Assignment 5: HR Project Management Final Team Report

Assignment 3:: Planning Considerations for the HR Projects

HRM 517: Tony Denkins

Gabrielle McNeely

May 11, 2019

Project management could be described as a process of planning, launching, implementing, monitoring and concluding teamwork intended to achieve specified objectives and as well meet set success criteria within a defined time ("Project Management Methodologies: 1.0 versus 2.0," 2015). The basic idea in project planning is its ability to meet all the targeted constraints. Before launching any project, all the primary constraints are documented. These four primary constraints are time, scope, cost, and quality. Quality constraints optimize all inputs available to come up with a product that will be on par with consumers objectives. When consumers’ objectives have been met in planning, they influence all decisions that would be made on time of accomplishment, its budget and the tasks required. A time which could also be referred as scheduling, scope and budget are all dependent on each other meaning that if one falls out of control, there is a high possibility that the rest will not be met (Kerzner, & Kerzner, 2017).

Scope in project management refers to all the predetermined requirement or the necessary job that need to be undertaken in order to complete the project. Scope in project management is as important as it directly affects the time and budget of the project. Scope majorly deals with prioritization of tasks and handling stakeholders’ expectations ("Project Management Methodologies: 1.0 versus 2.0," 2015). When tasks are set in order, assigning resources becomes efficient. A sense of order kicks out the overwhelming burden and the possibility of forgetting some tasks. It is also vital that your project should not be inclusive of pre-requisite task. This will aid in developing the project efficiently without hang-ups. A project will often encounter with new stakeholders with different demands or original stakeholders who will shift their demand. Developing scope of the project aids in managing changes in demands thereby still assuring stakeholders of their expectations.

Scheduling involves time planning and it is the estimated amount of time by which a given deliverable will be produced. To achieve this, a work breakdown structure is developed in an attempt to reduce the large project to manageable procedures. Scheduling involves creating policies, documentation of activities, sequencing them, resource and duration estimates, analyzing timeline and controlling the schedule (Kerzner, & Kerzner, 2017).

Time management also has to do with the collaboration of team members with the project managers to ensure everything is on track. As seen, breakdown and sequencing of activities are achieved within the scope of project management. Effective scheduling involves first figuring out the scope that is all the activities involved.

Statement of importance: it is worth noting that the set objective will only be met by carefully involving all the required tasks. In as well, the time allocated for each task is imperative to the quality of the desired product (Harrison, & Lock, 2017). This could have a great influence on cost and schedule as well.

The behavior of project players is critical and takes a high portion in setting the achievable strides of progress and the reliability expected by clients. More often than not, it is through collaboration and strengthening of project players’ behavior that vast opportunities for project advancement can be found. It is, however, impractical to achieve all the behavioral practices in one practitioner at a given time. Behavioral practices are therefore classified into organizational and human behaviors. Among the critical ones are leadership behavior, teamwork, communication, and delegation. Leadership as behavioral skills does not independently focus on project manager but every player’s contribution. Pervasive leadership is the ability to explore and continually seeking better methods of progress, energetically working with commitment and having technical knowlwdge about a project. Teamwork is the aspect of partnering together, agreeing as stakeholders, collaborating with each other and outsourcing arrangement. Keeping proper communication is vital in sharing new ideas, making the decision and in dispute resolution. The delegation could be assigned to the project manager to ensure that every team player is aware of what they are doing, how far the project has been efficient and next steps to be followed. The delegation also involves having expertise in the area of work, quality management, and wise decision making. I think the four are most vital since they widely revolve around all aspects of behavioral skills associated with successful projects. The collaboration of team players, communication, leadership skills, and delegation are necessary for identifying problems, solving them and acquiring viable ideas.

Cost basically is making an estimate of the financial figure or commitment needed to successfully run a project. Among the three constraints of project management, the cost is considered the most complex in its constitution. This is because one has to account for every resource required which at a time, the monetary values keeps fluctuating with time. As a result, different approaches to estimation have been taken to account for costs. Physical materials, human workforce, software and hardware, and other outside costs must be considered. Costs such as labor are variable depending on skills, productivity as well as terms of employment of the team members. Cost is aggregated via different approaches either historically, resource costs, vendor bid, parametric or quality analysis (Harrison, & Lock, 2017). Historic data is not an accurate method due to the fluctuation of the value of a product that has been experienced over the past few years. I chose to aggregate my cost constraints using resource cost, vendor bid, and parametric method. I establishing the cost of labor and goods per unit and constituted the amount to a financial figure. On account of the parametric method, the statistical relationship between chronological figures and other variables was obtained. After computing the values from the various methods, it is advisable to apply project management tools to determine the cost variance (Harrison, & Lock, 2017).

Determining cash flows for various activities in the process of accounting for any cash in or out of business and which brings about changes in the balance sheet. In determining cash flows, activities need to be broken down into operating, financing and investing activities. Money from sales of assets is added up to that used to pay loans and sale of stock, then the money used to buy the assets, to get the loans and purchase stock is subtracted. The figure obtained is referred to as a statement of cash flow (Nurnberg, (2015).

Project risks are uncertain conditions that in an event of their occurrence, they have a negative impact to project objectives. Project risk could be personal where it could cause death or loss of income. In as well, incidences such as fire and theft could case property risk (Walker, 2015). It is majorly the role of the project manager to collaborate with tea members to identify possible project risks. Project risk could be identified through brain writing, conducting an interview insight or root analysis.

Brainwriting: this is the process of getting ideas over a particular problem and evaluating each to obtain the best of them all. Where a large group is involved, brainwriting is most effective. Index cards are given to each participant, where one idea is written per card. Second and more subsequent rounds are conducted where cards are swapped and the ideas are improved to generate new ones (Harrison, & Lock, 2017). Eventually, all cards are found to have a stream of ideas that can be revised and consolidated to identify and mitigate risks.

Interviews: insights are best generated when colleagues, stakeholders or clients are interviewed in a less pressurized environment (Glendon, & Clarke, 2015).

While using this approach, a project manager should structure interview questions paying much attention to the key questions. To gain the most, one person should conduct the interview while the other one listens and takes notes as well as answering back to follow up questions. It is also recommended to seek advice from outside experts especially where your team has less familiar with the project you are taking on (Harrison, & Lock, 2017).

Root Analysis: risk registers are often packed with huge risks that are not necessarily risks. At times they are outcomes that have arose from dissimilar situations. These situations too could be taken as risks and plan on strategies to mitigate them. For instance, taking a root cause of a problem as a situation where the project runs out of money, the risks associated with it such as an incomplete project could be identified. For such a risk, the team members could suggest where they could get financial support or better ways to utilize their financial resources so that such a risk does not come up. Among the methods of the root cause analysis method of identifying risk are Ishikawa method, Five Whys method and 5W2H method (Walker, 2015). Questions like why, what, where who and how are helpful in systematically identifying project risk (Glendon, & Clarke, 2015).

In conclusion, project management is a process and cannot be accomplished by one party. It calls for collaboration in its planning of resources, time, and scope to attain desired objectives. Organizing and management efforts are vital for the identification of risks, managing and eventually coming to the success of the project.

References

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

Walker, A. (2015). Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.

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

Glendon, A. I., & Clarke, S. (2015). Human safety and risk management: A psychological perspective. CRC Press.

Nurnberg, H. (2015). Cash Flow Statement. Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, 1-7.

Project Management Methodologies: 1.0 versus 2.0. (2015). Project Management 2.0, 105-140. doi:10.1002/9781119020042.ch6