Establish a Project Proposal
The next stage will be to develop a project proposal. This will clarify some of the main aspects of the project and will include some or all of the following:
- The scope of the project: what it involves and equally importantly, what it does not involve.
- The timescale for the project: this will include the start date, important deadlines during the project and the time for completion.
- Resources: what resources will be available to carry out and complete the project? These include both human resources (who will do what, when and where etc.) and financial resources.
- Main contacts involved with the project: these may include the college principal or the person responsible for health and safety at the college, the accounts department and so on.
- Potential barriers to completion: the project team needs to identify what factors might prevent the successful completion of the project.
- Thinking through the potential difficulties as well as focusing on the positive issues is an important part of the planning process. For example, what happens if people drop out of the trip or do not pay their deposit on time? What if the venue you are hiring is double booked? Thinking of these things beforehand will help you to cope with potential difficulties as they arise and enable you to have contingency plans in place.
- Learning aims: each person in the team might wish to identify their own personal learning aims in the project.
Initialising the Project
Once the proposal stage is completed, the actual start of the project will go ahead, which will involve a series of actions. Planning is all-important in making sure that the deadlines etc. identified in the project proposal are met. The project will have to be directed and each stage in the project managed to ensure that the timelines are met.
It may be that the project will require short progress reports to be submitted at key stages to assess how the project is going. These will identify any potential problems that may arise that need to be dealt with to ensure the project is completed on time.
For example, if you are planning to arrange a group trip to a leisure park like AltonTowers, certain key things will need to be in place. Coaches will need to be booked or train tickets secured; is this done before or after you secure deposits or payments from customers? You may need to have a database set up with details of customers who have expressed an interest in going. This would detail whether they had paid a deposit, how they paid, whether they had paid the whole amount, when payments were received and what happened to these payments - were they banked, for example.
You might choose to use a variety of different methods and software to monitor the progress of the project and also to ensure that communication between the members involved in the project is high on the agenda. Meeting deadlines, however, will be essential to ensuring all goes smoothly. Copyright: Jan-Willem Pap, from stock.xchng.
There will need to be particular people involved in specific aspects of the project. These may include some people dealing with the financial affairs of the project, others dealing in the advertising and promotion if relevant, others in the details of the actual event - for example, negotiating with the venue about the catering arrangements, safety, rules and regulations, access to equipment and so on. The project manager will oversee all these activities, making sure that there are clear lines of communication between all the team members involved.
The importance of good communication and negotiation skills will be an important learning outcome of this stage of the project. One of the key aspects of this stage is not just planning out what will be done and when, but focusing on the process of project management. This means getting the job done, getting results and meeting targets to complete particular activities at particular times.
For example, if the project involves going to AltonTowers, getting a quote from a coach company for the journey to the venue might need to be done at least eight weeks prior to the event taking place - many coach companies have advanced forward bookings! Once these quotes are in, those involved with the finance can then estimate what numbers will be needed to ensure that the cost per ticket for customers is reasonable. A 52-seater coach with a hire cost of £500 with only 35 passengers on it will mean that each passenger will have to be charged around £14; if it is full, the price for each passenger will only be around £9.60. When you add on the cost of the entrance to the venue, this might make a big difference to whether you get the sort of take-up you are looking for!
The simple task of hiring a coach to get to your destination is not as easy as it sounds - what size coach will be the most cost-effective? Is a smaller coach any less expensive than a larger one? Do you go for luxury or basic comfort? How many weeks in advance do you need to book the coach and on what terms and conditions will the coach company be looking to negotiate? What happens if they do not turn up when they say they will, or if they are late getting you to your destination? Copyright: Robert Davey, from stock.xchng.
Closing the Project
Closing the project involves a variety of different tasks, not least ensuring that all the accounts are tied up, creditors paid and accounts closed down if appropriate. Copyright: Vicky S, from stock.xchng.
The completion of the project may not end the moment the event finishes. If we take the case of the visit to AltonTowers, it may be that there will still be invoices to pay, finance to collect in and other issues to settle. These will have to be sorted out and it is often the case that this is the most dangerous part of project management. The end is near and it is easy to lose sight of the fact that important things need to be completed before the project can be closed.
Even when you have managed to collect all the money, settle all the invoices and so on, you may find that you have either a surplus on the account or, if things have gone badly, a deficit. These cannot be left, so you will have to find a way of disposing of the surplus (you may have decided to donate any surplus to a charity at the outset of your project planning), or what you will do if you end up with a loss. It may be the case that you have had to negotiate with the principal or your tutor: what would happen if you were unable to pay all your debts? For example, what would you do if you were unable to pay the coach company all the money they were owed?
This might have involved you in some pre-planning: arranging the signing of an agreement that as a student group, you would receive help from the college if such an occasion arose. You may find that without some form of security or underwritten agreement like this, some firms will not deal with you! Assuming everything turns out fine, your job will still not be over. You will have to make sure that any bank accounts that were opened to cater for this project are closed down and any sort of credit agreements cancelled.
Reviewing the ProjectThe final task in this exercise is to write up a report on your experiences. This will form the basis of your assessment for this unit. To achieve a distinction, your report will have to evaluate the planning and the process of the project. This will mean a bit of soul searching and honesty on your part, as well as identifying what you have learned from the experience. It is not good enough to say something like 'we needed to advertise a bit more to get more people to come'. Such a comment is an example of some simple evaluation, but not of a level to get you a distinction.
You might instead accept that the advertising was not adequate to secure the sort of numbers you needed to help you meet your aims (i.e. breaking even?). You will have to think carefully about what it was about your advertising that was not up the scratch: was it how you advertised or where you advertised? What evidence do you have that people were aware of the event and how did they react to the advertising? Was the success of the advertising limited by the budget you set for your advertising? Did you need to allocate more for advertising? If so, how would this have made a difference?
Part of the process of closing the project is to review what has happened and pinpoint aspects that you did well and not so well, so that you can learn from your mistakes and improve for next time. Copyright: Davide Guglielmo, from stock.xchng.
You might have identified that the communication between the team members was poor: maybe one person did not do their job properly, which was one of the reasons why the project did not go as well as you might have hoped. If so, what leadership or management lessons have you learned from the experience? Often, telling a friend that they are not doing a proper job is extremely difficult but in the business world, having to confront people and challenge them about their attitude, motivation and approach is an important skill in itself.