The Importance of Work Packages - Essay Example

Project Management The Importance of Work Packages Importance of Work Packages The deliverables are broken into progressively smaller parts until allthe deliverable are considered as small enough, while a work breakdown structure is being constructed through decomposition. The process of constructing small deliverable process called as Work Packages. In a work breakdown structure decomposing all the deliverables in work packages pays a higher dividend as it stands for efficiency and creativity. There are so many advantages which work packages offers during a project. Work packages are implemented in order to crate project schedule and decompose the activity details after the scope baseline constructed. These activity lists proposes all the scheduled activity which will help to complete the project quickly. Implementation of work package during project leads concurrent work on various different mechanism of a project at the equivalent time by multiple teams. Most of the times, the completion of work package has been overseen by the managers or supervisor or a team leader of a project team. Moreover work packages reduce the activity cost and other indirect costs like cost of material, cost of transportation, cost of labor etc. Use of Work Breakdown structure Work breakdown structure is a deliverable and oriented decomposition of a specific project into smaller components. One of the important uses of work breakdown structure is that this structure proposes cost control standard for the future project activities which may or may not be similar. Moreover work breakdown structure starts off with a generalized goal in a quality planning process and helps to identify the progressive narrow level of action that is needed in order to achieve the project objectives. While implementation of work breakdown structure the team should have in depth understanding of the tasks required. Work breakdown structure is the critical input which identifies the risks subsequently in macro and micro level of work packages. Cost and Schedule Performance measurement baseline To identify the cost variances and scheduled variances, project managers quite often use the performance measurement baseline. The performance management baseline is the collection of work packages that estimates work effort and duration of every work packages. Moreover it controls cost of resources. Cost performance measurement baseline After determination of scopes and approaches towards a project, work breakdown structure is constructed to complete the work packages efficiently. These will help a project team to identify the project activities. The key elements are required to construct a project work that is the resources. Project managers need to apply efficient cost performance measurement baseline. To apply cost performance measurement baseline project manager or team leader need to follow few steps. Firstly the resources like capital, cost, labor, land should be identified efficiently. Then the project manager has to prepare the estimated cost for completion of project according to the identified resources. Then the managers have to keep the track record of resource load schedule in order to continue the project work in specific time level. Finally cost performance measurement baseline completed by the identification of effective funding constraints. This performance measurement baseline helps to complete the project without indirect cost. Scheduled performance measurement baseline In order to complete the work packages quickly and efficiently scheduled performance measurement baseline is imple3mented by the project managers. After developing the work breakdown structure managers set the objectives and construct the project activities. The process of scheduled performance measurement baseline continues with the estimation of time duration for completion of the work packages. Then managers should identify the allocated milestones in order to finalize the work schedule complete the work packages of the project within quick time. After implementing all the stages of schedule performance measurement managers should finalize the allocated milestones according to the project (Solomon and Young, 2006, p.199). EVM helps to understand Project status Examples of EVM Earned value management consists of few primary data elements and derived data elements. Every data element values are based on the time an earned value management is performed according to the project (Kendrick, 2009, p.58). The easiest way to understand an Earned Value Management example is to solve a problem. Problem: A budget for completion of a project is 10 million $ and the schedule is 10 months. It is implicit that each month the total budget will be spent on equal basis until the 10th month is reached. The project manager finds after 2 months that only 5% of the total work has finished by spending of 1 million $ of total budget. From the example it is clearly feasible that Earn Value Management helps to find various data elements of a particular project. Earn value management helps to identify the present value, earned value and the average value for a project. Moreover, other elements like cost variance, scheduled variance, consumer price index and estimate at completion are identified by earn value management. Benefits of EVM Earn value management helps in various ways in project management. This tool helps to reduce the risks of projects. Earn value management provides better accountability for the project performance. This tool helps the company to forecast about project like what will be the forecasted outcomes of a specific project. Moreover earn value management helps the project managers to communicate with the stakeholders of the project handling company. EVM improves the visibility of the stakeholders. Performance tracking of a project can easily measured by this project management tool. After the completion of a project earn value management helps to formulate the profitability analysis of a project. These are the beneficial contribution of earn value management towards project management. Use of project control chart Project control chart is very essential tool for project management. The project control chart use the sample data in order to identify the project duration and process of the project. These control charts are applicable in administrative process in a company. It helps to analyze and identify the repeatable process. These project control charts used to reveal the characteristics of variations in specific process. Moreover it determines the expectations and the outcomes of specific process. Project control charts are the fundamental tools of various statistical process controls. Project managers assume that project control chart is restricted to manufacturing (Rose, 2005, p.86). The project manager who is assigned for a particular project believes that data collection for the purpose of specific projects requires more capital and time than specific budget. The project control chart helps to represent the data which can be find out during the project work. It helps the project team to forecast the risk in a specific project and estimation about a project out come. Moreover by the completion of a particular project, a manager can forecast for future projects’ schedule, resources, and application of technologies by the use of project control chart. Failing to implement project control chart may result the poor analytical outcome of data of specific projects. The past project control chart will help the project management team to process future projects and it will successfully highlight in the future project outcome. Effective change management process Managing effective change management process ensures success for a particular project. Change management process helps to achieve the objective of projects. Moreover it helps to achieve the personal goal for the project team. Change management requires knowledgably planning and effective implementation of strategies. Change management process helps to identify and to do the changes to a specific project. The purpose of change management is to control the change process during project implementation and to ensure the fact that the project should complete within the time limit, specific budget. The objectives of change process are controlling the gaps between the institution procedure and the baseline system. Moreover it is used to modify the baseline system and before the modifications it encourages the project communication and the process and policies. The effective change management process aligns institutional resources in order to achieve the institutional needs. The principles of change management process are, it identify the current situation of an organization. This helps to communicate, enable and facilitate and involve from the team members as openly and as early as possible. Moreover it helps the project management to understand what and how to measure. References Rose, K., 2005, Project Quality Management. Plantation: J. Ross Publishing. Kendrick, T., 2009. Identifying and Managing Project Risk. New York: Amacom. Solomon, P., Young, R., 2006, Performance-Based Earned Value. New Jersey: J. Wiley & Sons. Read More