P7 – Review

This project has had its ups and downs when working through it because some parts of the project were hard to do and others were easy. We works in a team of two to get everything done and it showed when we missed the deadline. The attendance of our team was pretty good although we each missed one lesson to get the work done so I think this contributed to why we missed the deadline. Although we missed a lesson each we took time out of our own time to get work done but we still missed the deadline.

Overall I think this project was a very good project to do as it had different elements from writing tasks to planning to designing. Good points about this project I would say would be the designing of the CD cover and the CD on body print. These tasks were not too hard and I actually found them enjoyable to do which makes it better. The writing tasks were the parts where I fell down on although we worked in a team so I didn’t have to do all the work on my own which I was very grateful about. The planning I thought was easy and I thought that we kept to it well although we fell behind a little; we only missed the deadline because we had other work to do and we got referred on a part of the work.

What I found that was unexpected was that I drew my final front cover for the CD but after handing it in I found out that I had to do it on a program on the computer to make it look more professional. The cover that I drew was good but I understand why it got referred as if I saw it in a store it wasn’t that eye appealing, the drawn front cover made a good final design though.

The software that we used to plan this project was project Libre. In my opinion this software was not needed to keep on track with this although we missed the deadline. But I think if we did this full project and was actually doing everything on the plan then it would be needed as this project would have been a lot bigger and took a lot more time. Also if this project was in full there would be a lot more people working on it so people would have to look at the project plan to know what they are doing and there deadlines for finishing there part of the project. On this occasion the plan did not really help us keep on track.

We achieved everything on our specification even if it was a little past due, all of the work we did was done to an excellent quality if I do say so myself, i think we designed the work that we needed to design very well and what we needed to create I feel we created it to a very good standard. I feel the deadline that was given was very realistic we just fell behind on work in a real business I feel we would not have as it would be the only thing we are doing and not a lot of other work from other subjects.

Our final products that we created fit the purpose of the project very well and I feel that we did a very good job even with the minor setbacks. I feel making a plan for the project was pointless and just took up time we could have spent on actually creating the project. Although creating the plan did keep us on track and reminded us what we had to do we could have made a simpler one in a shorter amount of time. I feel the products that we created would have been saleable if they were put on the market because it was done to a high standard. If we had more time then we could have made the products better and with better quality but considering the time scale that we had I feel we did a very good job.

I feel our team worked very well and we both contributed to the amount of work we had to do equally. We both did a lot of work each and we both kept each other on track, when we fell behind we made sure that we got it done another day. I would work with my partner again in future projects as we get along and do the work.

Cover Letter for press pack

Dear Sir/Madam,  

Here you will find an enclosed press pack with information about the fantastic band “Chain Gang of 1974”. Inside this press pack you will find a Q&A with the band, a small biography about the band, photos and 10 free CD’s for you to kindly promote.

The Q&A is just a short interview with the band which you could play on your radio station; it is so that your listeners could here an interview with “Chain Gang of 1974”. The small biography is just a short brief of the band and the band members, it will tell you information which you may need to know and gives you an insight into what the band is about and who they are.

It will be greatly appreciated if you could help this band by promoting them in your radio station.

Thank you for your time.

Final CD cover

on body print ideas and final idea

ideas

 

this is also an idea but i have chosen it as my final design

 

CD cover ideas and final design

P5 – plan

CD Single pdf

P4

Project specification

M1 – Why to projects fail – Tyler Livesey

There have been many businesses in the past that have failed whether this is by not enough money etc. But I have found that most projects that have failed have failed because there was not enough planning or the planning was bad or they made bad decisions. Here are a few of examples of projects that have failed and why.

One of the examples that I am going to talk about is the airbus A380, this is the world’s largest commercial aircraft with a wingspan larger than a football pitch and it also has 2 decks that hold 850 passengers. It is the most complex aircraft flying today and although we have been using these air crafts for 6 years it was supposed to be in operation in 2006 but was delayed by 2 years and they also went several billion dollars over budget. The main problem with this project were difficulties integrating the complex wiring system needed to operate the aircraft with the metal airframe through which the wiring needed to thread. The aircraft with 530KM of wires, cables and harnesses that weaved their through the airframe. With more than 100,000 wires and 40,300 connectors that are performing 1,150 different functions, the airbus has the most complex electrical system that has ever been designed. When the first airbus prototype was being manufactured it was soon began to realise that the wires and their harnesses were too short  by just a few centimetres, but in a aircraft you can’t just tug a wire to reach. As the construction on the prototype continued they found that it wasn’t just a few wires that were to short and all the wires were too short throughout the design. The reason that the designs were wrong was that the construction of the airbus was collaboration between 16 different sites which were located between 4 different countries. These countries are Germany, Spain, Brittan and France. The problem was that when designing the project Germany and Spain were using software called Computer Aided Design (CAD) version 4 and Brittan and France used version 5. Although there shouldn’t have been much difference between the two it should have worked but this is a good example that theory and practise is not always the same thing. The root of the problem can be traced back to the single decision to proceed with the project despite the fact that two different versions of CAD were being used on the design. If this business was not funded with a lot of money then the project would have failed completely and would not be in use today.

My second example is Woolworths. Woolworths was a big company that sold a wide range of things from sweets to games to clothing, Woolworths was a well-known store around the United Kingdom and always had a lot of customers, so why did it fail. When Woolworths was a big company back when it opened all the way until it closed, but the main problem was with its years of mismanagement. Woolworths failed to move with the times and in the end a lot of their customer’s left and started shopping at more dynamic and focused shops. Woolworths tried to compete with their rival companies but they did it in the wrong way and made poor decisions. They decided to open a new chain of Woolworth stores and called them ‘Big W’ this was a bad decision as the new chain offered nothing different apart from a few extra DVDs and a few extra tubes of sweets. I feel that Woolworths became outdated with the growth of online shopping and also more specialist shops started to boom, such as Game, W H Smiths, Waterstones etc. These shops sold everything that Woolworths did but they sold them on a larger scale and more efficient. Woolworths go them self in to debt and as the country went in to economic crisis Woolworth’s were asked to pay the money back in which they didn’t have. When they were in this position there were no buyers wanted to invest in Woolworth’s so the business folded.

My last example is HMV as HMV was definable a beloved store around Brittan and I’m sure everyone was shocked to see that it went in to administration. HMV’s administrators Deloitte did their best to try and keep at least some of the 238 of the world wide stores open and instead of all HMV employees losing their jobs they managed to save around 2,500 jobs by doing this. No one could see how such a big company that seemed to be doing fine went in to administration but when you think about it, I’m surprised that it didn’t close down sooner. With the growth of the internet online shopping is becoming more and more of a big thing when you can download an album from iTunes who wants to walk to HMV to buy a CD? As many people did want to buy the CD it didn’t make much of a difference with the amount of people who will just download their music. And this isn’t just for music as you can just go online and sign up to love film and you can watch a lot of the latest block busters on here for just a small fee. So what’s the point in going out to buy DVDS when you can just watch it all online? But it’s not just being taken over by online companies because as the internet grows so does the amount of people illegally downloading music and moves. But through this all companies lose out. When someone can download a Blu-ray copy of a film easier than going to the shop and buying, then why go out and buy it? There is also the issue that online shops do not stock everything in a shop, online shops hove huge warehouses to keep all of their goods. For example amazon has over 1.5 million books for sale this is a figure that cannot be matched by any high street outlet. There is always going to the other issue of actually going in to town to queue up behind the checkout to buy your product and if you took your car you also have to think about paying and dealing with busy car parks, it’s just so much hassle to go in to town when you can just go online and shop for everything.

As you can see there are a lot of reason why a project or company might fail it could be down to poor planning and overlooking things that should have been took in to consideration or at latest tested to see if there idea would work before jumping straight in to the project. Or it could just be poor management, trying to up your sales by spending money it’s better to make sure the money is going to be well spent and will get customers interested instead of just a bad idea that’s going to cost more money than its worth. And lastly the huge growth of the internet, knower days the internet is one of the biggest things out there and it’s going to be for a long while  and this is why a lot of high street companies die because they never saw the internet as a threat to their business.

issues in project management – P3

There are 7 issues that may happen in a project management these are:

1.effects of changing external factors

2. monitoring progress

3.taking corrective actions where necessary

4. communications

5.working within relevant guidelines (internal and external) and legislation;

6.dealing with conflict

7.impact of project outputs on other systems eg staff, organisational structures

External Factors

When you are managing a project you have to take in to consideration the external factors, for example the MMR vaccine in 1998 to 2007 was given out to babies at a young age to prevent them from getting measles. This vaccine was abandoned when a report came out that the vaccine had a very slight chance of giving your child brain damage, a lot of parents said no they don’t want to give their child this vaccine due to this reason. Because of this a lot of children died from measles because of a report that was leaked. There are many different examples of external factors for example if you were building a house for a client and you say that it is going to take you two months, but you didn’t take in to consideration that the weather maybe bad then the project will go over the arranged date.

Monitoring progress

Monitoring is the systematic gathering and analyzing of information that will help measure progress on an aspect of your project. On going checks against progress over time may include monitoring water quality in a catchment or monetary expenditure against the project budget. Monitoring is not evaluation as such but is usually a critical part of your evaluation process and should therefore be included at your project planning stage. For example the English chairman of the FA stated “i promise that England will win the 2022 world cup”. This was a bad statement to make as he doesn’t know anything about what will happen that far in the future. He cant make that statement because there have only been 14 chairmen and only 3 of them have been in that place for long enough to actually make the allegations that he has made. He doesn’t know if he will be chairmen at that time.

Dealing with conflict

When dealing with conflict for example t

ime pressures vs work hours pressure, you have to find the middle of both of these because you don’t want to give your staff very low hours and then your time pressure will take a very long time. You will also have to think about time vs Money pressure, this is just you have to think about how much money you are going to put in to the project but with the amount of money how long it will take, you don’t want to spend a little and your project take a lot of time.

Law

If you buy an old house and plan on renovating it but you find bats living in the attic then the law states that you cant do anything to disturb the bats. This can cause major problems in a building project because there are unforeseen problems. But you can also use the law to your advantage as if you were going to build a full economical house then this will effect the price of it by about 20% cheaper as you will not have to pay tax on the house and you wont have to pay tax on the equipment to build the house.

pert graph

 

a pert chart is a chart that helps you calculate the estimated time it is going to take to complete a project . as you can see in my picture, it isnt as easy to understand as a gantt chart, the lines on the chart represent the jobs and how long it is going to take and the boxes represent mile stones. this shows that there are different things that can happen in a build that can speed up or slow down time in a build and takes it in to consideration to estimate how long the project will take. for example if the weather is fine and you get maximum work every day your project will run quicker. if it rains so the project will be delayed and if you have horrible weather every day. most likely that you will have some rain and it also takes that in to consideration when using the formula to work out how many day the project will take. this graph is good but i do prefer the gantt chart more as it is simpler and easier to make.