Project Charter: Establishment Of Social Media Research Centre And Website Development

Project title: Establishment of social media research centre and developing website

Project objectives:

· Setting up a social media research centre and developing a functional website

· The clients shall be the interested doctoral and masters students

· The centre shall have subject matter experts in the area of social media

· The intranet site shall be very user friendly so that they can easily download the tools and templates like the project documents, useful and related information, retrieval of articles and the “Instant help from the senior expert” feature, which will allow the users to post questions or queries and seek help from the senior experts  

· Some sections of the intranet website shall be visible to the public while the major part shall be accessible only to the paid customers, internal subject matter experts and the other consultants within the organization

· The intranet site shall be  very secured and protected

Measurable organizational value:

· Improve the research methodologies and generate quality research data

· Efforts directed towards collecting large data

· Provide on the job training to the staff in order to ensure qualitative research design, collection of data and research analysis (Heagney, 2016). 

· Identify potential collaborators and develop relationship with them in order to gain knowledge about their research needs and find the best possible ways to assist them

· Disseminate information regarding our capabilities to the potential customers by developing  an effective outreach strategy (Coombs, 2014). 

· Identifying the potential customers and developing new activities in order to cater to the needs of the clients

· Adopting new technologies and encouraging interactions with the stakeholders in order to generate new opportunities and becoming the leading qualitative research provider (Kerzner, 2013). 

· Achieve sufficient funds to run the core activities

· Achieve best quality personnel to carry out the activities efficiently (Weiss, 2014). 

· Adopting technologies that can enhance the operations of the organization

· Annually updating of the website

Acceptance criteria:

· Setting up the expectation level of the clients

· The acceptance criteria based upon the acceptance list of deliverables. The subject matter experts are to send the deliverables before commencing any research work

· Avoiding all kinds of miscommunication

· Getting approved the acceptance criteria by the project sponsor   

Assumptions:

Improving the efficiency and attaining the result within the proposed budget. Improve the research quality and employee efficiency. Continuously increase the productivity.

The RACI matrix is used for identifying the roles and duties of the project management team. RACI stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed (Khan & Quraishi, 2014). These terms have deep relation with the project management. It helps in clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of every individual within the team. The team member who is in charge of completing a task shall be responsible for the completion of the task. The executives and the project sponsors are accountable for the proper functioning of the project (Lientz & Rea, 2016). Those people fall under the category of consulted who are consulted through a two way communication for the project. The RACI matrix for the social media research centre is as follows:

Stakeholders list:

The outcome of a project is highly affected by the stakeholders. The stakeholders must be identified and their requirements must be understood. The involvement of the key stakeholders is an important part of project management (Martinelli & Milosevic, 2016). The success of a project is determined by the level of active participation of the key stakeholders. The key stakeholders must be identified using the prioritization matrix (Turner, 2016). The opinions of the stakeholders must be given due importance and their opinion should never be ignored. Ensuring proper communication with the stakeholders is an important aspect of project management (Chevalier, 2016). Importance must be given to the periodical participation of the stakeholders in the project’s progress. It is necessary for the policies of the management to remain flexible throughout. The following is the list of the stakeholders:

Lessons learned:

· Designing and implementing  an intranet website. Setting the expectations of  the clients shall help in the success of the project

· Emphasis upon the acceptance of the list of deliverables. The subject matter experts are to send the deliverables before commencing any research work in order to save time and money that will ensure effectiveness of the project. Lastly, avoiding any kind of miscommunication shall be avoided and active participation of the stakeholders shall be encouraged (O’Dea, 2014).

Charter sign off:

Plan purpose:

The purpose of this plan is to establish a social media research centre and develop a suitable intranet site for its efficient functioning. The website shall contain all the information regarding the research projects, project reports, supervisors and doctorate and masters’ student projects.  

Stakeholders:

· Identifying stakeholder groups

· Creating stakeholders list

· Conducting stakeholder assessment

· Prioritizing the engagement of stakeholders

· Developing a stakeholder map

· Creating communication plan for stakeholders

· Identifying the activities in which the engagement of stakeholders is necessary

· Developing an engagement plan for the stakeholders

· Executing the engagement plan

· Regularly updating and monitoring the engagement plan

· Implementing a feedback mechanism

· Avoiding any kind of miscommunication

Information to be shared:

The kind of information required by the stakeholders shall be shared when required. The information shall be shared according to the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders of the project team.

Frequency of exchange of information:

Information shall be shared as per the requirements of the stakeholders.

Communication purpose:

The main purpose of communication is to avoid any kind of miscommunication and to ensure efficient functioning of the project (Schwalbe 2015). Ensure active participation of the stakeholders by properly communicating with them. The project team leader shall be responsible for drafting a communication release and sending it to the team members before the release date. The members shall check the issued draft and make any required changes then finally send back the revised draft. The final revised draft shall be stored in the server (Tantalo & Priem, 2016).

Communication mechanism:

The following shall be the communication mechanism:

Change management:

The following principles are to be followed in the change management:

Meeting agenda:

Implementation meetings shall be held once every month. Ad hoc meetings shall be held to address any key issues that affect the success of the project. A process report shall be periodically updated to ensure progress of every segment of the plan.