1774709 MGT210: Project

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Project Management Plan

Project Charter for a Project Management Plan for a Training Presentation on Learning and Managing Project Team

Student Names Student Numbers

Tutor’s Name

Word Count: 3626

Document Management

Distribution List

Name

Position

Signature

Date

Melissa Innes

Project Sponsor

MN

11/05/2018

Arnold Packer

Project Manager

AP

11/05/2018

James Milner

Project Team Manager

JM

11/05/2018

David Porter

Project Team Member

DP

11/05/2018

Version Control

Revision #

Change Description

Approval Date

Author

Project Registration PC/0036489/18

Project Name Project Management Plan for a Training Presentation on Leading

and Managing Project Teams.

Project Ref # MGT210RFP2

Creation Date 11/05/2018

Sponsor Melissa Innes

Project Manager & PM Company Details (Name, Email contact)

Arnold Packer

JEVCO Project Consultants

[email protected]

Executive Summary

The demand for project team leadership and management is increasingly growing in the corporate, public and private sector. Every year, the job opportunities of project managers increase with millions with the increase in the number of profitable project companies undertake each and every year. It doesn’t matter which industry you work in whether healthcare, technology, manufacturing, energy, construction, finance or business services, project talent management is required across all these industries. Project managers are the real deal when it comes to this since they are change agents. Therefore, there is a demand to develop commercially viable training presentation for project management plan.

The objectives of this project is to develop a project management plan in form of a training presentation package that can be delivered into the SME business sector through commercial mechanisms and that can be expanded into national training program using licensee or franchise model. The success criteria for this project are alignment to objectives, timely completion and alignment to the key performance indicators. The main benefit of this project management plan is that it will help small and medium-sized business managers to understand the essence of leadership knowledge and internally managing projects as well as knowing how to choose when to seek an external project manager to offer direction and planning for project management

According to the findings, the project integration plan involves development of project plan, execution of project plan and integrated change control. Project stakeholders include project team leader, senior managers, project team members, resource managers, project customers, line managers, project subcontractors and consultants among other people or groups impacted by the progress or completion of the project. project team require multiple skills, projects cannot be run without effective communication, effective project scope and objectives and requirements include key objectives, scope, deliverables, milestones, high level requirements, assumptions and exclusions and known risks. Time management entails defining tasks, defining activities and estimating resources. Project cost management, project procurement, project risk management and project quality are also important for effective project management.

In order to effectively and efficiently manage a project, a project manager should consider the following recommendations;

a. Integrate all the processes required to properly coordinate the elements of the project.

b. Identify project stakeholders, assess and rank them so as to identify who you should give priority at a given time.

c. Develop a project team with right skills who will be responsible for completing the project within the constructs of time and the budget.

d. Properly communicate with the team members and stakeholders so as to build a good relationship that is significant for the smooth flow of the project.

e. Develop a comprehensive project scope and requirements that fully define the project boundaries and clarify the deliverables within and outside the scope.

f. Adopt project time management skills and techniques.

g. Adopt project cost management techniques and skills to plan and control project budget.

h. Ensure that resources needed for the project are delivered within the specified time and budget allocations.

i. Effectively identify, analyze and respond to risk factors throughout the project life cycle

j. Consider all the project requirements needed to ascertain and achieve project quality.

Table of Contents

2 Document Management

2 Distribution List

2 Version Control

3 Project Registration

3 Project Name

3 Project Ref #

3 Creation Date

3 Sponsor

3 Project Manager & PM Company Details (Name, Email contact)

4 Executive Summary

5 Table of Contents

6 The Plan

6 1. Project Integration

7 2. Project Stakeholders

8 3. Project Team

9 4. Project Communication

11 5. Project Scope and Requirements

12 6. Project Time Management

13 7. Project Cost Management

14 8. Project Procurement

15 9. Project Risk Management

16 10. Project Quality

17 Authorization

17 11. Recommendations

18 12. Approval

18 13. Sign off (signatures)

19 14. List of References

20 15. Appendices (include a copy of your Project Charter

The Plan

1. Project Integration

The project integration plan is a collection of processes needed to ensure that the various project elements are coordinated properly. It involves making trade-offs among competing objectives and alternatives I order to achieve or exceed the needs and expectations of stakeholders. Project integration comprises project plan development, project plan execution and integrated change control (Baker, 2000). Project plan development is the integration and coordination of all project plans so as to develop a consistent and coherent document that will guide the entire stages of the project. This includes approach to project management, statement of scope, baseline for project performance measures, resource and budget schedule and staffing and responsibilities.

Project plan execution involves carrying out the project plan with respect to the strategy, plan and activities outlined in the plan. It integrates the general skills of management, work outcome and supporting details as well as, policies of the organization and system of work authorization. The management skills include planning, organizing, execution and controlling, time and personnel management, leadership, emotional intelligence, communication skills, project management skills and technical knowledge.

Integrated change control entails coordinating change across the project. It integrates the changes resulting from all control processes, adopting corrective actions, liaising with the change control board and configuring management. It will also integrate, management of changes and ensuring that everything is proceeding according to the change management plan, making controls within the baseline, refining the limits of control, communicating and conflict resolution, working with respect to policies, performing post-mortem and identifying lessons learned, making sure the lessons learned are implemented in the subsequent phases of the project and lastly providing updates of the project plan.

2. Project Stakeholders

For a project to succeed, it is very important for the project team to identify the project stakeholders. Stakeholders can help champion the project and drive its success or powerful stakeholders can choose to sabotage the project especially if they fell less engaged (Stein et al., 2017). Project stakeholders are all individuals, organizations or groups with interest or role in the project or those that may affect, be affected by or perceive themselves to be affected by an activity, outcome or decision of the project. The stakeholder may be within or outside the organization that sponsors the project, will gain on the successful project completion or may have a positive or negative influence in the completion.

Some of the project stakeholders include project team leader, senior managers, members of the project team, resource managers, project customers, product user group, line managers, testers of the project, project subcontractors as well as the project consultants among any other person or group impacted by the progress or completion of the project. However, the project management team should not just focus on a single subset of stakeholders but should perform stakeholder analysis and prioritize all stakeholders so as to focus more attention on the most important stakeholders at different points in time.

Stakeholder analysis involves assessment of the proximity, power and urgency associated with every project stakeholder. This could be performed once or regularly so as to keep track of change in attitude of stakeholder to the potential change over time. The stakeholders can then be classified into primary stake holders who are ultimately affected by the process and completion of the project, secondary stakeholders who are affected indirectly by the activities and outcome of the project and lastly, key stakeholders who have a significant influence in the project (Fletcher et al. 2003). This classification will help develop cooperation between stakeholders and the project team as well as the ultimate assurance of successful project outcome.

3. Project Team

Project team is a multi-disciplinary group brought together from various departments and may include suppliers or experts from different companies. This team is responsible for the completion of the project with respect to the project schedule (Lock, 2007). Typically, a project can be made up of the project sponsor or executive, project manager, subject matter experts, change management function, planner, project assistant or coordinator, testing manager, risk management function, quality assurance functions, team managers and testing teams. It is also important that the project manager has enough authority and seniority to manage the project team. Therefore, the team should report to the project manager and the team’s organization structure should reflect the ownership of the project manager. In addition, the project manager should directly report to the senior management in the structure.

Another important aspect of the project team is having the right skills within the team to project success. The membership of the project team is flexible because different skills are required for certain stages and deliverables (Lock, 2007). Some of the features of the project team member should be; achiever in that they should at least accomplish something on a daily basis, activator by being able to make decisions and commence activities quickly, adaptability by always making progress in when they meet the unknowns, analytical, ability to communicate by both speaking and writing clearly, belief and guidance by core values, arranger, competitive and wants to outperform everyone, contextual by always sticking to the main purpose of the project, deliberative and can identify and analyze risks and plan to avoid them, consistency and treating everyone in the same way, discipline, developer, focus, empathy, ideation, include, harmony, futuristic, maximizer, positivity, responsible, self-assurance and confident, relator, strategic and learner.

4. Project Communication

Generally, managing a project without communication is pretty impossible. Project management involve so many layers of requirements, information and decision making that need approval by the stakeholders in the chain of command. Each of these steps involved require new task to discuss and that task depend on another task and decision. Therefore, the project manager cannot handle all these alone, he or she will require an effective communication. Without strong project communication, even having the best tools and resources don’t matter such that as the project manager, you just have to talk to your team and other people involved.

A successful project begins with a solid communication strategy that can bring trust and success in the team. The components of a good communication strategy include developing the purpose which entails the mission statement of the team and the reason behind everything done in the project, setting realistic goals for the project and the primary indicators for its success, determine key players which involves the team members and the stakeholders that need to be involved and the extent that they should be involved, people to be involved in all the meeting and those involved from the standpoint of approval as well as ensuring everyone understands his or her role. Discuss task dependencies and how to meet them, that is, identify risks and roadblocks that may exist along the way. Be realistic on the timeline and scale and don’t overpromise. and lastly, make adjustments when needed by being flexible and honest with the team so that adjustments can be med when needed and on time (Robbins et al., 2011).

Good project managers establish relationships that helps smooth movement of the projects. This is achieved when the project manager has some of the top communications skills. Such skills include listening, instead of just waiting for their turn, an effective project manager listens to the team member to both their good and bad ideas which helps them understand and fix issues efficiently. Secondly, they focus on efficiency over speed such that they ensure their team emphasizes on quality. Asking questions so as to get to the bottom of situations and processes. Respect to team members which establishes a good relationship since the team members will also reciprocate the respect. Keeping everyone in the loop is also essential as everyone involved need to have up to date information. This can be achieved by team manager sending updates on a regular basis, maybe daily, weekly or monthly (Robbins et al., 2011). Other communication skills include ability to speak and write clearly and confidence.

Looking at how project managers successfully communicate, project managers should ensure that the information is flowing in the expected manner. This will enable the team to share information easily and ask for more when required. Some of the basic ways to ensure information is going to and from the right people include setting project expectations. When commencing the project, ensure both the project team and stakeholders are aware of what is expected of them throughout the project course as well as what they expect from you, the project manager. This could be done by mapping the project with a chart, discussing the project goals and plan and discussing the forms of communication that will be used in the course of the project. Secondly, discuss project deliverables and review them as a team. This will ensure the teams to collaborate and build a stronger project. A short review will eliminate the risk of negative impacts associated with current deliverables on the scope hence will generate more confidence in the project as well as keeping members of the team accountable for project decisions. Third, conduct status meetings on a regular basis to keep everyone informed about progress and roadblocks. Fourth, ask questions to seek clarity of ideas that come from team members and other stakeholders.

5. Project Scope and Requirements

Project scope and requirements describe the major project deliverables including key milestones, assumptions, high level requirement as well as project constraints. The project scope statement is very useful in future decision making especially when considering new change requests for modifying the project scope. It also helps in defining the project boundaries and clarifying the deliverables within and outside the scope. Project requirements also outlines the tasks or conditions that must be completed to ensure project success or completion. The project scope and requirements provide a clear picture of work that need to be done and aligns the resources of the project with the organizational objectives (Turner, J.R., Kristoffer et al., 2002).

An effective project scope and requirements includes key objectives, project scope deliverables, project scope milestones, high level requirements, assumptions and exclusions, known issues or risks and review and approval of stakeholders. Project scope objectives comprise the objectives that will meet the needs of the customers with respect to the results of the project. Deliverables are the outputs expected of the project which could be identified through a brainstorming session. The outputs expected should support the objectives of the project. project milestones include those events that mark progress across the timeline of the project. This helps in better management of project schedules and financial costs. High level requirements include project specifications described at a summary level. They often include technical descriptions. Exclusions and assumptions describe the specific disclaimer and decisions about the project that aid in description of the scope of the project. With known issues and risks, the team can further redefine the scope on the basis of the known challenges as well as giving the team an opportunity to respond accordingly. Generally, stakeholders review and approval is required before proceeding to the next stage of the project as it formalizes the entire project scope.

6. Project Time Management

Time management generally refers to tools, techniques and skills that help in managing time while accomplishing a given project, task or goal. As a project manager, you must be an effective time manager. To achieve this, it is important to clearly understand the activities related to the project and have the necessary set of skills to plan, schedule and control the timeline of a project. Alongside the skills, it is significant to be able to utilize time management tools to help in analyzing, measuring and assessing your time management skills and techniques. Therefore, the following four steps will help a project manager with time management (Forsyth, 2013).

First, define the activities. Here, a project manager is required to define the tasks, milestones and other relevant activities required to complete the project. Begin with a basic definition of every task and update the details as the project progresses. For example, you can use a grant chart to outline the entire project and add tasks with their respective timeframes. Secondly, after defining the activities, sequence them by putting them in an order in the most sensible way to you. Develops the needed subtasks and logically organize the project. Add dependencies to the sequence of tasks. By using dependencies and not dates help see the true project timeline. Third, estimate activity resources by first assessing the demand and supply of every resource as well as the relationship of the resource to the specific project. Find out whether there are enough resources to complete the task. The project manager also assigns specific persons or job roles to each and every task and review the dependencies on the basis of resource allocation. Lastly, develop and control the schedule. This step requires the manager to review each activity with the entire team so as to complete the buy-in before commencing the project. It also ensures everyone understand their role in the project and be able to commit to the project timeline confidently. The project manager should also monitor carefully the status of the project and ensure the activities are timely completed within scope.

7. Project Cost Management

Cost management describes the process of planning and controlling the project or business budget. Activities involved include planning, estimating, budgeting, financing, funding, managing and controlling costs to ensure the completion of the project within the approved budget. The life cycle of the project, starting from initial planning phase to measuring the actual costs and completion of the project, is covered by cost management. The resources for almost every company is limited, therefore, when investing in a project, companies often need a team management that is well conversant with cost management so as to avoid overspending of wastage of financial resources. The following are the various steps that should be followed by the project manager to achieve effective project cost management.

To begin with is resource planning. During the initial phase of the project, the team need to define the resources required to complete the project activities and tasks. The project manager can use work breakdown structure (WBS) and historic information of comparable projects to define the physical resourced required. This could be the needed time, labor, material, equipment, et cetera. With the knowledge of resource types and quantities, the costs associated can be determined. Second step is cost estimation to predict the amounts it will cost to complete project tasks. The manager can use analogue or parametric model cost estimating methods depending on the level of information. Third step is cost budgeting that provides an overview of the periodic and total costs of the project by allocating the costs over the period of time that the cost will be incurred. This provides a cost baseline for measuring the progress of actual performance. Forth step is cost control which is concerned with measurement of variances on the basis of the cost baseline and tacking corrective actions effective for achieving minimum costs. Here, the project manager may use dedicated control software tools.

8. Project Procurement

Project procurement management is the section of project management plan where the manager determines how the ordered product deemed essential for producing deliverables can be delivered on the specified timeline and within the budget allocations (Lewis & Roehrich, 2009). In order to manage project procurements and acquisitions, the project manager must efficiently collaborate with the purchasing department on the processes of planning and management of procurements. This section is necessary only for those projects that deal with substantial buy-in of capital items or expertise which involve high level of procurement expenditure. Otherwise, it would be enough just to include a list of procurement items and a vendor list in the plan for the project implementation.

The project procurements process is made up of five major steps which include specification, selection, contracting, control and measurement. Specification entails the communication between the purchasing department with the project manager so as to establish and approve a list items to be procured necessary for the implementation of the project. The items approved must be specified by the department for the external vendors. Selection step requires the department to identify the potential suppliers who are capable of procuring the necessary items in accordance to the specifications. The department can do this through vendor selectin criteria that may include service quality, delivery and cost measures. Contracting describes the process of the department communicating with the supplier on the dates of delivery and conditions for payment listed in the procurement contract so as to ensure delivery of the items on time and within the stated project budget. Control calls for tracking the process of delivery, reviewing items ordered against approved product specifications and making necessary adjustments to the procurement contract to ensure successful accomplishment. Lastly, measurement involves the use of a system of performance measures and indicators to assess the effectiveness of the whole process.

9. Project Risk Management

Project risk management involves identification, analysis and response to risk factors throughout the project life cycle with respect to its objectives. A proper risk management is proactive rather than reactive. Once the possible risks have been identified by the project team, they have to choose the risks that are more likely to occur on the basis of past experiences of the probability of occurrence, lessons learned, gut feel and historical data among other criteria (Hubbard, 2009). The various risk responses include risk avoidance which means eliminating the specific threat, specifically by doing away with the cause before it happens. Mitigation which involves reduction of the expected losses in the occurrence of the risk by reducing the chances of its occurrence. Risk acceptance involves accepting the risk consequences and developing a contingency plan to execute in case of the occurrence of the risk event. This is often done for inherent risks that cannot be prevented.

The sources of risks that a project manager should know include taking many projects at the same time, poor control of design changes, problem with team members, poor understanding of project manager’s job, no integrated planning and control, conflicting project priorities, unrealistic planning and scheduling, natural disasters, changing regulatory requirements, inflation, market or operational risks, environmental constraints, changes in technology, legislation and labor and workplace problems among other related risks.

The project manager can use the following risk analysis as a quality problem solving. First identify the risk by reviewing the list of the possible sources of risks and the experience and knowledge of the project team. After which, categorize and prioritize the risks. Secondly, assess the risk which involves identification of the root causes of the identified risk. Thirdly, develop response for the risk to possibly prevent the occurrence or manage the risk. Lastly, develop a contingency or preventative measures to manage the risk when it occurs.

10. Project Quality

Project quality entails meeting the project requirements. Therefore, project quality management involves all the activities and processes needed to ascertain and achieve project quality (Rose, 2014). For a project manager, it is important to consider the following key quality management concepts in order to deliver a high quality project; Customer satisfaction. This ensures that the customer needs are met by the product of the project hence it is important to ensure that the requirements of the project are met. The concept of prevention over inspection ensures that mistakes are avoided rather than corrected since the cost of mistake prevention is much lesser than the correction costs. The concept of continuous improvement refers to the ongoing efforts to improve the processes over time. This is done by analyzing the issues encountered in the course of the project and application of any lesson learned in the future.

There are three key processes for project quality management that the project manager should consider. The first one is plan quality. This involves identification of quality requirements for the project and documenting how the quality requirements will be met by the project. The result of this process may include quality metrics, quality improvement plan, quality checklist and quality management plan. Second is performing quality assurance. This helps in verification of the sufficiency of the project processes so that if they are adhered to, the deliverables of the project will be of high quality. This could be done using the two methods, project audits and project checklist. Third is performing quality control. Quality control ascertains that the quality requirements are met by the project. The two methods applicable for quality control include peer reviews and testing. The outcomes determine the need for corrective actions.

Authorization

11. Recommendations

In summary, in order to effectively and efficiently manage a project, a project manager should consider the following recommendations;

k. Integrate all the processes required to properly coordinate the elements of the project.

l. Identify project stakeholders, assess and rank them so as to identify who you should give priority at a given time.

m. Develop a project team with right skills who will be responsible for completing the project within the constructs of time and the budget.

n. Properly communicate with the team members and stakeholders so as to build a good relationship that is significant for the smooth flow of the project.

o. Develop a comprehensive project scope and requirements that fully define the project boundaries and clarify the deliverables within and outside the scope.

p. Adopt project time management skills and techniques.

q. Adopt project cost management techniques and skills to plan and control project budget.

r. Ensure that resources needed for the project are delivered within the specified time and budget allocations.

s. Effectively identify, analyze and respond to risk factors throughout the project life cycle

t. Consider all the project requirements needed to ascertain and achieve project quality.

12. Approval

I have reviewed the terms of the project and I approve the project with a completion date of 11/05/2018, that is 2 months, and at a budget for not more than $20,000.

Project Sponsor: Melissa Innes

Date: 17/03/2018 Sign: MI

13. Sign off (signatures)

Project Manager: Arnold Packer

Date: 11/05/2018 Sign: AP

Team Member: James Milner

Date:11/05/2018 Sign: JM

Team Member: David Porter

Date:11/05/2018 Sign: DP

14. List of References

Baker, S.K. (2000). The Complete Idiots Guide to Project Management. Indianapolis: Alpha

Books.

College, K.S. (2012). Information technology project management (7th Ed). Boston, MA:

Course technology.

Fletcher, A. et al. (2003). Mapping Stakeholder perceptions for third sector organization.

Journal of Intellectual Capital. 4(4): 500-527.

Forsyth, P. (2013). Successful Time Management. Kogan Page Publishers.

Hein, A.M., Jankovic, M. & Feng, W. et al. (2017). Stakeholders power in industrial

symbioses: A stakeholder value network approach. Journal of Cleaner Production. pp.

923-933.

Hubbard, D. (2009). The failure of risk management: Why it’s broken and How to fix it. John

Wiley & Sons.

Lewis, M.A. & Roehrich, J.K. (2009). Contracts, relationships and integration: Towards a

model of the procurement of complex performance. International Journal of

Procurement Management. 2(2): 125-142.

Lock, D. (2007). Project Management (9th Ed.). Aldershot: Gower.

Turner, J.R., Kristoffer, V. et al. (2002). The Project Manager as a Change Agent. London,

McGraw-Hill Publishing Co.

Robbins, S., Judge, T., Millett, B. and Boyle, M. (2011). Organizational Behavior. (6th Ed.).

Pearson, French’s Forest, NSW.

Rose. K.H. (2014). Project Quality Management: Why, What and How. J. Ross publishing.

15. Appendices (include a copy of your Project Charter

Project Name: Project Management Plan for a Training Presentation on Leading and Managing Project Teams.

Project No.: MGT210RFP2

Project Sponsor: Melissa Innes

Project Creation Date: 17/03/2018

Estimated Start Time: 19/03/2018

Estimated Finish Time: 11/05/2018

Resource estimates (money, time, humans, equipment): The estimated budget for development of the project is $14,000 that will cater for expenses plus additional $2000 that will be paid to the project team. The project will run for six hours a day for two months, excluding the weekends. The project will be conducted by the project team of four people. Equipment required are a computer, printers and notebooks and pens that are estimated to cost $2500. Travel expenses $1000, personnel expenses $500, publishing costs $2000, seeking professional services $3000, airtime will cost $800, electricity expenses $200, lunch expenses $1000, Contingency expenses $2000 and Miscellaneous expenses $1000. The organization is expected to sell and distribute 3000 booklets within the first 12 months at a price of $20.00 each, therefore the expected return on investment is 2.75.

Project Manager: Arnold Packer

Team members: James Milner and David Porter

Background: There is high demand of project team leadership and management in the corporate, public and private sectors. However, team leadership and management is considered to be very essential for organizations to effectively and efficiently manage and lead projects.

Scope Overview: The scope is to develop a project management plan. This will be done through research.

IN Scope: The project will develop a training presentation package that can be delivered and used into the SME business sector through commercial mechanisms, originally in SE Queensland and can as well be expanded into a national training program using a licensee or franchise model. This will include, selling the project management plan booklet to companies, organizations and businesses in SE Queensland who will use it to train their project managers on project management. Expanding it to a national training program will involve the organization using the project management to obtain contracts of training project managers of various organizations at a cost. The project management plan will train project managers how to integrate their projects, how to manage risks, how to procure resources, how to manage time, enhancing communication, coordinating project team and stakeholders and producing a good quality project.

OUT of Scope: The project will not include in the plan organizational management and management of organizational workforce as most of that will be irrelevant for project management.

Business Case (the WHY?): This project will be undertaken following the desire of the client to develop a commercially viable training lecture/presentation on project management training plan. This plan is expected to help business managers of small and medium-size (SME) to understand the value of knowing how to manage and lead internal projects and how to know when to consult an external project manager contractor to offer project planning and direction.

Milestone Schedule:

Milestones / Phases / Stages

Start Date

End Date

Documenting the research plan and preparing questionnaires.

19/03/2018

23/03/2018

Conducting Research and collection of data.

26/03/2018

06/04/2018

Analysis of data from both primary and secondary sources

09/04/2018

13/04/2018

Preparation and presentation of preliminary project management plan to the project sponsor.

16/04/2018

27/04/2018

Review and evaluation of comments of sponsor and concluding the project and submitting to client.

30/04/2018

11/05/2018

Key stakeholders (excluding project team): Who are the key stakeholders?

Position Title:

Name:

Client Company Manager

James Gordon

Risks, Assumptions & Constraints

· Risks – Technological advancements which may render the plan useless in future and piracy whereby the project management plan document could be exposed to piracy.

· Assumptions – The project team will maintain a regular communication with the client, all SMEs use the same process of project development and implementation and lastly, every project management plan is applicable in all SMEs.

· Constrains – Limited time for collection of information, resource limitation in that the budget was tight and lastly, lack of cooperation from participants who were very confidential.

Signatures and Commitment:

Position Title

Name

Signature of acceptance

Project Sponsor Representative

Melissa Innes

MI

Project Manager

Arnold Packer

AP

Team Member

James Milner

JM

Team Member

David Porter

DP

1