SuperNewMedia Ltd Is A New Media Agency Essay Example

SuperNewMedia Ltd Is A New Media Agency Essay There is a challenging web development project at SuperNewMedia. This requires contemporary aesthetic and website placement skills that my current team does not posses. To successfully implement the project, I need to recruit a new team, establish a communication strategy and control the team effectively to complete the project on time and within acceptable cost.As the Senior Project manager, I feel that there is an urgent need for SuperNewMedia to recruit employees. There are several needs that the new charity based website has in the UK. The website produced by SuperNewMedia must be able to host console games, have qualifications, criteria for charity selection and evaluation, newsletters, articles, maps, internal data and details of upcoming tours (Caramel. B Tija. P 2005). The website must be able to introduce GlobalCulture-For-All through its website, must display resumes and pictures of its staff, must strengthen relationships with the donors who sponsor the exchange programs for schools, give detailed information and show videos about the different exchange programs, show testimonials and the beneficiaries of the program. Most important the website should be up twenty-four hours a day with minimum costs and resources and involve in interactive communications with clients (Friedlein. A 2001). The website should build up the image of GlobalCulture-For-All and get it well-funded, progressive donors or buyers of the Charity merchandising.However the problems that I am facing now are that the current team is not able to produce the video clips that are required to be incorporated in the website. The current employees do not have industry experience; some are located abroad and are very difficult to communicate with, the personnel in London are not able incorporate simple features like forms, links and download features into the site. And even when they do it, these features are very slow, do not have compatibility with the browser, are difficult to navigate and are not artistic (Geest. T. 2001). The current employees that may have thrived in the creative department of a newspaper seem to be at a loss in case of this website. I have a real problem with communicating with the present team about the importance of placement with regards to search engines. The understand promotion of the GlobalCulture-For-All website but not much about placement. Most importantly, the present team has no experience with the development and implementation of websites.In particular I have a team that consists of one production assistant. He is a full time employee who has good experience in producing print magazines but has no experience in the production of a website. I have five designers, three of which have worked in important daily newspapers; one has experience in a sports magazine and another has earned his laurels in a tabloid. They have strong aesthetic skills but their designs are more suited to print media rather than a website. Each of these has u ndergone a training program in web designing but this seems to have added little to their skills. I have on my team an excellent programmer who programs very good console games but has little knowledge of placing websites on search engines. Finally, there are three â€Å"content experts†, each of which is a trip organizer in different locations like New York, Paris and Hong Kong. The three tour organizers send in information that is suitable for a printed catalogue but not a website. What they really need to do is to produce attractive videos that can be posted on the website.From one perspective this means that I would not like to have any member of the ‘old’ team working on my project. What I need to determine is that the current team members need to be redeployed in those areas where their talents can be used. These team members are most suitable for projects that are related to the print media. They would be excellent in designing advertisements, writing copy for printed advertisements and even designing newspaper and periodical layouts. One possible redeployment strategy is that SuperNewMedia should commence the publication of a newspaper or a periodical. The current team will do an excellent job. The second possible redeployment strategy would be that SuperNewMedia opens an advertising agency and have the current team handle the print media related work. The third possibility is that SuperNewMedia should restructure its production team and most of the current employee would be retrenched.For completing this project in time and up to the satisfaction of GlobalCulture-For-All, I need a team that has designers that have both cosmetic designing abilities, programming designing expertise, knowledge of charities, and experience in site placement. In other words my team should have a balance of cosmetic and programming skills and experience. I want them to make an excellent looking website which is well place on search engines and services p romotion. The professionals that I want on my team should have a minimum of ten reference websites so that I can asses the candidate’s general skills, commitment and potential to stick to a job. I will like to look at the reference accounts of the sites (Yunker. J 2002). I am interested in evaluating how they have handled the content of websites. If they have any experience in handling the content of Charity websites. Search engine query scripts shall be examined to evaluate how the potential candidates have placed their websites on search engines.For the selection of new personnel, I will evaluate their creativity so that the website differentiates itself, the aesthetics and layout should be arresting sot that it attracts and persuades viewers (Burgess. S 2002). I will test three aspects of the past work done by any candidate, the loading time taken by site, the compatibility of the site with different browsers and the ease of navigation on their websites. Even though I woul d like to have my team in London so that direct supervision is possible, I am not averse to having a designer of SuperNewMedia located abroad. If a potential employee has the ability to build in extra features like bulletin board, useful links, foreign language areas and forms into a website that will make him more employable.My recruitment strategy for new team members will be to produce well defined specifications for each position. The specifications will be used through the usual channels of recruitment. I will actively use recruitment consultancies and job sites as they will generate large volumes of applicants quickly. I will also two other channels but they will be less important namely, personal referral of the current employees and using the corporate site of SuperNewMedia. These however, are expected to generate very few candidates. After I have generated a pool of applications, I will use the criteria for selection described above and each candidate’s profile to sh ortlist the candidates for each position. Each candidate will then be asked to appear for interview. During the course of the interview I will assess the candidate’s qualification, current skills, experience and attitude towards work. I will match the candidate’s skills and abilities to the current project in hand and the projects that SuperNewMedia is likely to get in future. Those candidates that I find are most suited for the current project of SuperNewMedia will be selected by me for my new team.If SuperNewMedia decides to outsource work then it has certain advantages. It can control its costs. This is one of the major benefits of outsourcing. Some work can even be outsourced to countries in South-East Asia where the cost of labor is very low. In addition, outsourcing can increase the efficiency of SuperNewMedia. The outside providers cost structure and economies of scale can give your company a competitive advantage (Epstein. M 2004). Further, there can be decreas e in the project execution time for SuperNewMedia. Moreover, outsourcing can allow SuperNewMedia to focus on its core business. I as the project manager can concentrate on more projects if the business is outsourced. Most importantly, outsourcing can reduce the risk for SuperNewMedia. Consider the GlobalCulture-For-All project; had its major portions been outsourced at the very inception, there would be no time overrun or cost overrun.On the other hand there are some severe problems with outsourcing. At the inception SuperNewMedia will not be able to either account for or understand the hidden costs. This will increase the cost to complete the GlobalCulture-For-All project. In addition, there are increased staff training and turnover costs. These costs are difficult to account for but will have to be borne by SuperNewMedia. Further, there are worker inefficiencies at the inception stage that lead to sharp increases in the total costs and make the project uneconomical. Finally, Super NewMedia should note that the startup costs are so high that it takes one to two years of outsourcing before the cost benefits of outsourcing are achieved. For this reason SuperNewMedia should avoid going in for outsourcing unless it is assured of a steady stream of projects of building websites.The rationale for not outsourcing the GlobalCulture-For-All website development project is that SuperNewMedia will be required to negotiate contracts for website making with contractors abroad. There will be a huge initial cost involved for training of foreign personnel, initial inefficiencies and startup costs. This cost can be defrayed if the contract is negotiated for more that two years. However, there is no evidence that contracts similar to that of GlobalCulture-For-All will flow into SuperNewMedia.My communication strategy will include several elements that will enable team members that are freelance to participate in the project. First, I will read the codes prepared by designers and programmers and offer advice on improvement. Second, I will understand that website development sometimes leads to dead ends and errors and these portions need to be redone. Third, I will follow the progress of every worker in my team wherever he is located so that I can estimate that he is on target as far as time for completion is concerned. Fourth, I will check that every designer and programmer is following the industry best practice. I will establish criteria for test-case creation and code testability and make sure that these requirements are not ignored by anyone in my team. Fifth, since I am the project manager, I will understand what each member is doing at a high level and guide my team members with directions irrespective of where they are located. Sixth, I the project manager will understand and know what different team members are doing in their different locations. I understand the technical details and if any work is being done incorrectly or is behind schedule, I wi ll know it. I am confident of it (Krishna. S, Sahay. S Nicholson. B 2003).The communication tools that I will use to enable the team members that are abroad or that are freelance to participate in the project will be weblogs. Even though there will be some use of e-mails and discussion forums the main communication tools will be weblogs. Weblogs are the most popular online creation tools and these are available easily over the web. The information will be presented in the form of a journal and is suitable for use among teams. This will help connect the SuperNewMedia team members.To sum, I as the project manager need a team that has the education, skills and experience that is appropriate for developing an excellent website in reasonable cost and in reasonable time. There has been procrastination in SuperNewMedia because the current team is not suited for website development. This situation can be ameliorated by recruiting a fresh team.