Many elements of life require planning; ranging from large scale coordination to the arrangement of a visit to the supermarket. Planning is such a vital part of reaching a much desired goal; once a goal is set, planning begins. In the business world, planning and preparation has become an official stable part of the systematic organisation of a company, to the extent that employers hire personnel to undertake the role of “project management planner”. This investigation will look into the benefits of project planning in general and the specific details important in the media project management plan created “KI Beach Festival”.
People tend to take project planning for granted; it sometimes is ignored in favour of diving straight into the job in question. What they fail to realise is that there is value in a project plan including saving time, money and many avoidable problems (Haughey, 2010). As seen in my project plan, stakeholders desperately depend upon the structure and outcome of the strategy. Anybody directly or indirectly related to its structuring will be impacted, and therefore it is important to understand their needs, and further prioritise them. For example, promoters of the KI Beach Festival have been categorised in the priority class.
The relationship between the project and the stakeholder is a dual affiliation in the sense that the stakeholder impacts upon as well as being impacted by the festival. If promoters do not reach their target goals, the festival will not receive its minimum intake of visitors. If this occurs then the festival will not make its income threshold, therefore will be unable to pay its personnel, including the promoters.
A major part of the project management process is risk management. Identifying, assessing and prioritising risks is an extremely important technique which will lead to much more of a manageable future outcome. By taking any possible risk into account, organisations are able to enlist anyone who will be impacted by a change, and then look for ways of minimizing, controlling and monitoring the probability of unfortunate events. In the ‘KI Beach Party’ project management plan, we involved the same three components. The first risk was identified as a lack of sponsorship. In order to control the risk we recorded several strategies leading from a review of the current sponsorship package, to a search of potential sponsors, and if that fails the plan describes seeking other revenue streams. To monitor the risks parties have been placed as controllers of surveillance keeping a close eye on what unfolds.
Risks themselves can be found to comprise the entire project, for example, the ‘KI Beach Party’ is the first of its kind and therefore the event is an enormous risk for all its stakeholders. This can be likened to large film distribution companies gambling with small-budget films, in some circumstances they prove to be box office hits (eg. Big Fat Greek Wedding) or damaging to the distributors reputation (eg. Cutthroat Island) (Goldstein, 2011).
Managing risks almost always involves in-depth research. After all, companies such as Sony Pictures cannot gamble their reputation without investigating what their audience wants. The trend of more majors film distributors making minor investments can be attributed to several researched factors: the changing tastes of audiences, the quality of indie product and the current economics of the film industry (Goldstein, 2011).
The project management plan created would be extremely important in underlining all the important elements involved in achieving desired outcomes, taking into account the aim, outputs, related events, risks and most importantly the analogous stakeholders. By abiding by this strategic document people are able to be directly informed of exclusions and budgeting. It is quite exceptional how one document can almost completely eradicate risks, miscommunications and controllability. Planning an event will not guarantee you success; however not planning will ensure failure. (PMP, 2004).
references
Anonymous (2004). “Project Management Plan: A Foundation for Success”. Design firm management & administration report (1057-2864), 04 (3), p. 1. Retrieved 4 September, 2011 from AcademicOne File Database.
