Project Management Plan: Seismic Zone Residential Construction Improvement Program - Assignment Example

? Table of Contents Project Management Plan 4 Project Objectives 4 Project Scope ment 4 Project Deliverables 4 Product Acceptance Criteria 5 Project WBS 5 Project Schedule Management Plan 6 Project Resource Management Plan 8 Project Cost Management Plan 9 Project Risk Management Plan 10 Project Communication Management Plan 12 Project Quality Management Plan 15 List of Tables Table 1 : Internal Resources 9 Table 2 : External Resources 9 Table 3 : Project Cost Estimates 10 Table 4 : Risk Mitigation Plan 12 Table 5 : Project Communication Plan 14 Table 6 : Quality Management Plan 15 List of Figures Figure 1 : Work Breakdown Structure 6 Figure 2 : Project Schedule Management Plan 7 Figure 3 : Organizational Structure 8 Figure 4 : Risk Probability ad Impact Matrix 11 Project Management Plan : Project Siesmic Zone Project Management Plan is the most critical and essential document as it guides the project toward completion (Sanghera 2008). During initial phases of the project, limited information on the project details is available. Thus project management plan contains necessary planning to meet the project objectives; however, as the project progresses and more information is made available the project management plan is progressively elaborated, a process called “rolling wave planning” (PMBOK 2008). A project management plan contains its subsidiary plans including cost, schedule, resource, risk, quality, communication, procurement and scope management plans. Besides this project management plan also contains the procedure for change control management and configuration management for monitoring and controlling changes and approving the changes to the project (Mulcahy 2011). This case study pertains to development of a project management plan for the Seismic Zone Residential Construction Improvement Program undertaken by Research and Development unit of Property Development Department of the Government (PDDG). Flexible Models (FM) is a company that specializes in developing to-the-scale industrial models for building manufacturing plants, refinery process plants, and public usage buildings, such as halls and shopping malls. PDDG is working to assess the effectiveness of the boxes of a particular dimension used in the foundation of buildings. The project management plan for this project is elaborated below. Project Management Plan Project Objectives Project objective is to design, cut, assemble and deliver the boxes on the client’s location and assess the effectiveness of the scaled dimensions used in the foundations of the building. Project Scope Statement Wysocki (2009) recommends project team to follow a linear project management life cycle for successful completion of the project objectives. The project manager and project team should collect in wiring the requirements of stakeholders and conduct interviews to assess their needs, wants and expectations to review the project scope. This would allow the project team to finalize project scope and product specifications and come up with estimates of time and cost for comprehensive project planning. Project Deliverables Deliverables include the outcomes of the project processes that comprise the intended product or service. It also includes the auxiliary results such as reports and documentations. According to PMBOK (2008), it is essential to have processes for defining, verifying and accepting the final deliverables of the project. Given the project scope statement, project deliverables are described either in detail on summary level depending upon the availability of the information in a particular project phase (Mulcahy 2011). In our particular case, project deliverable is boxes of following specifications The size must be 300 x 250 x 200 cm with a slot of 10 x 10 x 25 cm. The tolerance on outer dimensions must be +/-2 cm. The tolerance on dimensions of the slot must be 0 to -3 mm in width. In short, the slot cannot be more than 10 x 10 cm. It should be made of cardboard or metal sheet. It should be made of small cubes of dimensions 5 x 5 x 5 cm. It should be smooth in appearance. Product Acceptance Criteria The product acceptance criteria would include delivery and assembly of boxes with following specification at the client’s site. The size must be 300 x 250 x 200 cm with a slot of 10 x 10 x 25 cm. The tolerance on outer dimensions must be +/-2 cm. The tolerance on dimensions of the slot must be 0 to -3 mm in width. In short, the slot cannot be more than 10 x 10 cm. It should be made of cardboard or metal sheet. It should be made of small cubes of dimensions 5 x 5 x 5 cm. It should be smooth in appearance. Project WBS Work Breakdown Structure is a deliverable oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work (PMBOK 2008). It is accomplished by the project team to create the project deliverables for meeting project objectives. Since this activity is carried out by the entire team, it is also employed as one of the team building tools. In work breakdown structure, major deliverables of the project are placed at the upper most level and are decomposed logically in a way that no more decomposition is possible. At the lowest level of the work break down structure are work packages containing the project activities for project completion. In our particular case, the WBS created is shown in figure below: Figure 1 : Work Breakdown Structure Project Schedule Management Plan The project schedule management plan helps guide the project to meet specified timeline. It is also a tool to monitor and control scheduling of project activities and measure the project progress over time. In this context, project performance is measured against the project baselines, which are established in early planning phase of the project (Mulcahy 2011). The project time management plan can also be used as an input to calculate earned values and estimate the project time to completion accurately. During the project execution, project schedule management plan is used to determine the variations from the planned and decide if these variations necessitated any corrective action. Gantt chart is one tool that helps to effectively manage the project against the planned time lines (Wysocki 2009). Gantt Chart shows the dependencies among the project activities with their start and finish dates. Also calculating the early finish, early start, late finish and late start dates and performing a forward or backward pass to calculate the float for each activity helps determine the critical path of the project. Critical path is the path along the project activities path, which if changed can impact the project’s schedule positively or negatively. The figure below shows the Gantt Chart, while path in red dependencies represents the project critical path. In our particular case, the total duration of the project is 54 days. Figure 2 : Project Schedule Management Plan Project Resource Management Plan PMBOK (2008) highlighted three main types of organization structures under which projects are undertaken. These organizational structures include functional organization, projectized organization and matrix organization. In our case, project involves all the functional departments in designing, cutting, assembling and delivering the boxes to the client’s site. The organization chart of the project is shown below: Figure 3 : Organizational Structure It is also essential to identify the requirement for resources with type and quantity of each (Mulcahy 2011). These resources include human resource, material and machinery to execute the project work. This information is made part of resource management plan which is a sub-plan of project management plan. This plan provides information on all the resources, their types, quantities and time when required. In addition, this plan also aims to determine the criticality and priority of the resource between project and functional departments and any risks that occur as a result of either failure, conflict of priority or non-availability of the resource. Sanghera (2010) highlights the criticality of estimating resource requirement with respect to the successful completion of the project. In this project, both internal (in-house) and external (out-sourced) resources are required by the project. Based on description of he case study, following internal and external resources have been identified for completing the project. Task Description Department Resource Requirement (person days) Duration (Days) Requirement Analysis Interview Client Stakeholders Product Detail Analysis Refinement of Final Draft Design 8 10 4 4 6 2 Design and Concept High Level Design Details with Operation Design Design 4 12 4 6 Production Set up Cutting Sub Assembly 1 Sub Assembly 2 Sub Assembly 3 Assembly Integration Implementation Assembly Cutting Assembly Assembly Assembly Assembly Design Assembly 6 9 12 12 8 6 11 7 4 3 6 6 4 3 7 Table 1 : Internal Resources Task Description Department Duration (Days) Cost (USD) Delivery Pre-delivery Product Detail Analysis External 4 6 3000 6000 Table 2 : External Resources The resources required on this project would be shared between the project and department. Any priority would be determined by the project manager; however, vice president would be the authority to determine the final priority in case of any conflict between requirements. The pay and allowance of the project team would be paid through the organization’s existing policies of finance department. Project Cost Management Plan According to Hamilton (2004), cost management plan is the process of estimating, controlling and analyzing the project cost data to establish a continuous cycle for implementation of project plan towards successful project completion. According to PMBOK (2008), the purpose of cost management plan is to establish accurate estimates for the project cost and identify the project cost baselines against which the project progress would be measured. In our particular case, the project cost estimates would be based on the methodology described by Sanghera (2010) and the description provide in the case study. According to the information contained in the case study, the total cost of the project is 36960 $. The detailed breakdown of the project cost estimates is given below Task Description Department Resource Requirement (person days) Duration (Days) Cost (USD) Requirement Analysis Interview Client Stakeholders Product Detail Analysis Refinement of Final Draft Design 8 10 6 4 6 2 1200.00 2400.00 900.00 Requirement Analysis Total 4200.00 Design and Concept High Level Design Details with Operation Design Design 4 12 4 6 600.00 1800.00 Design and Concept Total 2400.00 Production Set up Cutting Sub Assembly 1 Sub Assembly 2 Sub Assembly 3 Assembly Integration Implementation Assembly Cutting Assembly Assembly Assembly Assembly Design Assembly 6 9 12 12 8 6 11 7 4 3 6 6 4 3 7 900.00 810.00 1800.00 1800.00 1200.00 900.00 1650.00 1050.00 Production Total 10110.00 Material Cardboard Sheet Metal Sheet Cubes 50 Sheets 50 Sheets 900 Pieces 1000.00 1250.00 9000.00 Material Total 11250.00 Delivery Pre-delivery Shipment / Delivery Outsourced 2 14 3000.00 6000.00 Delivery Total 9000.00 Total Project Cost Estimates 36960.00 Table 3 : Project Cost Estimates Project Risk Management Plan According to PMBOK (2008), “Risk Management Planning is the process of deciding how to approach and conduct the risk management activities for a project”. The process of risk manage should be completed in the early phases of project during project planning since it is most critical to successful completion of the project. Risk management plan is the most critical part of the project management plan. The risk management plan includes identification of project risks, qualitative and quantitative analysis for risk assessment and prioritizing risks to develop risk response plan. The primary purpose of the risk response is to optimize the project performance and protect the project from uncertainties that impede the project progress. PMBOK (2008) recommend creating a Risk Probability and Impact Matrix to determine the relative prioritization of the risks. According to Mulcahy (2011), no single project is without risk and so is the case with our project. Detailed analysis of the description of the case study, following risks have been identified: R1 – Non-availability of both Cutters Technicians R2 – Damage during transportation to client’s site R3 – Change in specifications R4 – Delay in arrival of raw material R5 – Incorrect setup R6 - Loose Assembly R7 – High Skill Level Requirement for Cutting Operation R8 – Non-availability of both Assembly Technicians R9 – Project schedule delay R10 – Delay in delivery / shipment R11 – Inadequate raw material purchased Prioritization or rating of risks is carried out on the basis of their effects on project objectives. The ratings to the risks are assigned on the basis of their probability and impact using a typical lookup table, as called risk probability and impact matrix. This matrix represents a specific combination of probability and impact that helps to rate the risks as high, moderate and low and allows to prioritize the risk responses. The rules for rating the risks are customized according to the specific organizational needs during risk planning and are usually standardized for all project for correlation. The table below shows the Risk Probability and Impact Matrix developed for our particular project. Impact Probability 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 0.1 0.2 R11 0.3 R6 R2 R10 0.4 0.5 R5 0.6 R7 R9 R4 0.7 R2 0.8 R3 0.9 R8 R1 Green = Low Risk Yellow = Moderate Risk Red = High Risk Figure 4 : Risk Probability ad Impact Matrix In our particular project, responses for moderate and high risks would be planned for mitigation actions. The risk mitigation plan is given below: Risk ID Description Mitigation Plan Responsible R1 Non-availability of both Cutters Technicians Rescheduling the technicians to ensure there availability on the project Michael Gartner Davidson Ferreira R2 Damage during transportation to client’s site Introduce severe contractual penalty in case of damage to the external agency outsourced for the shipment Jim Stanford R3 Change in specifications Scope of the project must be defined, approved and agreed upon by all. In case of any change, contractual provisioning must be ensured to compensate the project in schedule and cost. Davidson Ferreira R4 Delay in arrival of raw material Supply Chain Management needs to be activated in advance with information on all possible sources in case of any delay in arrival of raw material. Also high penalty should be imposed in contract against the vendor in case of delay greater than a defined and calculated time threshold. Jim Stanford R5 Incorrect setup Consult historical records and lesson learned from similar projects to avoid such mistakes and training personnel as per requirement. Philip Clooney Table 4 : Risk Mitigation Plan Project Communication Management Plan Management of communication requirements play significant role in project’s success. According to PMBOK (2008), “it involves timely generation, collection, distribution, storage, retrieval and disposition of information to all concerned stakeholders during all phases of the project”. This relates the information and the people for successful dissemination of the required data at appropriate levels. In fact, project managers spend most of their time in communicating with project sponsor, team and other stakeholders to prevent problems from occurring (Mulcahy 2011). Thus it is essential that everyone involved in the project understands the importance of the communication. Developing a communication plan requires identification of the information needs, their timings, format and persons responsible. All the projects require communication, but methods and means of communication differ among projects. Thus it becomes essential to determine the required means and methods for communication specific to a project (PMBOK 2008). Communication skills are also linked to communication management and involve a great deal of the subject. It is greatly influenced by the organizational factors and environment such as standards and culture in which project is undertaken. Choice of methods like written, oral, formal or informal is influenced by the available technology like online conferences, seminar, meetings and emails. Similarly, conventional methods of communication include telephone, fax and formal written correspondence. Mulcahy (2011) suggests that choice of technology for communication is determined by the urgency of information, availability of required technology, human resource skills in handling the technology and overall project environment. The choices for communication methods may include: Formal Written. It is used for communication over longer distances. Formal Verbal. This includes presentations and speeches. Informal Written. Informal written includes memos, emails and notes taken. Informal Verbal. This includes conversations, discussions and meetings. Also writing styles like active, passive, word choice and sentence structure influence the communication throughout the project. There are number of different formats available for communication on the project including: Status Report. Describes the status of the project compared to performance baselines. Progress Report. Describes the accomplishments on the project till date. Trend Report. Describe improvement or deterioration in the project performance over time. Forecasting Report. Forecasting future state of the project performance. Variance Report. Provides Comparison of actual results with planned baselines. For our particular case, the communication management plan is given on the next page. Stakeholder Communication Requirement Information to be Communicated Format Method Frequency Person Responsible All stakeholders Gather information on project requirements Project requirements Initiation meeting / Minutes of Meetings Meeting Once Project Manager and Project Team Client Project Plan Project Management Plan Presentation Formal Verbal Once Project Sponsor and Project Manager All Stakeholders Encourage communication Communicate plan, roles and responsibilities Kick-off meeting Meeting Project Manager and project team All stakeholders including the minister of state Update on project progress Project Status Status Reports Report Weekly Project Manager and project team All stakeholders including the minister of state Update of project progress on milestones achieved versus planned Project Status Milestone Reports Report Montly Project Manager and project team Project Manager Update project status and discuss project issues. Project status and project issues Project status meetings Meeting Monthly Project Manager and project team Client, Project Sponsor and Project Manager Seek approval to changes in project plan Project plan progress and updates Client and Sponsor Meetings Meeting As Required Project Manager and project team Project Manager Identify and review issues and risks affecting budget and schedule Project risks Project Risk Meetings Meeting Monthly Project Manager and project team All Stakeholders Historical Record and Lessons Learned To make records and lessons learned part of organizational historical archive All document forms Formal and informal both Closing of project All Stakeholders All Stakeholders Celebrations To formally celebrate successful completion of the project Invitation Cards Formal and informal Closing of project Project Manager and Project team Table 5 : Project Communication Plan Project Quality Management Plan Project quality management plan includes identification of all quality policies, quality objectives and quality standards that are critical to project quality. The purpose of quality management plan is to implement the quality management system through organizational policies, procedures and planning for quality control and quality assurance with an aim for continual improvement throughout the project lifecycle. The cost of poor quality results in rework and additional cost to the project; therefore, quality management plan elaborates the measures for implementation of the quality control and quality assurance procedures in our project to avoid rework. Objective Frequency Auditee Auditor Controlling the project quality documentation Once Project Manager Technical Leader Check of raw material prior to arrival Prior to each delivery Vendor Supply Chain Management Quality check on each step of production for 100% QC coverage Each step Assembly Design Cutting Technical Leader Check of shipment prior to desptach to customer Each production Assembly Design Cutting Technical Leader Table 6 : Quality Management Plan References Hamilton, A. (2004) Handbook of Project Management Procedures. London: Thomas Telford Publishing. Mulcahy, R. (2011). PMP Exam Prep. Burnsville, RMC Publications. Project Management Institute. (2008). A Guide To The Project Management Body Of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide). Pennsylvania, Project Management Institute. Sanghera, P. (2008) Fundamentals of Effective Program Management: A Process Approach Based on the Global Standard. Florida: J Ross Publishing. Wysocki, R. (2009) Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme. 5th ed. Indianapolis: John Wiley &Sons. Read More