One of the finalist team's at the APM Wessex branch's PM Challenge finals night on 25th February gave this presentation as an overview of their project.

1. Project Management
Highcliffe Castle Visitor
Trail
Team 9 – Dominic Wicks, Rachael Stone, Sarah Shuster
and Antonia Verna

2. The Project
Project brief, objectives, what we achieved.

3. The Project Brief
 The project was to improve the Highcliffe Castle’s visitors
trail.
Objectives:
 Information points should be interactive, linking to
information that can be easily updated over time
 Different groups visiting the trail should be considered and
their needs met
 Address content, design and functionality of information
points
 To design information points within a £1000 budget

4. The Project Objectives
 To design a visitor trail for Highcliffe
Castle to take visitors from the cliff top
car park to the Castle by 16th December
 To present our design proposal to David
Hopkins, the Highcliffe Castle
management on the 7th of January 2014
in a professional presentation.

5. Personal Objectives
 To learn how to use project management
tools such as Gantt charts, critical path
analysis and work breakdown structures.
 To learn from any mistakes that we make and
understand where we went wrong.
 To gain knowledge that we can use on future
projects.
 To improve existing professional skills such as
communication and team working.

6. Success Criteria
 Was David Hopkins happy with the design proposal
 Was our design proposal within the £1000 budget
 Did we meet our objectives within the time limit
 Did we gain project management skills from the
experience
 Did the project meet the assignment brief and the
project brief
 Did we complete all deliverables to a high standard

7. Proposed Design

8. Achievements
 Met the project brief and produced an design
proposal David Hopkins was happy with.
 We completed all tasks within the time frame.
 Improved our knowledge of project management.
 Delivered professional presentation to an external
client.
 Working with a designer to get a professional digital
prototype created

9. Managing the Project
Project management tools and techniques, project planning.

10. Project Planning
 Work Breakdown Structure
 Product Breakdown Structure
 Gantt Chart

14. Communication
 Between team members – Facebook Group,
messaging, telephone
 David Hopkins (Highcliffe Castle
management) – email
 Karen Thompson (Bournemouth University)
e-mail, face to face
 Other external stakeholders (for example
potential suppliers) – e-mail, telephone

16. Stakeholder Management
 We identified all the stakeholders to this
project and analysed them
 We then created a stakeholder matrix for this
 The 3 stakeholders we considered to be most
important were: David Hopkins (Highcliffe
Castle Management), Karen Thompson
(Bournemouth University) and us as a team.

18. Project Budget
 Cost measured as our time
 Budgeted 3 hours a week per person
 Total budgeted time 12 hours a week
 Any extra hours put in considered over budget
 Top-down approach to cost management – budget set by
management
 Highcliffe manager gave us a budget of £1000 to design signs for
him including the material cost. This was met.
 Did not spend any of the APM budget.

19. Risk Management
 Evaluation of potential risks to success of
the project
 Qualitative analysis of the risks (High,
medium, low)
 How we planned to monitor and control
these risks

20. Evaluation of Risks
 Loss/illness of a team member (low risk) - 4 team
members, loss of member not too significant
 Poor time management due to inexperience (high
risk) – Use Gantt chart and project plan to keep to
schedule
 Lack of commitment from team members, not making
project priority (medium risk) – planning ahead,
delegating responsibilities
 Insufficient resources for design (medium risk) –
correspondence with David Hopkins, Karen Thompson
and Gino Abate and thorough research of suppliers

21. Quality Management
 Team review – all team members review and
check activities and deliverables
 Project managers role – quality controls
project and gives team members feedback
 Consulting with David Hopkins, visiting
Highcliffe Castle, ensuring we are meeting
stakeholders needs
 Referring to assignment brief, ensure we are
meeting requirements

22. Progress Reporting
 Completed progress reports during project
to ensure we were sticking to schedule
 Highlighted any issues that needed
resolving
 Determine and plan what activities and
deliverables still need to be completed

24. Project Reflection
Learning from the project, what was successful, benefits and outcomes.

25. Overall Success of the Project
 Overall success – met all of our objectives
 David Hopkins was pleased with design
proposal and gave positive feedback
 Quality of work was to a high standard
 Success of project management is different
from success of outcome of project – we
could have managed the project better but
we have learnt from this

26. What Was Unsuccessful
 Over budget in weeks preceding deadline as we
had to put in additional hours to complete on
time
 Tasks could have been delegated better so that
work was completed more efficiently
 Time management – began project proposal late,
didn’t stick to Gantt chart schedule
 Communication – conflicts could have been
resolved better, messages were not always
received in time

27. Evaluation of Project Planning
 We created detailed work and product
breakdown structures helped us to accurately
plan what needed to be done.
 This information then helped us create a
Gantt chart which we tried to use to manage
our time.
 The Gantt chart could have been more
detailed providing information on who was
responsible for tasks.

28. Evaluation of Deliverables
 Design proposal and presentation -
completed to a professional standard
 All team members contributed to the
design and deliverables - commitment of
members and good management
 Client was happy with the deliverables –
which we consider main factor for success
of the project

29. What Would We Do Differently
 Assign clear roles and responsibilities and
stick to them – delegate tasks appropriately
 Keep minutes from meetings – ensuring
nothing is missed
 Follow the Gantt chart to schedule (create a
more detailed Gantt chart)
 Create a communications plan - find a better
channel of communication so messages are
not missed

30. What We Learnt
 Learnt how to plan a project effectively –
drawing up work breakdown structures
and Gantt charts
 Underlying issues should be confronted to
avoid conflict
 Discovered team has an ability to work
well under pressure

31. Thank you for Listening
Any Questions?