Running head: CLOTHES R US POINT OF SALE INITIATIVE 0
Clothes ‘R’ Us Point-of-Sale Initiative
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Clothes ‘R’ Us Point-of-Sale Initiative
1. Introduction
Clothes R Us was a leading apparel retailer in the United States with more than four hundred stores nationally. The company began its operation in Portland in Oregon 26 years ago and since then it has built a reputation in affordable clothing for men, women, and children (Jeffery, Norton, Yung, & Gershbeyn, 2017). The retailer store used old fashioned POS system for cash draw and item database pricing. Each store had nonintegrated credit authorization device worth its own line. The store manager spends almost all day in the store office reconciling POS closet and opening during shift changes with cash management, inventory tracking, staffing schedules, inventory and sending and receiving of paper faxes which is tiresome.
The stakeholder involves in the case include employees, in this case, including store manager which is affected by an old fashioned point of sale system. The third party player financial processor and the HQ merchant bank and customers are the individuals or parties who are directly affected by the old fashioned point of sale system (Jeffery, Norton, Yung, & Gershbeyn, 2017). The shareholder has also involved the decision of implementation of the new program because it would improve the value of their investments. The critical events in the project focus on improved store operation and performance by reducing the incidence of manual work and duplication within the system. The project in the case is the improvement of the point of sales at store level.
Analysis of the case
The project management methodology used in the project includes waterfall methodology. This is a linear project management approach where stakeholder and customer requirements are gathered at beginning of the project and then a sequential project plan is created to accommodate those requirements (Esther Cohen, 2017). The characteristic that indicates that the methodology used for this project is waterfall project method is because the improve point of sale system tasked are grouped at each project phases. For example, the first phase based on the cases is the requirement. This phase analyses the business need and documents what the software’s needs. The second phase based on the case is the system design.
At this phase, the architecture team decided on a customer development of a new store management application which would adopt the latest on the internet. The third phases include coding. This phase entails solving problems and writing code. The firm used an earlier version of the operating system means that all codes had been developed using the earlier operating system. The fourth stage includes testing where the architecture team ensures the code does what it supposed to be done. The firm allocated two months of testing. The fifth phase is the operation phases and it involves deploying the code to a production environment and providing support. The firm deployed the system even though it was one month late based on the schedule.
The project was delivered as per the requirement because the section which requires a lot of time like coding used the code used to program the former version point of sales system. The program was delivered even if it was delivered later based on the time allocated. The project incurred potential issues that arise due to poor management of the product team. In the second phases of project design, most of the product managers resigned and this was attributed by poor management of the team and poor salary. The product managers were outsourced by retailer software vendor where they were paid double the salary and this made them shift to this organization.
The product manager lacked focus on the POS program. The other issues arise in the project management is the delay in delivery because the operation steering committee would not have immediately sign off the POS GUI. There was incompatibility of the application with the preinstalled operating system that led to delivery in project implementation. The bankruptcy of world.com also affected the project management.
III. PMI (Project Management Institute®)
The five project group involves initial process group, planning process group, the execution process group, the monitoring process group, and closing process group. The initial process group involves activities, process, and skills needed to effectively define the beginning of a project (Simonette, Magalhães, & Spina, 2016). This process group was applied when the software architecture team was sought. The planning process group is the process needed to define the scope of the project, set a strategic plan in place in order to maximize workflow. The project objective of the software was defined. The project deliverable includes software requirement, functional and conceptual designs, and user interface design and system interface requirements.
The third step is the execution process group. This phase involves managing team effectively while orchestrating timeline expectation and reaching benchmark goals. The product managers communicated the strategies and goals to the software architecture team. The fourth process involves monitoring and control process. This process involves mitigating the challenges. The project manager monitored the project activities and challenges that were faced when the product manager left for a software vendor that sourced them. The last phase is the closing process and it involves culmination of strong project management skills as demonstrated through the project phase. This phase was applied in the review meeting where the issues faced in the project were discussed.
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