Introduction
The report is aimed to develop the plan for project management of developing upscaled and advanced annual report of Young at heart. It is a national non for profit medical research center that conducts researches on the diseases related to aging. The center, for now, develops simple and easy annual report in black and white color. As the center works as a nonprofit organization, therefore, it is very important for it to provide more accurate and clear reporting of where it utilizes the funds provided by thegovernment, corporation and foundations and other donors. Therefore, the director of the external affairs is provided with the project to design and develop a new annual report to publish on the website of Young at heart. The report must be attractive too to use for the marketing purposes.
The project plan to design new annual report includes the scope of the project along with objectives and assumptions work breakdown structure (WBS), scheduling, critical path, and cost estimation, resource utilization and risk management.
Scope of the Project
The project scope is the most important aspect of project planning, and therefore, it is very important to define and explain the scope of the project of developing a new annual report for Young at Heart. The scope statement is actually meant to define the aims, objectives, milestones, limitations and assumptions of the project. Scope statement of the project can be defined as the documentation of the milestones, roles and responsibilities, objectives, limitations, strategies and assumptions of the project (Gido& Clements, 2014).
The scope of "New Annual Report Development of Young at heart" is to develop a new annual report to publish on the website of young at heart that must be easy to read, shorter, simpler and attractive. The project of report development must begin on 14th September 2016 and must be completed on 13th March 2017. The purpose of the project is to provide the well designed and attractive annual report so that it can easily be used for the marketing purposes.
Objectives
The project is aimed to develop a new annual report of Young at heart to improve its purposes, such as to use it for the marketing purposes, to distribute to the stakeholders and for the effective management of the funds. Based on these aims and purposes, the major objectives of the project include:
The project must successfully design an effective annual report that would help to get the Young at heart towards the center of attention in the competitive market
The report must be attractive and eye-catching
The report must include pictures, graphics, and colors
The report must contain the information that must be easy to understand by the average existing and potential donors
The project of report design, print and distribution must be completed by 13th March 2017
Assumptions
The assumptions are the facts and things that are considered as true based on the information and knowledge of the stakeholder and project team members. The assumptions for the project of annual report design for young at heart include the following:
The project team will receive all the funds prior to the beginning of the project according to the estimated cost.
The project team members will successfully access to the information of all three locations of the research centers.
The project will be completed within the given time and budget.
The project will find the colorful and attractive pictures and images from the sites successfully.
Work Breakdown Structure
It is very important to design and develop a work breakdown structure in the planning stage of the project as it provides the complete path and logical flow of the work. Work breakdown structure (WBS) is the decomposition of the project activities and tasks into many sub tasks and smaller activities to distribute the work responsibilities among the team equally to complete the work on time (Globerson, 1994). The project of developing new annual report requires many different works and activities to be done. These works and activities are as follows:
Responsibility Assignment Matrix
The Project team Joanne- marketing specialists, Hanare- A writer/editor, Priyanka –Staff Assistant and a project manager. The team will also hire vendors for designing, printing and distribution, therefore, the team responsibilities will also distribute to them. The roles and responsibilities based on the work breakdown structure is divided among the team members as follows:
Scheduling
Gantt chart
The scheduling is very important in the project management plan for the successful completion of the project on time (Kerzner, 2013). Below is the Gantt chart that scheduled that work from the work breakdown structure in a timely manner:
Network Diagram
Below is the network diagram of the project of annual report design and distribution at Young at Heart. The diagram shows the link between the activities and tasks and the flow of the work.
The task 1.6 below is linked with the task 1.5 in the above diagram:
The task 3.1 below is linked with the task 2.5 above.
Critical Path
The critical path shows the critical and non critical activities in the project. The critical path in the Network diagram above shows some red highlighted activities. These activities are known as critical. The critical activities can impact on the other activities in case of their completion in early or late, while, the non critical activities (blue highlighted) do not impact on other activities and the whole project in case of delay. It means that the project team is required to consider and control the red highlighted activities to avoid delay in the whole project.
The four major tasks planning, design, execution and closing of the project are critical as all these four tasks are highly dependent on each other. The designing cannot begin until the planning is completed. Similarly, the project cannot be closed until it is completely and accurately executed.
Within sub tasks, only 1.2, 2.1, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 and 3.4 are the non critical tasks as they are blue highlighted in the network diagram. These tasks will not impact on the other tasks in case of delay. It means the project is needed to focus on all the remaining tasks as they are critical and can cause the risks to the success of the project.
Cost Estimation
The table below is designed to allocate the budget to each task and activity to complete the project, and the budget is estimated in percentage of the total budget:
Resource Utilization and Resource Profile
Resource Profile and Cost
The chart below shows that which resource will be used for which task and how many resources are required to complete each task in the project of annual report development at Young at heart:
The total hours estimated above are the sum of the working hours for each member of project team. Although, the project is to be completed within six months, however, the total hours include the hours allocated for each resource going to utilize to complete different activities. Six month is the time to complete the whole project, however, different resources will be used in the same time and therefore, all resources in combination will utilize the total hours as mentioned in the table above.
Resource Usage
The table below shows the resource usage with working hours:
Risk Management
The risks are an obvious part of the project, and every project faces some sort of risks at any stage during the project life cycle (Young, 2013). The uncertainties can occur at any stage of the project, and it is very important for the project manager and team to control and manage these uncertainties and risks as these risks and uncertainties can impact and influence on the project both negatively and positively (Chapman & Ward, 1996). It is the responsibility of project manager to identify all the possible risks at any stage of the project. The project management team can even try to complete the project before time by controlling these critical activities and complete them early or on time. The risks identification is going to be done in the form of risk register that will be upgraded throughout the project life.
Risk Register
References
Chapman, C., & Ward, S. (1996). Project risk management: processes, techniques, and insights. John Wiley.
Gido, J., & Clements, J. (2014). Successful project management. Cengage Learning.
Globerson, S. (1994). Impact of various work-breakdown structures on project conceptualization. International Journal of Project Management, 12(3), 165-171.
Kerzner, H. R. (2013). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Young, T. L. (2013). Successful project management. Kogan Page Publishers.
