For this assignment, follow along with the scenario below.

You have recently been hired into a management role at XYZ Call Support. Customers call into this call center firm from across the nation for help resolving credit card billing issues. The center runs 12 hours a day due to time zone differences across the country.

Employees are hired as Customer Service Representatives and their role is to answer phone calls. They are monitored to do so within a 5-minute period of time. All employees and managers are currently working within XYZ's call center building in suburban Chicago - there are no employees working remotely at this time. Your new role has a 25 employee span of control, and you are one of four Customer Service Managers for the company. The four of you report to Michael Coyle, Director and General Manager of the company.

You come to work the first day, are given a tour, and are introduced to your 25 employees and other managers before being taken to your office. Your office looks out over the cubes each of your Customer Service Reps works from as they perform their jobs daily working 8-hour staggered shifts Monday through Friday.

As you sit at your desk overlooking these 25 employees, you ask yourself "What's Next?" and you take out the paper and pen you find on your desk to begin writing down and developing your management planning outline.

Answer the following questions...

• What content is on your management plan outline?
• What do you wish you knew? How will you find this out?
• What is the first action you will take from your management plan?

In this assignment, you are now putting all of that new knowledge together and applying it as you take on this new role as a Customer Service Manager. You should be considering the functions of management as you prepare your plan outline and the expectation is your plan outline will include specifics. Keep in mind this is a 50-point assignment and the intent is for you to now demonstrate your new knowledge of the principles of management and put them to work in this assignment. You need to be sure the three bulleted areas above are covered and are easily found within your assignment response. The questions are not meant to be headings or content you include in your assignment response.

If you need this it may help you solve the problem.

How to create a project management plan

Follow these eight steps to build a solid project management plan from the ground up:

Step 1: Identify the goal of the project

To build anything of substance, the first step youll want to tackle is creating the right foundation.

Ask yourself these questions to lay the groundwork:

1. Why are you creating this project?
2. Whats the goal of it?
3. How will this affect your stakeholders?
4. What about your team?

And to help you answer those, make sure you do the following:

Research and homework

• You may already have a good idea of why youre creating this project, but its essential to back this up with research.
• How is your company doing things right now? Whats working? What doesnt work?
• Are there enough resources available? What else is needed?
• Figure out the real problem at hand and gain a deep understanding of the current mechanics before you try to improve them.

Meet with your team for feedback

• Meet with anyone who could be involved in this project during this stage. Before narrowing things down, be sure to speak with any employees who will be involved in this project.
• You need to see things from their perspective so you have all your ducks in a row when it comes time to introduce the plan to your stakeholders.
• Once thats taken care of, you can then meet your stakeholders with confidence.

Figure out who is a stakeholder

• Sure, you may have a Board of Directors or some other stakeholders involved, but dont forget, those arent the only people to consider.
• Your customers and employees may also be stakeholders in this project.
• In short, anyone who could be affected by these changes is a stakeholder and must be considered as such.
• After you nail down your why and meet with both your team and all prominent stakeholders, youre ready to set your priorities and goals.

Identify priorities

• Before you dive into your goals, consider your priorities first. What is more important here? What can take a backseat?
• Identify your priorities before moving on to finalizing your goals.

Set clear goals

• Once youve tackled all of that, youre ready to set specific, measurable goals.
• These goals serve as the foundation of your project management plan so its crucial that you spend enough time figuring them out before moving on to the rest of our steps.

Youll need to answer:

1. What are you hoping to achieve here?
2. How will you measure that?
3. Whats considered a success?

Step 3: Develop an outline or plan

Your next step is to create an outline and plan of action based on everything youve learned so far.

While this is only a first draft at this point, it pays to finalize as much as you can (as if it were the real thing) so you can avoid multiple rounds of revisions.

In this outline, including the projects:

1. Why
2. Goals
3. Stakeholders
4. Budget
5. Scope
6. Deliverables
7. Deliverable schedule

You should also include a page about your research to highlight your biggest key findings and discuss how they inspired your project management plan.

Polish up your document, add some branding elements, and youll be ready to share it with your team.