2 pages
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PROJECT PLANNING
Trident University International
John Walker
Module 2 SLP
PRM301 Introduction to Project Management
Dr. Loretta Jenkins
1/21/2022
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Reward Project Gantt Chart
Gantt Chart Rationale
To ensure on-time completion, the project's large activities must be controlled to ensure
that the schedule is followed, and the deadlines are met. Failing to finish a task out of sequence,
the rest of the project will be affected, leading to late delivery and higher costs (Scully-Allison &
Isaacs, 2021). In this project, the Gantt chart is designed to convey the information on schedule
visually, and it outlines the tasks involved in the project in their order, which is shown against
the timescale. This gives an overall overview of the project, its associated tasks, and, most
importantly, when each task is supposed to be completed.
Some of the steps that were considered to enable the creation of a comprehensive
structure of the Gantt chart include Identification of essential tasks, with the help of a work
breakdown schedule, a list of all the essential tasks was established, and then each task was given
an estimate of the earliest start time and the approximate duration for completion. Another
important step involved identifying task relationships; this is to identify the tasks that are either
sequential or parallel and how dependent some tasks are on others. This gave the project a deeper
understanding of organizing the tasks and scheduling the activities on the chart.
The Gantt chart can help the project team prevent overload of resources by delegating the
task to different teams without overwhelming the team in the process; it also helps track the
project's progress because, on completion of a certain task, the Gantt chart is updated. Also, the
project team is given more clarity and motivation as the project members can see the deadlines of
their tasks and finally, it provides accountability to the project (Scully-Allison & Isaacs, 2021).
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Critical Milestones
Some of the critical milestones in the project are the project review approval, which is a
high-priority task and a crucial decision that will determine the completion of the project. This is
because, in this stage, there will be consideration of the need for the project as per the presented
recommendations. The project involves monetary value, which the management has to decide
whether it is a logical step (Goldberg et al., 2021). Another project milestone is the approval of
the project plan; this is a crucial step because it involves selecting the team to conduct the
project. Hence, if the recommended selection is approved, it will ensure on-time completion of
the project.
Project start is another important milestone as the on-time start of the project will mean
that the deadlines will be met, but if the project fails to start on time, the schedule might be
overwhelmed to meet the deadlines. The deliverables are another milestone, and in this project,
the employee reward is the deliverable; if the deliverable is prepared to be delivered on time, the
project's progress can be measured when the employee reward is delivered.
Critical Risk
It is crucial to analyze the project's critical risk to help in minimizing the magnitude of
the risk. The idea is to establish a proactive approach rather than a reactive project management
approach, ensure that the project is completed within the stipulated time. This will also help
cover all the loopholes that the risk brings (Dong et al., 2018, July).
One critical risk that the project is likely to incur is cost risk. If there happens to be
mismanagement or shortage of project funds resulting from other constraints will be a threat to
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the completion of the project. When the project's cost becomes higher than the budgeted funds,
the risk might interrupt other operations.
Contingency Plan
Some of the strategies designed in the project to help in risk mitigation are risk avoidance
strategy, this is by the project team outlining all the costs that are anticipated and also account for
any cost that could arise in the middle of the project so that the consequences of going over
budget might not be very fatal (Burton et al., 2021). Another strategy is risk control; the project
team will design control methods that will detect possible issues with the project's budget. Some
of the strategies for risk control used include a management focus, the decision-making process
and finding loopholes in the project funding before any issue arises.
Transference of the cost risk is another strategy that will help the project mitigate the risk.
In this case, transference for cost will include holding the accountants and the finance team for
any issue arising concerning the budget. Transferring this risk will enable the management to
focus on the finance and accounts tea and, in turn, will enable the project team to focus on their
responsibilities. Another important strategy to help mitigate the project's cost risk is the watch
and monitor risk; this involves watching for and noting any changes that can affect the impact of
the risk (Burton et al., 2021).
In this case, monitoring the risk will involve the budgeting team to evaluate and help
monitor the cost risk by creating a reporting routine and listing all the project expenditures. This
is an important strategy that will allow the project to continuously assess the budget and adjust
any cost plan effectively (Burton et al., 2021). Also, another strategy for mitigation of the cost
risk for the project is assuming and accepting the risk cost. This strategy can be used to identify
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the impact of the cost risk and develop plans to lower the risk of going past the set budget so that
all the members of the project are aware of the risk and the possible consequences.
References
Burton, K., Cuffee, N., Neclos, D., Olatunbosun, S., & Ajani, T. (2021). Contingency Planning:
Prioritizing Your Resources. In Advances in Software Engineering, Education, and e-
Learning (pp. 937-942). Springer, Cham.
Dong, J., Li, R., & Wang, D. (2018, July). System Dynamics-Based Project Cost Risk Accession
Control Modeling. In 2018 Eighth International Conference on Instrumentation &
Measurement, Computer, Communication and Control (IMCCC) (pp. 81-86). IEEE.
Goldberg, V., Winter, D., Nitschke, F., Rath, M., Held, S., Spitzmüller, L., ... & Kohl, T. (2021).
The potential of raw material extraction from thermal brines–Successful milestones of the
BrineMine project. Oil gas, (01), 26.
Scully-Allison, C., & Isaacs, K. E. (2021). Design and Evaluation of Scalable Representations of
Communication in Gantt Charts for Large-scale Execution Traces. arXiv preprint
arXiv:2107.00065.