Nigel Longford Website Project Management and Marketing

Introduction

This is a project plan for marketing launching the website of the Nigel Longford, which covers different project development phases, which are described below. According to Aloini, Dulmin and Mininno (2007, p.34), the project was developed after consulting with key stakeholders, marketing, and web development experts. Meetings were held to define the project scope with the key stakeholder and web developer and other stakeholders to ensure that project objectives were determined and outlined accordingly. It was proposed that any changes to the project scope that might arise must be approved through a formal request and change procedure (Aloini, Dulmin & Mininno 2007). The main objectives will be to provide an online marketing platform, which targets to reach an audience of more than 80% of the customers in both the local and international market to enable them real time access the products and services offered by the company. Once successfully developed, the website will be launched on the Internet to reach the desired audience.

In theory and practise, the project phases consist of the project plan, monitoring and control, evaluation, the structure, and presentation. One of the key elements considered in the design was the size of the company (Dalal-Clayton, Dalal-Clayton & Child 2003). The site will provide the company with the potential to collect information about its products from different customers and to be able to customise her products according to the need and expectations of the customers. The website will enable the company to gather market intelligence reports for competitive analysis. Based on the opportunities that were identified in the market and the benefits that could accrue as a result of implementing the site, it was critical to think a project plan to implement the launch of the website. The first activity was to determine the activities of implementing the site.

Methodology

The methodology consists of the systematic execution of activities, which are necessary to market and launch the website for the company mentioned above. The proposed methodology is based on the concept of the system development lifecycle (SDLC). The rationale for choosing the method is because each deliverable at the end of each system development is evaluated for quality and conformance to the specifications of the desired system (Dalal-Clayton, Dalal-Clayton & Child 2003). Ragunath, Velmourougan, Davachelvan, Kayalvizhi and Ravimohan (2010, p.34) argues that the methodology has been proved to provide effective management control mechanisms at each phase of the system development cycle, and to optimise the skills and productivity of the system developers.

It has been established that the SDLC is a system development concept that accommodates projects of different types and scope and support all technical activities are involved in the development of a new system (Kwak & Ibbs 2000). The SDLC provides the flexibility to support the execution of different system development activities and processes. Another important reason that enabled the selection and use of the SDLC methodology is because adequate resources, which include the web development expertise are available, which can leverage the develop effort. Each development stage works rigorously for the effective development of a high quality system (Kwak & Ibbs 2000). Here, the SDLC methodology is flexible and rigorous for effective resource planning and provides the flexibility to identify the type of resources, the quality of each resource, for instance the skill of the web developer and the marketing staff, and specification requirements of each resource (Dalal-Clayton, Dalal-Clayton & Child 2003).

Project objectives

1. To develop a website for the online marketing of the company services by 2015.
2. To market the website by targeting different market segments.
3. Launch the website after the critical development period of 45 weeks.

The success criteria

• The performance of the site will be evaluated against the quality standards of the project.
• The page impressions will be evaluated against the needs and feedback of different customers (Del Cano & de la Cruz 2002).
• The number of visitors will provide information about the effectiveness of the site.

Project specification

The project specifications and outlines in the first week of the project development lifecycle-Those specifications include the development team who include the software developers, the marketing staff, and the project management team. The audience includes the holiday makers from the local and international market.

Stakeholder document

The document is discussed with the stakeholders and the project management team to ensure all elements populated into the project are accepted by all parties involved in the project (Kerzner 2013).

Description of project outcomes and definitions

The outcomes include the website, which provides a platform for effective marketing, navigational capabilities for people of different audiences, ability to gather market intelligence reports, and to statistically evaluate the log in rates and the number of users and sessions in a given period.

Content plan

The content can be recycled or created from scratch or purchased. For instance some videos have to be bought, delivered, and uploaded for the audience to access.

Marketing

The marketing strategy will include the use of page title, tags, and meta tags.

Definition of functional, technical, and data requirements

Those include the following elements:

• Structure
• The site map, functional specifications, and technical specifications
• A comprehensive site map which shows the links and navigations
• The required wireframes for each page
• CSS/HTML for each page
• Static and dynamic HTML/CSS elements

Monitoring and control

The monitoring and control of the project consists of key components, which are classified into the cost, time, quality, change, risk, and communication components. The proposed cost will be managed by recoding every available time spent on the project using a timesheet register for time and resource management for each activity undertaken (Kerzner 2002). Expense forms will be used to record approved expenses, and shall be approved by the project manager. On the other hand, a quality assurance, quality review, and quality control will be implemented to ensure project quality. A formal definition of project deliverables, a change management plan, project scope, and change request details will be entered into a formal document before they are addressed and communicated to the project development team on time.

Project communication

The project communication plan will provide a strategy and formal approach of identifying projects issues to be communicated and reviewing methods of communicating the messages within the project development team (Kwak & Ibbs 2000).

To ensure that a formal process is in place to effectively communicate messages, the project communication plan will consists of the project status report document. It will be critical for each member in the project team to make an entry into the communication register of the item or message to be communicated (Kwak & Ibbs 2000).

The templates, which will be used in the communication plan include:

1. A communication register
2. A communication management process
3. A project status report.

Presentation

The proposed project presentation will include a communication plan, risk management strategies, and project management issues, which are tabulated and discussed below.

The communication plan

Risk Management

This is a proposed risk management plan to address the probability of risks occurring and having a potentially negative impact on project progress and countermeasures (Tah & Carr 2001). The process starts with risk identification and the potential risks have been identified below.

1. Risk identification
2. Risk responsibilities
3. Risk assessment
4. Risk response
5. Risk mitigation
6. Risk contingency planning

Risk mitigation strategies

1. Risk avoidance-Any process, task, or strategy with risks will be avoided. However, the problem is that some risks cannot be avoided and avoiding a certain project phase will result an expensive investment alternative.
2. Risk minimization-Any potential risk that has been identified can be reduced by evaluating the level or severity of the risk and assigning a risk minimization element to reduce the risk. For instance, the risk of costs going beyond the budget can be addressed by reducing the costs or alternatively sourcing for cheaper materials.
3. Risk acceptance-Some risks cannot be avoided and if the severity level is low, it can be accepted.
4. The following matrix is a quantitative risk identification method, which categorizes risks into their severity levels, which include catastrophic, critical, moderate, minor, and negligible.

Risks

A risk register consisting of the following risks will be developed and countermeasures developed and revised with project progress time.

1. Scope creep.
2. Integration defects-This is the inability of the website modules to integrate effectively because of software defects.
3. Dependence change-This are the tasks, which depend on one another and, which might change because of the changes to some tasks.
4. Software risks-Software risks include flaws in the design of the program including security holes.
5. Scope gap-These are the gaps, which exist between what is to be covered and what has been covered.
6. Delays- Delays are caused by lack of skilled people, and availability of resources.
7. Estimation mistakes-Estimation mistakes are made because of the failure to address scope, resource, and time requirements.
8. Inefficient funds-Insufficient funds could jeopardise the development of the website.
9. Stakeholder pulling out of the project-When stakeholders pull out of a project the act adversely impacts on the project because the contributions made to the project by the stakeholder are lost.
10. Lateness in joining the team-Will lead to additional time requirements.
11. Lack of appropriate skills-When organisations lack skilled people, there could be additional demand for extra resources.

Proposed approach to managing the risks

1. Earlier planning of the resources and money to finance the project.
2. Understanding the project objectives with the stakeholders and agreeing on them.
3. Establishing acceptable project metrics.
4. Creating a summary of the project best practices.

Risk will be assigned different people with roles and responsibilities. The following table provides a risk management approach by assigning risks and responsibilities.

Project management issues

1. Quality of communication and feedback-Communication is important to ensure that project management issues, which arise, are clarified in real time to avoid time and resource wastages.
2. Customer information privacy-The privacy of
3. Project acceptance –If the customers and the main stakeholder do not accept the project, it could be a big problem.
4. Stakeholder pulls out-If the stakeholder pulls out of the project, the resources and other contributions to the project will be adversely affected.
5. Quality expectation’s-If the quality of the website does not meet the quality expectations, the customer might reject the project.
6. If the suppliers, for instance the supplier of the video does not respond in time, there are likely to be delays, which might delay the marketing and launching of the website. The strategy to overcome the problem is to plan in advance and carry out other activities while the video has been orders in time to enable the video developer to deliver it on time without delays (Olsson 2007).

Justification

The project is justified to be executed because of the following reasons. The website will enable the company to have the following:

Online web presence –The company logo will provide a platform for advertising the company creating an online presence. In addition, the colors, the navigation links, the structure of the website will be justified based on the need so of the company. Visual elements will be customised to the needs of the customers. The overall impression, the visual design, and the aesthetic values will provide effective usability to address the business needs of the organisation.

References

Aloini, D, Dulmin, R & Mininno, V 2007, Risk management in ERP project introduction: Review of the literature. Information & Management, vol. 6, no. 44, pp. 547-567.

Dalal-Clayton, B, Dalal-Clayton, D B & Child, B 2003, Lessons from Luangwa: The Story of the Luangwa Integrated Resource Development Project, Zambia, vol. 1, no. 13, pp.45

Del Cano, A & de la Cruz, M P 2002, Integrated methodology for project risk management. Journal of construction Engineering and Management, vol. 6, no. 12, pp. 473-485

Kerzner, HR 2013, Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Kerzner, HR 2002, Strategic planning for project management using a project management maturity model. John Wiley & Sons.

Kwak, Y. H & Ibbs, C W 2000, Assessing project management maturity. Project Management Journal, vol. 1, no. 31, pp. 32-43.

Olsson, R 2007, In search of opportunity management: is the risk management process enough?. International Journal of Project Management, vol. 8, no. 25, pp. 745-752

Ragunath, P K, Velmourougan, S, Davachelvan, P, Kayalvizhi, S & Ravimohan, R 2010, Evolving a new model (SDLC Model-2010) for software development life cycle (SDLC). International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, vol. 1, no. 10, pp.112-119.

Tah, JH M & Carr, V 2001, Knowledge-based approach to construction project risk management. Journal of computing in civil engineering, vol. 3, no. 15, pp. 170-177.