...AS1: Approaches to Project Management and Methodology March 2015 1. Standard approaches to manage projects Provide brief descriptions of the following standard project management approaches: (a) The traditional approach (5 steps) The traditional approach to project management identifies a sequence of five steps to be completed in chronological order, as follows: * Initiation * Planning * Execution * Monitoring * Completion/closure Most projects will incorporate these stages, even where more complex project management methods are used but it is a method suited to simple, smaller projects, which do not have multiple tasks and people within the project team. (Hom 2013) Available at: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4014-project-management.html) Accessed 25/03/15 (b) Critical chain project management This method was developed by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt and introduced in his book ‘Critical Chain’ (1997). It applies his Theory of Constraints to address project delivery issues, such as missed deadlines and increased costs and it focuses on eliminating delays due to uncertainty and over-estimation of task duration. The critical chain is comprised of the tasks which result in the longest path to project completion, with critical resources assigned to the tasks. The project schedule is then shortened by reducing the estimated task time and buffers are built in to provide for conflicts. Available at: (http://www.goldratt.co.uk/resources/critical_chain/)...
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...personality attributes and project management approaches Every project needs a huge effort in management; therefore project managers play a vital role for the leadership capability of the organizations. The factor that leads to project success received a lot of attention by doing various research on this field and the personality of project manager is one of these factors, so personality deemed a complex system that contain many traits. Many researchers argued that the efficient project manager is an essential factor to reach the success desired. This evaluation discusses the strong relationship between the project manager's personality and the project outcomes. The importance of project manager's personality In the field of project management, the project outcomes are affected by several factors, such as project manager's personality. Dvir, Sadeh, and Malach-Pines (2006), cited from many researchers like Thamhain and Wilemon (1977) did not deny the key role that project managers play to achieve the success and the effectiveness of them relies on their style of leadership and the environment of work. Moreover, Brown and Eisenhardt (1995) mentioned that the influence of the project leader is on the performance and the effectiveness of the product. In addition, Lechler found that the success of the project depends on human factors. According to Thal, and Bedingfield (2010), the primary researches that discuss the successful project managers focused on determining...
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...Technology, Sydney Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology 49002 Managing Projects Assignment 1 – Research on Lean Project Management Task Write a research-focused report that investigates and discusses how the principles, theory, processes and tools of Lean Production Delivery Systems (LPDS) can be applied to current project management practices. This is an individual assignment for both Standard and Distance Mode students. Overview There are several global trends, particularly rapid rates of change in technological, social, environmental and economic areas, that expose the inherent difficulties in meeting increasingly stringent clients’ needs. Project-based initiatives have been increasingly used as a very good way to deal with rapid rates of change, with a large effort to disseminate project management as a standard way to deliver increasingly sophisticated products. However, the strong emphasis on time, cost and quality may not necessarily ensure that rapid and constantly changing needs can be adequately and comprehensively addressed. Of all the approaches to production management, the theory and principles drawn from Lean Production Delivery Systems (LPDS) seem to be best suited for enhancing project management practices. You will investigate and discuss how the application of lean approaches, such as lean construction, lean manufacturing and lean thinking, to the management of projects and production address these concerns and enhance the value that is delivered...
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...PROJECT MANAGEMENT ESSAY MATTHEW DYSON Project management patterns form a source of valuable knowledge in which past experience is broken down into a series of situations and solutions, which can be easily searched and linked together to form a network of ideas through which managers can evaluate and assess the suitability of common approaches for implementation in their own situations. Once implemented, managers can contribute their own experiences back into the pattern database, which helps to expand and increase the amount of real-world information that the patterns contain, and through repetition of this process the quality and quantity of patterns will dramatically increase. There also exists a wide variety of defined and commonly implemented project management methods which are given as a strict structure that the manager will mould their team to, with different methods tailored towards different requirements. For instance, some methods will assume fixed requirements and flexible timescales, whereas others will assume a fixed time for completion allowing for flexible requirements. Once one of these methods is implemented, a strict set of decision making criteria is implemented that ensures that the project will not make compromises in the wrong area. When overseeing a project, a manager should be focusing on two key areas – the social interaction of their team, and the progress that they are making on the tasks given, which ideally should not be mutually exclusive, as...
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...PROJECT MANAGEMENT ESSAY MATTHEW DYSON Project management patterns form a source of valuable knowledge in which past experience is broken down into a series of situations and solutions, which can be easily searched and linked together to form a network of ideas through which managers can evaluate and assess the suitability of common approaches for implementation in their own situations. Once implemented, managers can contribute their own experiences back into the pattern database, which helps to expand and increase the amount of real-world information that the patterns contain, and through repetition of this process the quality and quantity of patterns will dramatically increase. There also exists a wide variety of defined and commonly implemented project management methods which are given as a strict structure that the manager will mould their team to, with different methods tailored towards different requirements. For instance, some methods will assume fixed requirements and flexible timescales, whereas others will assume a fixed time for completion allowing for flexible requirements. Once one of these methods is implemented, a strict set of decision making criteria is implemented that ensures that the project will not make compromises in the wrong area. When overseeing a project, a manager should be focusing on two key areas – the social interaction of their team, and the progress that they are making on the tasks given, which ideally should not be mutually...
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...agile project management and its benefits and challenges by considering definitions and theories of agile project management, principles and empirical literature. 2.1 Project management and agile project management defined 2.1.1 Project management According to Kerzner (2009, 10th ed.) project management is the planning, directing and controlling of company resources for a relatively short-term objective that has been established to complete specific goals and objectives. Project management also utilizes the system approach to management by having functional personnel (vertical hierarchy) assigned to a specific project (horizontal hierarchy). Project Management Institute (2004, pp.5-377) also defined project management as the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet or exceed stakeholder objectives and expectations from a particular project” and according to ISO 10006 project management is the planning, organizing, monitoring and controlling all aspects and activities of the project in a continuous process to achieve its planned objectives”. Basically, project management deals with coordinating resources and managing people and change. Managing a project includes: Identifying, requirements, establishing clear and achievable objectives, balancing the competing demand for quality, scope, time and cost; Adapting specification, plan and approach to the different concerns and expectations of the various stakeholders” (Project Management...
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...The Impact of Project Portfolio Management on Information Technology Projects Sergio Ricardo Calderini London Business School Regent’s Park, London NW1 4SA, United Kingdom e-mail: scalderini.mba2004@london.edu Bert De Reyck London Business School Regent’s Park, London NW1 4SA, United Kingdom Tel. +44 20 7706 6884; Fax. +44 20 7724 7875; e-mail: bdereyck@london.edu Yael Grushka-Cockayne London Business School Regent’s Park, London NW1 4SA, United Kingdom Tel. +44 20 7262 5050; Fax. +44 20 7724 7875; e-mail: ygrushka.phd2003@london.edu Martin Lockett Ashridge Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, HP4 1NS, United Kingdom Tel. +44 1442 841025; e-mail: martin@mlockett.com Marcio Moura London Business School Regent’s Park, London NW1 4SA, United Kingdom e-mail: mmoura.mba2004@london.edu Andrew Sloper CVC The Customer Value Company 48 St Mary's Road, Long Ditton, Surrey KT6 5EY, United Kingdom Tel. +44 7768 861920; e-mail: andrew.sloper@customervalue.co.uk February 2005 Ashridge Business School UK - http://www.ashridge.org.uk The Impact of Project Portfolio Management on Information Technology Projects Abstract The ever-increasing penetration of projects as a way to organise work in many organisations necessitates effective management of multiple projects. This has resulted in a greater interest in the processes of project portfolio management (PPM), with more and more software tools being developed to assist and automate the process....
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...Information Systems Project Management Unit 3 Assignment 1 Kaplan University IT511 Professor Chad McAllister February 16, 2013 1. Explain project scope management in terms of its processes. Scope management is the process of defining and controlling the work that is or is not included in the project (Schwalbe, 2012). This outlines to the team and stakeholders the product that will be produced and the processes that will be used to produce that product. The project scope management consists of five processes: * Collect requirements- This process defines the specific details of a product’s functions and features. Defining the processes for creating the products is defined in this process and results in the following outputs: stakeholders’ requirements documentation, a requirements management plan and a requirements traceability matrix. * Define the scope- The project charter, requirements documents and organization process assets are the inputs that are needed to determine the project scope. This process has two outputs the project scope statement and updates to the project documents. * Create the WBS- This process involves decomposing the major deliverable on the project into manageable elements resulting in the WBS and dictionary, a scope baseline and updates to the project documents. * Verify the scope- This is the formalized acceptance of the scope statement by the stakeholders, customers and the project sponsor. If the scope statement is...
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...feedback, observation of behaviors, professional goals, strategic direction, and competitive analysis (Best Practices, 1999, p. 29). AT&T CCS has integrated employee development and career planning into its human resource strategy. By making employee development a cornerstone of its human performance system model, AT&T CCS signals its importance to managers and employee alike (Best Practices, 1999, p. 29). It is similar to Foundation Schools, Nancy’s leadership has been a key reason the school has achieved its current reputation. She focuses her time on developing her staff, investigation and implementing new approaches to learning, and ensuring the school maintains its position as a leader in special education (UOP, 2011,p.2) To foster commitment, involvement and innovation, AT&T CCS employs a variety of team and individual involvement approaches. To measure and manage performance, AT&T uses three key measures to determine performance to include (1) people value added (PVA), customer value added (CVA), and economic value added (EVA). The PVA process focuses on the opinions and needs of employees through two indices (1) the Leadership Index that is composed of associate opinions on (a) AT&T CCS management’s leadership, (b) the organization’s dedication to customers and (c) job satisfaction; and (2) the Diversity Index that includes (a) supervision and (b)...
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...this essay is on the challenges that relate to risk management of the project. Generally risk management is seen as an activity of identifying and controlling undesired project outcomes proactively (Smith & Merritt 2002 as cited in Kieran & Sharon, 2009). However, it is unfortunate that many information systems projects do not follow a formal risk management approach (Jones 1994 as cited in Marchewka, 2003) and the KYC project is one such example. Risk management processes can be an extremely powerful approach to dealing with the intricacies and uncertainties that increasingly surround information systems project and organisation if implemented well; if not risk management processes can consume valuable resources and can constitute a risk to the information system project that must be effectively managed. The level of investment in risk management within projects must be challenged and justified on the level of expected benefit to the overall project (Chapman & Ward, 2003). Two of the key challenges faced with in this this project with regards risk management are lack of organisational commitment and technical constraints. Each of which will be discussed separately. LACK OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT The KYC project was borne out of a regulatory requirement and as such it is an information system does not have any strategic or competitive advantage since it is just to fulfill regulatory requirement. The project itself requires the gathering of customer data which...
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...Introduction The growing diversity of projects is being reflected in a growing diversity of ways to manage them. The dominant approach to project management remains the ‘‘plandriven” model, as exemplified by the Bodies of Knowledge (BOKs) of the various PM professional associations (e.g. Project Management Institute, 2004). However alternative or complementary approaches such as lean, agile, and soft systems methods have gained acceptance in some fields, and are beginning to spread beyond their areas of origin (e.g. Poppendieck and Poppendieck, 2003; Yeo, 1993). Even within the plan-driven model, increasingly diverse methods are being advocated. Despite this increasing range of available management choices, project managers frequently fail to seriously consider their alternatives (Brown et al., 2000; Shenhar, 2001). This may be partly because they do not consider this to be within the scope of ‘‘project management”, (although it is clearly part of the wider concept of ‘‘management of projects” (Morris et al., 2006)). But the lack of decision support tools also discourages such consideration. Although project categorisation systems are common within organisations, these are generally narrowly tailored and categorisation criteria often are not logically linked with objectives (Crawford et al., 2005). Hence there is a need for enhanced methods for relating PM approaches to projects. One path to such methods is via project contingency theory (PCT). PCT argues...
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...Prioritizing Projects at D. D. Williamson Critique the prioritizing process D. D. Williamson. D. D. Williamson is a small privately held company. Founded in 1865 in Louisville, Kentucky, D. D. Williamson has become a global leader in non-artificial colors (Kloppenberg & Nkomo, 2012). The company has grown to nine operating facilities in six countries and supplying many food and beverage companies around the world. D. D. Williamson had too many projects that were all deemed important. Even though the project was ongoing, some projects were late, over budget, and not achieving the predicted results (Kloppenberg & Nkomo, 2012). With so many active and important projects, the company decided to implement a prioritization matrix. The prioritization matrix was an excellent way to prioritize the company’s projects and improve the budget and on-time rates. As of 2009, the company made more changes to their prioritization process. They decided to choose no more than five “Vision Impact Projects” that would get high-level focus and attention (Kloppenberg & Nkomo, 2012). Projects are now receiving more in depth attention. Suggest at least one recommendation to improve the prioritizing process. Although D. D. Williamson has an effective prioritizing process, any method can be improved. The first thing D. D. Williams can do to improve the prioritizing process. Knowing that whatever process that is done the greatest impact will be on the stakeholder (“Prioritizing...
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...Study 1: Prioritizing Projects at D.D. Williamson Crystal D. Dr. Donny Bagwell Managing Human Resources Projects: HRM 517 October 27, 2013 Introduction D.D. Williamson implemented a new process for project prioritization that included focusing on the vision and impact of projects and narrowing down projects by selecting the ones of high importance and assigning them to senior management teams. I will attempt to critique that process, recommend an improvement for the process, provide a scenario of why the process could possibly not be successful, and project if the process will still be successful in five years. Critiquing D.D. Williamson Project Prioritization The prioritization process at D. D. Williamson is a great improvement opposed to the previous prioritization process that was implemented. I believe that D.D. Williamson was able to finally overcome challenges after years of not having a successful process in place. Cutting down the amount of projects from 60 to 16 was a smart plan that in return helped D.D. Williamson not to go over budget, increase the success rate to over 60 percent of projects finishing close to the expected completion date, and earn better results. This process also helped to move forward the most critical projects of high importance. Simplifying the criteria ratings also helped to narrow down projects and prioritize them. By selecting a new criteria rating and focusing on the Vision Impact Projects (VIPs), it made it easier...
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...EFFECTS OF RISK MANAGEMENT METHODS ON PROJECT PERFORMANCE IN RWANDAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY A CASE STUDY OF MULTI-STOREYED BUILDINGS CONSTRUCTION PROJECT OF RSSB Systemic project risk management has an effect on the project success. It is found that there is strong relationship between the amount of risk management efforts undertaken in a project and the level of the project success. Several project risk management approaches are proposed as follows; i.e., (PRAM, Chapman (1997), RAMP, Thomas (2002), PMBOK (2008), RMS, a risk management (2002) etc. Pejman (2012) Existing approaches may be summarized into a four phase process for effective project risk management, i.e., (identifying risks, assessing risks, responding risks, and monitoring and/or reviewing risks. Nerija (2012) The overview of definitions which can be found in literature regarding those two terms implies that uncertainty is a broad concept and risk is a part of it. This confirms close relation between those two concepts but at the same time distinguishes them. In the following chapters, the focus is on risk itself and how it should be handled. Uncertain is not a tangible term and thus will not be further developed in this report. The PMBOK (2004) listed the following strategies or techniques for managing risks in the construction projects; avoid (extending schedule, reducing scope, shutting down the project),transfer (Financial risk exposure, insurance, warranties, guarantees);mitigate(taking early actions...
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...planning phase. C) The focus of RAD is on system integration. D) The emphasis in RAD is generally less on the sequence and structure of processes in the life cycle and more on doing different tasks in parallel with each other and on using prototyping extensively. 3) Which of the following are deliverables for the analysis phase? 3) _______ A) code, documentation, training procedures, and support capabilities B) functional, detailed specifications of all system elements C) description of current system and where problems and opportunities are with a general recommendation on how to fix, enhance, or replace current system D) priorities for systems and projects; an architecture for data, networks, and selection hardware, and IS management are the result of associated systems 4) The traditional methodology used to develop, maintain, and replace information systems best defines: 4) _______ A) SDLC B) RAD C) prototyping D) OOAD 5) Turning system specifications into a working system that is tested and then put into use describes: 5) _______ A) maintenance B) physical design C) analysis D) implementation 6) One of the top three reasons for...
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