Project Management

Individual Project

You are the founder of a start-up company with 5 staff. Your team has recently developed a prototype kitchen utensil which can revolutionise the pineapple eating sector. To bring this prototype to the market you have secured the financial backing on an investor to the tune of $300,000 and, coupled with your own funds of $100,000 you now have enough investment to pursue your dreams. Now at the mercy of the investor, you have 5 months to move from prototype to a manufactured product ready to market and launch in early December to capture the lucrative Christmas sales. Noting how many Kickstarter projects never reach completion you are obviously nervous about managing a project of this type.

Pineapple Cutter

Assumptions There are several assumptions to the project (you can make and state additional assumptions in your report).

• The team members are not keen to work for charity and will need to be paid a fair salary during the project duration

• The launch event for the product will need some thought given the audience you are trying to target

• Your stakeholders are quite nervous about the whole project and need constant reassuring

• Remember that spending all your raised funds can be considered risky given that the launch of your product doesn’t mean instantaneous positive cash flow. The submission should consist of the following tasks. Please note that each task is separate and should be carried out in a sequential manner (using only the information you have been provided up to that stage), and you will need to repeat some of the information across tasks. Submitted format should be PDF and there is no word limit. Each of the five tasks carries equal marks:

Task 1 – Setting the scene

1. Which project management methodology have you decided to choose. Justify your choice.

2. Stakeholder management are critical to the success of the project. Identify all the potential stakeholders, capture their requirements, and develop a stakeholder engagement strategy including a communication plan.

Task 2 – Ensuring buy-off

3. To ensure that all parties agree, you have decided to generate a Project Charter to capture all the relevant information. Ensure that the objectives in your project charter are SMART (figure 1).

Task 3 – Project Scope & Scheduling To ensure proper project management, you have decided that several key activities (at least 20) need to be undertaken.

4. Identify all the key activities and present them in a Work Breakdown Structure. 5. Generate a GANTT chart with sufficient level of detail including linked activities and milestones.

Task 4 – Risky Business Given your experience with project failures (we don’t really want to talk about these) you have decided to be better prepared.

6. Identify 15 key risks and, using a risk impact-occurrence chart, select the top 5 risks.

7. Develop a risk register for the top 5 risks, identifying your mitigation strategies and other pertinent information.

Task 5 -Shock, Horror!

Unfortunately for you, a potential competitor has decided to bring their product launch date forward to mid-November to capitalise on the Christmas sales and ensure market leadership. Our market intelligence tells us that it the product performs a similar role to yours and should be launched on the 15th November 2025. Clearly, such an action is going to have impact on your plans. What are the new risks generated from such a decision by the competitor? What are the possible strategies you could undertake to that your product can be a success?