Implementation Plan Concepts Worksheet

Implementation Plan Concepts Worksheet

There is clearly no project management structure at Harrison-Keyes. The project is plagued with inefficiencies and problems. Budgets are overrun, deadlines are going unmet, authors are dissatisfied, there is no clear anti-piracy strategy in place, e-commerce hardware and software are not ready to meet demand, and bad publicity threatens to derail the entire project.

Many businesses struggle with creating processes that allow them to organize projects while continuing to carry on day-to-day operations (Gray & Lawson, 2005). Harrison-Keyes is no exception, as its e-publishing initiative is being carried out while the company continues to try stay afloat with its struggling printed books. People, time, and monetary resources are currently being shared by both the project and normal busing operations with no clear project structure guidelines.

Project management structures represent the major approaches to organizing projects (Gray & Lawson, 2005). "A good system appropriately balances the needs of both the parent organization and the project by defining the interface between the project and parent organization in terms of authority, allocation of resources, and eventual integration of project outcomes into mainstream operations" (Gray & Lawson, 2005, p. 55).

Work breakdown structure

"A good work breakdown structure (WBS) is part of the foundation of a good project" (Rose, 2006, p. 114). This is a structured approach for organizing the necessary information for successful planning, scheduling, and controlling of a project (Gray & Lawson, 2005). Harrison-Keyes has demonstrated what the anticipated project outcome itself will be, while fundamentally omitting the necessary end results of each interim step of the project.

Work breakdown structures provide a framework for specifying objectives and ensure that the plan matches the scope of the project (Rose, 2006). By thinking of the project in its overall scope instead of breaking each component into a work structure, HK leadership has to resolve many project challenges all at once.

Work breakdown structures are "a disciplined, structured method for selectively collecting information to use through all phases of the project life cycle, to meet the needs of all stakeholders and to measure performance against the strategic plan of the organization" (Gray & Lawson, 2005, p. 99).

Organization politics

"Organizational politics can be defined as actions by individuals or groups of individuals to acquire, develop, and use power and other resources in order to obtain preferred outcomes when there is uncertainty or disagreement over choices" (University of Phoenix, 2007, para. 2). Meg P. McGill, CEO used her political influences to convince the HK Board and company leadership that digit publishing was an important strategy to pursue at this time.