project management

Introduction

The Lewis project is lagging behind the project sponsor’s expectations, as the project’s cost, time and deliverable goals seem to be unattainable with the amount of time remaining. One of the problems that can be noticed from the project is the fact that the project was running way over the projected budget with the project team estimating that the project would cost 30% above the projected budget.

Besides that, the project had experienced some serious material delays, as the procurement processes were quite inefficient and expensive. The core purpose of this proposal document is to come up with an in-depth analysis of the problems that are affecting Frank’s effectiveness in handling the project and come up with proposed changes that could be implemented to make the project get back on track within the remaining project time.

Processes Involved in Change Request

Due to a failure of coming up with a concrete plan, the project team has come up with the idea of submitting a request to deal with the changes necessary to alter the project. There are certain processes they will have to go through in order to help the company to get back on track. The company needs to rework on the purpose and objectives that were initially carried out by Frank’s before the start of the project. As the cost and time of the project was going way up beyond the expectations, Franks’ would need to look over the scope of the project. The change request team then fills out the change request form in which they would identify a proposed change and then justifies the identified change. They would continue on to identify the impacts of change on time, cost, schedule and on stakeholders as well. After a complete working on this change, the management would continue on to change the management roles for example they would set the employees according to their positions unlike before. The management would then submit the change request, review the proposed changes and after that, if approved, the request will be approved.

Identified Project Issues

Communication Breakdown

The project team experienced some serious communication issues in the course of the project, which made the Lewis project, go out of scope. To start with, Frank’s project team required its suppliers to have a meeting with them for every part the company acquired from them. Initially, Frank normally held meetings with suppliers for parts that were deemed complex and had specific design requirements.

However, for this project, the team scheduled meetings with all the suppliers for all the parts, even for small off-the-shelf parts that didn’t need to be modified. The meetings were not productive, as the project team and the suppliers discussed the same things that were discussed in their project proposals. This communication flaw led to time-wastage, as the team was involved in time-wasting meetings instead of actually focusing on the project.

Besides that, the Lewis representatives needed to hold update meetings with Frank’s project team every week on Wednesday. Although the motive was pure from Lewis, they didn’t need to involve the whole project team. The project team felt overwhelmed by these weekly meetings and even had to hold internal meetings every Tuesday in order for them to be on the same page on the Wednesday meetings. Therefore, the project team focused more on the meetings than the actual project work, leading to time wastage.

Apart from that, the Lewis team always wanted constant updates from the Frank team, which made it difficult for the Frank team to work effectively. For example, the Lewis team wanted special reports from the procurement team every week, a move that made it difficult for the project team to work effectively when it comes to the issue of identifying and preventing problems that were related to procurement of parts.

The communication updates needed by the Lewis team went further until they had direct access to the project team members, a scenario that was not supposed to occur at all, as both clients had agreed before the commencement of the project. The communication breakdown led to communication lapses, as Frank’s upper project management team wasn’t looped in in some of the direct communications that took place between the project team and Lewis’ representatives.

Procurement Flaws

As mentioned in the previous section, the project team needed to schedule meetings with potential vendors for all parts, instead of doing so for complex parts only. Those unnecessary meetings caused a lot of time wastages from both teams, as nothing concrete was achieved from such meetings. Therefore, if Frank’s project management team had just used their normal procurement process, the project team would have had better project progress than it is currently.

Besides that, Frank’s project management team did not manage the process of acquiring project spare parts effectively. The company usually required the vendors to have lists of spare parts ready in the last three weeks of the scheduled delivery (assuming the order was made fifteen weeks prior to the delivery). The vendors would use that time to come up with accurate lists of the supply parts and their proposed shelf life.

However, since the project didn’t have a lot of float time, the acceleration of the spare part lists acquisition processes resulted into the project becoming more expensive whenever the engineers needed to make changes to the plant. These changes were accompanied with different spare part lists, a process that became too complex to manage forcing Frank’s project team to bring a full-time spare parts coordinator into the project.

Lack of a Risk Management Plan

Frank’s project team didn’t come up with a proper risk management plan to address the issues that would affect the project. Frank’s project management team was used to conducting projects that dealt with iron and steel or petroleum products. However, for this project, the company had to work with both teams in order to accomplish the project.

The project team did not foresee issues where the vendors would face some bankruptcy issues, leading to late deliveries and affecting the Lewis project deliverables. As a mitigation plan, the procurement team could have come up with a list of backup providers for parts in case the primary ones were unable to deliver on time.

Operational Inefficiencies

The project team was involved in tasks that were affecting the effectiveness of the whole project. For example, the use of overqualified individuals for small project tasks in order to impress Lewis’ representatives affected the overall project costs and man-hours used in the project. Apart from that, the request for frequent reports and meetings between the project stakeholders affected the project team’s effectiveness in general, which resulted in time wastage.

Besides that, the constant reshuffle of project team representatives and constant addition of project team members to the project, was a clear sign that the project team had some serious operational flows. For example, the addition of a team member to manage the spare parts acquisition process was a clear indication of how the process was flawed.

Control Change Request

Basically, when there are some changes occurs in project then project manager has to deal with it and its very hard to keep the project on track therefore it is very important to follow good clear processes to control the change as project can easily go out of control like frank’s project. There are always three components on baseline project plan which are scope(deliverables), cost or budget, time (schedule) and quality which is beginning of project. then company have to face with many issues, risk which have direct impact on these three components and change is required where all representative made change request to control it and its impact on other components. Then recommendation and suggestions or solution are discovered for that change which is documented on change request log including all changes occurs during the project with description, date, impact on other component. Then change management control board have to attend meeting periodically to control, analyse, evaluate and manage those changes and once they approved the change then only those changes are used into the project plan which also include rebase line the project plan. Therefore, this is basic things to do while controlling change request in project (Project Management Videos 2013).

Proposed Scope Changes

To start with, the company has to ensure that it changes its communication strategy with Lewis’ representatives. Frank could ensure that the project managers are the only people who would be in contact with Lewis’ representatives. Although the client will not like the move, it would be necessary in order to ensure that the assigned project team members focus on the project tasks at hand, a move that would ensure that the project costs and deliverables are met for the remaining part of the project. Therefore, communications should be done on a high-level basis and proper channels followed when the project team is reporting to the project sponsor (Meredith, Mantel Jr & Shafer, 2017).

Apart from that, the project team would need to streamline its operations across all organizational levels. For example, the number of trips taken by the project team to meet the project sponsors should be minimized and replaced with other forms of communication. Technology has provided us with an opportunity to communicate more efficiently and channels such as Skype, Slack or email could be used instead of having the team make visits, a move that saves the project’s time and leads to efficient allocation of resources, which ensures that the project is completed on time (Meredith, Mantel Jr & Shafer, 2017).

Finally, the problem of having late delivery of project materials could be resolved by having the suppliers make components available within shorter turnaround times. For this change to be accomplished, the procurement team would have to find other suppliers to make the components available for the cases where some of the suppliers have filed for bankruptcy. Besides that, Frank’s team should ensure that Service Level Agreements are signed with suppliers before they are awarded tenders for such projects (Snyder, 2013).

This change would require the project team to change how it manages its spare part lists, with the project team having to revert to its initial plan of having suppliers making them available when the components are delivered to the company’s production plants. Besides that, the project team could also ensure that suppliers work together in order to have the parts meet their specific needs. Successful companies such as Boeing are able to assemble parts from different suppliers such as Rolls Royce who supply the company with jet engines and have them designed according to the company’s specifications. Frank could use this move would save the company a lot of money, especially when making changes to the plant’s design and SLAs would save the project’s time.

Conclusion

Different issues that have been caused by Lewis and Frank’s representatives have affected the project scope. Some of the issues have something to do with communication flaws, operational issues and other issues that have been discussed in the change control proposal. The issues discussed have made the project lag behind and more expensive to implement and the project team may not complete the project on time if the same trend continues. Therefore, the purpose of the proposed changes is to bring the project back on track, greatly minimize on the project’s cost and time. Therefore, there’s a possibility that the project may not be completed on time but the work rate would greatly be improved.

References

Harrison, F., & Lock, D. (2017). Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge.

Heagney, J. (2016). Fundamentals of project management. Amacom.

kerzner, H. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Meredith, J. R., Mantel Jr, S. J., & Shafer, S. M. (2017). Project management: a managerial approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Project Management Videos. (2013). How to Control Change Requests on a Project (Streaming video). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWdgFFVkPgA

Snyder, C. S. (2013). A project manager’s book of forms: A companion to the PMBOK guide (2nd ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing.