Project Risk Management - Processes, Techniques, and Insights - Assignment Example

Project Management Questions Name Course Tutor: Institution Department Date Section - 1 1) How well do you understand Project Management Process and what documentation you will provide? Describe the Generic Process, why you will produce and for what you need to produce it?  Project management process is about helping organizations to grow in the scale and scope of productivity. It will involve having knowledge in the practice of management and the processes or methodologies (Caroll,2012). For example, one of the ways an organization can do this is by continuing to focus its efforts towards projects that determine a project portfolio as a whole. The process will involve different phases that are important to a manager; they help ensure that the organization delivers at the end of each managerial process. In this way, the team managers of a project are able to go to the next phase. The key generic processes however are the phase management, which defines above, planning, control, team management, communication, procurement and integration. The phase stage involves five important areas which are the project strategy and business care, preparation, design, development and testing, training and business readiness, support and benefits and closure of the project (Weiss and Wysocki, 1992). Strategizing is usually the first phase of project management process. It involves defining the overall requirement of the project. It will also lay down the foundation of the project and ways in which this can be approach and the methodologies by which the process will address the main issues of the project. During the strategizing meeting, it will be important to mention the timeline of the project, the budget and define the team that will be involved in the process. One should make sure that all issues care reviewed repeatedly to the end of the project. The second phase which is preparation will bring all the stakeholders to the project in order to present and produce the detailed plans at each of the project phases. By doing these each stakeholder is able to own the project and understand his or her responsibility. In this phase the team will also be able to identify third parties like the Information technology consultants, partners and other sub-contractors. The third phase which is defining the project design the project team now begins on the work that is involved. They will make use of the project strategy, the case in question and the initial plan of the project as the main starting point. There board will also be involved in the designing process; this is important because they will be involved in signing of the design. The fourth phase is about developing and testing of the project. This phase involves building important components of the project output, for example the business process or the software to be used in delivering. The fifth phase is training; the team will need to take through the project, they will need to have some form of training to manage the project well and make sure they are ready to run the project to the end. The sixth phase is the support benefits realization where the project realizes actions needed to make sure the project is successful. After that the project will come to a close, there will be need for a complete documentation and allow team members to assume various roles. The other process in project management is the planning process which basically means carrying out a high level planning for the whole project to the end. After this process there will be the control process that is important in monitoring the cost, the scope, risks, benefits and issues that are involved in the process. This will be followed by the management process that ensures team members do what they are supposed to do and at the time frame that is provided. The communication process involves having proper coordination with each other throughout the project period. It will also ensure that there is clear definition of duties and responsibilities and that the third parties have been well defined and given their roles. Communication process is also important during monitoring of the project. The second last process is the procurement stage, where all the equipment and services that will be important in implementing the project in a clear definition. The team manager will need to hire third parties among other consultants. There is also the integration stage where the project cannot continue to sustain itself unless there is integration with other projects or other departments in the business. 2) Have you done a good job or not by producing and following Project Management Process? Project Success Or Project Management Success – What is the current success rates for both? Project success is about measuring the results of the project after the project phase. A team will have done a good job if it has able to achieve a measureable amount of project objectives. Project management success is about the management of the whole project, this is measured by the way the team members were able to coordinate throughout the process and also the way there team leader was able to make good use of time, people and available resources. The current success rates for both is usually at 62% (Chapman and Ward, 2003) 3) List four reasons why projects fail and in each case explain what measures you would take to avoid these situations in your project? The four reasons why projects fail are: 1. Lack of project visibility 2. Poor or unclear objectives for the project 3. Lack of visibility to the amount of resources that will be involved in the project 4. Failure to measure benefits of the project in relation to the input Section – 2 4) Soft Skills – Type of personalities – Think of nuclear power Case Study / Team Work? Talk about what you would do different than the generic process (case study) – personalities, organizational structure, decision making! What would you do extra to make project succeed on top of generic process. Soft skills management personalities in a nuclear generic management process is very important in ensuring that there are clear boundaries on what should be shared and what should be shared with other people in the nuclear facility. There should be competence among all the regulatory staff as this important for safety of nuclear facilities in any country. There should also be a clear regulation on how turnover of staff is done. This is because employees are the most important asset of the nuclear facility. A nuclear plant needs to focus on building employee skills and knowledge as part of an important investment. It helps in positioning the organization and its employees in a way that will be able to meet the future business of the nuclear plant (Chapman and Ward,2003). In order to ensure this is done well, I would ensure that the managerial process takes care of all the staff needs so as to ensure oath of secrecy and less cases of employee turnover are realized. This means that there will be a systematic approach to training of the nuclear regulatory body. it will involve several areas such as the analytical stage where competencies will be put to task of performing particular jobs and attend to all the training needs in order for the achieve managerial skills for working in a nuclear plant. Competencies in this case means the group of skills, knowledge and attitudes that the staff need to have in mind in order to ensure that they are ready to perform a certain job. The way the output for this stage is measured will be judged by the how a particular staff is able to put to practice the skills that he or she has been taught to complete a certain task (Snabe et al., 2008). Designing is also another phase that will be involved here. At this the training skills are translated into learning objectives. This includes evaluation of the project strategies, the strategies are then organized into workable plan with all the points and cycle clearly defined. This can be followed by the development stage where all the project tools are prepared including the delivery methods and tools in order to ensure that the project process is delivered in a very efficient manner. There will also be the implementation stage which defines how recruitment is done in a specific environment by use of necessary tools which were created in the development. Lastly is the evaluation of the whole project, at this I would want to measure if the skills training has been beneficial to the staff. This will mean looking at the communication skills, coordination between staff and coordination between the staff and its clients. The results of this, would be to judge as to where there is need for more training or skills development in the same area. Lastly I would evaluation the whole project. This will not only be done once but will be a continuous process of the whole project cycle. The advantages of project evaluation is that it provides the much need feedback to determine the best way forward and also tell if there is need for possible improvement for the future programs. 5) Project Success - Example: Think about your own team, how do you adapt to different personality styles/how do you work with different people, how to handle different situations /personalities in a team (4 thinkers red green yellow blue) categorization of thinkers There are variouse ways in which I would handle different situations in order to ensure project success as follows: In case of poor coordination among the project team I would ensure that I implement the people based process of change. One of the best ways to work with a team would go to establish a more centralized location where all the projects would be coordinated. This will also be great in ensuring that team members integrate with each other and treat one another more like family that workmates. This is important because when the team is able to own the whole project then they are able to take it with the seriousness it deserves. The other way would be to improve communication between deferent departments of the project. One thing that can be done to ensure this will be through having a central network that team members are able to receive and send project files. The group members will have the access to the folder by a shared password. All this is aimed at ensuring that there is a visible location to where coordination of activities can be monitored and implemented. (Snabe et al., 2008) Section – 3 6) Risks – Generic Process Types The risk generic process type of management is one where a team leader generally looks ate a project, anticipates what might be able to go wrong then decides on ways in which this type of incident can be prevented from occurring. The risk generic process types include assessment of the risk through classification of information, identification of threats, identification of vulnerable, analysis of risk methods and summarizing and communicating the skills required. The other risk process mitigation where the team leader identifies options, choses an option and implement it. One of the ways implementations can take place would be through accepting the risk, transferring the risk, limiting the risk or simply avoiding the risk. (Chapman and Ward,2003) 7) Risks – Specific Types:  There are variouse types of risks in project management, some of the most common ones are: Organizational risks: These types of risks are usually contributed by the management team of the project. For example, there could be poor allocation of time to complete the whole project; poor allocation of resources for the project to take off and scheduling that would lead to poor or no work results. Performance risks: this type of risk is associated with poor technological expertise, lack of enough consultancies, failure to adopt new technologies that are able to increase performance and other issues like changes in industrial standards. Project management risks: They are also contributed by the management of the organization due to poor employee turnover, poor allocation of tasks and time to complete the project. External risks: External risks are usually caused by issues that the organization has no direct control over. These risks include third party relationships, legal issues, issues associated with labour and changes in the project priorities due to time factor and other external factor like the climate, (tornadoes, earthquakes, floods and civil war.) (Chapman and Ward, 2003) Section – 4 8) Project Governance – Project Governance is in Project Success – Explain in detail? Project governance is about being able to sustain a project to the end of the project period. Project governance involves the ability of the team leader to coordinate other team members well, proper use of available resources time management. Project governance is an important aspect of project management as it helps shape the whole managerial process of the project. 9) What kind of Project Governance should include the increase of success? In order for an organization to realize success in project governance there should be well defined ways in which team members are able to communicate. Project governance also means that the team leader exercises authority over the project from the beginning to the end of the project period without interruption from the project board. The other important thing would be to ensure that there is proper allocation of resources which are needed to pay team members and also complete the project in the stipulated time. Success of in project governance will also involve monitoring and evaluation of the project in order to ensure that the team is moving in the right direction to the end of the project period. Sources Caroll, J. (2012) Agile Project Management in Easy Steps, In Easy Steps Limited. Chapman, C. and Ward, S. (2003) Project Risk Management: Processes, Techniques and Insights, Wiley; 2 edition. Snabe, J.H., Rosenberg, A., Møller, C. and Scavillo, M. (2008) Business Process Management - the SAP Roadmap, SAP PRESS; 1 edition. Weiss, J. and Wysocki, R. (1992) Five-phase Project Management: A Practical Planning And implementation guide, Basic Books. Read More