Acme Home Improvement de Mexico, SA de CV Project Plan Team Four: Folasade Bamidele Alibaloye John C Caputo Garner Frederick Hixson Hector G Rosado AMBA 604, Section 9093 Professor Stewart February 6, 2004Acme Project Plan 2 Table of Contents Section Page I. Executive Summary 3 II. Introduction 4 III. Project Organization 5 Organization Chart 5 Project Responsibilities 6 Staffing Plans 7 IV. Management Process 10 Management Objectives 10 Priorities 10 Monitoring/Controlling Mechanisms 10 V. Technical Process Plan 11 Computing System 11 Project Plan Modification Process 12 Computer Usage Policies 12 Construction Guideline Support 13 Project Acceptance Process 13 Lessons Learned Documentation 13 VI. Work Packages, Dependencies, Schedules & Budgets 14 Work Packages 14 Dependencies 17 Project Budget 20 VII. Summary 23 Appendix A Tasks on the Critical Path 24 Appendix B Assignment Matrix 25Acme Project Plan 3 I. Executive Summary Acme Home Improvements has determined it essential that expansion into international markets take place immediately. Acme Home Improvements has initiated a joint venture with local partners in Mexico City to form Acme Home Improvements SA de CV. The intent of this partnership is to open Acme's first ‘Do It Yourself’ – (DIY) home improvement store outside of the United States, to meet the competition head on and establish a foothold in international markets. This document spells out our plan for the project's success. The project's sponsor is the Acme CEO, Alex R. Fitzgerald. This project is the first step in his strategic initiative to expand Acme into international markets. Based on assessments, it is critical that Acme SA de CV complete the opening of this store in 12 months or less with a budget of up to $7.5 million. A key risk is Acme's lack of experience in international markets. As a result, we will rely heavily on our partners to help us mitigate 'soft' cultural issues and navigate local nuances of business. Because of the soft issues, remaining on schedule is a key driver of project success. To mitigate risks to the project's critical path, we have built feeding buffers into the schedule, and added a project buffer to the project end. Our plan outlines staff responsibilities and a staffing plan for project execution. This staff has strong support from corporate headquarters, a defined scope, budget, timeline, and processes by which to execute the plan. Included in these processes is a structured change control process that ensures changes are relevant, followed through, and controlled. In addition, this document, and the accompanying project plan clearly identify dependencies that can impact project execution. We have separated these dependencies into mandatory, external, and discretionary dependencies (Schwalbe, 2004). Doing this has enabled us to maximize scheduling efficiency. Acme SA de CV has an established technology infrastructure to draw upon. Our plan will leverage this technology through wireless local area networks, corporate servers, and use of project management software. Finally, we will utilize a feedback process to capture lessons learned for our future expansion into international markets.Acme Project Plan 4 II. Introduction Acme Home Improvements de Mexico, SA de CV intends to build a 100,000 sq ft retail facility in Mexico Distrito Federal (DF). This effort is part of Acme's strategy to expand into the international home improvement markets. Our Mexico City store will be the initial push into Mexico to meet our competitors head-on outside the United States. This project is critical to Acme's long-term strategy to expand beyond the US borders. Headquarters has allocated $7.5 million to complete this task. Strategic alignment with Acme's long-term goals, experience with similar projects, and an assessment of the competition dictates that we complete this project within 12 months. Our project is a joint venture with local interests. The project will be challenging for Acme, with inherent risk laying in our inexperience in international joint ventures. 'Soft' issues, cultural human resource issues will be as much of a driver of cost and schedule as the 'hard' issues like planning and execution. It is critical to the success of this project, and perhaps the organization's international growth strategy, that this project be completed on time, and on budget. The organization anticipates possible schedule delays and cost overruns due to cultural assumptions and misunderstandings. Knowing that schedule delays will affect costs and international expansion strategy, we pay particular attention to the project's critical path (see Appendix A, and the accompanying MS Project file's network diagram view). To deal with these risks, the team has built several feeding time-buffers into the work breakdown schedule, at constraints along the critical path (Goldratt, 1998). A large project buffer has also been added to protect the end of the project. Attention to the safety buffers along the critical path will contribute to the team's successful execution of the project. This plan presents an overview of the project organization, including the team's organization chart, project responsibilities, and staffing plans. Next, the plan addresses the organization's management process related to this project. Management's objectives, priorities,Acme Project Plan 5 and monitoring and control mechanisms are covered in this section. The project's technical process plan is covered next, reviewing such things as the IT support and guidelines for the project, processes for modification, and acceptance of the plan, and the process for documenting lessons learned on the project. Lastly, this plan discusses the work packages, dependencies, schedules and project budget. We begin with a look at the project organization plan. III. Project Organization Organizational Chart: Acme Home Improvements de Mexico Site Construction & Opening Project Organization Chart Prepared by: John Tarea, Project Manager This organizational chart shows the authority and communications organization for the project. Every one of the team members reports to the Project Manager. Team members are from different knowledge areas and each will