Target Corp Project management

Project Costs
Expanding Target’s online presence will require work on several fronts. First, the company will need to expand the size of its web team, The current team is built mainly to maintain the current website and social media, but this new project is a capital project that requires new incremental investment. The total cost for the needed team is expected to be around $200,000, hired on a contract basis, along with redeployment of existing resources, in order to ensure that the project does not create any problems or issues for the existing web infrastructure. There will also be ongoing needs for two marketers, at a cost of $80,000 per year total. In addition, Target is building some other functionality, including new cybersecurity measures, into this project. The company has already made massive cybersecurity investments in the wake of the 2013 breach. The new cybersecurity investments will be done concurrently with the expansion of the company’s web presence, but they were going to be implemented anyway, and therefore do not count as incremental expenses. The total capital budget will therefore be $300,000, the other $100,000 being for infrastructure, along with ongoing $80,000 needs for operating the website, and redeployment of some existing resources to maintenance of the expanded web presence.
As with most web development projects, there are significant risks associated with timeframes. Because the company is relying on contract labor, the ability of that contract team to deliver on time and on budget is unknown. Target has faith in the project management capabilities of its in-house team, but is also aware that web development projects can have a high level of variance between the expected completion time and the actual completion time. The downside risk of web projects in particular has been fairly well documented – 27% run over budget, with average cost overruns over 200% (Hazrati, 2011).
There are several benefits to operationalizing this idea. The first is that there are opportunities for Target in terms of building a better e-commerce experience. The company lags behind rival Walmart in terms of its e-commerce business, and there have been several things that have been identified as potential causes for that – things that needed to be modernized in the user interface and core site functionality, for example. A reinvented web presence also provides additional opportunity to build content marketing into the company’s overall marketing strategy, and to implement some much-needed improvements to cybersecurity. Being able to tackle these multiple issues is one of the major benefits of this project. This will be weighed against the potential costs, which include the risk of the project going over budget and underperforming in terms of the deliverables.
Work Breakdown Structure
The work for this project will be done in three phases. These are the pre-development, the development and the post-development phases. The pre-development phase will be done by an in-house team that is comprised of members of the marketing and IT teams. The time frame for this stage will be four months, as team members build this project into their daily rhythms. During this phase, the marketing team will work with the IT people to determine the scope of the project. Establishing an appropriate scope and sticking to it is an essential component of bringing a project in on time and budget (Hazrati, 2011). This first phase will also include the building of the team at will work on the site – including back end, front end and UX/UI people.
The marketing team will identify the opportunities that this project can position the company to exploit and set targets for the post-implementation functionality and metrics, in order to determine whether the project was a success or not. By determining up front what the project will achieve, this cross-functional team will be able to map out a scope of work for the contract developers.
The second phase of the project will be the development phase. During this phase, there will be one marketing person providing oversight, in addition to the in-house head of technology. The contract developers will work within the framework of the current website, but make a number of different enhancements that are included in the work breakdown. The development phase is expected to take around two months. While most of the heavy lifting will be outsourced, there will still be roles for Target’s in-house marketing team, especially on the content creation side (photographers, graphic designers, writers and videographers). Their work will not be included in the budget since they are full-time employees and their wages are a sunk cost. This phase will be considered complete once the website has been subject to quality control and deemed to be acceptable. At the end of the this phase, it is expected that most of the contract workers will be relieved of their duties.
The third phase of the work breakdown will take six months. This is the post-development evaluation phase. When the expanded web presence is complete, Target will then task its in-house teams with operating the website, which includes ongoing maintenance and development work, and populating this new web presence with content. Furthermore, the digital marketing department of the company will be responsible for the ongoing maintenance of this heightened web presence, through the creation of content and the application of digital marketing strategies. One of the roles with which the digital marketing team will be tasked is to monitor the ROI and other metrics for the enhanced presence. Thus, the marketing team will play a significant role in measuring the success of this initiative, through the data that they gather and use to evaluate the performance of this initiative.
All told, these three phases will last nearly one year, and the post-development phase could stretch out even longer. The work breakdown structure is split into three phases, as determined by which internal teams are involved. The first phase is a cross-functional team with IT and marketing people. The second phase is driven almost entirely by the IT team, and the third phase almost entirely by the marketing team, albeit with each team having some visibility into each phase.
Key Milestones
There are several key milestones that define this project. The first is going to be the formation of the cross-functional team that will spearhead the project. Because this is a major project, there are likely to be political dynamics as to who ends up on the team, but from a purely functional point of view, the team will need to represent a wide range of stakeholders, especially in IT and marketing. The formation of the team will be the first major milestone.
The second major milestone will be the finalization of the work plan, including timelines, budgets and responsibilities. At that point, the work on the project can begin, so this is the second major milestone. There will be a number of more minor milestones, such as the finalization of the wireframe, and these will help move the project forward. The third major milestone will occur at the end of the second phase, when the work of building the site will be completed, and the work of running it will begin. Equipped with this new infrastructure, Target’s marketing team will be able to execute on its part of the plan to expand the company’s web presence, e-commerce and mobile commerce capabilities, as well as content marketing and social media.
The final milestone will be after the third phase, when the company is able to evaluate the entire project, studying the metrics, and completing a report on the project that can be used to inform future major projects. This final milestone will be valuable insight both into what worked and what did not work during the creation of this project.
Potential Obstacles
There are number of potential obstacles. The first major problem to watch for is scope creep. This is when the scope of a project is continually expanded as input from more stakeholders arrives. Scope creep is often responsible for a project’s failure, in particular where meeting original goals and budgets and timelines is concerned (Teamwork, 2016). The risk of scope creep must be weighed against the need for stakeholder input – if stakeholders are not engaged early enough in the process, there can be significant pushback and resistance later on. Getting buy-in early is essential, but this has to be achieved without allowing the project to spiral into something too large and costly to fit into its constraints.
Another potential obstacle is lack of resources. While the company obviously will want some checks and balances to maintain the budget, there is also the risk that a lack of flexibility can scuttle the project altogether. Circumstances change. A new e-commerce technology, or new cybersecurity threat, could emerge at any point during the project and change its scope. In order to ensure that the project succeeds, there will need to be at least a little bit of flexibility built into the project, especially in the budget, because running out of money before completion is a major resource-driven obstacle to success. Resistance to change might occur, in particular from within the IT department, since they are not being tasked with this work. This may be viewed as management intruding on their fiefdom, so some turf-defending might occur, when in reality they will play the most critical role in the development of the initiative.
Another potential obstacle comes in the form of communication. Not only will an external team be used to build out the project’s infrastructure, but there will be extensive communication required from all participants, and not all of this communication can be face-to-face. Giving each team member the right amount of visibility, and ensuring that communication about any challenges that may arise in the course of the project, will be critical to ensuring its success (Teamwork.com, 2016).
Risk Mitigation
There are a few methods by which the risks inherent in this project can be mitigated. The first is through the use of budgets as a control mechanism. If cost overruns are the biggest risk to Target, then the budget should be subject to considerable scrutiny. Third-party oversight might be required to at least provide visibility from the outside into the budget aspects of the project. It is important that the project is kept on track with a high level of budget control.
There should also be operational control in order to mitigate risk. The project manager will need to have granular visibility into the project to ensure that everything is going smoothly. The means of communication need to be established, and there needs to be clear communication guidelines in place so that everybody knows what their role in the project is. All told, this is significant challenge in terms of risk mitigation – the better the communication, the more likelihood that potential problems are detected early and resolved.
Finally, having clear role definitions is an essential part of risk mitigation. When everybody knows exactly what they are supposed to be doing, the risk associated with the project is lower, because each person can be held accountable for fulfilling their role. Furthermore, the project manager can be held accountable for any roles that needed to be filled but wasn’t. Clear responsibilities, strong communication, and formal budgetary controls are all important elements of risk mitigation for this project.
References
Hazrati, V. (2011) IT projects: 400% over budget and only 25% of benefits realized. InfoQ.com. Retrieved April 15, 2019 from https://www.infoq.com/news/2011/10/risky-it-projects
Teamwork (2016) 6 obstacles to any project and how to clear them. Teamwork.com. Retrieved April 15, 2019 from https://blog.teamwork.com/6-obstacles-project-clear/