Project Management Assignment: Removal of Cash Payments at LOCALBus Ltd

Question

Task: Removal of cash payments at LOCLBus Ltd.

Overview
LOCLBus Ltd are a bus operator in the East of England, in the UK. With a fleet size of 60 vehicles, ranging from large minibuses to 60 seater vehicles, they are a well known independent operator in the region, second only to the main contractor, First Group who operates the main local authority contracts in the region.

In response to demand from customers and the local authorities who contract LOCLBus to operate key services on their behalf, the management team have decided at a recent board meeting to stop accepting cash payments on all services where customers pay the driver (so not, for instance on school services) and replace cash with card payments and, they hope an App for mobile devices. The board realizes this is a huge change for them, as since their inauguration in 1972, the only way they have accepted payment is via cash and it totals £2.7m per year, around 40% of their revenue (the rest being from local authority payments and other commercial contracts).

You have been recruited, due to your experience in commercial vehicles, to project manage this process, from fact finding to roll out of the first phase (card payments on vehicles) to the full roll out which will cover Contactless card, Apple Pay and Android payments and their App which will allow customers to buy virtual tickets in advance. The current status is that the project has been discussed, and you have some guidance documents from the board, but nothing has been started yet. You are expected to plan the complete process, and write a discussion report which will go to the board in the form of a 2500 written report and supporting documents outlining the key steps in the project.

On your first day in the office, you bring your trusted guide books; Project Management by Harvey Maylor and the PMBOK Guide from the Project Management Institute. You will be referencing these as best practice and anything else you think is suitable in terms of sources.

You admit to feeling a little overwhelmed by the new job, but with the tools and techniques you have learnt and guidance from best practice, you think ‘if they sent man to the moon’ you can do anything...

Further information and tips to help you complete and create your project plan:
1. LOCLBus plan to buy the equipment that includes card reader, control system and web based storage and part of the project which will be to source a suitable supplier who will partly define the roll out based on their timelines and experience. A supplier who is of interest to LOCLBus is detailed in Appendix 1

2. LOCLBus require their own custom mobile app to be developed, this will be branded with the company image and provide fee-free transfer (to the customer) via the different payment methods. They require a plan to be defined, to understand timings and cost for the mobile app development. A quote has been included in Appendix 2 to help you.

3. A Risk register will need to be produced to understand the risks to LOCLBus of the project’s delivery phase and the use of the new system in the initial roll-out. (A template is available in the course textbook and in lecture notes).

Key delivery phases
The CEO of LOCLBus has given you the following document which will outline the key phases they believe must be completed, but of course, you are expected to add to these and elaborate in line with best practice as you think is suitable. It will give you a briefing of how the company feels they need to progress and the resources you may need.

LOCLBus removal of cash payments strategy planning document - INTERNAL, CONFIDENTIAL

Assignment Deliverables
You are required to deliver a 2500 word project management assignment report on “Best practices in Project Delivery for a regional transport provider” This report should detail the approach you will take to deliver the project at LOCLBus and will detail best practice in Project Management, including, but not limited to:

• Balancing cost, time and quality
• Stakeholder involvement
• Risk Management
• Team structure between the three companies
• Plan for strong communications with the selected suppliers and internal team
• Supplier choice and management
• Project management processes and methods to be used (methodology)

Answer

Introduction
The report on project management assignment is a case study analysis ofLOCLBus Ltd which is prepared to manage a project for removal of cash payment feature for bus booking service. The report is prepared based on project management strategies and application of project management tools and techniques. The project charter is prepared with mentioning project scope, reason, project objectives and constraints; risks identified project benefits or expected outcomes from the project and overview of the budget. The project plan is prepared with using project Gantt chart based scheduling with assigning time and predecessors to suitable activities (Ye and Konig 2020). The Risk register in this project is prepared based on project tasks and provided case study, moreover, a stakeholder map and communication plan is prepared to operate the allocated stakeholders and their responsibilities.

Project Charter
Project Charter is a document where project management aspects are mentioned and this document is prepared to provide a specific understanding about the project. Project management requires handling the project progression with including necessary characteristics such as project schedule, cost, and project scope (Saravanan and Soundarya 2021). Project manager require to identify the issues in the project and to make necessary adjustments to avoid failures.

Project Scope: Project scope is known as the task requirements and completion of the scope deals with entire project completion. The project scope is hence considered as essential for managing the project activities along with defining the planned waterfall model (Hasan 2020; Enríquez et al. 2020). The scope of the project controls the entire project aligned with delivery of the project within a given timeline. The project scope also handles the project completion within a fixed budget. Scope management is considered as critical along with handling the task with priorities assigned and enabling the project plan and assigning the resources(Mir et al. 2020). When the project scope is not defined and the task order is not mentioned, the project can face scope creep issues.

Project cost: The project cost is considered as a financial statement of the project that is entirely dependent on cost and involvement is measured based on project cost. The project cost is also requiring resources to be utilized. Some other sources can be included in the project that can have influence on the entire project(Nemoto et al. 2021). There are some different aspects of cost that are either fixed or variable with the project activities. Project cost estimation techniques include as; assessment of historic data, estimation of resource cost, bottom-up project cost, parametric assessment of cost, vendor-based quote of cost, reserve or contingency cost, and cost of quality management.

Timeline consideration: Time in project is another part of the plan where, the estimated amount of time is allowed to reach completion of the project(Krishnan et al. 2021). The timeline is used to determine a deliverable of the project. Timeline in a project helps to understand the necessary activities and moving from one task to the end of the project to achieve project finish.

Table 1: Project Charter
(Source: Created by author)

Project Plan and Scheduling
Project planning is a document where a short formal document is prepared that can describe the entire project based on obtained activities and objectives. The project scheduling is main part of the plan and it should be followed during the entire project life cycle(Andhare et al. 2020; Igwe et al. 2020). Here, as per project charter, the project is estimated to be completed within 8-12 weeks’ time; actual scheduling includes 75 days’ timeline avoiding weekends and 8am to 6pm work routine. There are some different types of project management process to be followed; those are waterfall, scrum, critical chain management, agile, critical path method, hybrid,and integrated management. This particular project should be developed as per agile method. The project activities and deliverables are shown as following:

Table 2: Project Activities Scheduling
(Source: Created by author)

Figure 3: Gantt chart
(Source: Created by author)

Stakeholder involvement in project plan is considering sharing common knowledge and understanding in the decision-making process. The project stakeholders in planning phase has some advantages and benefits (Di Giuda et al. 2020; Elghaish Abrishami and Hosseini 2020). The stakeholders can ensure that project plan is a major requirement, trust environment should be developed and issues should be shared, report and project should be considered accountable. Moreover, the stakeholders should be involved as per the requirements, project action should be promoted and project activities should be held responsible, and stakeholder ownership should be increased.

Budget and Cost Management
Budget and cost management is prepared in following table:

Table 4: Budget plan and cost expenses
(Source: Created by author)

The budget and cost management table is prepared with considering development aspects of the project. However, this budget table is entirely a one-time cost; after implementation of the project, profit from ticket sale would cover the development cost expenditure.

Risk Register and Mitigation
Risk management is considered as a major part of controlling the entire organization. The risk can occur from several sources along with financial uncertainty, faults from management end, mishaps and natural calamities (Jradi et al. 2021; Sarkar and Ray 2020). Risk management should include organizations with identification of threats and control of the identified threats for security of digital assets. The risk management should include some major considerations as;

A. Creating safe environment for work towards all staffs and customers,
B. Business operation should be increased and legal burdens should be reduced,
C. People should be protected and potential harm should be avoided,
D. Detrimental protection should be placed, and
E. Organizational requirement should be placed for saving priorities.

Risk register
Risk register is prepared with mitigation plan under a single table as following.

Table 5: Risk Register with mitigation planning
(Source: Created by author)

Stakeholder Matrix and Communication
Stakeholder Matrix
The stakeholder matrix is considered as project management tool that can analyze the entire project and determine required actions for aligning project tasks with relevant stakeholders. There are different ways to represent a stakeholder matrix with a format of power interest matrix, stakeholder analysis, and stakeholder engagement assessment as well(Bublyk et al. 2020; Shah, Prasad and Singh 2020). For a power interest matrix, there is two major variables and against those, the stakeholder matrix is prepared. Stakeholder with high power and high interest should be considered as major, high power with low interest should be considered as parties required to be satisfied, low power and high interest are considered as parties should be informed and stakeholders with low power and interest should be considered as monitoring. The stakeholder matrix is prepared as;

Table 6: Stakeholder Matrix
(Source: Created by author)

Here, as per the case study and related information, the stakeholder matrix is prepared. Power and interest sections are mentioned with labeling each parties falling under each quadrants. In major category, there exists CEO (Mike Jones), CFO (Jenny Gooding), Project owner board, Project Manager as major stakeholders. In “should be satisfied” category, there are Fleet Manager (Hassan Khan), Operations Manager (Bernard Jenkins), and IT manager (N. King) as relevant parties. In the “should be informed” category, there are marketing executive (G. Ward), operations department, finance department as stakeholder departments. In monitored category, there is Supplier (S. King) as only stakeholder.

Communication Plan
The communication plan is crucial to handle all the stakeholders mentioned in the above part where the stakeholders should be involved with a suitable plan to coordinate teamwork (Fernandes 2020; Chavhan et al. 2020). The communication plan should include certain components such as;

Communication frequency: The communication frequency should be followed as at least twice a week(Biagini et al. 2020). The communication frequency is to be kept high as possible to get maximum responses from all the stakeholders to keep everyone informed.

Communication medium: The communication medium should be considered as per convenience requirement such as email, memo, report, and audio-video recordings. The communication session should be organized as meetings between the stakeholders and the discussion and relevant reports to be kept as future references(Abayomi-Alli et al. 2020). The audio-video recordings can be used for more detailed change management program. Memo and report should be introduced for new changes or incorporated changes management purpose.

Communication Agenda: The communication agenda would be decided from “major” category stakeholders such as CEO, CFO, project manager and project owner board. The communication agenda would be reported to all the stakeholders through memo and when everyone is present, and then the meeting session would be conducted.

Conclusion and Recommendations
The project can be concluded with stating some important aspects in project management that should be always part of priority to ensure project success. The project value assessment and quality management is always depend on the project activities. The project planning is mandatory and the planning controls the success of the project always. The scheduling activities are considered as a priority to the project. The stakeholder matrix is prepared with essential role to the project and their individual requirement to the project. Risk assessment is prepared as per project assumptions and critical scenarios. Some recommendations are mentioned as;
1. The stakeholders should be informed regarding all communication sessions
2. Interpersonal conflicts should be resolved
3. Changes in project should be approved before proceeding
4. Project owner board should be informed to proceed with certain changes

References
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Andhare, S., Lakkabathini, R., Gugale, K., Choudhary, S. and Chavan, V., 2020. Review on RFID Based Design and Implementation of Client-Server System With Peripherals and Wallet System for Student Centric Applications. Available at SSRN 3572335.

Biagini, V., Subasic, M., Oudalov, A. and Kreusel, J., 2020. The autonomous grid: Automation, intelligence and the future of power systems. Energy Research & Social Science, 65, p.101460.

Bublyk, M., Matseliukh, Y., Motorniuk, U. and Terebukh, M., 2020. Intelligent System of Passenger Transportation by Autopiloted Electric Buses in Smart City. In COLINS (pp. 1280-1294).

Chavhan, S., Dubey, N., Lal, A., Khetan, D., Gupta, D., Khanna, A., Rodrigues, J.J. and Pinheiro, P.R., 2020. Next-Generation Smart Electric Vehicles Cyber Physical System for Charging Slots Booking in Charging Stations. IEEE Access, 8, pp.160145-160157.

Di Giuda, G.M., Locatelli, M., Schievano, M., Pellegrini, L., Pattini, G., Giana, P.E. and Seghezzi, E., 2020. Natural Language Processing for Information and Project Management. In Digital Transformation of the Design, Construction and Management Processes of the Built Environment (pp. 95-102). Springer, Cham.

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Fernandes, M.R.D.R.F., 2020. Analysis and Improvement of Software Development and Project Management Processes.

Hasan, D.K., 2020. INTELLIGENT BILLING SYSTEM USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

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Appendix A: Risk register

Appendix B: Project plan

Appendix C: Stakeholder matrix

Appendix D: Project charter