Service Development and Project Management - Essay Example

Business Service Development Project plan According to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, project plan is an approved formal document that is used in guiding both the project control and project execution. The major reasons for developing a project plan is to document is to facilitate communication among those involved, planning decisions and assumptions, and describe the approved cost, scope, and schedule project baselines. In developing a project plan, we aim to provide a statement of when and how the objectives of the project are to be accomplished through showing the primary milestones, products, resources, and activities that the project require. It is the duty of the project manager to create the project plan according to the input described by the key stakeholders and project team. For the project plan to take effect, it must be approved by at least the key stakeholders and the project team. The manager of the mental health service plan is very reluctant to allow the project to be blighted totally due to the existing uncertainties in the facility; I have been requested, as the project leader, to develop a plan for this project dealing in mental health services under the currently existing major uncertainties in the project. Our organization seeks to offer the best mental services in the medical industry. This paper therefore seeks to develop and detail the project plan of mental services improvement under the qualms and uncertainties being experienced currently. The paper will illustrate the purpose of the project, project content and its application to the mental services in the facility. The paper will also examine the project being planned and provide strategies and approach that will help the project to continue despite the risks and uncertainties such as low bed numbers and varying funding parameters being experienced. The project plan will also suggest a possible solution strategy to these uncertainties as well as those originating from project scheduling and detail a financial plan. The aim of this project plan is to improve the performance of the project and the achievement of the project objectives. The project plan also has a purpose to help in executing the objectives of the mental health project that the facility has planned with the help of the project stakeholders and the project manager. This project plan will define the approach that the project team will use in order to deliver the scope of the intended project and achieve its goals. The project is addressing the problem with the mental health and addresses mechanisms of offering the services to the mentally impaired patients. The project plan will also put into consideration the project deliverables and products. This project is being performed in order to improve the quality of the mental health services. At the end of the project, the patients should be satisfied with the services they receive and there should also be a reduced prevalence as well as incidences of mentally related disorders. This among others are the goals of the project, hence the reason for developing this plan. This project plan describes the scope of the current uncertainty which is addressed at the project conception stage. It will do this through clarifying what is to be done, making decisions concerning what exactly is to be done, and ensuring that it is completely done. This plan also improves the performance measurements of the project such as duration, cost, and quality. The project plan has also come up with uncertainties associated with the size of the project such as quality, time, and cost of related project activities. However, the following are the sources of uncertainties that are currently being experienced and will be sorted out in the project plan: Lack of defined specifications of what is needed in the project Complexities related to the number of inter-dependencies and influencing factors Lack of novelty and experience in the project activity Possible happenings of specific conditions or occurrence of particular events posing effects on the project activities Limited processes analysis of the entire project. Kim & Knut (1999). The project will involve the project manager, the project team, project coordinator, monitoring committee and project evaluator. Every team member will be responsible for the duties assigned by the project manager. For instance, the project manager shall oversee the progress of the project and participate in the planning process of the project in general. The project team will ensure the project functions are being executed by every member and control the project activities. The project coordinator will see to it that the project activities are carried out systematically and assess the progress of the project in general. The project monitoring committee will collect information on the progress of the project and use it to make corrections where necessary. Finally the project evaluators will carry out a summative and a formative evaluation on the project to assess if the intended goals of the project have been achieved successfully. The project has a defined timeline to be completed. It is estimated that by the end of the first phase which is two years, the milestones of the project should have been achieved successfully. This will be ensured by the project monitoring committee and the external project evaluator. The project plan also gives an intense description of the uncertainties such as: the parties who are ultimately involved in the project, the interest of each party, the goal of the parties involved in the project, the required resources for the project, what work will be done with each party, and when the work and the whole project is to be executed (McKenzie et al., 2005). According to Van Der Schaaf et al. (2004), the content of the project plan in relation to the PRINCE2 standards describes the control, management and execution of the project. This project plan will therefore describe the details of the scope of project management, schedule of the management, project quality management, project requirements management, financial management of the project, communications management, resources management, risk and uncertainty management, project change management, and project procurement management. As described above, these details of the project contains clarifications on the current uncertainties on the fundamental relationships that exist among the parties involved in the project. This describes the ambiguity that results from multiple numbers of parties with vested interest on the project. However, this project plan describes the ambiguities in respect of: specification of responsibilities of all project parties, effective communication across all interfaces, the perception and notion of responsibilities and roles, contractual conditions as well as their impacts, the capability of all the project parties, and the mechanisms for project control and coordination. In this regard, we shall manage the uncertainties witnessed through combining opportunity management and risk management. This includes managing the perceived opportunities, threats and their respective implications. This will include determining as well as identifying all sources of uncertainties, already mentioned above, and managing them effectively in order to shape and give rise to our perceptions of opportunities and threats. This will include understanding the explored sources of project uncertainties before beginning to manage them. On the other hand, the processes of project risk management have a limited focus and this restricts efforts to improve the management practice of the project, hence the performance of the project. It is therefore significant to have a broad perspective on the uncertainty management of the project. Project planning involves uncertainty inevitably. The planning parameters such as cost, time, and activity resources are affected by the sources of uncertainty since they are not deterministic. The simulation techniques of planning projects however ignore the relationship between the project parameters and the sources of uncertainties. This project plan will apply a solution approach to solve and address the project uncertainties in the management of the entire project. One of the approaches that will be used to address these uncertainties is the Bayesian networks, which is broadly used in decision making applications. This project plan appreciates the fact that projects are characterized by variability in terms of quality, time, and cost of performance measures, uniqueness, and ambiguity in terms of lack of structure, lack of clarity, bias estimates, and lack of data. Quantifying project uncertainties is however not prominent in most projects planning approaches even with the existing tools and techniques already developed to support the process of project planning in general. Therefore, managing project risks includes the processes that are concerned with analyzing and responding to the identified risk of the project. According to Reddy (2001), this is done through maximizing the products of the positive events and minimizing the effects of adverse events. Handling uncertainty is central to risk management. This is because the processes of managing project risks currently bring on a restricted emphasis on the management of uncertainties of the project. This project plan is however interested in the uncertainties of the project scheduling. These are obviously experienced in the duration estimation of particular project activity. It is difficult to estimate this time scale due to the lack of proper knowledge on the activities involved in the project. According to this project plan, the uncertainties of project scheduling may arise from the following: Uncertainty on the project resources required and their availability Possibility of uncertain events occurring during execution of the project Existing trade-off between time and resources Causal factors and the existing interdependencies between those factors Bias estimations and uncertainties on based on the subjective estimations Use of subjective data and lack of previous experience in using objective data Common causal factors affecting several activities of the project (Bruijne et al., 2010) This project plan suggests the use of Critical Path Method to use as a technique in supporting the project scheduling. Critical Path Method is deterministic and is widely incorporated in the software tools used in project management. However, this technique does not make any attempts to quantify or handle uncertainty. According to Braden (2001), Critical Path Method calculates the earliest possible time, earliest network, within which the project can be completed through the use of dependencies network existing between the deterministic values for the duration of the tasks and the tasks themselves. Critical Path Method will also help us in scheduling our project in the following ways: Identifying individual tasks: this will be done based on the complexity and size of our project. It will be the responsibility of the project manager to provide a list of all the activities required during the entire project. Determining the dependencies existing between the project activities: this will be done through listing all the immediate predecessors which will have to be completed before any other activity can be started Drawing the network of the project: this will be drawn in order to show all the project activities and their dependencies. The network will also indicate the boundaries of the project and where the project is expected to stretch to during its execution. Estimating the durations or time scale of all the activities: this will be carried out by the judgment of an expert for instance, the project coordinator with assistance from the project manager using historic data, in every activity, there will be estimated single point duration Identifying critical path: this will be done through identifying the longest network path and the earliest possible time for the completion of the project. Updating the Critical Path Method network: this will be done throughout the progress of the project, more information will be collected and made available on the project activities as the project progresses which will enable the project manager and the project coordinator to update the network calculations and structure Conclusively, the critical path is often determined through identification of project parameters such as: project duration, earliest possible finish time, earliest possible start time, latest start time, and latest finish time (Truesdell & Chris, 2001, 98). In summary, uncertainty is a significant concept in project management as they impact directly on the results and/ or success of the project. According to Gere (1997), uncertainties affect the activities of the project and their impact is felt throughout the execution of all the activities and processes of the project. It is therefore important that the organization observes the causes and/ or sources of risks and uncertainties in a project and manage them at an earlier stage to avoid detriments in accomplishing the goals of the project. For instance, in our mental health project aimed at improving the quality of the services offered to the patients, we have identified the possible causes and sources of these uncertainties and suggested the possible approach (Critical Path Method) to manage and handle them during execution of the whole process of the project. As mentioned in the above paragraphs, all the project parties will observe their duties in the project in order to help make it a success. We look to improving the mental health services and minimizing prevalence as well as incidences of mental health cases. This has been taken care of in this project plan which will help in execution of the project activities successfully. We can hence conclude that this project will successfully help the project to address the problem with the mental health and the mechanisms of offering the services to the mentally impaired patients. The project plan has considered the project deliverables and products. This project is being performed in order to improve the quality of the mental health services. In relation to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, project plan is an approved formal document that is used in guiding both the project control and project execution. This is what this paper has majored on. In details, the major reasons for the development of this project plan is to facilitate communication among the stakeholders, planning decisions and assumptions, and describe the approved cost, scope, and schedule project baselines. The project plan has also detailed the aim of this plan. I doing so, the plan has provided a statement of when and how the objectives of the project are to be accomplished by indicating the primary milestones, products, resources, and activities that the project require. It is prescribed in this plan that the project manager has the duty to create the project plan according to the input described by the key stakeholders and project team. This paper has developed and detailed the project plan of mental services under the qualms and uncertainties being experienced currently. The paper has also illustrated the purpose of the project, project content and its application to the mental services in the facility. In addition, the paper has provided an examination of the project being planned and provided strategies and approach that will help the project to continue despite the current risks and uncertainties such as low bed numbers and varying funding parameters being experienced. The project plan has also suggested a possible solution strategy to these uncertainties as well as those originating from project scheduling such as the Critical Path Analysis. As a project plan, it will help in improving the performance of the project and the achievement of the project objectives. It will also help in executing the objectives of the mental health project that the facility has planned with the help of the project stakeholders and the project manager. This project plan has therefore defined the approach that the project team will use in order to deliver the scope of the intended project and achieve its goals. The projection of the first year profit and loss for this project plan is very critical. The projections will ensure that there is an understanding of the project will make loss or indicate a marginal profit. The following is the financial plan: Cash flows from (used in) operating activities 1st Year Value in GBP Cash receipts from investors 728,000 Rent of new service rooms 24000 Cash paid to consultants and employees (400000) Cash paid for advertisements, promotion (90,000) Contingency Fund (50,000) Interest paid (30,000) Income taxes paid (50,000) Training Costs (50,000) Net cash flows from operating activities 63,360 The net cash flows are anticipated to increase by a minimum of 10% annually. The following is a graph showing annual net cash flow from the project. Gantt Chart Gantt Chart will be used to help in planning out tasks that will be completed, enable resource allocation planning, give a basis for task scheduling, and help in working out the project’s critical path. Project Activity Earliest start Duration Type Dependent on A.Drawing a project plan Week 1 1 Sequential B.Project communication and education Week 2 2 Sequential A C.Project initiation and execution Week 3 6 Sequential B D.Addressing project uncertainties and risks Week 4 2 Parallel C E.Contacting clients for their views Week 5 2 Sequential C F.Handling client opinions and corrective actions Week 7 2 Sequential E G.Obtaining feedback Week 8 2 Parallel C Gantt Diagram Weeks 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Drawing project plan Project communication and education Project initiation and execution Addressing project uncertainties and risks Contacting clients for their views Handling client opinions and corrective actions Obtaining feedback Bibliography Braden, E. 2001. Critical Path Planning and Scheduling Methods. Journal of project management. 9 246-320. Bruijne, M. 2010. Coping with unknown unknowns and perverting effects. An introduction to the crisis of risks management in public infrastructure management. Delft: Delft University Press. Gere, P. 1997. Project risk analysis and management. Journal of project Management Association. 7 (6), 100-132 Kim, F. & Knut, S. 1999. Square Pegs and Round Holes: Evaluation, Uncertainty and Risk management. London: SAGE Knut, S. 1999. Square Pegs and Round Holes: Evaluation, Uncertainty and Risk management. London: SAGE McKenzie, S. & Vahid, K. 2005. Project Planning: Improved approach incorporating uncertainty. London: Queen Mary University Reddy, D. 2001. Towards and integrated script for risk and value management. Journal of project Management. 7 (1), 52-59 Timoshenko, N. 2010. Coping with unknown unknowns and perverting effects. An introduction to the crisis of risks management in public infrastructure management. Delft: Delft University Press. Truesdell, S. & Chris, C. 2001. Transforming project risk management into project uncertainty management. International Journal of project Management 21 (2003) 97-105 Van Der Schaaf, T.W. & Habraken, M.M.P. 2004. Requirements for prospective risk analysis in healthcare. Eindhoven: Eindhoven University of Technology Read More