Developing A Systemic Lessons Learned Knowledge Model For Organisational Learning Through Projects

Project background

The project is based on opening of café called as Coffee Klatsch in UK. The project report discusses the background of the project and aim and objectives of the project work. It also analyzes the time and finance constraints raised into the project. Cost and quality are controlled to successfully complete the work. Finally, risks are identified to prevent from any type of project delays.

Two of the accounting and finance students at LSBU plans to open a cafe called as Coffee Klatsch. The cafe is located in United Kingdom based on central location. The cafe is closed to the office as well as public transport and servers of higher quality coffee as well as food items to the customers. The vision of the project is to start with one outlet and then build stronger brand which revolves with better quality, quick service and consistency to open the chains of cafes into prime locations. For success of the project, there is requirement of resources which will enhance the adoption of new measures and develop the opening of cafe.  

The aim of this project is to start the niche and themed the café in three months at a cost of € 7768.

Following are the project objectives:

• To turn the profits from first month of their business operations
• To provide good quality of coffee and food items to the customers
• To create a welcoming environment for people those want to talk and mingle
• To complete the project within estimated time and budget
• To change taste and preference of the customers
• To provide with customized coffee flavors

The purpose of the café is to provide best coffee experiences to the customers and public of UK. The opening of this café will be helpful for company in order to attract of more people towards their coffee business. Attraction of more customers towards the business increases the demand of coffee in the selected region. The project will also helpful for providing pure and better coffee taste to the customer base.

 The resources for the project plan are Tanya, Kylie, Project Manager, Project Sponsor, Project executive, project administrative, finance officer, planning officer and project coordinator. Those resources are required to complete the entire project and success of the project.

In order to open the cafe, both Tanya and Kylie are applied for the start up loan. Delay into income generation results in delay of return on investment. The financial constraints occur when there are limited fund of the project. The owners may be possible that they are not getting loans for the project (Schwalbe 2015). Therefore, it affects the start up business more. It includes of inadequate access to the venture capital, inflation and rise into rate of interest. As it is a start up business, therefore it is relied on start up bank loans and funding. Inflation means there is increase of raw materials as well as labor costs that affect the profitability of business (Boud, Cohen and Sampson 2014). Rise into interest rate means higher interest payment which affects the capability of the business to pay the dividends and plan their growth.    

Following are the exclusions for the project work:

1. Food, offers, full time staffs and beverages for the in-store operations of the cafe
2. There are extra services such as press release, media relations, advertising initiatives are available
3. There are sales and operational support for café
4. Contest prizes are given to the customers

The project manager should use of observational techniques to fulfill the requirements for the quality. The manager evaluates whether the product and services of café would meet with requirements of the client (Mir and Pinnington, 2014). The taste of coffee and quality of coffee should be good and better so that it can attract more customers towards the coffee business.

The finance officer will monitor the cost for the project. All the invoices from the team members are submitted with the tracking sheet. Tanya will ensure that all the items are recorded to cost baseline (Gido, Clements and Clements 2014). All the project related costs are monitored and tracked on regular basis. The cost plan is as follows:

Task Name	Duration	Resource Names	Cost
Opening of café: Coffee Klatsch	65 days		€7,768.00
Feasibility research	11 days		€1,568.00
Set up meeting	2 days	Kylie, Project Manager, Tanya	€368.00
Analysis the stakeholders	1 day	Project Manager, Project Sponsor	€88.00
Visit the site	3 days	Kylie, Project Manager, Tanya	€552.00
Review the site	5 days	Project executive, Project Manager	€560.00
Create the project charter	23 days		€3,312.00
Outline the objective and scope	1 day	Project executive, Project Manager	€112.00
Outline the benefits	2 days	Planning office, Project coordinator, Project Manager	€272.00
Outline the risks and measures	2 days	Project coordinator, Project executive, Project Manager	€304.00
Constraints	2 days	Project Manager	€96.00
Cost	7 days	Finance officer, Project administrative, Project Sponsor, Kylie, Tanya	€1,792.00
Final sponsor review	4 days	Project administrative, Project coordinator	€320.00
Set up meeting with stakeholders	3 days	Project administrative, Project coordinator	€240.00
Sign off the charter	2 days	Project Manager, Project Sponsor	€176.00
Development phase	29 days		€2,592.00
Set the meeting	3 days	Project executive, Project Manager	€336.00
Brainstorming session with the stakeholders	8 days	Planning office, Project coordinator	€704.00
Generate of scope and Adding of deliverables	7 days	Project executive, Project Manager	€784.00
Generate of schedule	5 days	Project Manager	€240.00
Develop the risk	6 days	Project coordinator, Project Manager	€528.00
Closure phase	2 days		€296.00
Stakeholder feedback	1 day	Project Manager	€48.00
Final sign off	1 day	Kylie, Project Manager, Tanya, Project executive	€248.00

Time constraints are happened as early as the project start date. It is the responsibility of the project manager to complete the project as soon as possible. Delay into the project activity has no control and affects the running of the project (Nicholas and Steyn 2017). The time constraints affect the cost as well as quality. Schedule delay may increase the project cost.

Risk ID	Risk identification	Evaluation of risk	Risk Analysis	Risk estimation analysis	Mitigation actions
			Likelihood	Impact
R1	Inadequate capital	There may be lack of adequate funding of the project.	Likely	Major	€ 200	Before plan and start the café, the business owners should collect more funds so that there is no shortage of cost (Duffield and Whitty 2015).
R2	Demand of workload	As it is starting up business, therefore to open the café, the staffs may be working overtime hours. The workload would exhaust the staffs.	Likely	Minor	€ 100	More resources are required for the project so that no extra workloads are provided on the staffs (Gollenia 2016).
R3	Location	Choosing of bad location for the business will affect the opening of café.	Unlikely	Moderate	€ 180	A good location is required to be selected for opening of the café which should be near college and university.
R4	Schedule risk	It may possible that the project plan is not completed within scheduled time due to delay in one of the project activities. It causes delay into the project work (Leach 2014).	Likely	Minor	€ 150	Project schedule is required to plan the project and estimate all the activities start and end date with all possible constraints (Todorovic et al. 2015).
R5	Lack of regulations	The café is not able to meet with the local regulations for the commercial establishments and there is lack of fire safety regulations of the café shop.	Unlikely	Moderate	€ 70	The business should maintain proper local regulations to open the café. (Walker 2015).

Figure 1: Organizational structure

(Source: Created by author)

References

Boud, D., Cohen, R. and Sampson, J. eds., 2014. Peer learning in higher education: Learning from and with each other. Routledge.

Duffield, S. and Whitty, S.J., 2015. Developing a systemic lessons learned knowledge model for organisational learning through projects. International journal of project management, 33(2), pp.311-324.

Gido, J., Clements, J. and Clements, J., 2014. Successful project management. Nelson Education.

Gollenia, L.A., 2016. Business transformation management methodology. Routledge.

Leach, L.P., 2014. Critical chain project management. Artech House.

Mir, F.A. and Pinnington, A.H., 2014. Exploring the value of project management: linking project management performance and project success. International journal of project management, 32(2), pp.202-217.

Nicholas, J.M. and Steyn, H., 2017. Project management for engineering, business and technology. Taylor & Francis.

Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.

Todorovic, M.L., Petrovic, D.C., Mihic, M.M., Obradovic, V.L. and Bushuyev, S.D., 2015. Project success analysis framework: A knowledge-based approach in project management. International Journal of Project Management, 33(4), pp.772-783.

Walker, A., 2015. Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.