Project Management Using PMBOK Categories - Assignment Example

Project Management Using PMBOK Categories Abstract Project Management plays a vital role in the successful completion of a project. The main reason for most project failures which project managers don’t realise is improper project management. A large university of New Zealand is considering the development of an online dispute resolution system for its students, but due to non – compliance with the best practices of project management their earlier projects failed. Lacks in different knowledge areas of project management were the main reasons of the failure of the projects which resulted in a loss of both important time and money. Therefore, considering the large number of project failures, the university has decided to obtain a report from a professional describing the importance of Project Management Knowledge Areas to the planning Committee and how they would help them in making their projects a success. There can be certain problem areas that would require more time and effort than the others. There is a need to recognise these project areas and give them the due emphasis. Keywords: Project Management, Project Failure, University of New Zealand Project Management Using PMBOK Categories What is Project Management? As the word suggests, project management is all about planning, motivating, organising and controlling the available resources to achieve the goals. It is about the successful completion of a project in a way that all the desired goals are attained within the limited resources available. In most cases, improper project management leads a projecttowards jeopardy or an unsuccessful ending. Therefore, in order to combat this situation, proper project management is a key tool. Project Management covers all the aspect of the project including time management, scope management, risk management, procurement and cost management. All these things are divided into four primary knowledge areas, which are further divided into nine sub-headings. These knowledge areas cover all the necessary aspects of a project. A project can be managed properly if all these knowledge areas of project management are given due consideration. The PMBOK gives a complete insight of how a project can be managed properly and can achieve the completion status without any hindrance. The project management process is a tried and tested method of managing projects in different industries. The whole process can be further broken into four to five different processes which are governed by a control mechanism. These processes are normally known as project initiation, project design, project execution, project monitoring and project closing. These processes are supplemented by an exploratory process (known as research and development) that normally is executed before the project starts and/or during the project cycle as per the requirement. Another process that may supplement the main processes of project management is the decision making process that involves go/no go decisions and are primarily invoked or taken by the project manager. Now, let us consider and understand how these knowledge areas of project management will affect the development of dispute resolution system to be deployed by the university. Project Integration Management Project Integration management is an information area that deals with the project manager keeping a bird eye view on all the aspects of the project and ensuring that deadlines for all activities are met and issues are resolved. This information area also pertains to the fact that all ambiguities are cleared and the project follows the project plan. The progress of the project also needs to be reported accurately and timely so that issues such as resource allocation can be resolved. Basically, good integration management depends on the project team and the involved stakeholders. The project manager needs to ask himself certain questions like is the staffing needs met, do the team possess necessary skills and does the team have information, tools and support to manage the given project? Integration management also involves managing conflicts and disputes during the project and smoothening transitions that take place during a project lifecycle(Project Management Institute, 2009). The dispute resolution system that needs to be implemented would require proper understanding of project plan and its distribution amongst themselves. The stakeholders should understand that the timeframe for this project cannot be stringent and they must understand that even after the development phase, the project would still not be complete. The Project Manager in the light of this knowledge area should understand that the project in totality is worth a view. If he/she goes till the granular level, then he/she may not be able to solve the major problems and would waste their time in petty issues. Therefore, integration management of project can rightly be termed as strategic management of the project and thus, will play a vital role in the management of dispute resolution system since it will cover and govern project’s processes from project initiation to project closure (Schwalbe, 2012). Project Scope Management This knowledge area looks after the boundaries of a project’s scope and deliverable. To explain, a deliverable of a project or the milestone is a combination of requirements, processes involvedand implementation. This means that scope management covers requirements engineering phase and then client’s testing, prototyping and validation phase of the project. To formalise a project’s scope, a formal project scope statement is created that tells what the project is all about, what delivery milestones are and what aims and objective do an organisation seeks to meet with the help of the implementation of the project. The most important part of project scope management is to decide on what things are not parts of the project and a contingency needs to be made which can accommodate future changes in the project. For the dispute resolution system, a proper project scope statement needs to be devised by the steering committee. The failure of earlier projects was due to the fact that scope wasn’t properly defined and the stakeholders came up with changes after the completion of the project. The project scope management plan for the current implementation should be devised in a structured manner. The requirements should be taken in full, counter – signed by the client. Then a broad scope of the project should be made and decomposition of tasks into milestones should be done. These milestones or smaller fragments of scope should be verified by different stakeholders and domain experts involved in the project. A control mechanism of verifying and re-verifying should be used since requirements are ever-changing and they can only be controlled through tight delivery and good communication skills. Project Time Management The biggest measure of a project’s viability is its timely delivery. Along with cost,time is the biggest constraints that a project manager and his/her team are faced with. The biggest source of conflict during a project is indeed, time. It has been noted that most projects end up in jeopardy because of deadlines that are not met because of ever changing requirements from the client side. For the dispute resolution system, a use of time management system is recommended. This specific software will help the project team in scheduling, estimating and sequencing the different activities of the project in an organised manner. MS- Project is a highly recommended tool that helps in managing and keeping a track of even the minimalist details of the project. The project team for the dispute resolution system must stringently follow the six processes of time management. The project team must first define the vital activities of the project and then schedule them according to the given time frame. They must then estimate resources and allocate them different time slices. This will lead to a development of a project schedule which can be ideally depicted through a Gantt chart or a Network Sequence Diagram. As with all project management activities, the whole process of time management should be governed by a control mechanism. Project Cost Management As mentioned above, the second biggest constraint that affects a project plan and its development is the project cost. Managing cost is a big problem in any given economy where the project is taking place since the difference in cost makes a project successful or unsuccessful. Due to increased competition, most companies have to cut down their budget and lessen their service costs. Most projects that are very budget intensive but not fast movers have to be terminated in the early phases. The management of cost directly affects a team compensation and appraisal so the team has to be really efficient about managing costs. The university has already lost many dollars on the two projects that they have terminated. Therefore, they mustspend each dollar wisely and ask questions about every dollar spent and the gain they had on each dollar spent. The project team should go with a three step plan in which they should first estimate all the monetary resources that would be required to carry out the plan. Then the university should appoint a cost accounting expert who should help them in allocation cost to different components of the project with the project team. After budgeting, each team of the project should be given their due share and then the whole project should be monitored and controlled by a steering cost committee. Project Quality Management From the perspective of the project in isolation, this is perhaps the most important knowledge area that needs to be considered. Each and every process that makes up a project are evaluated against some pre-set success measures that were taken from previous projects and are now considered as best practise measures. This exercise is a part of the validation process and the project manager is responsible for devising this quality management plan. This project needs to be created before the project is initiated. The University needs to devise this plan and set quality parameters that they need to ensure are in line with their expectations. The University needs to ensure that they have power users who can perform user acceptance testing and quality assurance checks so they can know if the system made by the software team is viable enough to cater to their requirements. Project Human Resource Management This knowledge area solely deals with the recruiting need of the project and the project manager has the key role to play in this aspect. In the project plan that has been talked off earlier, there is a need to mention the HR need that needs to be catered during the course of the project. The University should ensure that the vendor team is complete and they comply with the requirements of the project for the committed time frame. The process that they should involve for recruiting is to make a HR project plan which would include which resources to include and for how much time. Then they should ensure if the project resources are available within the time of the project or not. After deploying resources, the project manager should ensure if the resources are motivated enough and are compensated duly. Project Communication Management This knowledge area concerns the knowledge management and information flow during the project. For the success of the project, all stakeholders need to know what’s happening and the other insights into the project. It is recommended for the University team to communicate in both formal and informal methods using all sorts of communication procedures. The project manager would have to submit the information dissemination plan to the stakeholder telling them what sort of information would be provided to which stakeholders at what time. Project Risk Management This knowledge area pertains to the management of both inherent and expected risks of the project. Risk and feasibility studies need to be performed even before the project’s idea of inception takes place. The university needs to identify the two characteristics associated with the risk that are: risk of an uncertain happening and its effect on the project. The project manager also needs to make a provision for a risky event in the future. The project manager also needs to employ all sorts of tools that can help eradicate or lower risk. The best practise is to perform both a qualitative and quantitative analysis given a projects resources and expectations. Project Procurement Management This knowledge area deals with procuring or obtaining resources from outside the organisation. The project manager is solely responsible for taking decisions to buy products or resources that can support the current plan. The University should make sure that all the resources are procured timely and efficiently so that project’s requirements can be met. Conclusion After going through the information provided about the project failures of the University, it is easy to conclude that a strong Project Management Plan is required to accomplish the desired goals successfully. Therefore, the planning committee should take assistance from the above mentioned categories of the knowledge areas of PMBOK. The above mentioned sub-categories that are elaborated in accordance with their importance in dispute resolution system would be beneficial for the committee in making appropriate decisions. It was observed from the past experience that most of the university project failures were mainly because of the mismanagement of time, cost & resources. Thus, after studying the lacks extensively, the above report is produced addressing all the necessary issues that are to be given special consideration while developing the online dispute resolution system. References Project Management Institute. (2009). A guide to the project management body of knowledge. 4th. Newtown Square, PA: eBook. . Schwalbe, K. (2012). Information Technology Project Management. CA: Cengage Learning, Inc.: eBook. . Read More