Time Management in a Project, Budgeting - Essay Example

s: Project Management The project management skills need to be learnt by each director or member of a project. Projectmanagement involves trying to come up with a schedule for the different activities within a project. The budget of the project needs to be developed early before its implementation to ensure the project does not stop halfway. The main causes of failure in many projects are conflicts among project members on who should carry out certain activities. Such problems are solved by using project management tools in dividing activities between the different members of the project team. Division of activities allows each project member to be accountable for the responsibilities assigned to them. The project completion comes with challenges that include an overflow of the budget and difficulty in completing with estimated time limits. Time management in a project The development of the house plan needed setting the date of completion and start time. Time management has to be observed carefully to avoid situations where the project is completed late or never completed. The need of time management leads to demand of developing tools like gnat chats that are able to distribute the time of the project according to activities and time to be taken in completing an activity. The project manager has the responsibility of allocating time without any biases in allocating more time to activities that require less time. Project management dictates that the time frames set for each activity should be observed but does not restrict implementers of the project from finishing the project before the allocated time. The house-building project had problems in trying to determine which activities required a lot of time and those that required less time. To solve such problems, proposals were made by members to study documents on already finished construction projects. The document gave a clear indication what building a house entailed and what time was almost required to complete certain activities. Estimation of the time had to be done in consideration of the available labor force together with the availability of inputs for construction (Field 35). The workers were less than ten, which led to demand of having a work plan that involved taking a long time in completing each task. The work plan was communicated to the individual group members, who had different opinions. Their opinions led to revision of the initial work plan to make the activities of carrying out the project satisfactory to all members. Budgeting The project management requires the estimates of the cost of the project to be presented for approval before starting any activities. The budgets are supposed to take care of costs that might occur even when risks take place during the project. To avoid an escalation of such costs, insurance cover is taken to pass over the risks of loss to a third party. Some of the costs set during starting of a project are costs of buying raw materials and paying labor. The type of project that is being run determines the cost of materials. In the house-building plan, some of the materials required were roofing materials, cement, and building stones. The cost of each material was determined and approved by a quantity surveyor who had extensive knowledge in estimating costs of building projects. The cost estimate were made taking in consideration chances of changes in economic status of the country, which might lead to rise in cost of inputs. To cater for such uncertainties, a percent of the entire project money was provided as contingency fund to cater for any uncertainty. The budget in the project was prepared by a person with financial expertise together with the project manager and members of the project. Each group provided cost estimates of their activities, which upon consolidation were evaluated for realism. The realism was supposed to remove any chances of some of the project members trying to quote in excess the cost of inputs. Projects that overrun their budgeted cost most of the time end up failing leading to the group taking utmost care in making cost estimates. The research showed failure occurred because the managers or project owners refused to finance the activities of the project by terming them a waste of capital. Work Breakdown The work breakdown involves breaking a project to different activities that can be carried out independently (Field 56). The work break down was to allow some projects activities to be carried concurrently because of independence in relation to their implementation. The work breakdown had an advantage of reducing the time required to complete the entire project by setting time limits on what each group members are supposed to take in completing an activity. Lack of a work breakdown might lead to confusion among the workers. One of the confusion would be when one group completes on a task that needs to be joined with another; the other task might be incomplete which would lead to discontinuation of construction to wait for the uncompleted activity. Challenges were experienced in trying to determine which activities would be done independently during the construction of the house. The group members had to perform a comprehensive research on the activities involved in building the house. The first work breakdown had not included construction of the roof, which is a vital part of the house. To eliminate such errors, group members had to brainstorm on different activities while a professional in the construction industry was consulted to clarify on such issues. The brainstorming and involvement of a professional led to development of a definitive work breakdown. Holding Project Meetings A group of people who may have never interacted mostly carries projects. Need arose to hold meetings with all the members of the project to try to determine their position and inform them on the project. Education on the project entailed informing group members on what the project entails and how it would be carried out. The meeting informed the project members of the time lines set for completion of each activity. To conduct effective meetings with members, there was a need of picking a team leader. The team leader had to be picked through secret ballot voting by each of the members of the team. The problem that appeared during the first meeting was that some team members could not show up for the meeting while some arrived late. Evaluation of the problem showed that the means used to announce the meeting was not effective because some team members did not read their emails on time. Team members had to decide on an effective means of communication, which led to selecting the use of short text message and memos. The textual messages were to be sent to all the members through the phone numbers provided to the project secretary. Members complained that meeting notices were short timed, and they needed more time to ensure they alter their plan to resemble that of the project. Conducting the meeting was a problem when all members needed to voice their opinions concurrently. This situation led to the necessity of commanding every person to raise their hand whenever they needed to say something. The project management skills on negotiation were mainly applied in arriving at a common ground whenever controversy arose among project members on what should be done (Field 121). The project manager always acted as a mediator and group members had to be advised on the necessity of compromising their stands. Completion of each meeting needed establishing when the next meeting would be held and the venue. The first meeting did not confirm the venue of the next meeting, which led to confusion among the members resulting to some going to the place where the last meeting was held. Suggestions were made that the text message should always include the venue, start time, and end time of the meeting. Project evaluation Need arose to continuously evaluate the project to ensure that it follows the laid down standards while avoiding scope creep. Some of the scope creep came up during the implementation of the project where some members tried to suggest adding an extra room to the building. This was met with resistance, and they were convinced that an extra room required additional time and money that was not available. The only accepted change in the scope creep of the project was a modification of the roof to ensure rainwater did not flow to the neighbor’s lawn, which would be seen as trespassing. The project evaluation determined that the construction of the floor took three more days which was contributed by rains experienced during the cementing. The time was recovered while constructing the walls that were finished earlier than the estimated time. The project manager had to verify if the quality of the building materials met the standards. One of the suppliers had supplied defective roofing materials that would tarnish after a short time. The control measures were set which dictated that upon arrival of any building materials, one of the group members had to examine their quality, and any sub-standard inputs found would not be used in constructing the building. Conclusion The project management ideas on setting control and establishing standard helped in running a project that would yield a quality building. The skills will be of immense importance in holding meetings with project members and establishing the different communication methods during meeting sessions. Brainstorming being one of the most preferred methods of collecting opinions from project members required setting rules of airing opinions. The rules were to ensure that the meetings did not become chaotic but were run in an orderly manner. The project management skills will immensely help in the future managing of workers and avoiding scope creep in a project. The scope creep can lead to increase of costs and time needed to complete a project. Opinions of the project members played a greater role in providing solutions to most problems or identifying challenges that would be faced in development of the project. Works Cited Field, Mike. Project management. London Boston: International Thomson Business Press, 1998.Print. Read More