Case Study MANCHESTER UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB
VIVEKANANDAN THANGAMANI UIN 656953998
Summary The organization committee of the Manchester United Soccer Club (MUSC) has been entrusted with the responsibility of sponsoring a summer invitational soccer tournament. This was done to generate some funds for the club. Similar tournaments have reported to have earned anywhere between $50k - $70k and the MUSC hopes to emulate the same through their tournament. Nicolette Larson the Tournament Director held a brainstorming session with the committee members to help bounce off some ideas and get to know the requirements for conducting the event. However her lack of project management experience led to the session being a ‘free-for-all’ of ideas and suggestions ending in rigmarole. She now has the task of planning and organizing the project and helping bring structure to the chaotic environment the committee has found itself in.
1
Major Deliverables in holding a Football Tournament
Nicolette has to first break down the entire task of holding the tournament into sub tasks of decreasing magnitude such that they may be managed or carried out by an individual. This is called work breakdown structure. This will enable the project to be better managed and breaks down huge tasks into workable, simple individual tasks.
Fund Raising through a network of Sponsors, Sports Enthusiasts, Public, Philanthropists and Government Bodies. Venue arrangements (including Stadiums, Tickets, Accommodation) and other Logistics for participating teams. Procurement and Sales (including T-Shirts, shoes, accessories for players). Trophies, medals, ground maintenance equipments. Team Registration, Screening and Finalizing the draw
The work breakdown structure for the MUSC Tournament is given below with 3 Levels of details. The tasks can be further sub divided to bring them to more levels of work packages. But we have not ventured into that as the project is not a big one and the availability of resources is low.
2
How WBS helps a Project Manager
Nicolette was under prepared for the initial meeting which ended up in pandemonium. Now that we have designed a WBS for the project, we will now see how this can alleviate the some of the problems that occurred during the first meeting.
Hierarchy & Structure By setting up a WBS we now have a set of tasks organized in a hierarchy. This now enables Nicolette to view the entire problem as a list of hierarchical tasks called work packages. The sum of the work packages would mean the completion of the project. She can now work on this subset of problems and work them logically to get more focused results. The second level of WBS has 5 subcategories: 1. Funds and Sponsors
a.
Financing the project takes the top most priority and for the MUSC this is usually done through funds from sponsors. b. A team can now work on how best to raise money for the event by contacting sponsors, conducting campaigns in various media, deliver presentations for interested donors, government bodies etcetera. 2. Venues
a. Another group can be assigned the task of fixing venues, the football stadiums that will host the matches. b. This can include subtasks such as contacting the college ground staff, acquiring the time availability of the grounds, renting costs and estimation, refurbishments and other activities necessary for getting the ground ready for the playoffs. 3. Resourcing
a. This will involve screening, registering and enrolling the teams that are interested in the tourney. b. A sub task would be to come up with a reasonable entry fee for each team and to ensure quality of the playoffs restrict entry to only established teams. c. Referees and their payments is another identified sub task. The scheduling of the matches will be decided on the availability and contract of the referees. d. Another sub category within resourcing would be the hiring of artists, designers to get the design of t-shirts and possibly even the medals and trophies. 4. Merchandize and Sales
a. This division will work on the procurement of raw materials for the various merchandize of MUSC and the tournament such as t-shirts, shoes, accessories. b. The same team or another group can work on the sales and marketing of the event to the local public and may be even other counties. 5. Logistics, Scheduling and Public Relations
a. These three functions can be carried out by a single team. b. They will be incharge of the logistics of the participating teams, referees, VIPs attending the events, MUSC merchandize etcetera.
c. The draw for the matches for the league stages and the finals can be drawn in conjunction with the resourcing team. d. This vertical will also take care of the public relations of the events. All the queries, event co-ordination, ad-hoc trouble shooting in the public domain shall be carried out by this group. Time & Cost WBS gives the complete breakdown of all the tasks to the basic work unit called work package. Now the project manger can assess the time involved for completing the project as each work package is designed in such a way that they all can be done in equal amount of time. The work done by members in various levels (in our case levels 1,2 and 3) can have various magnitudes of impact on the project. This can be a good starting point on the costing of the resource time. In this specific WBS we also see that we can identify potential points of expenses and revenues such as advertizing and merchandize sales respectively. Communication Channels & Organization Breakdown Structure The WBS model gives us segmented details of the project highlighting the importance of the responsibilities, work level of each package. It paves way for an Organization Breakdown Structure. For e.g. this MUSC Football Tournament can have 5 divisions (see diag.) each having a ‘Project Head’ at level 2. Each subdivision in Level 3 c an have a project manager and a group of employees under him as and when necessary. This way we are able to establish a structure to the project organization. This not only identifies the flow of control but also maintains communication paths for each division. An employee working in a particular task will be immediately reporting to his/her manager and that manager if need to raise a concern can raise it with the Project Head. This enables efficiency and smooth functioning of the project and quick troubleshooting of organizational problems, and decision making.
3 Where can Nicolette find additional information to help her develop a WBS for the tournament? A well designed WBS is crucial to the success of a project after identifying the project definition and scope. Having the wrong WBS can lead to project delays, increased costs and resources amongst others. Additional information if available that can help design a better WBS should always be carried out. Some possible sources for additional information to help develop a WBS for the tournament are given below:
Other similar Football clubs – Since this has been done by other football clubs, Nicolette can get information on how they were executed, the problems they faced and design her WBS accordingly.
Stakeholders – The major stakeholders of this event are the sponsors. She has to find out the possible areas on how to get more sponsorship. Nicolette can also check the sales of t shirt and sweatshirts. This can be done by studying the costs of designers, cost of producing the items etcetera. She also needs to look at the referee payments and their availability. For Venues she can get more information by contacting the local college grounds and get an estimate on the work to be done on that front.
4 How could Nicolette and her task force use the WBS to generate cost estimates for the tournament? We know that the WBS arranges work in a hierarchical manner enabling us to sum up the work done from each individual work package leading to the completion of the project. This gives us the opportunity to budget the costs of smaller work packages into larger work entities like ‘modules’. Modules’ worth can then give an idea on the efficiency on that division. This way module having similar functional groups can be accounted for together. For e.g. the work packages for t-shirt design, designer time, procurement cost of materials, sales work could all be brought under one account for merchandize. All efforts towards the logistics, scheduling of the tournament can be estimated along one vertical in a bottom-up fashion. This way we can individualize budgets at various levels – division, module, tasks, work package.
Why would this be useful information? While estimating the costs of each of these WBS entities can be difficult it enables the owner of each of the five divisions to estimate and manage their budget. Since this is done in a bottom-up manner the expenses/costs can be monitored at each of the 3 levels. Abnormalities can be easily identified, process becomes lean and easy to manage from a project management perspective. Each deliverable costs can be identified as a sum of work package costs, direct and indirect costs, purchasing and other costs. The scope for embezzlements is greatly reduced. A person who is working on a higher level can easily monitor the budget cost and see where his money is being spent. As a consequence accounting for these costs, generating reports becomes easy and nimble.
