Herbal tea planning
Currently, most of the businesses adopt technology for their services and the products for high sales and competitiveness (Tukker and Tischner 2017). But adopting these technologies without proper planning may be risky for small businesses like herbal teas. The herbal teas are a small business that sells beverages, specifical tea to the consumers. For development and improving the business operations, a website was recommended for the success of the business. This incorporation of a website in this business requires proper planning for the success of the business and implementation of this technology. Therefore, the article will explore the key consideration and areas for website implementation and incorporation in the business using a Gantt chart.
The two main deliverables in this herbal tea planning Gantt chart is the website for the business and the user manual that will help the users’ or the sellers to use the website for marketing, display and sales of the tea. Among the deliverables, the website is the key deliverable for the project. It is the key reason why the project is constructed. Therefore this project needs to be implemented at the right time, in the right quality and perform the specified operations. According to Kerzner (2018), for any project to take the required time and produce the desired quality, tracking of the development processes is required. Therefore, the project implements the Gantt chart to track every operation and processes for the production of the right output. The project has ten work packages within four sub-projects. These work packages include key practices that need to be performed for a better website for the business. These key work packages include materials and cost analysis, technical and operational cost analysis, risk analysis which are placed under requirement analysis for the project. This means that materials and budgets must be determined at the initial stage before the development of the project. This process ensures proper planning of the business and ensures all the requirement for the project are ready and can be achieved. Web design and implementation is the key sub-project that require technical experience and skills.
Since this is the main part of the project, it involves work packages like design layout (front end programming and design), module design (back end design, databases, security, integration and connection) and testing and hosting of the website. Testing and hosting are implemented when the module design is in the final stage to ensure the system performs at all stages. Since users have little knowledge about the website designed, they need to be trained on the performance of the website. The first work package includes training users on how the website function, then how you can use the website to market the tea business by displaying the prepared tea to the website and packs. Then user manuals are also provided to enable users to master the key concept of the system. Finally, the project is launched through sales and promotion to attract many consumers to the business. Each process depends on each other taking specified durations as shown in the figure below. Alternatively, the project could take a shorter duration, but the critical path was considered for the project to take a maximum number of days but produce a quality website. The critical path for the project involves material and cost analysis, technical and operational cost analysis, risk analysis, design layout, module designs, testing and hosting, website functionalities training, tea preparation and packing for display training, provision of user manuals and launching through sales and promotion.
For every project, there is a possibility of the risk occurring, thus making the project to fail or take longer time than the planned time (Kendrick 2015). Therefore, proper planning of the risk is the key consideration for making sure that such risk is mitigated and in case they happen, their effects are reduced. Different risks like unrealistic deadlines, extreme financial spending and security issues are the common issues that can interfere with the project. The key issue which can interfere with the project completion and the objective of the project is the failure of the system. Since it is a website, the system may fail during launching or computers used in programming of the system can crash when the project launching is nearer. This risk can paralyze the project and does the project to fail in meeting its deadline and its objectives. This project failure may make the consumers lose trust in the system; therefore, rarely prefer the system for their services like ordering and payment of the orders through these online platforms. For better risk management plan for the project, we will ensure the following resources are used effectively. First, every change in the system must be backed-up. The external drives will be provided for backing up changes in the codes to ensure the development process is not paralyzed when the systems break. Since viruses are considered the core sources of system failure and interruption of the computer programs, these systems will be secured using registered Kaspersky anti-virus. Lastly, thorough verification and testing of the program will be done during the testing phase to ensure all the requirement are met and the program is in a stable condition hence cannot fail during launching and usability.
In the Gantt chart, the task name column consists of the milestone, sub-project and the work packages for the project. The milestone is used in the project to mark specific points along a project timeline (Defusco et al. 2016). Since there are numerous processes that the project managers need to follow when executing the project, the project manager may forget some steps due to project complexity. Therefore, the project milestone will enable the project managers to track the key steps that need to be considered in the project to attain the required output. Since the project is likely to fail in meeting the require output when the developers skip key steps, these steps are grouped into sub-project for easy follow-ups. These sub-projects include requirement analysis, web design and implementation, user/seller training and launching. Requirement and analysis stage helps the business to plan, budget and predict some issues that may occur during the project execution. Since the shortage of materials, budget and skills are considered a key factor that may cause the failure of this project, materials and cost analysis, technical and operational cost analysis and risk analysis are the key steps that will ensure that the project is well planned, required materials and services are available, and future risks can be predicted and mitigated effectively. The second sub-project includes web design and implementation. The step ensures that the project is well developed, and all testing is done for stability and functionality. For users’ or sellers’ familiarity of the website, users’ training is done concerning the functionality of the website, services like marketing on the website verbally and through written documents like user manuals. This procedure enables the users to be familiar with the project and avoid errors that may cause program failure. The project is then launched through sales and promotion to create awareness of the tea products in the market. For every sub-project and work packages, there is the start time and the end time. These start time and end time ensures that the project manager starts a process at the right time and end it at the appropriate time. This practice will reduce unrealistic deadlines within the project. Therefore, the project manager can fix processes to fit their required duration and balance the projects in case any used the other’s time. Since some dependencies occur immediately after other while others occur before the end of others, tracing might be hard; thus, the project uses bars in the Gantt chase for proper tracking.
References
Defusco, S.A., Eckerle, J.D., Rabideau, L.A., Rossi, B.J. and Nutter, M.J., Deltek Inc, 2016. System and method for managing projects. U.S. Patent 9,317,825.
Kendrick, T., 2015. Identifying and managing project risk: essential tools for failure-proofing your project. Amacom.
Kerzner, H., 2018. Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. John Wiley & Sons.
Tukker, A. and Tischner, U. eds., 2017. New business for old Europe: product-service development, competitiveness and sustainability. Routledge.