Mid-term Assignment

Ahmad Reza Khawar

MSc Information Systems Management

Student ID @00450058

Christmas land project is good business opportunity for investment, because most of the people in the

cities are interested to visit these type of recreational areas with their families during their vacations.

Christmas land type business are running on very short period of time with very high profits and the

bankers and other investors are interested to finance these businesses. People from across the country

are planning their vacations to visit such recreational places, hence the project is able to gain high number

of customers.

It is a difficult to acquire all stakeholders’ expectations in a project, especially when we have multiple

number of stakeholders as each stakeholder’s objective is different. In order to tackle this problem and

carry the project to success by achieving each stakeholder’s expectation we have to narrow down

objectives of the project by harmonizing stakeholders’ objectives.

To achieve customer satisfaction we need to use different quality control approaches to ensure

conformance of performance to our pre-defined standards which is defined with consideration to

customer’s needs and expectations. Time to time every individual task of the project should be

controlled to start and end based on the project schedule.

Considering our high quality of service and good marketing approach we can target 100,000 number of

visitors/customers for our project.

Our main entity for the Christmas Land project, as for any other project, is the Stakeholders. Selecting,

assigning and management of stakeholders are very critical and hard work of the project. When planning

and designing the project we have to define tasks for every stakeholder. Sometimes activities and tasks

of stakeholders may overlap each other which does not only create conflict but also slows down the

project. It is project manager’s job while designing the project to manage and control activities of

stakeholders not to overlap each other.

One of the main factors on which Success and failure of the project depends is Project Team. The actual

implementer of the project are the project team who are involved in the project from the beginning till

end. Thus staffing the project – selecting members for project team – and positioning them is an important

task that should be carefully considered while planning and designing the project. To mitigate any risk of

delivering low quality outcome from the project, it is important to select a team of highly qualified

professionals with professional background of delivering successful projects, especially in projects similar

to Christmas Land.

Infrastructure and assets or materials used in the project are another important factor on which success

and failure of the project depend. Step by step quality check should be done for materials in order to have

best outcome.

Selecting best suppliers for our material and professional contractors for the design of environment have

also significant impact on project outcome. In order to attract more customers and gain their satisfaction

the environment should have a unique and attracting design which needs experienced contractors and

designer with successful past experience

2015

Christmas Land Project

BUSINESS CASE

UNIVERSITY OF SALFORD

Ahmad Reza Khawar STID @00450058

Contents

1. Literature View ...................................................................................................................................... 7

2. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 7

3. Project Initiation: .................................................................................................................................. 8

3.1. Objectives...................................................................................................................................... 8

3.2. Stakeholder Analysis: .................................................................................................................... 9

3.3. Success and failure of the project ................................................................................................. 9

3.4. Initial Planning............................................................................................................................. 10

4. Project Planning: ................................................................................................................................. 11

4.1. Project Scheduling and Work breakdown structure (WBS) ........................................................ 11

4.2. Quality Management .................................................................................................................. 13

4.2.1. Planning Quality: ................................................................................................................. 13

4.2.2. Quality Assurance: .............................................................................................................. 13

4.2.3. Quality Control: ................................................................................................................... 14

4.3. Risk and Opportunity Management ............................................................................................ 14

4.4. Problem-Solving and Decision-making ....................................................................................... 14

5. Project Closure (Development): .......................................................................................................... 14

5.1. Project Completion and Review .................................................................................................. 14

5.2. Performance Improvement ........................................................................................................ 15

6. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 15

7. Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................ 15

1. Literature View

This document is a business case report that is intended for the conceptualization, plan and design of a

Tourism Attraction Area for Christmas in Salford City. The report is developed based on the researches on

similar projects that are previously conducted in UK; lessons learned from projects are taken to

recommend successful approaches for the implementation of the project. The ‘Blunderland’ project of

Harrogate is studied in detail in the report, examples are provided that caused failure of the project and

solutions are pointed to proactively prevent such problems.

The recommendations in the document for each approaches in project management are given based on

the research from some highly read books in the subject. Project initiation and planning approaches

described by Dr. Maylor in his book Project Manage are suggested in the document.

2. Introduction

Having fun has always been people’s dream, and businesses on creating fun for people is top of the all

running and successful businesses in the world. Most of the recreational events are planned and

established on special religious holidays, as people respect and organize their vacations on such events.

Christmas land is one of these investment business opportunities that can be a good point of attraction

for businessmen’s interest.

Assuredly, not all the recreational projects are successful sometimes these type of project fail if they are

not carefully planned and designed. The ‘Blunderland’ project of Harrogate’s is a good example which

eventually failed. According to Calleam Consulting Ltd “updated 16 Dec 2014: The Magical Journey did in

fact reopen after a three day closure. Unfortunately, with just 9 days to go before Christmas, a key financial

backer has withdrawn from the project and the event has now closed its doors permanently”. The report

states the causes of the failure of this project as “poor management and lack of quality”. If we ponder on

the project, one of the main reasons behind first closure of the project from project management’s

perspective was not considering the uncertainties of the project. The organizer of the project did not

consider unexpected weather change of the environment which resulted in the failure of the project.

Planning Christmas land project in Salford City council is an opportunity for promoting the city and attract

tourists to the community and improve the local businesses and also introduce the city to the new

commerce. Setting up the Christmas land project in the Salford City with 100s of attraction and exciting

games for the visitors will change the Salford city view. Shareholders are not the only people that gain

benefits and revenue from this project, however the other stakeholders will also gain benefits from

Christmas land project. Along this the community will have long-term benefits.

Defining and designing of Christmas land project is a very complex task, it requires a detailed scrutiny of

the availability of the resources in the markets, environmental challenges such as unexpected climate

change, targeted customers with their budgets and city existing law. Considering these factors beforehand

will mitigate the project risk and also facilitate other associated tasks within Christmas land project. In

Christmas Land project of Salford City Council we need to clearly define any uncertainties associated with

the project and project environment.

The Christmas Land project should be intended to deliver high level quality services to the customers with

conformance to many different stakeholder’s expectation from the project. Moreover planning this

project in budget within timeframe is the most difficult task, Christmas land project cost estimation should

be done based on the market price with 10% margin to secure the project from any uncertainty in the

market prices. One of the major failure factor of the ‘Blunderland’ project was poor cost and benefits

analysis. Regarding MailOnline reported “there were claims that the crisis-hit attraction crumbled under

pressure to pay its staff wages of more than £100,000 per month - just nine days before Christmas”. It

shows a vast cost difference in their plan when designing the project.

To assure the Christmas land project is designed based on the stakeholder’s expectation, it’s required to

apply different project management approaches, in that the Total Quality Management TQM is one of the

successful approaches to keep maintain the project and provide high level services to the customers

within time in the right place.

3. Project Initiation:

3.1. Objectives

Planning the project main objective, which is to accomplish the project within timeframe and budget, is a

complex work in planning and designing stage. Having multiple objectives for a project is also considered

as a factor that may result to the failure of the project. Minimizing number of objectives for the project

will facilitate concentration on the project and project objectives while multiple objectives will result on

losing focus from the project. Keeping everyone happy is a difficult task, and having multiple number of

stakeholders will result in maximization of project objective since each stakeholder will have its own

expectation and objective from the project. To narrow down multiple objectives into few objectives that

encompasses the expectation of all stakeholders is one of the major task in Design stage of the project.

Most projects fail because of having multiple objectives. Likewise projects with ambiguous and unclear

objective are considered to be failed projects. The ‘Blunderland’ project, for instance, is a project in which

objectives were not accurately considered during budget estimation, nor during execution of the project.

In a small change in the budget and plan of the project, focus from the project objective was completely

distracted. The quality and performance were completely ignored and instead all focus was routed to

minimization of project cost. To make the Christmas land project successful we limit the main objectives

of the project. Following are considered as main objectives of Christmas Land project:

� Customer satisfaction with high level services, high level customer care

� To finish the Project within budget and schedule.

� Target at least 100,000 visitors in the first year

To achieve the aforementioned objectives it is required to have an experienced professional team in

management, financing and designing. Also good financing for the Christmas land project is another factor

that can enhance the project objectives accomplishment.

3.2. Stakeholder Analysis:

Christmas land project success is dependent on stakeholder satisfaction, stakeholder can be a team or an

individual. Defining stakeholders for the project is tough work, because they have direct impact to the

project success and failure. How the stakeholders are managed and assigned to the specific portion of the

project is another complex work. The Christmas land requires different number of stakeholders who are

involved in different part of the project based the project requirements. According to Dr. Maylor’s book

Project Management key questions to be asked about stakeholders are “Who are the stakeholders?

What do they want? What influence is this going to have on the project process or outcome?” In general,

according to Dr. Maylor, stakeholders are divided into two main groups External stakeholders and

internal stakeholders. External stakeholder those who are externally involve with the project and

received the project services (e.g. customers, sponsors). Internal stakeholders are those who are

associated with the project process (e.g. member of project team or government structure).

All stakeholders focus on their own significant benefits and have influence on the project, or sometimes

the stakeholders overlap each other activities. To manage this issue within different stakeholders it is

required to map related tasks to each stakeholders and give them a proper guidance.

The management board will be the actual organizer to the Christmas land and they will take more benefits

from this project. Considering that the Christmas land project is a recreational project, many companies

will be interested to sponsor it. Establishing such recreational place in main city requires a lot of legal

work, and it is required to have the legal team to arrange such work and push for the appropriate laws to

be passed through legislative body if not already in place. Residents of the adjacent area are critical

stakeholders for the project. They can directly earn benefits from this project (e.g. the Christmas land

visitors will use their hotels and shops). Also residents will use the Christmas land to do their marketing

and advertisements. Suppliers (contractors) are the companies or individuals that are preparing the

Christmas Land environment. Companies that supply raw materials for the project are also considered as

stakeholders for the project. Suppliers can be from the local or international companies.

3.3. Success and failure of the project

The Christmas Land project success factors and benefits are depending on complexities associated with

the “objectives” of the project and the stakeholders’ requirements/expectations. Thus selection of

stakeholders and bringing the contradictions and conflicts of requirements from each stakeholder group

into harmony and thenceforth defining relevant objectives for the project is of the most important tasks

of the Project.

Once the project stakeholders are identified and objective(s) set for the project the second most

important tasks which defines success and failure of the project is the allocation of resources for the

project. In resource allocation first point of focus should be given to the human resources as they are

those who are using other resources and running the project. Delivering a project within time, budget and

defined quality while achieving stakeholder’s expectations is a difficult task which requires a team of

professionals for board of management as well as skilled team for the execution and implementation of

the project.

Capital resources, which includes materials, infrastructure and other assets that are required to run the

project, is the second point of focus in resource allocation. Success of Christmas Land project depends on

the selection of high quality materials and capital resources for the project. The reason that ‘Blunderland’

project was closed permanently after re-opening was selection of low quality materials to minimize cost

as the report states “Trees laid low with snow – reality: a few hastily erected plastic Christmas trees in a

muddy field”. In Christmas Land project it is required to select best suppliers with past experience in

delivering quality products for such events on time.

Last but not least of the key success factors for the project is the interior/environmental design of the

Christmas Land area. Arranging and setting-up a world class entertainment environment for the visitors

in such a unique event requires selection of best contractors and designers for the project. A Challenge

for the project is to select contracts and designers in consideration of the project budget. Methods can be

used to convince such contractors with low cost, such us providing other benefits in the project for

contracts. For instance, advertisement opportunity for contractors is a good point to attract their interest

in the project. This way, contractors are considered as the stakeholders of the project and thus tries their

best to provide quality service.

These are the main factors that help the Christmas land project drive into the success stage, while poor

management of these factors will fail the project.

3.4. Initial Planning

To run the project within scope and time frame, it’s required to do project initial planning based on the

market available resources and costing. Dr. Kerzner in his book Project Management A Systems Approach

to Planning Scheduling and Controlling lists “Poor Initial Planning and Market Prognosis” among the nine

reasons that are stopping projects. Initial planning is considered the foremost important step after

outlining “the requirements, measures and benefits” in that the outcome of the project is clearly defined

and the activities involved to deliver this outcome is defined. Based on the data from the requirements,

measure and benefits of the project, the project scope and out of scope is clearly defined and

documented.

The Winton Park of Salford City is recommended for the project as it has wide area where all the required

environmental settings for the project can be configured. In order to mitigate any risks and scope creeps

in the project, the project scope is defined as follow:

� Design and Construction of Christmas Tourists Attraction Area in Winton Park with 100 Stalls

� Provision of 10 beautifully designed wagons with their reindeers

� Provision of 100 Santa with real-looking costumes

� Staffing of the area with welcoming young teens

� Provision of Christmas gifts for children

� Advertisement of the project to TV channels and other media

In order to achieve the project objectives within the defined scope and within the timeframe, it is required

to define a work breakdown structure for the project and assign resources for each activity of the project.

Activities in WBS should be logically sequenced in that the predecessor activities should be considered

before scheduling any successor activity. Preparing a Gantt chart is one of the best approaches that

facilitates the provision of WBS with consideration to predecessor and successor attributes as well as

assigning resources to each activity.

4. Project Planning:

4.1. Project Scheduling and Work breakdown structure (WBS)

The time estimation and resource allocation are depending on the project activities, which tasks need to

be performed by which resource in which timeframe. The project timeframe is required to reflect all

project associated activities within project time, while planning the project timeframe we control the

project resource overlapping activities. Also some of the project activities start directly or depend on other

prerequisite tasks. Delivering project associated tasks within timeframe and controlling the deliverable

tasks is the project manager’s work. Project manager need to communicate and control all allocated

resources within the project.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a good approach for project scheduling and resources scheduling. In

this approach first the project is decomposed into activities and tasks, resources for each tasks are

identified. Task dependencies are identified in the WBS and based on their dependencies and priorities

they are scheduled. Gantt chart is very useful for WBS where a complete view of project activities are

viewed in one chart.

Christmas land project timeframe and WBS (Gantt chart)

4.2. Quality Management

Quality is very important in such projects, where customer experience plays a huge role in the success of

project as well as long-term viability of the business.

We will adhere to Total Quality Management (TQM) principles and address quality as end to end process,

from raw material to the customer experience everything should be part of the quality management

practices.

We are planning to address the quality management through three stages process:

4.2.1. Planning Quality:

Quality should be planned into project activities not Inspect into, meaning everyone should know in

advance what quality standards or processes to follow rather than inspected by the quality manager or

supervisor and told them how to do it.

The Quality metrics should be defined from the initial planning stage of the project, as we are establishing

recreational park, we need to consider environmental, legal, safety and other such process required by

law, as well as provide good customer care, maintain the equipment for optimum performance all the

time and provide good quality entertainment.

All these and other services as well as obligations need to be identified and planned in light of stakeholder

requirements and legal framework.

4.2.2. Quality Assurance:

Once everything is planned we will make sure that this plan is implemented as required. Some of the

practices for quality assurance could be:

Processes: we make sure all the processes involved in the project are carried out appropriately and within

the specified time limit, these processes could include arrival of raw material on time, hiring of the right

people, appropriate disposal of the wastages, implementation of the environmental considerations as

outlined by law and others.

Doing things right: everyone involved in the project should know how to do their work right, these could

include adherence to industry best practices, requirements of the law and usage of the right tools, in most

case it will be required to provide the project personnel and other stakeholders training to highlight or

convey the knowledge of “doing things right”

Adherence to the Project requirements: In most cases when we are managing medium to large scale

projects, people are lost in details and they forget the bigger picture the main objectives of the project,

we will make sure that everyone understand why the project is being implemented and what the end

results we are expecting to meet.

4.2.3. Quality Control:

It’s one of the most common challenge in quality and requirements management that we plan something

very well and it’s also implemented as planned, but it’s not what the customer want, as a result the end

product is not acceptable to the customer.

Through quality control practices and processes we will make sure the work is carried out as by the overall

objectives of the project, and we make sure the end product is acceptable to all involved.

4.3. Risk and Opportunity Management

Risk is basically the impact of uncertainty on project activity, some of the risks we can consider for this

project;

� Adherence to the government/ local laws: we consider if it’s not properly planned and not

� Usage of right Raw material:

� Hiring of experienced personnel:

� Lack/ No adherence to quality practices:

� Risk of acceptability of the end products:

� Maintenance of the recreational/ game equipment:

� Safety processes/ practices:

4.4. Problem-Solving and Decision-making

We will work through projectized approach for the project, where the project manager will have the

ultimate responsibility and authority for making project relevant issues, he/she will be reportable to the

project management board, which can have their periodic meetings.

All problems and conflicts will be addressed through at the grass root level, will be addressed at the first

level of happening, then if we could not address them at that stage, we will escalate it one stage, and it

will move up towards the project manager and management board.

5. Project Closure (Development):

5.1. Project Completion and Review

The project will work through phase wise approach, meaning each phase will have an end deliverable,

which will be verified and if required accepted by the customer/stakeholder.

As we will be managing our project WBS and will complete our Work Packages in time-phased manner,

every deliverable completed will be handed over to project team or stakeholder and moved to another

task, so towards the end of the project limited issues will be needed to complete, meanwhile if we face a

problem or rejection of certain deliverable we can fix it without losing anytime or extending the end date

of the project.

Toward the end of the project, the formal closure will take place, which will fulfills all the legal and other

requirements.

5.2. Performance Improvement

One of the main jobs of the project manager is continuous improvement and learning; we will use learning

curve theory, best practices and other mechanisms to continuously look for continuous improvement in

our behavior, project activities and deliverables.

6. Conclusion

Christmas Land project is a very huge opportunity for the Salford City Council to promote the city and

attract the attention of stakeholders not only for the project but also for the future of the city. Christmas

is an event where people across the country tries their best to spend their vacations in best recreational

facilities with their family, thus it is best opportunity for businesses and bankers to invest on such projects.

Notwithstanding its benefits and future impacts on the city, the project does entail its own complexities

and risks that needs careful study when planning. High number of stakeholders with different objectives

each is a challenge for the project whereas the project objective should be narrowed down to mitigate

the risk of losing focus while it should encompass the expectations and objectives of stakeholders at the

same time. Hence the project’s success and failure highly depends on the identification and analysis of

stakeholders and selection of objective(s) for the project. Initial planning of the project needs careful and

concentration in that the scope of the project should be carefully defined in which the boundaries of the

project, activities associated in the project including the timeframe and any expected uncertainties of the

project should be considered.

When planning the project a detailed work breakdown structure should be defined so that activities with

same resources should not overlap each other. Dependencies of activities should be considered as well as

resource allocation and time boundaries for each activity should be defined. A professional quality control

mechanism should be defined for the project so that each activities performance are evaluated at several

stages to mitigate risk of low quality delivery of service. The project has its associated risks which should

be clearly defined and approaches to mitigate such risks should be considered beforehand.

After implementation of the project, the closure of the project is a very important phase where lessons

learned should be documented from the project for future success of projects. The city council can further

develop the project into a permanent recreational facility for the city residents where any festivals and

events can be conducted in the project environment. After reviewing the project performance of activities

can be identified and best practices can be listed that brought the project to success.

7. Bibliography

Covey, S. R. (1990). The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Free Press.

Kerzner, H. (2009). Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling.

New York: WILEY.

Linning, S. (2015, January 13). Winter Blunderland' designed by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen went bust

owing creditors nearly £1MILLION. MailOnline. Retrieved from

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2908122/Winter-Blunderland-designed-Laurence-

Llewelyn-Bowen-went-bust-owing-creditors-nearly-1MILLION.html

Maylor, H. (2010). Project Management. Prentice Hall FINANCIAL TIMES.