Work Breakdown Structure in eBook Printing, Free Essay in Project Management

Printing eBooks is different from a standard printing process. In the latter, if books about a particular subject are to be printed, the workers of that project work on a single book first. They put together and polish its contents. Also, they design the layout and covers. From that first standard copy, the project team now produces multiple copies of the same without alterations or modifications. The final result is a physical book, printed in papers. In the former, the contents of all books may be similar. However, the layouts and cover design for each book differ from one another. This is because they are tailored to suit the clients' specifications. That, therefore, translates into a tediously long process of handling each book at a time. What makes printing eBooks a project is that it is a process like every other project. Also, it has specific timelines and a clearly defined goal as with all projects.

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Institutions of higher learning make a significant part of the stakeholders in the eBook printing projects. They send orders to printing companies with instructions. They also issue fixed deadlines within which the books should be delivered to them. The main challenge that is facing these stakeholders is timeliness. The printing organizations are struggling with meeting deadlines. Often, they complete the projects a week or two after the fixed deadlines. This, in turn, affects the schedules of professors and students of the universities and colleges that are expecting the books.

The main cause of delay in eBook printing projects is the unclear scope of work clients assign them. It is common for clients to send order instructions in bits which are confusing to the project team. Such a method of delivering order instructions does not allow the team to be wholly proactive. The project managers may ask the delivery team to wait until the complete orders arrive but that would result in overwhelming work in a limited period of time. A defined scope of the project from the client is important as it facilitates organization of the delivery process. It is also important to have cohesion between the extent to which the printing needs to go and the production of each book. It creates a sense of direction for it is possible to tell how unique each book in a single project ought to be.

To print an eBook one follows through major steps namely; Receiving, Planning, Production and Managing Production. In the Reception phase, production team receives the task from the client, checks and verifies it. They then serialize the task in a work order. In this phase, they also record the client's name and their contact details. This is also where they confirm if all the necessary contents and materials have been provided and note the due date. In the Plan Order phase, the delivery team plans for processing the order by approximating the needed time, assigning each part of the project to members and also determines the number of resources required. Next is the Production phase where every plan is executed. Staff members seek permission, do desktop publishing where necessary, convert content, produce the eBook; and the quality assistants check the quality as well as countercheck the format if it is according to the order instructions.

The Manage Production phase runs hand in hand with the production phase. This is where the supervisors follow up the progress, confirm work assignments, work out the costs and resolve any arising issue with the urgency each demand. The steps of production here are basically these except that in the first phase, there is a specific form to be filled which includes the substeps like; name, phone number, and email address. The lesson in this work breakdown structure is that production proceeds systematically and beats the fixed deadline. This points out to the fact that organization is necessary.

The best bet for risk management in such a project as this is to have a good back up system with a team on standby; also keeping good records. This can be incorporated into the budgeting to cover for unforeseeable challenges like a sudden overflow of urgent orders or revisions. The cost of producing each book must accommodate such anticipation so that when unexpected large amounts of correction are sent, the team which worked on it can do so as the standby team works on the ongoing projects.