Project Management Assignment: E-Commerce Website Development Of The Corner Store

Question

Task:
Purpose
Planning is a critical phase in the project management process as it is the key to successful project management. The purpose of this project management assignment is to provide you with the opportunity to develop a project management plan for the project that you had defined in your first assessment and to provide recommendations for successful implementation of the project.

Requirements
The body of your report must include the following components:

To establish the context for this assessment, you are required to present a summary (maximum one page) of the project's descriptions, objectives, success criteria, and priorities that you had defined in your first assessment. This section will NOT be included in the word count.

The project management plan and analysis:

Project title
A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) plus a discussion on your preferred approach for creating an effective WBS

The project's Schedule Plus a discussion on the strategies for reducing the project's duration

Identification and evaluation of the major risks that might be involved in the project plus a risk response plan

Recommendations and guidelines for the successful implementation of the project plan.

First, discuss the potential causes of the project's success/failure for the project that you have developed a plan for in this assessment. To support your discussion, you are required to reflect on your experience and refer to the research conducted in this area. Then, provide recommendations and guidelines for reinforcing/avoiding the causes of the project's success/failure. You are required to use any two of the following concepts to develop the recommendations and guidelines:

Project management structures

Managing project teams

Estimation

Project progress and performance evaluation

Project closure

Benefits realization

Project governance

Ethics in project management

Answer

Executive Summary
The project management assignment focuses on the Corner Store, which is planning to develop an e-commerce website for their business after the pandemic outbreak to continue their business profits and maintain customer retention. The assumption of the business is to recover the financial loss and achieve customer satisfaction. Each of the stakeholders associated with the project must play an essential role in ensuring the project's success rate. The project's priorities are to serve the intention and the desires of the consumers who are associated with the business. Moreover, the project's success criteria depend upon the development of the operational styles that can maintain the relation with each stakeholder of the organisation. This study will highlight the work breakdown structure of the project and the strategies used in the planning of the project. In addition to that, it will also analyse the various risks of the project accompanied by the risk response plan.

Introduction
Digital marketing has evolved a strong position after the outbreak of the pandemic. As the days passing by, the importance of e-commerce shopping has been increasing. The daily demands of the customers are being satisfied by the e-commerce websites when the people are not in a situation to go out shopping in some offline stores (Lin,Wangand Hajli, 2019). The Corner store has also decided in this case to develop their E-commerce website to reach the market. In this report, the work breakdown structure has been designed for The Corner store to understand the project's plans. This is followed by the planning of the project designed in series of steps and the definition of the strategies being used for the project. In the next part of the report, the risk assessment is being performed for the project development and a risk response plan. In the end section of the report, the recommendations are developed for the project. The recommendations will be based on the management of the project teams and the progress of the project, along with its evaluation of performance.

Work breakdown structure and effectiveness
According to Al-Kasasbeh, Abudayyeh and Liu (2021), work breakdown structure can be defined as the work division effectively to make it easier for the employees to understand the whole project in a perfect way. An an-e-commerce project has been necessary after this COVID-19 situation. With the help of WBS, it has been found that project work becomes easier to handle, and the execution of the project is much easier.

Figure 1: Work break down structure
(Source: Created by author)

The work breakdown structure, which is provided in the above diagram, is basically divided into four activities planning, implementation, monitoring and control and deployment. Further, these parts have been a break down into smaller segments to ensure that the employees do not get confused and the project manager can effectively deliver the whole project within the stipulated time period.

Top down approach has been taken for developing this e-commerce project work break down structure. It states that the biggest task should be taken into consideration and then it should be divided into smaller segments as done in the task with a branching format and thus it have helped the project manager a lot.

The precise execution of all the activities will create a successful project work (Collier and Lambert, 2018). The whole WBS has been divided into four basic levels, planning, implementation, monitoring and deployment. The main aim of decomposing the whole project is to ensure that the work components have been managed effectively.

• Planning: In managing the e-commerce project, it is necessary to develop the various requirements related to the setting of an online grocery store. Without planning, it is not possible to organise the actual research hosting options. However, this project is intending to use the cloud hosting types which will provide a load-balanced clustered server to the customer, and it is more reliable. The management team are in charge of this planning part. As per Ehikioya and Guillemot (2020), designing the site interface is necessary as it will create a perfect site where the customer will get every piece of information regarding the retail store.
• Implementation: In this stage, the development team must develop the e-commerce website and make sure that the site runs properly without any problem. After the testing of the site then it will be rolled out to the customers. An E-commerce site includes the development of the proper database of the customer who is the target customer for the retail store.
• Monitoring and control of the project: In this package, the control team of IT experts need to maintain the quality of the websites which have been created and to make risk management which will be done to identify the potential risk in the further procedure of the making of e-commerce project. With the help of the controlling segment, it can be helpful for the project manager to analyse the issue which is related to the website development and can affect the overall project if correct steps are not taken.
• Deployment: This is the last activity of the WBS, which is assigned to make sure that all the resources which are to be used for the project are monitored in an effective way (Lutsenko, 2017). This system is taken to shift the workers from one task to another where needed and to meet the needs of the operations, which include the training and the development of the team to serve the project in an effective manner.

Project strategies
For developing or completing any project, it is essential to have good strategies. In case of any ecommerce project for a corner store, it is essential to build some strategies and implement those according to the need of the hour or according to the time. For having higher gain or higher effectivity of the strategies, there is the possibility of using or segregating those into multiple parts and working according to that (Al-araibi et al. 2020). For the corner store, the strategies are mainly main for reducing the time of implementation and ensuring that the corner store's goal in this testing time is achieved correctly.

Website building
The first part of the planning is to create an effective website or build an application capable of taking orders and showing the customers about all the things or all the products available on the website. After building the website, there is a need of having good surveillance or a team to make sure that the website or the application is not facing any issues regarding its working potential.

Warehouse
It is also one of the parts of planning for the better facility provided to the potential customer of the corner store. By developing a sound warehouse, the corner store will create a good amount of stock. Furthermore, by having a warehouse in case of any difficulties regarding product supply, it is expected that the corner store will be able to supply goods for a more extended period than any other companies or ecommerce sites working in the market.

Competitor analysis
As per Pourhejazy(2020), for doing any business in the UK, it is vital to evaluate the critical market competitor present in the market. By having adequate knowledge regarding all the competitors, complete planning can be made. As in this case, one of the biggest competitors of the corner store can be said as companies like Tesco, Sainsbury and many reputed ones. For competing against those mega giants of the market, the corner store ecommerce platform has opted for a small area to do its marketing and work in the area, so by giving good facilities to the customers, having higher gain increases.

Market research
It is crucial to complete market research according to the situation and make sure what products are in demand in the market. By having a clear idea about the products, the corner store ecommerce platform is willing to create its warehouse fill of all their products (Das, Rajak and Kumar, 2018). One of the key reasons for adopting this strategy is creating trust among the potential customers that the corner store can supply a good amount of product.

Target
The critical approach taken by the corner store ecommerce system is regarding the market or doing business according to the location it is situated in. For example, the corner store is situated at 355 Oxford Street, London, UK. It is willing to target the customers to supply the needed material or the available materials within the close areas from its store (Kiradoo, 2019). By having this approach, the corner store is willing to deliver all the product at the right time and having issues regarding delivery tends to reduce in this way.

Budget
In the case of allocating budget, the corner store has adopted the value proposition budget strategy. By having this budget strategy, the corner store ecommerce project will make sure that the customers who are going to buy products from the website will get beneficiated and given the product at the best price.

Marketing
In the case of doing marketing for the compere project, the digital marketing approach is considered. One of the key reasons for taking digital marketing as the medium of marketing is the amount of involvement potential customers of the corner store ecommerce project is having. In any other medium or through any other marketing strategies, this number of customers cannot be reached (Qiao, Fricker and Labi, 2019). Therefore, while doing digital marketing, most marketing will be done through the help of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and other ones.

Technological aspect
One of the critical strategies for doing the project is to use technologies at their best. For developing the website or application, there is a need of having good technological advancement. Along with this, it is crucial to use technological tools for maintaining the details of stock and every other factor. One of the critical strategies of the organisation is to use technologies in all the aspects of the operation or the work of the corner store ecommerce project (Al-araibi et al. 2019). There is a huge dependency of the project over technology, and in case of having success for the project, it is essential to have technologies working in favour.

Shortening lag time between task
There is possibility of having time gap between two task or two strategies town be implemented. Without having much time gap or without giving away too much time after completing any task the lag time of the project is going to be reduced.

Concurrent task completion
Another way of reducing the time of completing the project is running more than one task at the single time. For saving the time in this project of corner store ecommerce project some of the operation are going to run in a single time frame. By doing this the chance of wasting any kind of time gets decreased and the time of completing the task also gets decreased.

Risk assessment
There are some associated risks in the execution process of every project. In order to ensure the feasibility of the project, it is required to analyse the risks and find out its alternatives which can help to handle these risks and restrict its possibilities. The Corner Store also faced some potential risks in developing and managing the new e-commerce website for their business.

• Technical risk- Technical risks are associated with any of the projects that occur unexpectedly during the project's implementation. Certainly, these risks are not anticipated beforehand; thus, it is reliable to perform the analysis of the risks to have early detection of these problems.
• Financial Risk- The risks of finance is likely to occur if the budget associated with the project did not meet the expectations of the project (Sharmaand Kurien, 2017). The budget allocated within the project it fails to meet during the implementation of the project, then it causes financial risk.
• Time Management risk-The risk of time management occurs in the development of the website if the project fails to deliver the project modules within the allocated time.
• Resource risk-As per Tzavlopoulos et al. (2019), The resources are likely to occur in the development of the website if the website could not fulfil the necessary resource requirement. These resources can be the shopping items, the payment methods, the sellers, the delivery agents, etc.
• Labour risk-The risk of labour may occur for the store if the store fails to maintain the skilled and adequate labour to manage the e-commerce website store (Wagner Mainardes, de Almeidaand de-Oliveira,2019).
• Requirement risk-The requirement risks are likely to occur to develop the e-commerce website if the website fails to meet the requirements that can specifically categorise it as an e-commerce website. It should have all the features and specifications that can make it popular among the customers.
• Communication risk- The communication risk can occur if the communication between the sellers and customers is not suitable or causing the dissatisfaction of the customers and investors.
• Quality risk- The quality risk is possible if the website fails to maintain the standard for regulations required to perform in a competitive market (Sharmaand Kurien, 2017). If the quality does not meet the customers' expectations regarding the maintenance and the technology used, it will not attract customers.
• Documentation risk- The documentation risk may occur if the store fails to maintain the documents required to manage the customers' data and their orders along with the shopping details and stocks of the store (Wagner Mainardes, de Almeidaand de-Oliveira,2019).
• Privacy risk- The privacy risk is highly possible for the website if there is no authorisation in the website, enabling the increased risk of cyber attacks and loss of sensitive information by hacking, phishing or any other cyber-attacks.
• Malware risk-According to Tzavlopoulos et al. (2019), the malware risks are very certain to occur in an e-commerce website where the system is not protected with effective antivirus to restrict the entry of any malware attacks. This may lead to system failure causing high expenses to counter the loss.

Risk Response Plan

Table 1: Risk response plan
(Source: Made by Author)

Timeline of the project

Gannt chart
Gannt chart

Figure 2: Gantt chart
(Source: Created by author)

Conclusion
The project is very efficient in creating something new or creating something new in this testing time for the corner store. Due to the impact of the covid 19 lockdown, the store has lost a tremendous amount of time, and along with this, the store has faced a more incredible amount of loss regarding its moratory funds. Here a detailed report regarding all the aspects of the operation of the ecommerce project is described in detail. In the initial phase of the report, a detailed analysis of the project's work breakdown structure is described after describing that the project planning and strategies are described for having a clear overview of the project. Then all the risks attached to the project are elaborated so that they can be solved or minimised. At the end of the report, a detailed recommendation that can be followed for development or a higher gain of the project is described. It is expected that all the planning made for the project will be very efficient and effective for the corner store.

Recommendation
For this e-commerce project, there are many parts where the project manager needs to improve in order to make sure that the whole project should accomplish the assigned goal. In the above part of the report, there are many risks which the project manager has to face while producing this project. But the main issues lie in managing the project team in a proper way and project progress and performance evaluation. Below given are the ways to improve the management of the project team.

• The project manager needs to set the goal of each employee in an appropriate way so as to set the goal clear for the team members. Implementing a daily habit of logging in order to interact with the team members will prevent inaccuracies in the project.
• The utilisation of the project templates and streamlining the project creation which will create great consistency among the team members. All the employees must be well acquitted with this template and should make it a daily routine, which will later help the project manager to generate the report.
• Communication is the primary approach which the project manager needs to improve as it will help to understand the team members. In case of any changes in the software of the project, all the employees should be informed about the project. Communication will enhance the project and will make it more successful.
• Proper training of the workforce is necessary to improve the condition of the employees and will help the manager to manage the overall project process. Many times the old employees do not have technical knowledge about the creation of the website. Thus, it is necessary to train these employees.

Some of the ways to project progress and performance evaluation of the project are as follows:

• One of the effective ways to improve performance is to stay focused on the primary goal of the project. Like to stay focus on the development of the e-commerce websites and include all the necessary things which are required for the completion of the project.
• The usage of intuitive time and practical technological tools is another way of recording the project time and the custom views in different roles. By maintaining the timesheets can reduce the overall time from the project schedules and technological tools make sure that the e-commerce project is set in an effective way.
• Automate billing system make the projects more profitable. These billing alerts at the time of the planning phase will make use of fewer errors. With the usage of PSA software, it can automate the invoicing and this help to manage the whole task in a perfect way.

Reference List
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