Project Management Essays

Project Management Essays Project Management Essay Project Management Essay Name: Course: Lecturer: Date: The document is valuable for establishing a common understanding among project stakeholders regarding the scope of the project. The project scope document usually contains the following sections: 1. Customer requirements define the functional or performance specifications for the project’s end product and other project deliverables. 2. Statement of Work (SOW) defines the major tasks or work elements that will need to be performed to accomplish the work that needs to be done and produce all the project deliverables. . Deliverables are the products or outputs that the project team or contractor will produce and provide to the customer during and at the completion of the performance of the project. Although major or key deliverables may be stated in the project charter or request for proposal, they need to be expanded on in greater detail in the project scope document. 4. Acceptance criteria for all project deliverables must be described in greater detail than what is stated in t he project charter or request for proposal. For each deliverable, the quantitative measures or references to specifications, standards, or codes that will be used should be stated, as the criteria will be the basis for the customer agreeing that a deliverable is acceptable. 5. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The major work elements defined in the statement of work section along with the detailed list of deliverables provide the basis for creating a work breakdown structure, which is a hierarchical decomposition of the project work scope into work packages that produce the project deliverables. The project scope document is valuable for establishing a common understanding among project stakeholders regarding the scope of the project. It is important to document the detailed requirements in the project scope document in order to establish a clear understanding with the sponsor or customer. Work Breakdown Structure End of Class Evaluation Task AssignedDiscussion Questions LettersassignmentsQuizzesExams Team WorkTeam leader Team members 1- 2-Team leader Team members 1- 2-Team leader Team members 1- 2-Team leader Team members 1- 2-Team leader Team members 1- 2- CharterEvaluation Contribution Value addedGrammar Run outs valueTiming Expectation solutionsTiming Expectation solutionsTiming Expectation solution S C O P eCorrelation, Plagiarism Citations, quality and frequencyCorrelation, Plagiarism Citations, quality and frequency Enhancement structureCorrelation, Plagiarism Citations, quality Correction Time frame Correlation, Plagiarism Citations, quality and frequency Correct ion Time frame Correlation, Plagiarism Citations, quality and frequency Correction Time frame CostTask assigned on hourly basesTask assigned on hourly bases Task assigned on hourly basesTask assigned on hourly basesTask assigned on hourly bases Time frameWeek 1 to 8Week 1 to 8Week 1 to 8Week 1 to 8Week 1 to 8 The Project Charter; The Project Charter Example is used by the sponsor of a project to announce a new project and to demonstrate that management is in support of this project. The Project Charter Example provides the outline for a new project and gives management a sense of direction for the project from beginning to end. This example is downloadable and customizable for your specific usage. Project scope; Project scope is the part of project planning that involves determining and documenting a list of specific project goals, deliverables, tasks, costs and deadlines. The documentation of a projects scope, which is called a scope statement, terms of reference or statement of work, explains the boundaries of the project, establishes responsibilities for each team member and sets up procedures for how completed work will be verified and approved. During the project, this documentation helps the project team remain focused and on task. The scope statement also provides the project team with guidelines for making decisions about change requests during the project. Project Charter: Acknowledges the existence of a project Scope Statement: Defines where the major objectives and what the project deliverables Differences between these two documents: Project Charter: Official document created and approved by key stakeholders, after project idea has been identified Developed by the corporate executive or sponsor Defines the responsibilities and boundaries of the project manager and the project Scope Statement: After the project charter is approved, the project manager can proceed with launching team building activities and defining the scope of the project Document that formalizes references the scope of everything that the project must produce that is used for future decision making Developed by the project manager with his/her project team members Acts as a response to the Sponsor/Project Charter Project planning; 1. dev elop plans with relevant people to achieve the projects goals; 2. break work down into tasks and determine handover procedures; 3. dentify links and dependencies, and schedule to achieve deliverables; 4. estimate and cost the human and physical resources required, and make plans to obtain the necessary resources; 5. allocate roles with clear lines of responsibility and accountability; 6. allocate tasks that are realistic and equitable and accommodate other workloads; 7. Establish appropriate and agreed meeting schedules, as well as reporting, control and communication methods. Project scope; The Project Scope pertains to the work necessary to deliver a product. Requirements and deliverables define the project scope, and it is critical that the stakeholder is in agreement with the information discussed in the proposed plan. Construction of a WBS; Identifying the main deliverables of a project is the starting point for deriving a work breakdown structure. This important step is usually done by the project managers and the subject matter experts (SMEs) involved in the project. Once this step is completed, the subject matter experts start breaking down the high-level tasks into smaller chunks of work. In the process of breaking down the tasks, one can break them down into different levels of detail. One can detail a high level task into ten sub tasks while another can detail the same high level task into 20 sub tasks. Therefore, there is no hard and fast rule on how you should breakdown a task in WBS. Rather, the level breakdown is a matter of the project type and the management style followed for the project. In general, there are a few rules used for determining the smallest task chunk. In two weeks rule, nothing is broken down smaller than two weeks work of work. This means, the smallest task of the WBS is at least two week long. 8/80 is another rule used when creating a WBS. This rule implies that no task should be smaller than 8 hours of work and should not be larger than 80 hours of work. One can use many forms to display their WBS. Some use tree structure to illustrate the WBS, while others use lists and tables. Outlining is one of the easiest ways of representing a WBS. The right mix of planning, monitoring, and controlling can make the difference in completing a project on time, on budget, and with high quality results. These guidelines will help you plan the work and work the plan. Given the high rate of project failures, you might think that companies would be happy to just have their project finish with some degree of success. That’s not the case. Despite the odds, organizations expect projects to be completed faster, cheaper, and better. The only way that these objectives can be met is through the use of effective project management processes and techniques. This list outlines the major phases of managing a project and discusses key steps for each one. Note: This article is also available as a PDF download. PLANNING 1: Plan the work by utilizing a project definition document Project overview Objectives Scope Assumptions and risks Approach Organization: Show the significant roles on the project. Signature page: Ask the sponsor and key stakeholders to approve this document, signifying that they agree on what is planned. Initial effort, cost, and duration estimates: These should start as best-guess estimates and then be revised, if necessary, when the work plan is completed. 2: Create a planning horizon After the project definition has been prepared, the work plan can be created. The work plan provides the step-by-step instructions for constructing project deliverables and managing the project. 3: Define project management procedures up front 4: Manage the work plan and monitor the schedule and budget Once the project has been planned sufficiently, execution of the work can begin. Review the work plan on a regular basis to determine how you are progressing in terms of schedule and budget. Identify activities that have been completed during the previous time period and update the work plan to show they are finished. Determine whether there are any other activities that should be completed but have not been. Monitor the budget. 5: Look for warning signs Look for signs that the project may be in trouble. These could include the following: A small variance in schedule or budget starts to get bigger, especially early in the project. There is a tendency to think you can make it up, but this is a warning. If the tendencies are not corrected quickly, the impact will be unrecoverable. You discover that activities you think have already been completed are still being worked on. For example, users whom you think have been migrated to a new platform are still not. You need to rely on unscheduled overtime to hit the deadlines, especially early in the project. Team morale starts to decline. Deliverable quality or service quality starts to deteriorate. For instance, users start to complain that their converted e-mail folders are not working correctly. Quality-control steps, testing activities, and project management time starts to be cut back from the original schedule. A big project, such as an Exchange migration, can affect everyone in your organization. Don’t cut back on the activities that ensure the work is done correctly. 6: Ensure that the sponsor approves scope-change requests 7: Guard against scope creep 8: Identify risks up front 9: Continue to assess potential risks throughout the project 10: Resolve issues as quickly as possible Create Work Breakdown Structure Once the project scope document has been prepared and agreed on, the next step in the planning phase is to create a detailed work breakdown structure (WBS), which is a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the project work scope into work packages that produce the project deliverables. Having a comprehensive project scope document is important because it is the foundation for creating the work breakdown structure. The project scope document defined what needs to be done in terms of the statement of work and deliverables, and the WBS establishes the framework for how the work will get done to produce the project deliverables. Creating a WBS is a structured approach for organizing all the project work and deliverables into logical groupings and subdividing them into more manageable components to help ensure that all the work and deliverables to complete the project are identified and included in the baseline project plan. It is a hierarchical tree of deliverables or end items that will be accomplished or produced by the project team or contractor during the project. The work breakdown structure subdivides the project into smaller pieces called work items. The lowest-level work item of any one branch is called a work package. The work package includes all of the specific work activities that need to be performed to produce the deliverable associated with that work package. The WBS should be decomposed to a level that identifies individual work packages for each specific deliverable listed in the project scope document. Often the WBS includes a separate work package labeled â€Å"project management† that is for all the work associated with managing the project such as preparing progress reports; conducting review meetings; planning, monitoring, and tracking schedules and budgets, and so on. The accomplishment or production of all of these lowest-level work packages in the work breakdown structure constitutes completion of the project work scope.