Assignment'brief You!have!recently!been!appointed!by!the!Salford!City!Council!who!is!seeking!to! develop!a!Christmas!Tourism!Attraction!of!its!own!but!they!have!concerns!over!...

Contents
Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................. 2
Literature Review .................................................................................................................................... 2
Introduction to the case.......................................................................................................................... 3
Project objectives .................................................................................................................................... 4
Performance Measurement / Management of quality .......................................................................... 4
Stakeholder analysis ............................................................................................................................... 5
Activities to be carried out and scheduling including any milestones .................................................... 6
Resources to be used including project budget ...................................................................................... 7
Constraints and Risks .............................................................................................................................. 8
Possible success/ failure factors for this project .................................................................................... 8
Bibliography of the sources .................................................................................................................... 8
Executive Summary
It is a general understanding that the project initiation and planning are of utmost importance with a
better degree of planning, the chance of the success of the project will be higher. Hence it can be
said that the time which is used for these specific tasks help in reducing the risk as well as increasing
the success of the project. In contrast, if analysis and planning is not adequate, the same will lead to
the failure of the project.
For this project it is important that the Christmas Tourism Attraction is created for Salford City
Council location in such a way so that the same is committed towards providing all the guests with
experiences which are memorable through providing them options of entertaining, fun, and
educational activities. The aim will be design the facility in such a way so that the same adds to the
overall joy of the festive season for the visitors of all ages through promoting life-long conservation
learning and advocacy. In spite of the importance that has been shown towards project initiation
and planning processes by the previous researchers, it is often ignored stage and thus the same
brings the downfall of any project. As far as the reasons of the providing less focus towards this
phase is the lack of understanding of the fact that the project planning is highly beneficial for the
project managers especially in view of the fact that this process enable the project planners to
prepare a detailed plan of the project for various expected as well as unexpected activities and this
the outcomes of the project can be controlled and manipulated. These reasons are also significant as
far as the possible success/ failure for this project.
Literature Review
In this section a critical review of previous literature on the topic of project initiation and planning
will be looked into and the same is expected to provide an in depth understanding of the various
aspects of these activities which in turn can be used for the effective solution of the case study
which is being looked into in this paper.
It is a general understanding that the project initiation and planning are of utmost importance with a
better degree of planning, the chance of the success of the project will be higher (Wang and Gibson,
2008; Dvir, Raz and Shenhar, 2003). Hence it can be said that the time which is used for these
specific tasks help in reducing the risk as well as increasing the success of the project. In contrast, if
analysis and planning is not adequate, the same will lead to the failure of the project (Morris, 1998;
Thomas, Jacques, Adams and Kihneman-Woote, 2008).
To gather a better understanding of these factors it will important to understand the true nature of
project planning.
The definition for the planning phase which has been given in PMBOK® (PMI, 2008, p. 46)) is as
following
“The Planning Process Group consists of those processes performed to establish
the total scope of the effort, define and refine the objectives, and develop the
course of action required to attain those objectives.”
Some of the analysis tasks are not considered by the definition of project planning as given by
PMBOK® (2008) and these include assessment of technology, assessment of high-level design,
analysis of different options or vendors etc. Planning in projects has been defined by Shenhar (2011)
as the “what comes before action”, Shenhar (personal communication, 2011).
In spite of the importance that has been shown towards project initiation and planning processes by
the previous researchers, it is often ignored stage and thus the same brings the downfall of any
project. As far as the reasons of the providing less focus towards this phase is the lack of
understanding of the fact that the project planning is highly beneficial for the project managers
especially in view of the fact that this process enable the project planners to prepare a detailed plan
of the project for various expected as well as unexpected activities and this the outcomes of the
project can be controlled and manipulated. In view of the fact the planners tend to take decisions
quite early during the life cycle of the project, all the precautionary steps can be taken for
minimizing the risk of the failure of the project. Various researchers have provided their insights on
the value of planning in detail before the project is initiated from a conceptual standpoint. However
few researchers have also confirmed that a high degree of planning and evaluation can lead to a lack
of success of the project. As has been mentioned by Bart (1993), as far as the research and
development (R&D) projects are concerned, very high degree of much planning may bring about
failure in view of the fact for this...