Unit 42 Project Management Assignment

Introduction

This Unit 42 Project Management Assignment aims to throw light on concept of project and its management along with determining the factors responsible for evaluating the success of a project. It also depicts seven phases and nine principles of DSDM in addition to explaining the reasons of difficulty faced by project management to terminate a project.

Task 1

1.1 Project and Project Management

A project is an endeavour undertaken in order to accomplish a desired objective in a given time period through specific set of operations. It is a temporary process as it has specific beginning and end period and it has to be completed utilizing available resources. Project management is the process of applying and utilizing the defined resources; both human and financial and scope so as to fulfil the project requirements and achieve the aspired goal within given timeline (Harold, 2003). It is the methodological approach followed in an organization to plan and organize all the processes of a project.

1.2 Success of a Project

For a project to run successfully and achieve its aspired objectives, project manager is the one who needs to plan and manage processes and operations efficiently and within three constraints of a project as in fig: 1.2, which are time, cost and scope. A project is said to be successful if it come in on time, as per the budget and the final product is acceptable and meets the specified requirements (Lewis, 2006).

Fig 1.2: project triangle

Moreover, criteria based on outcome are also used to assess the success as final service or product must be used by the intended constituents, assists in providing a learning experience to stakeholders and must improve the overall efficiency of the organization.

1.3 Phases and Principles of DSDM

Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) is the framework used by organization for having an agile approach and finding right solutions for project management (Plonka et al., 2014). DSDM broadly has three sequential phases out of which the second phase is further classified into five steps, altogether constituting the seven phases of DSDM as follows:

1. Pre- project phase: the phase before the official beginning of project in which decision to start a project is taken following its conceptualization.
2. Project phase
   1. Feasibility study: determining if the project may be completed utilizing the defined resources and time period.
   2. Business study: researching project’s business aspects.
   3. Functional model iteration: decide and review the way system functions should be performed.

• Design & build iteration: product designing is done through models.

• Implementation: the final product is wrapped and a documentation is written and reviewed.

3. Post project phase: the phase of maintaining the final product or service.

The nine principles of DSDM are:

1. Involving active user is extremely necessary.
2. Empowering team to make decisions.
3. Frequent deliveries must be emphasized.
4. Systems must be delivered that fits the business needs nicely.
5. Incremental development is required by adding new features in new releases.
6. Development phase changes need to be reversible.
7. Some requirements should be set at high level to minimize the freedom of making changes in development.
8. Testing needs to be done throughout the project.
9. Team members need to work in collaboration and cooperation.

1.4 Difficulties in termination of a project:

Project managers face a real difficulty in pulling the plug of an ongoing project. There are several reasons given by Staw and Ross (1987) and may be categorized into four groups as follows:

• Project factors

1. Beneficial outcomes are evident
2. Investment is for R&D
3. Issues seems temporary

• Psychological factors

1. Previous success history
2. Attached emotionally with project
3. To depict one’s initial decision was correct

• Social factors

1. Competition between various departments
2. To show winning attitude by persistent performance

• Organizational factors:  strong higher authorities have the power and they continue to provide money and protection

Task 2

Introduction

The report depicts the factors assisting in making a project successful for an organisation including the recommended project team structure, ideal qualities of project manager and the difficulties faced by him while managing human and financial resources to achieve the aspired goal of project.

2.1 Project team structure:

STRUCTURE	STRENGTH	WEAKNESS
FUNCTIONAL	Person leading the team is very experienced, knowledgeable and skilled. Employees have opportunity to grow in their functional areas.	Workforce not skilled enough to work in different departments. Goals of functional areas and organisation are not aligned in one direction.
MATRIX	Matrix allows efficient exchange of information and knowledge. Different departments work in cooperation and collaboration and resolve conflicts effectively.	It is full of internal conflicts and lack cooperation among members. Structure is very complex and divided between multiple authorities.
PROJECT	Project team is well build and managed by manger and is focussed towards achievement of project goals. Team members and managers work together, communicate timely and make quick decisions.	Team members do not take required efforts and financial resources are limited. Project team members do not have business continuity.

2.2 Challenges in managing an IT project

An IT project is one that aims to produce or manufacture an intangible service for customers and a project manager has to face following difficulties in managing one:

1. Unclear and changing scope: IT projects are very flexible and user requirements keep on changing making it very difficult for managers to organise things and even cause wastage of money, time and other resources.
2. Educating project sponsors: mostly project sponsors are not much aware about concepts and deep technicality of software development and thus at times make it tough for managers to justify certain tasks and investments (Schwalbe, (2014).
3. IT projects and their outcomes seems a minor job in comparison physical products like automobiles, buildings, etc.

2.3 Qualities of an efficient project manager

Since project manager is the one who would manage the resources to accomplish a project successfully, he must have following qualities:

1. Knowledge and skills: project manager must have experience, knowledge and skills in his as well as other fields so that he may direct his team effectively.
2. Conflict resolution skill: it is very essential as conflicts are unavoidable and must be managed for team to work in collaboration.
3. Communication skills: he must have communication skills to clearly convey information and commands (Lock, 2007).
4. Leadership qualities: he has the responsibility to lead the team efficiently and timely motivate them towards achievement of project goals.
5. Vision skills: he must have ability to predict future outcomes corresponding to tasks and situations.

2.4 Planning and building project team

Planning and building a project team is an extremely significant factor responsible for a successful project, thus while building a team, project manager needs to select individuals having skills and knowledge in the required field who would work in coordination and collaboration towards achievement of desired goal of the project. The team members must be selected at right time and in optimum numbers, must be clearly explained the aims and operations of the project and must be kept motivated so that they may give their best efforts to accomplish assigned task (Kousholt, 2007). They must be lead effectively in a way that they may freely communicate with manager as well as with each other to discuss any issues or give their feedbacks.

Conclusion: In an organisation, for projects to bring fruitful results, must be managed by an efficient project manager who is skilled, knowledgeable and experienced to build a great organizational structure and lead it in a direction of working in cooperation so as to achieve aspired objectives.

Task 3

3.1 Project plan and contents

A project plan can be defined as the development of a blue print which is outlining the goals and objectives of a team and it would help in developing the plans and procedures of attaining these goals. Resources which would be needed for the project would also be a part of the project management and so would be the budget and financial planning of the project.

3.2 Budgeted cost

BCWP is used to analyse and assess the earned value associated with the project activity and plan. It is called as budgeted costs for work planned. There are two activities in this project which is not yet started and they are not considered as a part of the calculations. 4 activities are completed fully and 2 are only partially completed and so it is important that lower bound is to be considered.

CWP

Approximate lower bound for the BWCP is estimated to be 211600 GBP

Upper bound for BCWP: partially completed activities which are used for upper bound of BCWP would be taken as 95 percent completed. Activities which are not completed less than 95 percent would be taken as not started (Chapman and Ward, 2007).

Upper bound of the estimated value of the project is 240,400 GBP

At the end of the project BCWP would be equal to the total earned values of the project which is coming to be 2 70 400 GBP.

3.3 Auditing function

Auditor’s Attributes: Chances of a project’s success are also dependent on an efficient and effective auditing system.  This system would help in keeping various activities of a project under the check and make sure that none of the activities would go out of the hand financially or time wise. There are a few attributes and qualities in an auditor like (Burke, 1999).

1. Efficient
2. Effective
3. Qualified
4. Certified
5. Trained and educated
6. Technologically savvy
7. Honesty and integrity

Auditing Function: It is very important to get a project audited because the final outcome of the project would be dependent a lot on the auditing systems which are being used by the project. It is a must release a check list of the tasks and functions applicable for getting audited and then all the attributes which are covered in the check list would be applicable depending on the type of industry and sector.

3.4 Change control system

Change control system are one of the formal ways through which a change is introduced in the project properly and it also helps in executing and planning for the changes.

• Proper definition of the required change and the parameters which are to be used while measuring the level of change.
• Providing proper information and knowledge of the project.
• Discuss and explain the process which would be used in change management.

                                        CHANGE REQUEST FORM

References

Burke, R. (1999), Project Management: Planning and Control Techniques, 3^rd edition, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, England
Chapman, C. and Ward, S. (2007), Project Risk Management: Processes, Techniques and Insights, John, Wiley & Sons Inc.
Clarke, L. and Gribling, M. (2008), Obstacles to diversity in construction: the example of Heathrow Terminal 5, Construction Management and Economics, 26(10), 1055-1065
Harold, K. (2003). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling (8th Ed.). Wiley. 
Kousholt B. (2007). Project Management –. Theory and practice. Nyt Teknisk Forlag. p.59.
Lewis R.  (2006) Project Management. McGraw-Hill Professional, 2006. p.110
Lock D. (2007) Project Management (9th Ed.) Gower Publishing, Ltd., 2007.
Plonka, L. et al. (2014). "UX Design in Agile: A DSDM Case Study." Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming. Springer International Publishing,
Schwalbe, K. (2014), Information Technology Project Management, Cengage Learning
Staw, B.M. and Ross, J. (1987) “Knowing when to Pull the Plug,” Harvard Business Review (65:2)

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