Project management process Essay

Which of the four phases of the project management process do you feel is most challenging? Why? The focus of project closedown is to bring the project to an end. Projects can conclude with a natural or unnatural termination. A natural termination occurs when the requirements of the project have been met—the project has been completed and is a success. Closing down the project. During closedown, you perform several diverse activities. Conducting postproject reviews. Once you have closed down the project, final reviews of the project should be conducted with management and customers. Closing the customer contract. The focus of this final activity is to ensure that all contractual terms of the project have been met. A project governed by a contractual agreement is typically not completed until agreed to by both parties, often in writing. Closedown is an important activity. A project is not complete until it is closed, and it is at closedown that projects are deemed a success or failure. Completion also signifies the chance to begin a new project and apply what you have learned. Now that you have an understanding of the project management process, the next section describes specific techniques used in systems development for representing and scheduling activities and resources. What are some sources of risk in a systems analysis and design project, and how does a project manager cope with risk during the stages of project management? The purpose of systems analysis and design is for a business to increase their efficiency, because when you look at a current system you will see flaws that need fixed ans within the new system that you design you will take these into consideration. A new system will make the the business more profitable. The Capital Project Risk Management Process is intended to result in the effective management of project risks (threats and opportunities). The objective of the project risk management process is to help project sponsors and project teams to make informed decisions regarding project alternatives. The project manager, project sponsor, and project team members jointly develop a written plan that enables them to identify, assess, quantify, prepare a response to, monitor, and control capital project risks. There are two stages in the process of Project Risk Management, Risk Assessment and Risk Control. Risk Assessment can take place at any time during the project, though the sooner the better. However, Risk Control cannot be effective without a previous Risk Assessment. Similarly, most people tend to think that having performed a Risk Assessment, they have done all that is needed. Far too many projects spend a great deal of effort on Risk Assessment and then ignore Risk control completely. Search the Web for recent reviews of project management software. Which packages seem to be most popular? What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of each package? What advice would you give to someone intending to buy project management software for his or her PC? Why? There are basically two types of online PM applications that can be accessed and utilized with any compatible web browser. The first and most common type is web-based software that is hosted and maintained by a third party, such as Project Genius and Basecamp. These products offer numerous advantages, especially for those groups who are spread out over a large geographical area or who spend a lot of time traveling. The main selling point for these tools is that all you need is an Internet connection to access your project information. That is, there’s no need to worry about remotely connecting to your company server or to lug around copies of data on external storage devices. An added bonus is that multiple people can access and modify the same information simultaneously, so there’s no confusion about which version of a project management form is the most recent. One downside of these applications hosted by third-parties is that most have some sort of monthly fee associated with them, and these fees can start to add up fast. However, there are some services, including Basecamp and Central Desktop, which offer free accounts to those with limited needs. Others, such as Clarizen, offer substantial discounts if you subscribe for an extended period of time and pay for that subscription in advance. A nice thing about the free accounts provided by certain vendors is that they can be upgraded to full paid accounts at any time. So, even if you think that the free version of these applications won’t be enough for your project management needs in the long run, you can still test them out without spending a dime. Another disadvantage of these third-party services that may be a deal-breaker for some is that you are basically locked in to the design and format of the software. That is, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to modify the application so that it includes all the fields and forms you need as well as get rid of all the ones you don’t. If the ability to do this is high on your list, you may be better off going with self-hosted, open-source project management software. I’ll talk more about this option in the next section. Suppose that you have been contracted by a jewelry store to manage a project to create a new inventory tracking system. Describe your initial approach to the project. What should your first activity be? What information would you need? To whom might you need to speak? Initiating the project. Establishing the project initiation team. This activity involves organizing an initial core of project team members to assist in accomplishing the project initiation activities. Establishing a relationship with the customer. A thorough understanding of your customer builds stronger partnerships and higher levels of trust. At PVF, management has tried to foster strong working relationships between business units (such as purchasing) and the IS development group by assigning a specific individual to work as a liaison between both groups. Establishing the project initiation plan. This step defines the activities required to organize the initiation team while it is working to define the scope of the project. Chris’s role was to help Juanita translate her business requirements into a written request for an improved information system. This task required the collection, analysis, organization, and transformation of a lot of information. Establishing management procedures. Successful projects require the development of effective management procedures. Within PVF, many of these management procedures had been established as standard operating procedures by the Systems Priority Board and the IS development group. Establishing the project management environment and project workbook. The focus of this activity is to collect and organize the tools that you will use while managing the project and to construct the project workbook. Developing the project charter. The project charter is a short (typically one page), high-level document prepared for the customer that describes what the project will deliver and outlines many of the key elements of the project. I need to speak to the manager of this company and find the warehouse keeper, because he know the inventory clearly. If I were an employee at Petrie’s Electronics, I would work on this project because a project scope statement is a short document prepared primarily for the customer to clearly describe what the project will deliver and outline generally at a high level all work required for completing the project. Jim was successes to briefly introduce this new project and its objectives to the customer. He also claimed what opportunity and project benefits will bring to the company. We can clearly see the team members and their responsibility and the general estimated project duration. This project scope statement is good, but there are some problems: they need project deliverables and the stakeholders can not show in this document. In addition, the objective of this project cannot enforce customers to regard our products as the first and only choice, this project should be track customer purchase to forecast buying patterns and serve better customer services by this new customer relationship management system. Tangible cost includes hardware and software cost, labor cost, and operational costs from employee training and building renovations.Intangible cost includes loss of time to decision or conflict, employee morale and operational inefficiency.This project will directly bring intangible benefits like organizational and operational benefits: increased employee morale, increased organizational flexibility and competitive necessity, first to market. Every project has risks. Now Jim’s team just has a general idea and plan to this project, but it is still a high-risk project. After they correct the scope statement, they must face some feasibility concerns like operational, technical and schedule feasibility. Because this is a new and challenging system, hardware, software and operating system to be used are very important; the process of examining the system also will be a big risk in the future. If I were part of Jim’s team, the team’s risk is my risk. That is not a big deal; I think we can pass it over together. On this case, if I work in this Jim’s team, I am worrying about operational risk because in current days, competition is fierce and technology changes fast, I hope this system can fit the day-to-day operations of the organization.