The Significance of Quality Project Management - Assignment Example

Midterm Exam of the of the Objective and Scope Objective of this paper is to discuss different important factors related with project management. How the project management can be fruitful for the organizations across the world. The paper will also discuss about the difference between ongoing activities and management of projects. This study will discuss how the different stakeholders are managed. It will also discuss about the relationship of different structural parts of the project. Purpose of the project communication plan also will be discussed. Answer 1 Growths and success of any organization are significantly dependent on the successful implementation of the project management. Over the years, the organizations have concentrated on project management for getting better business performances. It is being observed that the natures of different projects are random and unstructured. Sometimes it causes too many unnecessary projects. Team work at the upper level of the management is highly important which can be gained with the help of project management. Organizational cooperation requires systematic approaches towards the project. It can be achieved with the help of project management concept only. Selection and prioritization of project is certainly an important but complex task. Project management concepts are guiding stars for the companies. It guides the upper level management team to choose the right project significantly suitable for the organizational goals. The concepts of project management will help the organizations to select or prioritize the projects on the basis of the below 4 steps (Figure 1). Figure 2: Systematic approach to selecting projects (Englund and Graham, 1999). In the modern day business world, time and different kinds of other resources are critical to manage. Businesses require optimum utilizations of important resources. It can be accomplished with the help of project management. It helps the organizations to allocate their critical resources in the proper context. Most of the projects are the collection of different small projects and act as the portfolio of different small projects. Nature of the all projects is different from each other. It is very important but complex for the organizations to bring all the small projects under systematic control to achieve the organizational goal. Organizations across the world also gain this benefit from the concept of project management. Answer 2 Managing the project is significantly different from the management of the ongoing activities. In the case of ongoing activity the main things are monitoring and evaluation. In the case of project management the scope of work is much higher. The faith of the ongoing activities is utterly dependent on the successful compilation of the project management. Project management is the deciding factor which guides all the different activities. All the projects have finite amounts of money, people and time. Managing the projects has different sets of limitations than the ongoing activities. The reason of this is specific start and end point. Unique out puts and diversified workforces have made the managing of projects different from the ongoing activities. All project activities go through predictable process and that is famously known as the project life cycle. This process helps the project managers to scrutinize the whole project process. It provides project managers enough opportunities to manage and adjust the entire project. In the first case project managers have to come up with certain assumptions before starting the project. In case of ongoing projects, the whole process has been already designed (Morris and Jamieson, 2005). In the case of critical and long term projects, there are certain issues. The managers have to be significantly aware about the organizational resources and the capacities. The modern day business world is significantly volatile. In this context it is serious issue for the project managers to design the nature of the projects on the basis of evaluation of past trends of different business environmental factors through different analytical tools. Answer 3 Stakeholder management is an important component for delivering the projects or activities in a successful way. Stakeholders can be any kind of individual, organizations or a group of people whose interests are significantly related with the success or failure of the projects of the companies. Stakeholder management is process through which organizations keep close relationship with the people belong to outside and inside of the organization. The whole process is being done with the help of certain steps. Identification of the stakeholders is utterly important. In this step organizations storm their brains to identify which are the people that can be affected by the success or failure of their projects. In the next step, prioritizing the stakeholders is significantly important for the companies. This prioritization can be achieved with the help of Power-Interest concept. This grid helps the organizations to identify who are the most important stakeholders for them. Each and every category of stakeholders is approached differently. Figure 3: Stakeholder matrix High power and interested stakeholders should be engaged highly. Organizations try to satisfy them with all their projects and activities. The organizations discuss enough with high power and less interested stakeholders but it should not bore the stakeholders. Stakeholders with low power but high interest are generally being informed about the projects. They are very helpful for the success of the projects (Verzuh, 2012). Project managers across the world monitor all the stakeholders with less power and interest but do not prioritize those stakeholders that much. First category of stakeholders is managed very closely with best possible channels. Second category of stakeholders are always should be satisfied with the different projects. In case of third category stakeholders they always should be informed about the different projects. Continuous monitoring is required for 4th category stakeholders. Answer 4 Project charter is a scope of statement which includes statement of work, project goals and deliverables. Statement of work, objectives of the project and different deliverables are the integral part of the project charter. It acts as the reference to the organizations. Being an integral part of the project charter statement of work is a formal and structured document that articulates different activities, deliverables and timeliness of any project. It also includes different detailed requirements like standard procedures and governance. It also clarifies the purpose of the project and what are the scopes to accomplish the project (Dvir, Raz and Shenhar, 2003). Sometimes, it standardizes what software or hardware should be used in the course of the projects. Statement of work also fixes the acceptance criterion of a project. Project goals are the reflection of specific results which are anticipated from a project. Projects goals are some statements which gives the clear idea about the purposes of the projects. It is an important part of the project charter. In simple terms goal statement clarifies the objective of the projects. Deliverables are certain activities or mode of activities which have to be followed in the course of performing the projects. In the context of project management deliverables are the services or products which are to be given to the clients. It is time bound in nature and time related information is provided in the other part of the project charter. All the above discussions are clearly indicating that project charter, project statement, project goals and deliverables are deeply related with each other. Answer 5 In every project there is certain level of risks. It is significantly important for the project managers to identify and manage different risks associated with different projects. Risk planning is an important method to identify and manage the risk. Risk planning should be done in an iterative process. Project managers can maintain a risk management document. This document will help the managers to identify different risks and to score them. Risk identification is the preliminary but obvious step for the managers to mitigate project risks. Building a risk register is also important where all the details of the identified risk will be stored. Generally project risk analysis can be done both in qualitative and quantitative way. In the case of quantitative approach managers put weigh or score for each risks and this scoring is being done on the basis of potential impacts of the risk (AtTask, 2010). Project management team should analyze their risk tolerance because impacts of the all risks are not equal. After the identification of different risks then developing the response plan is significantly important. Risk response plan can be done on the basis of three levels. Those are response plan, contingency plan, and fallback plan. Response plan is concerned with identifying the triggering events of the risks. Contingency plans take care of what should be done in the event of risk occurrence. Fallback plan acts as the backup plan if contingency plan fails. There are certain risk response strategies and those are different for threats and opportunities. In case of threat response four strategies are to avoid, mitigate, transfer and accept. In case of opportunity response, strategies are to exploit, enhance, share and accept. Answer 6 Project communication includes different elements like project objectives or goals. It also includes the basis of the communication. The communication plan includes strategic approaches of the communication. This approach mentions some specific portions of the project communication. It also guides about the focusing factor of the project. Project communication includes internal communication among the project team and concentrates upon their different communication tools like websites, media tools, events, visual identity and publications (Kloppenborg, 2011). It provides clarity to the target groups of the communication. The project communication plan generally includes what are the information have to be collected and how. This communication plan also identifies the people who are going to gather the information. Project communication plans talk about the methods through which information is collected. Project communication plan is significantly important for the proper communication of the projects across the length and breadth of the organizations. It articulates different details about the projects. It is the backbone of any successful project management. References AtTask, Inc. (2010). Risky Business: A Practical approach to project risk management. Retrieved from: http://www.ndm.net/ecm/pdf/WP-RiskyBusiness-05012010.pdf. Dvir, D., Raz, T., and Shenhar, J. A. (2003). An empirical analysis of the relationship between project planning and project success. International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 21, 89-95. Englund, L. R. and Graham, R. J. (1999). From experience: linking projects to strategy. Retrieved from: http://www.csb.uncw.edu/people/rosenl/classes/OPS100/From%20Experience%20Linking%20Projects%20to%20Strategy.pdf. Kloppenborg, T. (2011). Contemporary project management. London: Cengage Learning. MORRIS, P.T.W., and JAMIESON, A. (2005). Moving from corporate strategy to project strategy. Project Management Journal. Vol. 36, (4). Verzuh, E. (2012). The fast forward MBA in project management, 4th Edition. New York:  Wiley. Read More