ICT352 Work Breakdown Structure Assignment Sample

Project Management Principles

1.a) Complete a business case for this project adapted to the AFP market opportunity.

b) Describe the most likely organizational structure for your company, how does this impact your ability to execute and manage this project?

Market opportunity refers to a potentially favorable condition for a company to grow where the company can capitalize on the changing trends or the growing demand for a product or service they are providing. This is usually when the competitors have not yet recognized this change in trend. For the complete utilization of a market opportunity, the company must be able to recognize it future markets (Damnjanovic & Reinschmidt, 2020). They should also be able to predict their capacity to capture the market share and calculate the specific needs and the needs of the market. The company should also be prepared to manage themselves if there is a situation of potential risk. Being able to manage their business portfolio in unfavorable situations or in an unstable economy by making correct the correct decision when to comes to funding, a company will be able to mitigate its risks to a large extent.

The preferred form of organizational structure for the company would be the product based organizational structure with several ideas from network structure which will contain numerous smaller departments responsible for each function, and each of these units can have their own team (Jørgensen & Halkjelsvik, 2020). This type of organizational structure adheres to the rule of management that emphasize on one product line.

But the most ideal form of organizational structure would be object oriented that have functional groups that have to communicate with other groups and make sure that the updates and operations are in smooth working order (Windheim et al., 2020). Managing conflicts and good engineering objectives can help a company immensely and because software development is not about few major decisions but consistent small decisions that change every minute, an organizational structure that can keep up with the fast pace is obviously good for potential market growth.

Selecting the staff in accordance with the goals and primary objective requires deep knowledge and accurate decision making during the hiring process. A software company should have delegated its work to project managers and chief technology officers (CTO) .Based on the decision of how they get their funding , a company can decide if it wants to go LLC or not. As most software companies outsource their processes, the best decision is to reduce costing as much as possible. Of course, all of this changes if they get adequate funding.

It involves a lot of inter communication among groups and the leader is always the most skilled person with maximum knowledge who can guide the operations in the desired direction according to market needs. The ideas from network structure can also help the company wherein they provide services while sharing their resources with other companies too (Kozak-Holland & Procter, 2020). This not geographically bound to one place, the members can work from different locations and often hire freelancers and staffers from different regions. In fact, in a software development company, operations must be delegated across different locations. Amidst all this their workflow and communication across departments should be smooth.

2. Create a simple Work Breakdown Structure to develop a functional prototype of this app.

A work breakdown structure list is usually a lit that the project manager of a software development team has to create in order to streamline the various operations of the company and create a standardized report that the workers can refer to. Of the company has multiple tasks of the same nature every day, the project manager can create a work breakdown structure template that will help him assign tasks, workers and timing accordingly (Cicala, 2020).An ideal work breakdown structure for this technology start-up will involve five tasks they are planning, design, testing, installation and maintenance. The project manager of the company will make a work breakdown structure template and put down these five tasks (Putra Lim et al., 2020). Once a new project is started the project manager has to add more tasks, names of people who are working on the operation, start dates and end dates.

WBS is an essential part of project management and helps the company work in an organized manner. An ideal work Breakdown structure for this company would be one that simplifies all the things that the team needs to do in order to accomplish, organized into multiple levels and represented graphically. As each task is completed, they can be ticked off to add further task

3. Describe the suitability of using agile systems in the case and articulate the pros and cons.

The biggest marker that sets agile systems apart from the traditional management systems is the flexibility it provides. The traditional management system usually works when no tools are involved but for an up and coming software development company it is necessary that they have more room for experimentation and technology. The agile methods can increase the company’s accountability and enhance its product performance considerably.

The methodology uses a model of “sprints” which is based on continuous cycles of development that are short in duration and work towards consistent, relevant improvement of the product (Cooper & Sommer, 2020). For this technology startup, agile systems really work because they are looking to branch out to future markets and they need to develop strategies that will help them do so without getting into any conflicts with the AFP. They are seeking to continue their competitive advantage and agile systems allows them to do that. It also allows stakeholders and developers to interact on a daily basis in a regulatory manner.

There are many pros of opting the agile systems. As accountability is of paramount importance, the rate of delivery of products is high and the operational procedures also have to move in compliance with the system and work breakdown structure without fail. Also helps them develop to changing environments and growing needs of the market through constant assessment. This way the agile systems helps them become more productive, gives them flexibility, decrease the risk of missed objectives and ensures transparency and higher quality (Ghezzi & Cavallo, 2020). It optimizes the development process, employs a lighter weight framework, increase adaptability to change and market demands while inducing focused efforts.

The few cons of the agile systems is that it might not be well suited for every project operation and may not function in the absence of clarity from market trends or client needs. One of the biggest drawbacks is the fact that the agile systems are best suited to project managers, developers but the end experience of the user cannot always be predicted. The fact that the developers do not know what the end product is can be a daunting idea unless they have a very deep and astute idea about their output. With their emphasis on faster delivery and development of desired output the end result might sometimes not be the best one because of poor resource planning or fragmentation. unless scrutinized and worked on in a dedicated manner this could be detrimental for the company. But the major advantages and benefits of using agile systems make it the more preferred system for project management for this technology startup company.

References for Project Management Principles

Cicala, G. (2020). Developing a Work Breakdown Structure. In The Project Managers Guide to Microsoft Project 2019 (pp. 119-148). Apress, Berkeley, CA.

Cooper, R. G., & Sommer, A. F. (2020). New-Product Portfolio Management with Agile: Challenges and Solutions for Manufacturers Using Agile Development Methods. Research-Technology Management, 63(1), 29-38.

Damnjanovic, I., & Reinschmidt, K. (2020). Project Risk Management Fundamentals. In Data Analytics for Engineering and Construction Project Risk Management (pp. 23-41). Springer, Cham.

Ghezzi, A., & Cavallo, A. (2020). Agile business model innovation in digital entrepreneurship: Lean startup approaches. Journal of business research, 110, 519-537.

Jørgensen, M., & Halkjelsvik, T. (2020). Sequence effects in the estimation of software development effort. Journal of Systems and Software, 159, 110448.

Kozak-Holland, M., & Procter, C. (2020). Adapting Project Management to Meet This Challenge. In Managing Transformation Projects (pp. 13-25). Palgrave Pivot, Cham.

Putra Lim, A. W., & Latief, Y. (2020). The Development of Safety Plan Using Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for Building Information Modeling (BIM)-Based Building Structure Work. Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience, 17(2-3), 1402-1413.

Windheim, M. (2020). Challenges of Modular Product Structure Decision-Making: A Descriptive Study. In Cooperative Decision-Making in Modular Product Family Design (pp. 5-32). Springer Vieweg, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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