Not applicable | Y | Y | N/A | N | Y |
| No adverse effect on other operations (Current and planned) | Y = Yes N = No N/A = Not applicable | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Want Objectives | Relative Importance’s 1 – 100 | Single project Impact definitions | P.1 | P.2 | P.3 | P.4 | P.5 |
| Be nominated for winning the UK home appliance award of the year | 60 | 0 = No potential 1 = low potential 2 = high potential | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Create and attract a strong media attention | 20 | 0 = No potential 1 = low potential 2 = high potential | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Time to market | 50 | 0 = More than 1 year 1 = between 7 – 12 months 2 = less than 7 months | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Generate profit greater than 20% | 80 | 0 < 20% 1 = 20 – 24 % 2 > 24% | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Advance the state of the art in home appliances innovation and preserve the firm’s reputations | 40 | 0 = no impact 1 = some impacts 2 = great impacts | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Provides the basis for the development of new home appliance product | 10 | 0 = No potential 1 = low potential 2 = high potential | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Total weighted score | 6 | 2,4 | 7,2 | 2,4 | 3,6 | ||
| Priority | 2 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 3 |
Project Structures and Skills
To succeed in this project, management must allocate suitable resources to carry on the project. It is needed that every team member should have the required project management skills. Joubert (2019) listed some competencies required for the project management team. The project team must have effective communication skills. Since this project can be identified as big, communication is frequently needed in teams. Next, project management managers and teams should have technical expertise in this area. In this case, they should have the expertise to develop a toaster. The team should have good problem-solving and decision making. A project manager should have outstanding leadership skills (Joubert, 2019).
The next task is preparing project structure organizations. The managing director can assign several employees or hire external professionals to help conduct the project. Considering the nature of the process and the company’s culture and capabilities, it is suggested that management adopts the project-oriented (composite, hybrid) typology (Twproject, 2022). In this typology, the work teams are organized by project. Firm X is suggested to hire external professionals because their employees have steady performance and knowledge. So, external expertise will be enriched the teams. This typology suggests that project management is a full-time position for professionals with project expertise. The project management administrator must be hired full-time to focus on managing the project.
Part 2. Project Documents
In implementing the project, several documents should be provided as guidance for project executions. This section elaborates on the project brief and scope of statements, project work breakdown structures, Gant chart, the network diagram, the stakeholder assessment plan, the risk management plan, and the evaluation of the selected project success factors.
Project Brief and Scope Statements
Executive summary
As the leading home appliances company in the country, Firm X wants to evaluate the number of several proposals that would support it in extending its business and production throughout Asia. Currently, Firm X has the main office in the UK. There are 20 stores available for sales and after-sales services across Europe. Firm X has enjoyed a steady position for almost 15 years. The growths were never increased nor reduced dramatically. However, last year, there was an indication of growing sales of 17% or about 25.2 billion pounds. These opportunities triggered them to expand the business scale by selecting one of five available potential projects. The project will be the firm’s new tool to expand its market across Asia.
Project Purposes/Justification
The business objectives of this project are to expand the firm’s market and improve the company’s sales and revenue.
– Design the low-energy electronic toaster to be offered to the client within the next six months
– Complete the implementation of the new home appliances product within the next six months
– Increase the sales by 20% in the first year of launching
Project Descriptions
This project aims to create an electric digital toaster. This is a low energy-consuming electric toaster. A 4-slices toaster with six browning settings, defrost, reheat and cancel settings, double wall housing, a warming rack, and auto bread centering with a modern LCD. It takes in electrical energy from the power outlet and converts it into heat very efficiently. This toaster can toast multiple types of sliced bread products. When the toaster is overheating or malfunctioning, it automatically turns off. This project will have a six-month time to market with a £500,000 budget. According to some customers’ feedback, this product has high customer service and after-sales service and value for money to innovation.
Requirements
This electric digital toaster must meet the following list of requirements in order to succeed in executions stages:
- The product design must be adequately tested and researched before entering the new phase, executions
- The new product must be tested in the company lab before deployment
- The product must comply with CF marking
- The project must be executed without disruption to daily operations
Constraints
The following constraints pertain to the electric digital toaster:
– All projects meet current legal, safety, and low energy consuming and environmental
standards.
– The selected projects should receive or be eligible for the CE marking
– The selected project should not have an adverse effect on the current or planned operations of the company
Assumptions
This project is executed with several assumptions that are agreed of all parties:
– This project gets the full and valid support of the project sponsor, the related stakeholder, and all department within the organization
– The company will be communicated the purposes of the project through the management and project teams
– Any staff in the related department will provide additional resources if necessary
Preliminary Score Statement
The electric digital toaster project will include project initiation, design stages, execution stages, testing stages, and project closure. The project team will manage all equipment, manpower resources, and other hardware. All project tasks will be monitored daily, and administrative staff will be assigned to conduct the project. Project funding will be managed by the project manager below the direction of the project owner. Any additional funding needed during the project execution will be available upon approval of the project sponsor. The project will be closed after the final report is submitted. The project’s technical documentation will be completed and distributed to key personnel stated in the project agreements.
Risks
Some risks are identified as follows. The project manager will coordinate to manager the necessary risk management and mitigation actions to minimize the likelihood of these risks.
– Faulty design due to technical incompetence and design error
– Potential disruption to operations during the deployments
– Machinery failure when testing process
Project Deliverables
This project has several deliverables, as follows. Any changes to the specification of deliverables should be upon the project sponsor’s approval.
– Fully deployed electric digital toaster
– Technical documentation
– Manual book
Summary Milestone Schedules
The project’s summary milestone is presented below. Any changes should be communicated during the project status meeting held by the project manager.
| Project Milestone | Target Date |
| Project Initiation | Week 1 – week 2 |
| *Project Kick off | Day – 5 |
| Design stages | Week 3 – week 8 |
| Testing stages | Week 9 – week 17 |
| Execution stages | Week 18 – week 22 |
| *Deployment | Week 23 |
| Project closure | Week 23 – week 24 |
Summary Budget
Budget needed will be explained in the following tables.
| Project components | Component cost (in pundsterling) |
| Workforce fee | 250,000 |
| Equipment’s & tools | 120,000 |
| Lab Preparation | 50,000 |
| Licensing | 80,000 |
Project work breakdown structure (WBS)
- Project initiations
- Kick off meeting
- Market survey
- Resources allocations
- Material preparations
- Design stages
- Design product component
- Develop for prototypes
- Testing for prototypes
- Testing stages
- Testing’s
- Validations
- Evaluations
- Execution stages
- Initial production
- Running the testing
- Evaluations
- Project closure
- Exit meeting
- Project documentations
Stakeholder Assessment Plan
| Stakeholder group | Goals, motivations, and interests | Influences | Interest | Action | Win/Win strategies |
| Managing Director | The project is conducted in time and success. | High | High | Key player | Approval for certain decisions and stages |
| Marketing departments | Maintaining a positive company image in society | Medium | Low | Key Player | Partner in the development and design of the products |
| Production and Lab management | Ability to maintain the business process as usual while contributing to execution and testing stages | High | High | Key player | Allocate the schedules for testing and execution, |
Risk Management Plan
| Risk Description | The likelihood of the risk occurring | Impact when the risk occurs | Severity | Owner | Mitigation actions |
| Product requirements are not clearly defined | Low | High | High | Project sponsor | Provide the complete business case and list the requirement carefully in Project Initiation Document |
| Project schedule is not clearly defined | High | Medium | Medium | Project Sponsor | Prepare the gantt chart and estimate the schedule properly |
| Workforces’ delays | High | Medium | Medium | Project manager | Monitor the performance and control regularly based on WBS |
| Design faulty | Low | High | High | Project manager | Coordinate with an expert related to the design. Communicate the final design to all stakeholders before the production. |
| Technical / machinery failure | Low | Medium | High | Project manager | Coordinate with an expert related to the design |
| Force majeure | Low | High | High | Project sponsor | Register the possibility of force majeures and their mitigation raised. |