Management Plan
Project Organization
For the SmartDesign project we will use the mixed style of project
organization. This style, which is a mixture of the Functional, Pure Project and
Matrix styles, was chosen for several reasons. First of all, we have a situation
that allows all the members of the team to meet and communicate with each
other on a regular basis, which eliminated the need to use the Pure Project style.
In considering what skills each member had to brought to the team we found that
all had very different, and in some cases, unrelated skill sets with regards to the
project, which means all would need to take on tasks that may be entirely new to
them. In addition to this, this project also requires that some or all of the team
may need to work on any particular task(s) in concert in order to complete the
project. These factors eliminate the need to use sole Pure project, Functional or
Matrix styles but a mixture of all three.
Budget Control
This project will be limited to a specified budget broken down by phase, as
follows:
Phase 0: unspecified
Phase 1: $ 100,000
Phase 2: $ 750,000
Phase 3: $ 751,893.91
For the out years (phase 3 on) the budget will be based on past and projected
sales of the software and services.
For the project to be successful there will need to be strict oversight of
spending. It is important that the proper and/or planned amount of money
allocated to a particular resource is spent on only that resource, and that that
resource is not overpriced or misused. These resources include direct costs such
as salaries, hard equipment and software. Indirect costs such as marketing,
research and overhead will be taken into consideration as well. This will all be
accomplished by the Financial Manager and Project Manager through regularly
scheduled reviews of general project progress and spending records. For further
information on how we intend to plan and ultimately track progress and spending
please refer to the Work Breakdown Structure and Budget plans.
Marketing Strategy
The marketing strategy, as outlined in the marketing plan, will be carried
out initially (phase 0) by this team’s marketing manager, beginning with research
and acquisition of a patent, as well as market identification. For future phases an
individual experienced in marketing shall be hired to take on the task of
marketing. Currently this includes the research and identification of our core
target market, Commercial Interior Design firms. With the market identified we
will solicit the product to interested local firms, one and the most important of
which is the Commercial Interior Design firm of Gwaltney Fleming (Richmond,
Virginia Beach). This customer has expressed a significant amount of interest in
this project and has already indicated that they will invest in it. This initial
customer will be used in field testing the product and their record of successful
use of it will be used in marketing it to firms located inside and outside the
southeast Virginia region, focusing first on the east and northeast regions of the
U.S and eventually working our way west and south, and eventually
internationally. We will market the software via the internet and through
purchasing ads in professionally directed magazines such as Architectural
Digest. The majority of these marketing activities will be conducted in the out
years.
Customer Relations
While working closely with our potential first customer, the Commercial
Interior Design Firm of Gwaltney Fleming, we have already begun the process of
using close customer relations to learn how we can improve and develop
SmartDesign. Through this relationship we have learned that the current way of
developing 3D renderings for our customer’s clients is expensive and time
consuming. This has helped direct our efforts into producing a product that does
exactly what our customer needs it to do. In the future we will continue to use
feedback from our customers and create weekly reports on problems and
suggestions regarding improvements in future versions of SmartDesign. This
continued communication with the customer will ensure that SmartDesign is
developed with the necessary features to be of maximal use to our customers,
thus ensuring customer satisfaction, without which the project would otherwise
fail.