Project Management Leadership and Skills Assignment

You have recently been appointed by a large investor in the UK who is seeking to develop Target stores in the UK but they have concerns over the problems Target US had with their project in Canada (see Appendix 1). Your assignment is to write a report on the prospective Target UK as a project - considering what is likely to go well and what not so well.

Your report should therefore focus on the project management aspects including the key risks e.g. loss of money and overrunning its schedule and not meeting the performance requirements expected from a project of this type.

Part A (20%)
This involves the preparation of a PowerPoint presentation of your business case and project plan as detailed in the assignment brief. You are required to prepare the slides along with associated writtenpresentation notes for submission with Part B. Part A should be included in the beginning of Part B, in a Word/PDF document.

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Introduction

The aim of this report is to discuss a project plan and present a business case to understand how Target UK would be a project that would be approved by an investor who is willing to invest a large sum. Gantt chart has been given to highlight the milestones to be achieved in the mentioned timeline. A proper risk management plan, as well as risk matrix, has been showcased to understand what are the potential risks and hurdles that might come up during the project plan. Performance measurement indicators, budgetary allocations and requisite recommendations are discussed which would help in the final assessment of the whole project management plan for the expansion of Target store in UK.

Project objectives

Target is one of the largest retailer store in U.S. it is known for its lower prices it provides for products and is famous for the logo of a red bull's-eye. Target is known for its good reputation, which came from low prices, solid quality, and good choice (Joslin, and Müller, 2015). The investor wants to develop Target store in the UK however considering some problems that Target had to face with their project in Canada. The project objectives made carefully. Here are the following objectives:-

?          Developing and increasing knowledge, for example, competitive intelligence.

?          A well-structured data have to be prepared.

?          Customer's relationships with Target as it acts like a tool that leads to the processing of sales and will help to boost profit.

?          Reduction of cost like automation will eventually reduce the cost of labour.

?          Need to be aware of situations and do stakeholder analysis.

?          planning of risk management (Serrador, and Turner, 2015)

?          Enhancing productivity will help to get more output per hour of work.

?          Fulfillment of the practices, rules, regulations, and standards.

?          There should be improvement in the quality of services, processes, products, experiences, and data.

Project schedule

A project schedule is made that indicates what are the necessary things that needed to be done, which type of resources must be used, and until when the project is due. First, all the activities have be mentioned, the project schedule is commonly performed in a Gantt chart, all the important milestones and dependencies are included and there is also a progress bar that help group members and project managers of the project to check their overall progress they made in project (de Carvalho, Patah, and de Souza Bido, 2015).

Here is a Gantt chart on the project of Target.

According to the Gantt chart, in week 1-2, there will be meeting and discussion with the stakeholders. In week 3-4, secondary data collection along with literature review. In week, 5-6, for the project target were identified. In week 7-8, allocation of resources and budget was organized. In week 9-10, risk management was planned and in week 11-12, strategies of the project were developed. In week 13-14, all the necessary communication is been talked about and finally in week 15-16, findings of potentiality took place.

Literature review

According to Cullen and Parker (2015), Target is one of the renowned retailers with its headquarters in Minneapolis USA. With help from a large investor, Target wants to expand its stores in the UK and for that; a project plan is to be made. The initial stages of project planning involve the starting and setting up of the project. The objectives, scope, purpose and the items to be delivered are to be decided in this initial stage. The project, which is to be undertaken, is identified and then planned accordingly. The project manager outlines the activities to be done in the first stage, which is the initiation of a project. The second stage involves the planning process where the details of the efforts to be done for this project are described. The feasibility testing of the project is done in the first phase, which is the stage of initiation.

In the second stage, project planning involves setting up of goals using SMART and CLEAR approach. According to Hornstein, (2015), the SMART approach involves setting up specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely goals, which would help achieve the project plan effectively. In today's fast-paced situation, there is also a requirement of CLEAR goals, which are collaborative, limited, emotional, appreciating and refined. In this way, a project management plan crosses the first two stages of initiation and planning. These two stages ought to be free from any problems or issues.

According to Serrador and Pinto (2015), any project management plan required to follow a certain approach so that it is known how the project is carried out. Target requires adopting and identifying project methodologies of an approach to carry out the tasks of their UK store expansion project effectively and efficiently. The project approaches, which are mainly used in a project management, are agile, waterfall, and Prince2. The agile project management approach is used to evaluate value-centered methods in the life cycle of the project. Sprints are identified between projects, which allow for the growth of the team members. Feedback is also an important component of the agile approach in project management. The waterfall approach involves no or fewer changes or modifications in a project. Everything is set up at the beginning of a project in this approach and it happens accordingly like a flow. The third approach is Prince2 where the output can be clearly defined and the costs can be delivered on time. The suitable project management approach for this project is the Agile methodology and approach which has short delivery cycles known as ‘sprints' and the process is faster and more suitable to retail industry (Rigby, Sutherland and Takeuchi, 2016).

Performance measurement

This project requires a set of quantifiable metrics that have to be taken from numerous sources and along with the suitable analytical process, it allows the management of Target to follow and assess the current position of specific process or project (Todorovic et al., 2015). The measures give important information for managing the relation with past position, the present and future direction, incase anything seems to be wrong or when Target has obtained its goal (Ramanathan et al., 2017).

Here are the examples of performance measures:-

1. Developing of budget: - an annual financial plan for business in Target has to be first established and it will explain all necessary details regarding how it will gain financial objectives and monitoring outcomes.

2. Key performance indicators are important small target indicators and instruments used in navigation, which directly put in business strategy. Complicated goals become more simplified and meaningful to everyone taking part in business.

3. The scoreboard is top down tool in management that changes the objectives of applied strategies into accomplishing performance measures and action plans. The balanced scorecard is categorized into internal processes, financial, customer, and learning and growth (Arena, Azzone, and Bengo, 2015).

4. Target will set benchmark to compare its performance with other best practice performances measure. It is organized by government agencies and research companies.

5. Customer relationship management is part of performance measures, it track down the relationships and communication with potential and existing customers of a business.

Stakeholder analysis

The stakeholders involved in the launch of Target are investors, customers, suppliers, project managers, directors of the company. This analysis helps to understand interrelationships, attributes, and interfaces between opponents and advocates involved in project and coordinate to plan the project strategically (Eskerod, Huemann and Savage, 2015). Stakeholder analysis can be considered the initial step in planning of strategic activities on an organizational level. The needs of all parties are considered including the main members of the project with a business concept for future involvement (Mäenpää et al., 2016). The results and attitude obtained could be used to filter down and implement to multiple projects that are related to Target. The analysis will begin with coming up with different ideas in project group (Eskerod et al., 2015).

In stakeholder analysis, stakeholder mapping is a form of visual representation of the analysis, the people are organized according to important criteria and that will help to manage them during project. These criteria involve influence, financial state, interest, emotional stake, and sidelining those who are important enough to be kept in the project. It can be done in a spreadsheet or grid.
The opinion and influence from most powerful stakeholders help to give shape to the project and it will be better used for success. Most importantly, there would not be any wastage of precious time and resources (Martin et al., 2016).

Budget and resources

The budget and resources allocation for the project plan has been described in the two tables below. The budget has been balanced wherever it has exceeded the planned value. Resources have been allocated accordingly with respect to the days and dates.

Risks and hurdles

Target Canada had to face some risks and hurdles due to which the retailing company failed in Canada. It could not bring success into Canada expressing values of deep customer intelligence earlier. However, Target soon, understood its problems. Here are the risks that it had to face:-

• During 2015 in the month of January, target announced its Target exit; it was found that 88% of Canadians felt that Target did not come up to its tagline, "Expect more pay less."

• Target could get success in case they involved with Canadian shoppers, as they were also Target US shoppers and needed to value more about their experience (Cagliano, Grimaldi and Rafele, 2015).

• The issues in supply chain described that they could not provide online shopping for the customers and that further made shoppers more frustrated (Cagliano et al., 2015).

In order to launch a new Target store in UK, the investors need to focus the above issue or risks that Target Canada had to face. They need to assure customer intelligence, Target needs to illustrate on information from various source and evaluate it with the speed of business. This customer intelligence tells decision makers about what, when, who, where and why.
It will provide guidance to leaders, as they will make real world business choices (Carvalho and Rabechini Junior, 2015).

Risk management plan

The risk management plan states the risks, which have been identified with respect to the project plan for the expansion of the Target store in the UK. The risks have been identified and their probable measures have been given. Risk management with probability of risks in percentage has been shaded accordingly. Both the risk measurement chart and the risk management table describe how the risks are covered in the project plan (Anantatmula and Rad, 2018).

Recommendations

The recommendations for the improvement in the project plan of Target UK are as follows:
? Risks are to be identified earlier so that the problems and issues can be mitigated within time.
? In order to establish a proper project management plan, communication needs to be improved. Sometimes it is the lack of communication, which creates obstacles in the closure of the project plan.
? The project manager has to ensure that each team member has understood their responsibilities, and there is no sense of animosity in them against each other.
? TARGET as a company has to study the feedback of customers and stakeholders from its other store chains around the world and implement strategies, which were successful and effective in those (Riol and Thuillier, 2015).
? The goals, which have been set up, ought to be appraised periodically so that the project managing team adheres to them while formulating the project plan towards its final stage (Riol and Thuillier, 2015).

Conclusion

Therefore, in this project management report of Target UK it could be observed how the project management plan was made. The risks and planning related issues were identified and proper measures were provided for the same. It could thus be found that if the project plan is undertaken in the manner this report has evaluated, the project would face fewer risks as predicted and it would be successful in the final stages.

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