Due Week 10 and worth 150 points

Your Project Sponsor has approved your project proposal and has asked you to come up with a proposal for the execution, control, and closure for the project.

Instructions:

For this assignment, you will provide a four to six (4-6) page paper, in which you must:

1. Provide a brief summary of your chosen project.
2. Identify and discuss your project’s greatest challenges (at least three) and provide a recommendation for addressing each of the challenges.
3. Examine how you manage your project performance via Earned Value Management (EVM). Identify at least three key EVM metrics you will use for your project.
4. Discuss your plan to properly close your project when it is over.
5. Use at least three (3) academic resources for this assignment. These resources should be related to your chosen project and the content provided in Assignment 3. Note: Wikipedia and other websites do not qualify as academic resources.

HOTEL UPGRADE 6

BUS 375: Project Management

Assignment 2: Hotel Upgrade

Professor William Steiber

Benjamin-Nabena Ebikonboere

Strayer University

March 1, 2020.

Executive Summary and Introduction

For every business, there is a potential risk. Risk in a business, must be given good attention, and treated with caution to halt its escalation, minimize it, eradicate it and maximize business profit: this is referred to as risk management. Hotels are a business that is prone to risk and has certain potential risks during the period of operation. It is in the hospitality industry. The hospitality industry has to do with building a relationship between hosts and guests, in the sense that, host gladly receives guest with goodwill, including reception and entertainment of guests, visitors and strangers (this is according to information from

www.hotelnews.com

). In this project, I have been tasked as a Project Manager, to revive a dying hotel; that is, a hotel, already running out of business. I have been given nine (9) months by my project sponsor to complete this assignment. It is therefore, my responsibility to act as a project manager and in the capacity of the hotel manager. I have to ensure that everything needed to achieve this task is made available and put in the right place before and during the course of the project. As a project team, we will be building and enforcing strategies, improving human capacities, leveraging on current assets and facilities and introducing new ones if need be, developing and utilizing budgets for the running of the project, developing the relationship between the hotel, its staff and the guests (or visitors), and, building goodwill (that is, saving the reputation of the hotel and sustaining it to stay in business). It is also my responsibility to get the restaurant running again, help the bar function proper, seek for right customers and get them to patronize the hotel, build lasting relationship between the hotel and its customers, and ensure that customers get value for the service(s) paid for. This project will clearly spell out the project goals and objectives, strategies (project structures), and inform who the key stakeholders and customers in this project are.

Project Goals

At the end of this project, we should be able to achieve the following goals for the hotel: improve the standard of the hotel to be above average and compete with world star hotels, build and improve on the goodwill and reputation of the hotel, and develop a system for communication and information flow, operations (booking, check-ins, check-outs, record managements, marketing, etc.) and monitoring (surveillance, appraisals and others). This will improve on the sustainability of the hotel and elevate the hotel to a peak where it can attract investors and customers for patronage.

Project Objectives

Improving sales and patronage, building goodwill to attract new customers and retain old customers, and, ensuring availability for both old and new customers. The project will discover and compare best sales and marketing medium and mechanisms which the hotel can leverage on, to increase customers patronage. The project also tend to develop on human capital and professional skills of project stakeholders, especially hotel employees, and to make use of their abilities for the improvement of a better relationship between the hotel and its visitors. In doing this, the hotel will introduce incentive and bonuses for new visitors and introduce customer loyalty programs for old and returning guests. Lastly, the project is aimed at ensuring the availability of all its facilities for service. We will be taking stock of current assets for use, outline important ones needed for hotel operations and ensure that these facilities are fully utilized. In line with this, the hotel will make available halls for dinner, banquet, weddings, seminars, conferences, and others. The hotel will also make available varieties of items on its restaurant’s menu list, comfortable rooms and a pools side for relaxation, amongst several.

Project Structure

This project will be implemented and managed under agile project management methodology. It is a comprehensive approach under which the requirements and the collaborative efforts of the self-organizing and cross functional teams are made possible (Abrahamsson et al., 2017). Under this, there will be adaptive planning, evolutionary development and other forms of continual improvements during the entire phase of project implementation and management. The project will be implemented under various phases. The inception phase is where the costs of the project under implementation will be determined by a project management team. System and product design phase will entail determination of the hardware required to run the proposed software of developing the communication, information, operational and monitoring systems of the hotel. At the design phase, we will design a system that interacts with all stakeholders and customers of the hotel. During the coding phase, the system programmers will create a new information, communication, operational and monitoring system and infuse it with required features. Testing the developed software with the intention of establishing its compatibility with different operating systems, hardware, or browsers will be done at the testing phase. There will also be a training phase for employees of the hotel. A certain period will be set aside to train all employees in the use of the developed system, as related to them. Training will occur in the use of computerized systems, customer service and relations, data management, marketing and others. At deployment phase, the new system will be made available to everyone in the hotel. Finally, there will be a monitoring phase to ensure that sales and patronage are indeed improved, customers are happy and the system is running successfully. Until the end of the project, the project manager team ensures that all the objectives are met substantially. It is important or note that a projectized organizational structure will be used all through the lifespan of the project. This is because, this structure gives independent control to the project manager and allows the project team to report directly to the project manager. This structure also allows the project manager who sees and understands the vision of the project to be able to spot on errors and threats quickly, that may deter the realization of the project goals. This project will also be making use of dedicated team members, as the project manager will be making use of the hotel staff on a full-time basis, employ full-time team members and gives them the opportunity to learn from old employees.

Stakeholders and Key Customers

In this project, the major stakeholders are the project sponsor, the project team (project manager’s team and hotel employees), current and returning guests and potential new customers. The key customers are event planners and managers, corporate organizations, tourists and travellers, business owners, new couples, visitors and all kinds of guests that can afford our rates and keep to the policies and standards of the hotel. Our stakeholders will ensure that all resources needed for the completion and success of this project is achieved without delay. They will contribute their suggestions and opinions, where the project manager will decide with information flies per time or which suggestions or opinions will not fly. The project manager ensures the peaceful and corporate coordination among project team members. He settles any dispute or disagreement that may arise. The project sponsor ensures that every monetary resources needed to motivate the project is made available. The customers are kept happy and inspired to visit the hotel over and over again, and to invite their friends, family members and colleagues, since there will be incentives for such action.

Conclusion

A good hotel is that which bring in major profit in terms of consistent sales and patronage, maintaining goodwill, satisfying customers and giving them a value for payment, and ensuring that its employees are happy and motivated to extending such emotions to customers. In achieving this, we have seen that risks need to be mitigated. This can only be achieved by putting in place, the right structure for the realization of project objective. It is only when this is done adequately, that a drowning hotel can be revived.

References

Abrahamsson, P., Salo, O., Ronkainen, J., &Warsta, J. (2017). Agile software development methods: Review and analysis. arXiv preprint arXiv: 1709.08439.

www.thebalancedcareer.com

(the balance careers)

www.apm.org.uk

(association for project management)

www.hotelnews.com (hotel news)

Hi Abraham – You earned a grade of D on Assignment 2 (90.75%). Please read through my feedback below:

The project you selected for this course continues to meet the assignment requirements.  Remember, you are the Project Manager. You are responsible for managing people, resources and a budget. The project should be nine months in duration. Please use this work for assignment 3.

The project goals and objectives were updated according to instructor feedback. Two additional goals and objectives need to be added. Review SMARTER GOAL to ensure goals and objectives are specific and measurable. Review this link for more information on the SMARTER GOAL https://www.edupristine.com/blog/smart-goals-project-management Please review and revise this area 

Three key milestones and/or deliverables were not added and described in your project. A project milestone is a task of zero duration that shows important successes in a project. The milestones should represent a clear sequence of events that incrementally build up until your project is complete. Please 

A high -level timeline including key tasks and deadlines was not described. Tasks are activities needing to be completed within a period of time or by a deadline. Timelines provide measurement showing tangible progress has been made. Completed tasks lead to completion of milestones. If milestones are 

An estimate of the project’s overall cost and key staffing and non-staffing resources was not included in the project. Estimating costs allow weighing benefits against anticipated costs to see if the project makes sense and if funds are available. The bulk of project costs are tied to staffing. Please review and revise this area of the project.

Writing-Your paper needs improvement in this area.  Utilize Strayer’s writing center or writing standards to help for revisions of this assignment (please note headings).

Abraham, I appreciate you taking the time to review my feedback. Remember, if you have any questions or concerns, please email me at William.stieber@strayer.edu?subject=BUS375 BUS375 Week 8 Assignment 2: Revised Project Proposal William. stieber@strayer.edu or call or text me at 215-439-1176. Dr. Bill