Chain of Retail Stores -- Project Management Case Study

Chain of Retail Stores -- Project Management Case Study

Managing Project

Managing Budget

Managing Cost

Managing Project

Project management has become so refined over the course of its development that the implementation of a project based on a good project management foundation is actually more important than having any in-depth knowledge or expertise in any particular industry (Badiru & Adedeji, 2012).

The four most common compositions of teams are the purely functional project structure, the pure project organization, cross-functional team, or a hybrid or matrix team (Field & Keller, 1998). Furthermore, there are a wide array of outsourcing and project partnering opportunities that can further complicate the network structure (Cleland & Ireland, 2006).

Establishing a schedule is more than likely one of the most important critical success factors of any modern project (Thomsett, 2010). Many of the project management software solutions, such as Microsoft Project, can be a project manager's most important asset in managing and tracking the project's progress (Biafore, 2010).

For simple projects with fewer than thirty activities a mere list of activities may suffice. However, for more complex projects it is critical to utilize a network diagram in order to provide a visual representation of how the projects are organized. A network diagram can provide a quick and incredibly useful visual of how activities are related in terms of their relationships and interdependencies (Campbell, 2005).

Customer needs and requirements may be one of the most challenging aspects of the needs definition process and well developed people management capabilities (Frame, 2002).

One of the keys to developing meaningful objectives is to make sure they are SMART; specific, measurable, aggressive, realistic, and time-sensitive (Portney, 2010).Not all projects go as planned. In fact, most projects face a wide array of problems or unpredicted events that delay the schedule significantly or make the project go way over budget. In situations where these setbacks are extreme, it may come a time to consider all of the project's expenditures to be a sunk cost and cancel the duration of the project altogether before the project gets too out of control (Staw & Ross, 1987).

Part Two -- Managing Budget

Most project managers collect data about the budget and compile it into some database either as a stand-alone database or as part of a project management software suite. However, this data alone does not represent any meaningful information and project managers need to figure out how to make this data useful to their job requirements (Drucker, 2005).

The budgeting process is largely dependent on human behaviors and there are many personalities that can drive budgeting decisions irrespective of the actual financial data that is being applied (Steele & Albright, 2004).

The budgeting process is often thought of as a static process in which targets are set and remain unchanged. However, there are many options available for flexible budgeting. These can be designed around either variable costs or production data for a selected activity index (Weygandt, Kimmel, & . Kieso, 2008).

Managers are constantly confronted with different conflicts that can either have productive or counterproductive influence on a project's budget. However, research indicates that organizations can structure cooperative goals and develop constructive controversy skills to help their managers use their budget conflicts to their advantage productively (Etherington & Tjosvol,.....