Developing An Online System For UNICEF Child Care Initiatives

Project Management

The project management refers to initiation, planning, monitoring, implementation and closing. The current project is designed for developing a new system for UNICEF child care activities and managing the operations more effective manners. The new system will help organization for keeping and analyzing the inventory of products and services provided to the children aging between 6 weeks to 13 years. The report will develop a project plan for developing and implementing the new system for UNICEF to overcome issues and increase their level of contribution towards the society. Moreover, the report will involve analysis of risks, budget plan and allocation as well deliverables.

The current project is undertaken for developing an online system for ordering and payment for UNICEF child care initiatives. The organization is offering support for encouraging the facilities and services for children aging 6 weeks to 13 years. The organization is facing issues to maintain an uninterrupted process for maintaining the stock for the product and services to provide support in various areas. Now, the management is looking for developing a new system that automatic process the payment and provide the information about the stock (Abran, 2015). This kind of approach will help UNICEF to increase their capabilities and support for the society.

UNICEF is taking initiatives for offering better support and facilities for the poor children and families to maintain lifestyle according to trends of their locality. The UNICEF takes care of children by offering support in education, food, clothing and care. The organization is offering facilities for babysitter, teachers and nannies for taking care of children aging between 6 weeks to 13 years. Current, the organization is offering support for more than 2500 people on daily basis and considering their feedback for crafting improvement in the quality of services. The use of the online system will help to increase the effectiveness of their services and overcome the issues like payment delay and lacking in information about the product inventory (Alias and et al., 2014). The current process of availing services of UNICEF involves the collection of information about the account detail and transfer of payment through banking organizations. This process consumes a lot of time of parents and increases the level of stress of uneducated people. Now, to overcome the issues the organization is looking for an automated system for ordering and managing the inventory which will help to overcome the cost and wastage of resources.  

Current Project Overview

The project of UNICEF is about the development of order and payment through the online system that increases the reach and effectiveness of services for the children. The scope statement of the project involves the development of project outline that considers the requirements, constraints, assumptions and deliverables (Chow and et al., 2014). For the current project of UNICEF, the key success factors will include delivery of project according to quality standards and achieve the desired results. By focusing the deliverables and expectation of organization, the project team will look forward to developing the new information system that will facilitate the organization for online fund transfer and proper management if inventory.

The project objectives help to define activities and resources for project to maintain the flow of operations and planning of the desired function. The project objectives are defined according to scope statement and needs of the stakeholders for managing the functions (Haron and et al., 2017). Following are the key objectives of UNICEF online inventory and payment project:

• To improve service standards for child care activities
• To overcome issues of payment and managing inventory
• To analyze the requirements for new system and management of functions
• To identify the hardware and software for developing new system
• To develop integrated system to match organizational model
• To analyze effectiveness of new system through testing
• To implementation of new system   

The consideration of project requirements before starting the project is essential for a project manager to identify the needs, quality standards and develops the vision for the project. The collection and analysis of requirements are helpful for the project team to determine the scope, resources, budget and operational activities that are going to be performed for completing this particular project (Kerzner, 2017). The benefits of defining and analysis of requirements are planning of cost, effective change management, and improvement in the success rate of the project and manage the communication level with the stakeholders. According to the analysis of project and communication with the owner following are the major requirements carried out:

• Development of a new system that can perform payment through online sources
• To collect and store information about clients and uses of products
• Development of proper inventory for products and services to minimize the waste
• Identify numbers of benefited children and required services to meet the objectives.

For the current project of UNICEF, the deliverables involve the achievement of desired goals and objectives of stakeholders and maintain the proper inventory of supplied functions and initiatives of organization for children. The input of project will majorly depend on the process that followed for documentation, equipment, information, software and financial management (Kerzner, and Kerzner, 2017).  To meet the deliverables the project team will require the software, hardware and contract application of assumptions to achieve the goals and objectives. The project will be completed within 173 days and start on 21st May 2018. The aim of developing this system is to online ordering and deposit of payments. The key deliverables of this project will be managed in 4 phases such as initiation, planning, execution and closing. The project team will try to meet the standards that proposed the requirements and objectives of the project.

UNICEF’s Support

The milestone for current project will be determined by the project manager by focusing on the requirements and proper management of resources to complete the activities. The consideration of requirements for different phases will support the achievement of small and big objectives of this project. The major phases of project plan are known as a milestone and used for managing operations that initiated for managing the operations for offering support for the children (Montoya and Persson, 2017). The milestones play a critical role in defining and management of major tasks for the current project. The project manager will perform allocation of resources to project team to achieve the goals and objectives considering the milestone activities. The changes in project approach and activities depend upon the organization.

Table 1: Milestone of project

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish
Online ordering and deposit system	173 days	Mon 21-05-18	Wed 16-01-19
Milestone 1: Project charter developed	40 days	Mon 21-05-18	Fri 13-07-18
Milestone 2: System and network requirements developed	23 days	Mon 16-07-18	Wed 15-08-18
Milestone 3: New system launched	80 days	Thu 16-08-18	Wed 05-12-18
Milestone 4: Project completed	30 days	Thu 06-12-18	Wed 16-01-19

The success criteria of the project depend on various factors that involve quality, clear scope and development of an effective project team that has good knowledge and skills to meet the project objectives. The organization and project manager is responsible for developing project activities and functions that could increase the feasibility of a project and contribute to the success. For the current project of developing online ordering and payment system for UNICEF, the major success criteria would involve meeting the user requirements, completing the project in determined budget and time, achievement of objectives with proposed quality standard and satisfying the needs of stakeholders (Muriana, and Vizzini, 2017). The success criteria are defined before starting the project and it would be accepted by all stakeholders. A collective approach and efforts are required between the organization and project manager for increasing the success of the current project. Moreover, the UNICEF member will take active participation in project activities to encourage the success and develop the customized approach. In order to improve the success of the project, the project team will use the organize success metrics for information and communication technology. This technology will help to develop a comprehensive application for online ordering and payment for UNICEF (Shiohama and et al., 2016). The framework of this technology will help to encourage the system quality, information quality and services quality of the project.

There are some limitations that shape the project quality and process to meet the objectives. According to analysis, there are majorly six constraints that project manager and the team have to deal involve cost, quality, resources arrangement, time and risk management as well the development of unchanged scope. The primary factors that affecting the success of the project for developing online order and payment for UNICEF are scope, time and cost of the project. The time span is determined by the project team for completing the project which will be unchanged but the risk factors like environmental changes, lacking in communication and monitoring could influence the time of completing the project (ul Hassan and et al., 2018). Moreover, the resources for managing project are limited as the budget of the project is fixed. These constraints could affect the progress of the project and create the issues to manage the project activities more professional and customized manner. To overcome the impact of these constraints, the project team needs to develop a strong communication plan that will help to collect and offer real-time information to manage the activities. Therefore, the project manager will monitor and control each function related to project to maintain and increase the integrity and success of the project (Schwalbe, 2015).

Project Objectives

 

Figure 1: WBS of project

The Work Breakdown Structure of current project is based on the milestone activities that involve four stages such as initiation, planning, implementation and closing of the project. The project management will focus on the project management activities and divided the project into small functions that involve identification of requirements, mapping, development of the draft of for the services and discussion with the stakeholders (Sánchez, 2015). In the second stage, the sub-activities of planning involve identification of hardware and software, development of network as well management of a database for managing the services for the new information system. The third stage of the project is a breakdown in elements like upgrading of the existing system, development of the database, execution of new system and testing. Moreover, the manager will perform monitoring of the system and make the changes that required for meeting the objectives. The fourth stage of this project is closing of the project. The closing stage is divided into monitoring of overall project, documentation and signing off the project (Fleming and Koppelman, 2016). This kind of work breakdown structure will help the manager to perform and manage the activities more professional manner to achieve the goals and objectives.

 

Figure 2: Network diagram

The network diagram of the project will provide information about the flow of activities and process that followed by the manager to complete the tasks (Teller and et al., 2014). The starting and end of the particular activity is presented in the network diagram which will help to track the operational functions and current activity of project for online ordering and payment for UNICEF organization to increase the offering of services to parents of children aging 6 weeks to 13 years.     

Table 2: Scheduling of task

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
•Project	173 days	Mon 21-05-18	Wed 16-01-19
•Initiation stage	40 days	Mon 21-05-18	Fri 13-07-18
•Identification of requirements	10 days	Mon 21-05-18	Fri 01-06-18
•Requirement mapping	9 days	Mon 04-06-18	Thu 14-06-18	3
•Development of draft	12 days	Fri 15-06-18	Mon 02-07-18	3,4
•Meeting with stakeholders	9 days	Tue 03-07-18	Fri 13-07-18	5
•Planning stage	23 days	Mon 16-07-18	Wed 15-08-18
•Identification of hardware	8 days	Mon 16-07-18	Wed 25-07-18	3,6
•software requirements	5 days	Thu 26-07-18	Wed 01-08-18	6,8
•Network development requirements	5 days	Thu 02-08-18	Wed 08-08-18	8,9
•Database management	5 days	Thu 09-08-18	Wed 15-08-18	10
•Implementation stage	80 days	Thu 16-08-18	Wed 05-12-18
•Up gradation of existing system	15 days	Thu 16-08-18	Wed 05-09-18	10,11
•Database development	8 days	Thu 06-09-18	Mon 17-09-18	13
•Implementation of new system	15 days	Tue 18-09-18	Mon 08-10-18	14
•Testing	20 days	Tue 09-10-18	Mon 05-11-18	15
•Modification	12 days	Tue 06-11-18	Wed 21-11-18	14,16
•Implementation of changes	10 days	Thu 22-11-18	Wed 05-12-18	17
•Closing stage	30 days	Thu 06-12-18	Wed 16-01-19
•Monitoring of overall project	10 days	Thu 06-12-18	Wed 19-12-18	18
•Documentation	10 days	Thu 20-12-18	Wed 02-01-19	20
•Signing off the project	10 days	Thu 03-01-19	Wed 16-01-19	20,21

The scheduling of tasks for the current project of online ordering and payment will be performed in four phases that involve initiation, planning, implementation and closing. By consideration of sub-activities, the project manager will try to complete the project in 173 days. The project will be scheduled on 21st May 2018 and complete on 16th January 2019. The project team will look forward to completing the project in the determined time period but changes in scope and other risk factors might affect the deliverables and budget of the online ordering and payment system for UNICEF (Lock, 2017). The project manager has allocated sufficient time for each activity as they could have time to identify risk and develop the plan to manage the quality of all tasks. However, the uncertain activities could affect the process of the project and shape the budget and time.          

Project Requirements

 

Figure 3: Gantt chart

Table 3: Resources allocation

Name	Start	Finish	Cost
Project Manager	Mon 21/5/18	Tue 12/6/18	$7,520.00
System Engineer	Mon 21/5/18	Tue 12/6/18	$15,760.00
Software Developer	Mon 21/5/18	Tue 12/6/18	$13,896.00
Public officer	Mon 21/5/18	Tue 12/6/18	$1,632.00
Chairman	Tue 5/22/18	Tue 12/4/18	$1,680.00
Vice Chairman	Tue 5/22/18	Tue 12/4/18	$1,400.00
Treasurer	Tue 5/22/18	Tue 12/4/18	$896.00

The allocation of resources is done by the organization after considering the requirements and needs of the particular member. The role of project manager is critical in managing project and planning of the operation for that purpose the major amount is distributed to the manager. Other stakeholders are also allocated with resources to complete the operational activities according to their role and responsibilities (Gollenia, 2016). The UNICEF organization will collect the documents for utilization of resources which will be developed by the project manager. The proper assessment of resources will be beneficial for fund planning and manage the financial activities for the online ordering and payment project for UNICEF.       

Table 4: Budget planning

Task name	Resource name	Cost
Project		$42,784.00
•Initiation stage		$12,488.00
•Identification of requirements	Project manager, developer and system engineer	$4,000
•Requirement mapping	Software developer, system engineer	$3,000
•Development of draft	Project manager	$1500
•Meeting with stakeholders	Project Manager, Public officer, Software Developer, System Engineer, Treasurer, Vice Chairman	$3,988
•Planning stage		$5,032.00
•Identification of hardware	System engineer	$1,200
•software requirements	Software engineer	$1,400
•Network development requirements	Network engineer	$1,250
•Database management	Software engineer	$1,182
•Implementation stage		$21,360.00
•Up gradation of existing system	Software Developer, System Engineer	$3,000
•Database development	Software engineer	$5,000
•Implementation of new system	Software Developer, System Engineer	$3,000
•Testing	Software Developer, System Engineer	$5,500
•Modification	Software Developer, System Engineer	$2,000
•Implementation of changes	Software Developer, System Engineer	$1,860
•Closing stage		$3,904.00
•Monitoring of overall project	Chairman, Project Manager, Public officer, Software Developer, System Engineer, Treasurer, Vice Chairman	$1,500
•Documentation	Project Manager, Public officer, Software Developer, System Engineer, Treasurer	$ 1,500
•Signing off the project	Chairman, Project Manager, Public officer, Software Developer, System Engineer, Treasurer, Vice Chairman	$904

The total budget for this project is $42,784.00 that will be used according to a breakdown provided by the project manager. The summary of budget estimation will help to analyze the financial need of the project and planning of the flow of funds by using the internal and external resources (Nicholas, and Steyn, 2017). However, the cost of the activities could change as the modification in the project scope and activities. The factors like delay in supply of raw material and lacking labour also affect the budget allocation and overall cost of the project. The project manager and organization will try to complete the project within the allocated budget.   

For the project some predefine assumptions are considered by the project team before implementation of project plan. For the current project following assumptions are considered:

• All the stakeholders will meet their role and responsibilities
• The stakeholder will be present in the meetings
• The organization will fulfil the requirements of project team
• The goals and objectives of project will be communicated to all the department

Risk management is an essential approach for managing the project and planning of the operations to meet the standard objectives. The success of the project majorly depends on identification and mitigation of risks considering the priority and factors that could influence the functions. There are three types of risks involved in a project such as internal, external and technical (Binder, 2016). The project manager is responsible for developing the plan for managing risk and maintaining the smooth flow of development and implementation of the new system for online ordering and payment for UNICEF. Following are the key risks in this project:

Table 5: Internal risks

Risk	Priority	Factors	Summary	Impact	Mitigation plan
Delay in approval	High	Lack of communication	To start the project the approval from the stakeholders is essential to increase the acceptance	The delivery time of project will get affected by delay in approval	Development and use of effective communication plan to get approval (Nicholas amd Steyn, 2017)
Changes in requirements	High	Due to technical modification and improvement in cost	Changes in the scope are common issues that affect the process of managing requirements	This will influence overall process and deliverables of the project	Scope will be clearly defined and mange according to plan for implementing project
Failure in implementation	Medium	Lack of knowledge or expert team	The newly design system suit the strategic objectives of organization. Customization is essential for implementing the project	It will affect the closing in terms of estimated budget and time.	The design of new system will be customized according to requirements (McNeil, and et al.,  2015)

Table 6: External risk

Risks	Priority	Factors	Summary	Impact	Mitigation plan
Delay in supply of material	Low	Delay in payment or lack of communication	The supply of hardware and automated system can be delayed due to high demand in market. The supply of these products depends on selection of vendor	This risk will affect the implementation of the project as well as increase the time of delivery	By using the Just-In-time supply model this risk can be mitigated.
Other issues	Medium	Lacking in analysis of requirements	In the large project for ordering and payment many uncertain issues can be arise	These kinds of risks could affect the overall functions of project	To manage these kind of risks the management need to develop the risk register and prior planning (Pritchard, & PMP, 2014)

Communication with stakeholders is essential for managing the project outcome and activities. The proper communication among stakeholder will be beneficial for project team and organization to analyze the real-time information and make changes in the project activities (Jacobs and et al., 2014). The key stakeholders for this project involve organization, volunteers, project manager, public officer, software developer, system engineer and vice chairman. The communication process of the project team will involve the use of technical resources like email, text message and video conferencing. The use of these communication tools will help to minimize the time and tracking of the information. The project manager will also use traditional methods of communication like official letters and memo to communicate the financial and supply chain contract information to the top management people of the organization (Harrison, and Lock, 2017). This kind of communication approach is essential for increasing the feasibility and success rate of the project. Moreover, the communication plan for software engineer and system developer involve conducting the meetings to increase barnstorming which will support in generating new ideas and allocation of resources.

Deliverables

The project is started according to define goals and objectives by considering the requirements of organization and process of managing the activities. The project manager is taking feedback and supervising the activities of team members to maintain the standards and quality of the project (Papke-Shields, and Boyer-Wright, 2017). The current status report of the project is satisfactory as team members are working according to their capabilities and managing the functions of the project. The deliverables involve the achievement of desired goals and objectives of stakeholders and maintain the proper inventory of supplied functions and initiatives of organization for children. The input of project will majorly depend on the process that followed for documentation, equipment, information, software and financial management. The performance of project team is monitored according to define objectives of the project and the team members are following the standard to meet the KPIs. The factors like delay in supply of raw material and lacking labor also affect the budget allocation and overall cost of the project. The project manager and organization will try to complete the project within the allocated budget.

Conclusion

From the study, it can be considered that project management is broad activities that help to manage the large and small projects development and implementation. The current report has developed project plan for developing and implementing new online system for order making and offering the payment through online medium for users of UNICEF services. The report has analyzed risk factors, budget and designed the schedule for implementing the project into organization to provide benefits to children. 

References

Abran, A. (2015). Software project estimation: the fundamentals for providing high quality information to decision makers. John Wiley & Sons.

Alias, Z., Zawawi, E. M. A., Yusof, K., & Aris, N. M. (2014). Determining critical success factors of project management practice: A conceptual framework. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 153, 61-69.

Binder, J. (2016). Global project management: communication, collaboration and management across borders. Routledge.

Chow, A. F., Woodford, K. C., & Lambe, N. (2014). Using project deliverables and project management for timely completion of student projects. Journal of Emerging Trends in Economics and Management Sciences, 5(3), 323.

Fleming, Q.W. & Koppelman, J.M., (2016), December. Earned value project management. Project Management Institute.

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

Haron, A., Sahibuddin, S., Yusoff, H., & Osman, M. H. (2017, May). Systematic Approach Based on Best Practices to Develop Requirements Engineering (RE) Guideline in an Organization. In Information and Communication Technology (PICICT), 2017 Palestinian International Conference on (pp. 126-131). IEEE.

Harrison, F., & Lock, D. (2017). Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge.

Jacobs, F. R., Chase, R. B., & Lummus, R. R. (2014). Operations and supply chain management (pp. 533-535). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management metrics, KPIs, and dashboards: a guide to measuring and monitoring project performance. John Wiley & Sons.

Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Lock, D. (2017). The essentials of project management. Routledge.

McNeil, A. J., Frey, R., & Embrechts, P. (2015). Quantitative risk management: Concepts, techniques and tools. Princeton university press.

Montoya, J. H., & Persson, K. A. (2017, April). The Materials Project: Milestones, Challenges, and Opportunities in High-Throughput Computational Materials Science. In Meeting Abstracts (No. 35, pp. 1666-1666). The Electrochemical Society.

Muriana, C., & Vizzini, G. (2017). Project risk management: A deterministic quantitative technique for assessment and mitigation. International Journal of Project Management, 35(3), 320-340.

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

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

Papke-Shields, K. E., & Boyer-Wright, K. M. (2017). Strategic planning characteristics applied to project management. International Journal of Project Management, 35(2), 169-179.

Pritchard, C. L., & PMP, P. R. (2014). Risk management: concepts and guidance. CRC Press.

Sánchez, M.A., (2015). Integrating sustainability issues into project management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 96, pp.319-330.

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

Shiohama, R., Washizaki, H., Kuboaki, S., Sakamoto, K., & Fukazawa, Y. (2016). Investigating the relationship between project constraints and appropriate iteration length in agile development through simulations. International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 54(4), 311-322.

Teller, J., Kock, A., & Gemünden, H. G. (2014). Risk management in project portfolios is more than managing project risks: A contingency perspective on risk management. Project Management Journal, 45(4), 67-80.

Hassan, I., Ahmad, N., & Zuhaira, B. (2018). Calculating completeness of software project scope definition. Information and Software Technology, 94, 208-233.