Office Planning

1.Management
• Company registration
• Minutes of meeting
• Bank accounts
• Organisation structure
• Govt Rules compliance
• Taxes

2. Documentation
a. Procedures and Rules
Elaborate procedures should be developed for handling any job, Design platform, software, storage and backup system, security, logging and comments.
There should be common rules to be followed during documentation of project.
• Naming convention for variables in program, for file and folder names
• File organization on the disc
b. Workflow Diagram
Before the work is started, it is absolutely necessary that overall plan with objectives, inputs, expected outputs, selection of optimum method, check points and main control and quality testing procedure for output be prepared. This should indicate small subsystems, their input out requirements and dependencies. Time and resource allocation can be shown by using Gantt chart or CPM network.
c. Process description
d. Separation of common and specific tasks
e. Storage and accessibility – Type of storage Soft or Print format, Location Local and remote, Copies
f. General maintenance procedures

3. Correspondence
a. Contact Addresses Company and Individuals, Postal address, Phone Landline Mobile E Mail
b. Introduction to prospective clients
c. Bills - Soft and Hard Copy format
d. Receipts
e. Reminders
f. Information News letters
g. Getting feedback

4. Accounts
a. Bank Transactions
b. Daybook
c. Ledger Posting
d. Income – Expenditure statement
e. Profit – loss
f. Balance Sheet
g. Budget

5. Marketing
a. Market Survey
b. Identification and selection of target customers
c. Preparation of Specifications and advertisement material
d. Advertisement media selection – Newspaper, Banners, Brochures, Web, Sponsorship, TV, Exhibition, Lectures, Presentations, Events
e. Response analysis
f. Follow up program

6. Infra structure
a. Office Space, Furniture, Computers, Peripherals
b. Softwares
c. Stationary
d. Library

7. Manpower
a. Manager
b. Team leaders
c. Designers
d. Clerks
e. Salesman

8. Monitoring

a. Attendance Time and Duration Daily/Weekly/Monthly
Office should have fixed office hours, which helps costumers to contact, inform or complain. If it is not possible to have same timings for all workers, their individual time table at least should be fixed. Maximum 10 minutes late may be permitted for valid reason. Leave should be informed in writing preferably in advance. The application of leave should mention the alternative person’s name with necessary instructions and information. Minimum work hours should be Daily 8 hours, Weekly 40 hours and monthly 150 hours. This time is required for productive work. Time required for learning new thing, rest and entertainment should be extra and not countable as work time.

b. Work progress assessment
Team leader should assess the work per person in the team every week as per milestone predefined.

c. Management of resources if needed
If the work progress is not as per time plan, reasons should be investigated and additional workforce or extra facilities should be provided as necessary. Its impact on cost economics should be evaluated and recorded. If there some hurdle in work progress, it should be communicated to the client with revised time and cost estimate.
d. Testing and Quality Control –
i. Copy edit – spelling errors, punctuation errors, grammatical errors, layout errors. This is common type of error in amateur designers having language deficiency. Fortunately spell check facility can correct such type of errors. Applying spell check is a must. If browser does not have that facility, the text can be coped in word and checked.
ii. Jargon check – Valid terms and jargons ( Terms not commonly known or special names), Brand names, trademarks, service marks, acronyms, specification terminology ( units and format) This is more sensitive issue for client, as the mistakes may convey differt meaning or point to different party.
iii.Glossary - Provide Glossary for explaining special names and terms It is necessary sometimes to give footnotes with mark or provide separate glossary, context and explanations
iv. Readability and usability check – Scavenger hunt, Exploration, Graphics limited
v. Validate HTML
vi. Check for resolution on different monitors
vii. Cross browser compatibility
viii. Check for user’s platform ( Linux, Windows, Macintosh)
ix. Verify links, identify orphans ( webpages without links)

e. Feedback from client and corrections
It is necessary to contact the client and get his feedback as regards accuracy, effectiveness and ease of operation. This helps in correcting the product in time and avoiding repetitive or undisclosed complaints. Undisclosed complaints are more dangerous, as they keep you satisfied but create negative advertisement due to unsatisfactory performance or difficulties faced by user. Many users just don’t bother to complain or suggest modification and erroneous process leads finally to stoppage or switch over to competitors option.


f. Scrutiny and accountability –
Critical examination of errors and lapses helps in improving quality of future jobs. Logging system is used to identify the reason of error and if man made, to fix the responsibility. It should be linked with performance evaluation.