Project Planning and Implementation Using Microsoft Project - Case Study Example

 Contents Resource sheet 5 Gantt chart diagram 6 References 11 Important note! 13 How often have you heard it said that planning is waste of time? No sooner is the plan completed than someone comes along to change it. These same naysayers would also argue that the plan, once completed is disregarded and merely put on the shelf so the team can get down to doing some real work. To people management, we mean the planning activity that involves deciding on the types of people in form of resources that are required to fulfill the requirements of the project.

In other words the types of skills and number of workers we need to complete the project (kwysocki, 1997). Excellent planning and up to date management is very important part of successful projects. So the planning for Government Infrastructure projects comprise a sequence of goals and restrictions for instance fewer time frames for the completion of project. With the help of suitable technology and well plans, the management of projects can be improved (Chamoun, 2006). This section describes the project planning for development and installation of a benefits elections system to support the tracking and reporting of employee benefits.

As seeing the pervious data and current requests a project plan is developed through which this project plane will be implemented. According to Service Request we have to create a new benefits election system that is used for employers benefit. Project planning is the most impotent task in any project. A well planned project will be completed timely and takes less time and efforts for its management (Walker, 1998). Health Insurance part of this system has two planes one is standard plan and one is perineum plan.

In the standard plan no employee premiums will be there. Here this system counts $20 co-pay per for each visit, here his system have to manage the insurance pays of employee’s for 75% of eligible hospital and covered expenses. System have keep track the dependent coverage that can be purchased by employee, and company pays 50% and employee pays 50% of premium. Here maximum out of pocket per year will be given $750 to individual; and $2,500 will be given to per family. (Nidiffer, at al, 2005) This system has to keep track of these things in such a way that produce acceptable results.

As the premium plan for employee health care section the system have to calculate the given specifications to produce proper results. In this project implementation the second part is related to Dental Insurance in which ageing we have two plans one is premium and other is standard. Each one has its own specification. (Walker, 1998) For this project implementation we will work in parallel way. We will divide the project in teams into two parts. One will implement the health’s insurance section but here they will implement only the Standard plan section.

And other team will implement premium plan, same as first tem will implement the dental standard plan and second team will implement the second dental Insurance part. Here below the table is given that explaining this project plan. Project Planning and Implementation formwork Project Team 1 Project Team 2 Design, analysis and requirement gathering phase Team 1 for requirement gathering Team 2 for requirement gathering Health Insurance section Standard plan Premium plan Dental Insurance section Standard plan Premium plan Combining both Phases and testing Combining both implementations and setting up both individual and combine testing phase.

Implementations Implementation of projects and analysis if results Why such type of plan? Here it’s important to mention why I have planed such like this? Here I have thought the if one team is going to implement standard plan phase then after implementing this they have more better knowledge of this phase rules and regulations. If the same them will implement the same phase for the second project then they will feel more easiness and they can implement mere bitterly. Then again another point that is impotent to mention is if during the implementation of second phase team finds an innovative idea they can have some changes to first part so that feel more freedom and have new innovative ideas during all this process (Walker, 1998).

At the end there is phase of final project recombining. Here both team become one group and now they can share the knowledge and experience during the project implementation phases, here in this phase they can share knowledge. This is not impotent for this project but for coming projects they have better understanding of each other as well as they can found new thing through combine effort. After they have to implement the project and have the final results evaluation (Nidiffer, at al, 2005).

Here in next section Creation of a project plan in Microsoft Project that will be used to manage, track and report the progress of this software development to the management team will be presented. I will assign resources and human power to each phase to complete the job. So see the image given bellow that shows the resource sheet that shows the assigned resources. Resource sheet Figure 1 resource sheet Below I will show the modified shape of the template of Huffman Benefits Project Plan.

Here I have added resources related to my project and add time line and other related information. Here Gantt chart diagram (the plan) is given below: Gantt chart diagram Figure 2 Gantt chart diagram (the plan) In the above given Gantt chart diagram we have seen how resources are added. Here in MS Project we have start time of project its end time. The major tasks and there information is added the there can be sub tasks are assigned to them. Here resources like human resources we can add.

Here in our project we have added Analyst, Designer, Developer, Trainer and Administrative Assistant as human resource for this project. Here during this all we have to follow the time line in such a way that each phase must have a proper time limit. After that next one will start. There is no way and chance that we can take the risk of time line. According to given time line we only have to give 30 days to design, analysis and requirement gathering phase. Here 20 days for implementation and 10 days for product support.

So the total time line we have is 2 months or 60 days. By parallel working of teams as I have suggest we can complete this project timely. As we talk about the overall project management, then the MS Project is really good tool for this purpose and we can manage all type of project related thing like resources (human, martial), daily working, project targets and lot more. MS project provides the classic Gantt Chart - Task view presents itself as shiny and clean as one would expect from a professional software vendors product.

While marveling at the task bars’ rounded edges the user gets the feeling that designers specifically worked on this view to make a very good first impression. ( http://msdn2.microsoft.com/, 2008) Here as in our approach we have divided the project in small parts, MS project handle multipart situation very well because Though an explicit Multi-scenario management functionality does not seem to be present, Multi-project management is supported by the server-based high-level project view given through the Web Access feature, that allows to watch and track the state of all centralized projects.

( http://msdn2.microsoft.com/, 2008) References 1. Chamoun, Y. (2006). Professional Project Management The Guide 1st.Edition, Monterrey, NL MEXICO: McGraw Hill. 2. Kwysocki. (1997). Effective Project Management. McGRAW Hill. 3. Portfolio Project Management. Microsoft project 2003, 2003. http://www.portfoliopm.com/Proj%202003_Soln.htm. 4. Microsoft. Office project 2007 sdk, 2007. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/ library/ms512767.aspx. 5. Nidiffer, K. E. and Dolan, D. (2005). Evolving Distributed Project Management, IEEE Software, 22, (5), pp. 63 - 72. 6.

Walker Royce. (1998). Software Project Management: A Unified Framework. Addison Wesly. 7. Important note! Here the given below images are not part of this assignment but I have added so that you can have more better view and understanding about this project. So that that you will be able to have more precise and better learning You can delete them before submission. Figure 3 task usage diagram Figure 4 project network diagram Figure 5 Project colander