GROUP PROJECT CHARTER
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Looking for someone to read and understand from the business case attached and write the scope of the project in my group project charter template attached. thanks
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Project Charter
Description: Use the business documents prepared in Week 3 (business case and any other business documents you might have considered for this project) and the Project Charter Template in the Week 4 Content Area to develop your project charter. The project charter should include the content described in the Week 4 Reading (see reading list and PMBOK)
1
Running head: BUSINESS CASE
8
Week 2 Project Business Case
Project Business Case
Alliance Group Grocery Inc. (AG Grocery)
Aqua Group
September 13, 2020
PMAN 634, Section 9040, Fall Semester
Holly Wellington
Tiffany Moore
Cynthia Saale
Adrian John
Tolu Adedeji
Jess George
Change History
Date Changed
Change Details
Reason for Change (if applicable)
Responsible for Change
September 3, 2020
Initial Document Created
Initial Document Created
All Team Members
September 11, 2020
Additional information added about the timeline and geographic region. More thorough outline of the financials involved in the project. Adjustments made to the appendix scoring explanation. Minor formatting changes.
Feedback received from the class and professor
Jess George
Table of Contents
Project Name 4
Business Needs 5
Analysis of Situation 7
Recommendations/Evaluation 9
References 12
Appendix 13
Alliance Group Grocery Inc. (AG Grocery)
Virtual Shopping Assistant
With ever-growing online shopping, customers are currently anticipating speed and efficiency in the process of buying. The notion behind online shopping is that the process should be simple, quick, and intuitive. Due to COVID-19 and society currently using modern in-store technology, there is a need for virtual shopping assistants which aids in increasing efficiency in online shopping. The virtual shopping assistant utilizes machine-learning algorithms to classify products that buyers or clients may want and ascertain up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, found on their individual purchase history and product review scores. As every customer needs to make an amicable decision before buying any good, a virtual shopping assistant is of great help in decision making, creating interpersonal relationships, and building customer loyalty.
As mentioned earlier, customers always prefer to shop in places where the process is quick and simple. An in-store modern technology alone is not sufficient to give customers an excellent shopping experience during this time of COVID-19. This calls for the need of virtual shopping assistant systems or tools which can show clients a broad range of real-time item information, comprising options or products that are not on display on the shelves. Their presence ensures customer satisfaction as well as brings a sense of belonging to potential customers. Introducing virtual shopping assistants necessitates a business to conduct some customer-based review prior to the implementation of the system. This aids in implementing a virtual shopping assistant system, which is user-friendly to all clients. Previous analytical cases on virtual shopping assistants have verified that its implementation offers enriched customer service, established a unified commerce shopping experience in store, and assists buyers navigate organization physical and online stores. As espousal becomes prevalent, comprehending the essential elements of a virtual shopping assistant as covered in this project will be of great help to the organization.
Business Needs
COVID-19 has proved to be challenging for all sectors in society. Groceries and food supplies remain critical even during the pandemic, as evidenced by grocery workers being deemed essential employees alongside doctors and first responders. Prior to COVID, 54% of food is consumed away from home in the United States. Restrictions to bars, restaurants, and other eating establishments has therefore created a significant rise in grocery purchasing (Grashuis, Skevas, & Segovia, 2020). This increase has caused groceries to be one of the industries most impacted by the pandemic, outside of healthcare.
The grocery sector has had to rapidly adapt to changing conditions. Many stores have reduced hours to allow time for store cleaning, required customers to keep 6 feet of distance from one another, instituted one-way only aisles inside their stores, set maximum occupancy limits, and closed salad bars and deli counters to attempt to limit potential customer exposure (Martin-Neuninger & Ruby, 2020). Online shopping has also increased dramatically. However, this has come with several challenges. Many stores did not and do not have the infrastructure in place to maintain an accurate inventory online for each store, resulting in frustrated customers who cannot receive the items they ordered. Adding to this challenge are supply side impacts where limitations on quantities of supplies by various brands may make items unavailable, or require purchasing limits to attempt to meet the needs of the community (Grashuis, Skevas, & Segovia, 2020). Due to these difficulties, it is likely that many customers will not have a positive experience (Martin-Neuninger & Ruby, 2020).
Alliance Group Grocery Inc. (AG Grocery) is a grocery store chain comprised of 100 stores in the DC, Maryland and Virginia (DMV) region of the United States that is attempting to mitigate some of these COVID-19 difficulties by creating a virtual shopping assistant service. This will allow us to deliver a customer-centric experience, without compromising staff or customer safety. Permitting customers to walk a shopper through the store will help us to maintain consumers’ trust and confidence. They will be able to see for themselves in real-time what is in stock in the store, what the quality of produce looks like, and choose alternate brands and products when something is unavailable. For those who do not have video services, they can still take advantage of the service over the phone, though they will obviously then lack the visual information provided by video. Time slots will be made available online, or by calling a customer service representative. Because this requires less technological infrastructure to be created, implementation can be relatively quickly. Also, this type of shopping will allow for payment on-line or in person at the time of pick-up, meaning that it will provide an alternative to in-person shopping for customers who are participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
This service will allow us to both continue our business during the pandemic, but also serve the needs of our communities. It will aid us in nurturing our relationship with stakeholders beyond our shareholders, creating a person to person connections between our employees and community during a time of great isolation. Past research has shown that this model of generating goodwill within the community surrounding the business generates increased success over the long term than simply focusing on short term gains (Sheth, 2020).
It is unknown how long the pandemic may last or what societal changes will remain after COVID-19 is gone. While demand for virtual shopping may decline after the danger has passed, we believe this service will continue to serve our customers, particularly those who are elderly or housebound by providing a critical lifeline to essential supplies and a positive customer experience.
Analysis of Situation
Grocery ordering and delivery have increased in the past six months. Physically going into the store is not an option for a lot of people due to current public health conditions. The goal of this project is to create as close to a real shopping experience as possible for customers that would like to be an involved shopper, in the comfort and safety of their own homes.
The first objective is to accommodate COVID restrictions. The strategies that will be implemented in order to accomplish this are to provide shopping assistant employees with PPE, mark distanced spaces around the grocery store, and direct traffic flow with signs that indicate which way the shopping assistants will walk down each aisle. In addition, if more people sign up for this virtual shopping experience, the overall human traffic in the grocery store will be reduced because more people will be staying home while still getting their groceries.
The next objective is to create a website to schedule virtual shopping appointments. The strategy for this objective is to hire someone to build out a website that allows the customer to book a specific time slot that they will be available for their virtual shopping experience.
The last objective is to establish personal connections with customers throughout their shopping experience. Especially now, people are looking for positive human interactions. The strategy will be to hire and train virtual shopping assistants who are well-versed in customer service positions, and will prioritize the happiness of their customers that they are working for. Customers will be able to have an active role in picking out produce and pointing out specific items that they would like because of the video feature. This allows for customers to establish a sense of control over an aspect of their lives, when it is particularly hard to feel agency during this time. The overall goal is for this to be a positive experience for customers, where they feel like they can still get a shopping experience while staying safe in the comfort of their own homes.
In terms of criteria, a variety of measures will be put in place. For the objective on health and safety, the CDC guidelines will be followed for the shopping assistants, and each worker will get the same PPE equipment. For gauging overall customer happiness, after the customer concludes their virtual shopping experience, there will be a customer satisfaction form that will be sent out. The project team can regroup in order to make adjustments to better serve the customers needs if feedback is given about changes. There will also be a contact form built into the website so that customers can submit information and feedback whenever they feel the need to. These measures will be put in place in order to measure overall project success, and can be used to reassess measures that need to be fixed if the success isnt at an acceptable level.
This project requires a number of financials. An enterprise Zoom account costs $199.99 year and it has a minimum 100 licenses. Purchasing one account per store adds up to $19,900 annually. To build out the website to include online booking and customer feedback forms, a $100,000 one-time cost will be spent to hire a specialist to develop this software. For employee costs, we will budget $20/hr. 4 shoppers will be used per store each shift. $20/hr times 12 hours times 4 employees yields a cost of $960 per day. $960 multiplied by 365 yields a cost of $350,400 for an annual cost per store operating this program. We will estimate $500,000 per store to cover additional taxes and benefits that the store may cover for employees. 8 tablets will be purchased per store, which yields a total need of 800 tablets. The Samsung Galaxy Tab A or equivalent costs $100 each in bulk, which yields a total tablet cost of $80,000. Tablet stands cost $10 per item, and 4 will be needed per store. $10 multiplied by 4, multiplied by 100 yields a tablet holder cost of $4,000. Each VSA will need a wireless barcode scanner as well, which will be connected via WiFi to their smartphone. A single wireless barcode scanner, model Newland HR1550-CE Newland HR1550-CE, costs $168. 8 scanners per store, with 100 stores, yields a scanner cost of $134,400. Charging stations will be designated in every store. We will buy 2 power strips (retailing at $20 each) per store to use for the charging stations for the scanners and tablets that arent being used, which yields a total power strip cost of $4,000. Label-printing produce scales cost $400 per unit. We will purchase 3 per store, which yields a total produce scale cost of $120,000. Finally, we will be purchasing additional WiFi boosters to make sure that the signal is strong throughout the store. An individual booster costs $50. We will purchase 5 boosters per store, which yields a total WiFi booster cost of $25,000. Total, we estimate the costs of our project to be around one million dollars. As far as revenue, we estimate that if on average, 5 people at every store use the feature a day and have the minimum service fee of $25, the yearly income will be around 4.5 million dollars from the VSA service.
Recommendations/Evaluation
Based on the immediate need for safe shopping in the current environment throughout different communities, it is recommended that the Aqua team pursue a project called Virtual Shopping Assistant for our Organization. The team looks at various ways to best provide an innovative project and weigh the importance scores to come up with this project. This project stood out from the rest of the other options as it provides so much more avenues to expand on once its up and running. As mentioned in earlier parts of the business case, Virtual Shopping Assistant (VSA), is a grocery retail store that allowed customers to call in and virtual shop throughout the store via video. There will be some constraints that will be worked through as to the delivery distance. We will be able to serve the community by having the customer send in their list of items, and then we provide a video assistant when selecting the items. One risk during implementation would be video signal throughout the store as we do expect this to be an extremely popular means to shop. As mentioned in the financials, extra money will be spent to boost WiFi signal throughout the store in order to decrease the frequency of this issue. Another risk is the possibility of a customer seeing available produce in the store and then ending the video conference to go pick up the product themselves. During booking, their card number will be required information so that even if they end the call mid-shopping session, the customer will still be charged the booking fee. This is a specialty service so the customer has to pay extra in order to use it. There is a minimum convenience fee of $5, and then an additional $20 after the first hour of shopping. $20 will be charged for every additional hour of shopping. The goal of the lower convenience fees relative to other premium services is that more people will be interested in trying it out, and the hope is that we continue to create more revenue by having an increased number of VSA sales per store in our chain.
Our implementation approach would be using existing chains of outlets and outfit them with overhead cameras and body cameras for associates, WiFi bandwidth, carts with digital scanners and scales so customers can see their cost. We will use Zoom as our video calling feature, and employees will be trained on the software and expected process for the VSA experience. A new design website will be needed in order to create the online appointment booking feature. Grocery hold areas will be established as well so that the VSA has a place to put groceries at the end of the shop to keep each order organized and separated. All told, we estimate this will cost 3 million dollars.
This will require planning on meeting a few milestones such as identifying the locations that will have VSA, obtaining funding for each of these locations, approval of schedule and budget, pre-construction meetings and completion of the project.
The team sees great benefits in this project as we are continuing to serve our community by helping to keep people safe while still allowing them to shop freely from the safety of their homes. There would be no lines or masks for our customers to enter our VSA stores. Given that most people are plugged into technology, the organization would benefit by keeping our existing customers and getting new customers especially younger and older ones who would be open to this type of shopping. We will be keeping track of how customers use our program and will provide surveys after each shopping experience to use as how well we are performing and what we can continue to provide improvement.
Beyond the initial implementation, when it’s 100% safe to go back to pre COVID-19 times, customers would still want to continue using this new and sleek shopping style with high customer satisfaction.
References
Jasper, G., Theodoros S., & Michelle S. S. (2020). Grocery shopping preferences during the covid-19 pandemic. Sustainability, 12(5369), 5369. Retrieved from https://doi- org.ezproxy.umgc.edu/10.3390/su12135369
Rosemarie M.N, & Matthew B. R. (2020). What does food retail research tell ss about the implications of coronavirus (COVID-19) for grocery purchasing habits? Frontiers in Psychology, 11. Retrieved from https://doi- org.ezproxy.umgc.edu/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01448
Sheth, J. (2020). Business of business is more than business: Managing during the covid crisis. Industrial Marketing Management, 88, 261-264. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2020.05.028
Appendix
Simplified Scoring Model
Our firm explored multiple project options within a brainstorming section, all of which were related to fixing problems related to current COVID conditions. Settings such as grocery stores and classrooms have been significantly impacted by the current pandemic.
In determining which project to take on, our criteria was determined based on COVID priorities. Because of this, we prioritized factors such organizational fit, length of project development, and cost. These projects are specialized for the current pandemic, so the development and implementation is extremely time-sensitive. We want to be able to respond and react quickly to this new normal, so we scored those factors highly on our criteria. We scored the development risk factor low because there are already foundational elements established in other businesses, so we have businesses to reference as we develop our own virtual shopping system and build upon ideas that people have already established.
After defining our criteria, we scored each individual idea and found that the two highest-scored projects were the video shopping assistant (project #3) and the drive-through grocery store (projet #4). The project team decided to pursue the video shopping assistant project because the drive-through grocery store seemed less realistic to implement. Since we are a grocery chain that is already established and built, it would be easier to build infrastructure within the store to create the virtual shopping assistant experience, rather than having to restructure the entire building in order to create a drive-through experience. Because of this and the scoring model illustrated below, we decided on the virtual shopping assistant project.
(A)
(B)
(A) x (B)
Project
Criteria
Importance Weight
Score
Weighted
Score
Project #1: Create/increase curbside pickup
Cost
Return On Investment
Organizational Fit
Length of Project Development
Quality of Life
Development Risk
Total Score
3
1
3
3
2
2
4
3
6
7
6
3
12
3
18
21
12
6
72
Project #2: Grocery delivery
Cost
Return On Investment
Organizational Fit
Length of Project
Development
Quality of Life
Development Risk
Total Score
3
1
3
3
2
2
4
3
6
7
6
3
12
3
18
21
12
6
72
Project #3: Video shopping assistant
Cost
Return On Investment
Organizational Fit
Length of Project
Development
Quality of Life
Development Risk
Total Score
3
1
3
3
2
2
4
3
6
7
6
4
12
3
18
21
12
8
74
Project #4: Drive- through grocery store
Cost
Return On Investment
Organizational Fit
Length of Project Development
Quality of Life
Development Risk
Total Score
3
1
3
3
2
2
4
3
6
7
6
4
12
3
18
21
12
8
74
Project #5: School- virtual school programs/ educational content
Cost
Return On Investment
Organizational Fit
Length of Project
Development
Quality of Life
Development Risk)
Total Score
3
1
3
3
2
2
3
2
2
7
7
2
9
2
6
21
14
4
56
Project #6: Online arrangements for landscaping company
Cost
Return On Investment
Organizational Fit
Length of Project
Development
Quality of Life
Development Risk
Total Score
3
1
3
3
2
2
5
3
3
7
6
2
15
3
9
21
12
4
64
Project #7: Online landscape rendering
Cost
Return On Investment
Organizational Fit
Length of Project Development
Quality of Life
Development Risk
Total Score
3
1
3
3
2
2
5
5
3
7
3
7
15
5
9
21
6
14
70 Running head: PROJECT PROGRESS REPORT 1
PROJECT PROGRESS REPORT 2
Group Project Charter Template
R
Project Charter
[Name of Group Project]
Aqua Group
September 6, 2020
PMAN 634, Section 9040, Fall Semester
Holly Wellington
Tiffany Moore
Cynthia Saale
Adrian John
Tolu Adedeji
Jess George
Change History
Date changed
Change details
Reason for change
(if applicable)
Responsible for change
[January 1, 2016]
[Content added, deleted, or modified]
[i.e., edited scope description]
(i.e., John Smith, or other course team member)
Table of Contents
[Project Name] 4
Purpose for the project 4
Project Scope Statement 4
Project objectives 4
Project requirements 5
Project risks 5
Milestone schedule (summary) 5
Budget (summary) 6
Criteria for project approval 6
Project Authority 6
Project manager and authority level 6
Project sponsor or customer and authority level 6
References 7
[Project Name]
[This section provides an introduction to the group project. One to two paragraphs should be sufficient to introduce the project at a high level more details will follow.
You are now working on this project from the perspective of the performing organization (establish a company name for your group) or contractor and you have a customer/client organization (if you havent already, give this customer organization a name). Your organization has won the bid for the project and now your group will develop a project charter for this project. In the following weeks, weeks 5 through 12, your team will develop a project management plan for this project.]
Purpose for the project
[Describe the purpose or justification for the project. The project has already been evaluated for meeting the needs of the customer organization, so there is less need to include benefits to the customer organization.]
Project Scope Statement
[This section will be used to develop your project scope statement. Begin with a high- level description of the project. Discussion the boundaries of the project. What are the key deliverables of the project?]
Project objectives and success criteria
[This section will be used to identify project objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant to the project, and time-bound. Objectives should relate to your group project; not the organizational goals and objectives.]
[Project objective that is unique to your group project.]
[Project objective that is unique to your group project.]
[Project objective that is unique to your group project.]
Project requirements
[Describe the requirements of the project these requirements will help your project team to measure the success of the project. NOTE: Requirements will characterize or define your project deliverables these are not project activities.]
[High-level project requirement that is unique to your group project.]
[High-level project requirement that is unique to your group project.]
[High-level project requirement that is unique to your group project.]
[High-level project requirement that is unique to your group project.]
[High-level project requirement that is unique to your group project.]
Overall project risks
[Describe what risks might be identified this early in the project at a high-level. Your group will conduct a detailed project risk management plan later in the course and integrate the risk management plan into your project report. For this charter, list only three to five high-level risks at this time.]
[High-level project risk that is unique to your group project.]
[High-level project risk that is unique to your group project.]
[High-level project risk that is unique to your group project.]
[High-level project risk that is unique to your group project.]
Milestone schedule (summary)
[Milestones are the start/completion of significant events in a project that can be used to track project progress at a high level. Describe the milestones you would expect to monitor in your group project and then list these summary milestones here. Include a timeframe for the milestones (i.e., a start date, completion date, etc.). This is only a summary at this point; your group will elaborate on the milestones in upcoming weeks.]
[High-level project milestones unique to your group project.]
[High-level project milestones unique to your group project.]
[High-level project milestones unique to your group project.]
[High-level project milestones unique to your group project.]
[High-level project milestones unique to your group project.]
Budget or pre-approved financial resources(summary)
[Describe the projects budget at a high level. This is only a summary at this point; your group will elaborate on the project budget by phase/by resources in upcoming weeks.]
Criteria for project approval
[Describe the criteria for project approval here . What constitutes project success, who decides the project is successful, and who signs off on the project?]
Project Authority
[In this section your team will describe the authority level for this project performing organization and customer/client.]
Project manager and authority level
[Identify your project manager (a member of your course study group) and outline the authority level assigned to the project manager.]
Project sponsor or customer and authority level
[Identify your project sponsor and/or customer/client and outline the authority level for this person. Your team should have one member serve as the customer for this project.]
References
[You will likely use the PMBOK and assigned readings as resources. Add these references here as needed in APA format.]
