Unit 07

The creative industries refers to different types of activities which generally tend to fall into different categories based on certain types of knowledge and information. Creative workers are counted by what they do and what their enterprise produces. For example if someone was in the game designer they would be belong to the gaming sector, and someone who played an instrument would be classified as a musician. The whole purpose of this is to count the number of firms and the number of workers at one location. It also identifies places with high creative activity. However this does not only include people who work for that sector creatively, a security guard who works for a computer company can still be classed as being in the IT sector even though there job doesn't really involve any use of a computer or other computer related hardware etc. There is often a bit of slight confusion between what is deemed a creative industry and what is deemed a cultural industry. The Cultural side of industry tends to focus more on cultural tourism and heritage, museums and libraries, sports and outdoor activities.

The project life cycle is a few steps a company will go through when creating products in the most effective way possible. There are four separate phases of this cycle; Initiation, Planning, Execution and control, and Closure or exit phase. Industries use the cycle to effectively brake up the creation process to make it easier to plan out how it is going to be made and how it should be at each stage. With having 4 separate phases it also makes it easier to determine which phase any errors occurred, if there are any. For most industries these four phases will be different because they are all out to create different products so the phases of creations will all vary depending on the type of industry. The four steps are like this;

1. Initiation
This is the beginning of the project. This is where the project manager is appointed and has to select his team members based on their skills and experience. the most basic tools used during initiation are a project charter, a business plan, the project framework, the business case justification and the milestone reviews.
2. Planning
The second phase should include a detailed identification and assignment of each task until the end of the project. It should also include a risk analysis and a definition of a criteria for the successful completion of each deliverable. The governance process is defined, stake holders identified and reporting frequency and channels agreed. The most common tools or methodologies used in the planning stage are Business Plan and Milestones Reviews.
3. Execution and Controlling
The most important issue in this phase is to ensure project activities are properly executed and controlled. During the execution phase, the planned solution is implemented to solve the problem specified in the project's requirements. In product and system development, a design resulting in a specific set of product requirements is created. This convergence is measured by prototypes, testing, and reviews. As the execution phase progresses, groups across the organization become more deeply involved in planning for the final testing, production, and support. The most common tools or methodologies used in the execution phase are an update of risk analysis and score cards, in addition to business Plan and milestones reviews.
4. Closure or Exit
In this last stage, the project manager must ensure that the project is brought to itsproper completion. The closure phase is characterized by a written formal project review report containing the following components: a formal acceptance of the final product by the client, Weighted Critical Measurements (matching the initial requirements specified by the client with the final delivered product), rewarding the team, a list of lessons learned, releasing project resources, and a formal project closure notification to higher management. No special tool or methodology is needed during the closure phase.

To run a successful business it needs to have certain qualities. A business needs a reputation. A business with a good reputation will generally attract more and newer customers providing of course it is a good reputation. A good reputation makes people think there must be a reason why they have such a reputation, either through good customer service, good quality work of products etc, and these ideas make people want to choose that company over other companies that they haven't heard of or without a reputation. Just because a company does not have a reputation does not mean it is a bad company, it just means that they might not have been around long enough or had enough reviews to gain a reputation. Another thing a business needs is advertising. Advertising is key part of any company, without advertising very few people will find out about your company, and even if people to find out about it, they will generally turn towards similar companies that they have heard of before and have seen advertised. If you don't make profit then the business will go bust and be bankrupt. To stay with in the profit boundaries you need to make sure that after you have sold your products or service, that you have made enough money to pay for new materials etc as well as having enough to pay for the cost of production such as electricity bills and any staff that are required to make the products or for the service. A good business should always have a good future plan, on ways they can develop existing products and ways they can possibly expand in to new products. Any hardware company is a good example of this as advances in technology are happening so quickly these days because every company is trying to stay one step ahead of the other bringing out new and more advanced pieces of equipment or updating older equipment.

When developing new projects for a company it is vital that you and the people you are working with work together so you can get the best out of everyones skills and ideas and implement them into the project. The reason for this is that if you do not get along with some of the people in the group they might not accept your ideas just for the fact they do not like you, even though this is highly unprofessional it can happen. A project team can be split into multiple sections. First of there are the creators, the 'plant' and 'resource' investigators. The 'plant' will normally be in the person in charge of handing out the project briefs and base ideas and will wait for any ideas to sprout from these initial ideas. Once an idea has been selected it is up to the resource investigator to find out what materials and equipment they will need to create the design. Next comes the leaders of the group, also usually split into two. One of them will be in charge of co-ordinating the rest of the team to make sure they all have there set roles and stick to them, the other leader will always be on the look out on ways to improve the process and help speed the process up or help with any tasks that they can do while the rest of the team works on other things. Next there are the implementers, one of them will be the one will handle any worries or problems the group comes across and will try to find a way to resolve them while the other will try find a way to split tasks up to make them easier for the group to do. Finally we come to the last stage, There will be a monitor/evaluator, who has to be fairly strict on how he thinks the quality of the product is at each stage and determine weather it is good enough or not and then evaluate it and see if there are any changes or improvements that could be made.