Approaches to Project Management - Coursework Example

PROJECT MANAGEMENT Student’s Name Class Instructor Institution of Affiliation City Date Introduction Project management can be defined as a discipline concerned with the initiation, planning, execution, control and termination of a team’s work to meet organizational goals with a specific criteria for success (Burke, R., 2013, 76). It can also be explained as application of knowledge, techniques, tools and skills to the project activities with the aim of meeting the requirements of the project. A project on the other hand, is said to be a temporary endeavor that is specifically designed to produce a specified end result (such as a unique service or product) that brings about an added value or beneficial change. It is the work of the project manager to ensure the success of projects and thus he is the one entrusted with project management (Cleland, D. and Ireland, L. 2006, 76) . Resourcing plan A resource plan is a major aspect when it comes to project management because the project’s success depends directly on the way resources are allocated and the ways in which they are used optimally. The importance of a resourcing plan is that it ensures that a project team will not have to struggle and juggle when they require resources (Al-Mashari, M., Al-Mudimigh, A. and Zairi, M., 2006, 352). In this project the major resource requirements include labor, materials and equipment. In terms of labor, the roles involved includes the construction crew both for the roads and building both totaling to about 100 workers, foreman’s for inspecting the construction crews totaling to about 10 individuals, one construction and one architectural engineers for technical expertise, temporary workers for simple tasks amounting to 50 individuals and five supervisors. In terms of equipment’s, the needed equipment’s include: heavy equipment such as caterpillars, bulldozers, excavators, transit-mixer, street sweeper, soil compactors and dump trucks, iron beams, tents, projectors, screens, seats and a public address system. In terms of materials, the required materials include: concrete, steel, wood, nails, curtains, wires posters, ink, gravel, tar and cement. Risk Management plan This is a documentation prepared by ta projects, project manager that helps in foreseeing risks, define answers to problems and estimate impacts. A risk management plan also entails a matrix for risk assessment. This documentation is prepared since risk in every project is inherent. The prepared documentation assists project managers in assessing risks continuously and developing plans for addressing those risks. In short, this means that a risk management plan assesses identified risks and provides ways of mitigating the identified risks. It is recommended that a project manager should update and expand the risk management plan periodically in the projects lifecycle because as the complexity of the project increases the risks begins to be more defined. The following matrix shows the projects risk management plan. Figure 1: Risk management matrix ID Risks and consequences Probability Impact Priority Mitigation response 1 Bad weather, the consequences involve disruption of the event 0.2 4 low Change of the events date, change of venue, erecting tents or taking the event indoors 2 Limited accommodation which can lead to low attendance of the event and lack of accommodation to some people. 1 5 high Construction of accommodation facilities either temporary or permanent, change of venue. 3 Narrow, hilly and winding roads which can lead to accidents, traffic jams and inaccessibility. 1 5 high Expansion of the roads, construction of more roads, provision of alternative modes of transport such as air through the use of helicopters. 4 Insecurity which can lead to increased crime rate. 0.8 2 high Provision of security in terms of police officers and security guards and setting up of a security checkpoint during entry. 5 Power problems which can lead to power blackouts 0.4 5 high Provision and installation of a power backup generator. Leadership and Management plan A leadership plan in project management ensures that the project is completed successfully through the defining of individual roles and responsibilities of each team member as specified by the project manager. In such a situation, the project manager can delegate powers to any individual (Bredillet, C. Tywoniak, S. and Dwivedula, R. 2015, 254). This ensures that there are no conflicts regarding the hierarchy of power and responsibilities. A management plan gives a project manager a chance to elaborate the planned procedures, objectives and goals in detail concerning the organizations proposed project (Binder, J., 2016, 150). As a project manager for a 3-day music festival that will take place in Victoria it is the role of the project manager to provide a management plan for this project that will include all the necessary elements needed. The following is the management plan of the above stated project. The projects objectives involves making sure that the country Victoria venue is capable of holding the ranging size of the crowd that will attend the festival given that in the previous festivals the number of people usually range between 8,000 to 12, 000. Another objective is to ensure that all participants in the music festival including judges attend the event. Another objective of the project is to make additional plans for ways of accommodating the large numbers of people since the music festival will be a three day event and the locally available accommodation cannot cater for the large number of people. Another objective of the project will be to provide easy accessibility of the music festival venue and location for accommodations since the roads given the geographical location in the region are commonly hilly, narrow and winding. Lastly, the projects objective is to ensure security to everyone. The major goal of the project is to have a successful 3-day music festival. In order to achieve the above stated objectives and goals, a number of actions must be carried out to achieve them. This actions include: Preparation of the venue for the music festival, confirmation and reminding of the festival participants and judges about their attendance, expansion of accommodation facilities such as local hotels where possible and the construction of temporary accommodation facilities to accommodate the large crowds. Another action involves the expansion and levelling of the existing roads and construction of additional roads. Depending on the resources available, an additional landing space for helicopters will be constructed. Announcements will also be made on social media and TV stations regarding the possibility of limited accommodations. The successful implementation of this project in time will require a lot of man power in terms of judges, security guards, participants, construction crew, construction and architectural engineers. Architectural engineers will be required in designing the construction of the landing field for helicopters, roads and accommodation facilities, they will be required at the initial phase of the project. The construction crew will be required for the man power required in all the construction and they will be required at the planning phase of the project. The construction engineers will also be required for their expertise in the construction of safe and sustainable structures and roads. They will be required throughout the projects life cycle. In order for the above actions to be carried out, equipment’s for carrying out the tasks must be obtained. The equipment’s will be obtained from a local construction company and some from the Victoria’s department of sports and music. The legal procedures will be followed when hiring the construction equipment and obtaining the music festival equipment’s from the Victorian government. The project is expected to be fully implemented within a specific timeline which is before the start date of the 3 day music festival (Kerzner, H. 2013, 57). The timeline is shown below using a gannt chart. Figure 2: GANNT CHART FOR SCHEDULE WEEKS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Initiation Planning and design Monitoring and Control Execution Termination/completion Approaches to Project Management There are different approaches that can be adapted by project managers in project management. The availability of the different approaches empower organizations to complete their projects efficiently, considering the dynamic external situations and internal constraints in the interim. The main approaches to project management include: the traditional approach, extreme project approach, critical chain approach, PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), PRINCE2 (Projects IN Controlled Environments), Agile approach and event chain approach (Dinsmore, P.C. and Cabanis-Brewin, J. 2006, 134). The project management approach chosen for this project is the hybrid project management approach that combines the traditional approach with the agile approach to project management. This approach is inclusive of the elements and principles established in the traditional and agile approaches. In this approach, the project being undertaken is segmented into several manageable tasks by either functionality or discipline. The work breakdown was done using the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) process. The advantage of the hybrid approach is that it combines the benefits of two approaches into one and offers improved rate for a project success and improves the quality of a projects results (Cooper, R. 2016, 21). On the other hand, compared to the hybrid approach, the traditional approach makes an assumption that the scope of the project and goals remains constant up to the time a project is completed. Because of this the project manager identifies and plans for the resources of the project basing his decision on this assumption. This is not a good approach for the current project since the environment is dynamic and keeps on changing, this change brings about risks and unforeseen situations which may require the project manager to accommodate new changes. With the traditional approach this is impossible since it is inherently rigid. Agile approach is also unsuitable for the current project since it only functions well for projects carried out in an environment that is complex and fast-moving (Rezaeean, A. and Falaki, P. 2012, 698). Compared to the hybrid approach, critical chain approach makes an assumption that at least one process or behavioral constraint is probably going to obstruct projects that make utilization of complex processes and a big number of teams that are cross-functional. This kind of approach to project management proves to be useful when sending deliverables that are of high quality on time through removing constraints proactively. When it comes to extreme project approach, the hybrid approach is the most preferable since the extreme approach is appropriate for projects handing dynamic situations like that of changing the requirements of customers. In this approach, a project can be guided purely by market changes and it is usually not possible to acquire a full project requirements clarity (Schwaber, K., 2005, 277). References Al-Mashari, M., Al-Mudimigh, A. and Zairi, M., 2006. Enterprise resource planning: A taxonomy of critical factors. European journal of operational research, 146 (2), pp.352-364. Binder, J., 2016. Global project management: communication, collaboration and management across borders. CRC Press Bredillet, C., Tywoniak, S. and Dwivedula, R., 2015. What is a good project manager? An Aristotelian perspective. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), pp.254-266. Burke, R., 2013. Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA. Hhpmbok Cleland, D.L. and Ireland, L.R., 2006. Project management. McGraw-Hill Professional. Cooper, R.G., 2016. Agile–Stage-Gate Hybrids: The Next Stage for Product Development Blending Agile and Stage-Gate methods can provide flexibility, speed, and improved communication in new-product development. Research-Technology Management, 59(1), pp.21-29. Dinsmore, P.C. and Cabanis-Brewin, J., 2006. The AMA handbook of project management. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. Kerzner, H.R., 2013. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons Rezaeean, A. and Falaki, P., 2012. Agile Project Management. International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences, 3 (4), pp.698-707. Schwaber, K., 2005, June. Agile project management. In International Conference on Extreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering (pp. 277-277). Springer Berlin Heidelberg Read More