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Essay: Project management

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  • Subject area(s): Project management essays
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  • Published: 21 September 2015*
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  • Words: 1,136 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 5 (approx)

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Question 1
1.1 Project

A Project can be defined as a complex human endeavour to create change with in a set budget and time to provide specific goals and out comes that is unique to an organisation.

1.2 Project Management

Project Management is a set of principles to effectively manage the process and activity of planning, organizing motivating and controlling resources and procedures to achieve specific goals in a unique environment.

1.3 Project life cycle

Project life cycle define the beginning and end of a project with a project sequence that is necessary to fulfil project goals or objectives. All projects can be mapped to four basic phases. Initiation, Planning, Execution & Control, Closing. The project life cycle is an important tool to manage the sequence of tasks that need to be completed in a project.

1.4 Programme

A Programme is more than one project that is managed jointly to provide better management overview. These project may contain ongoing operations as well as repetitive undertakings.
Question 2
The Project Life Cycle has been divided into 4 basic phases:
‘ Initiation
‘ Planning
‘ Execution
‘ Closing

Project Initiation
The Initiation Phase is the backbone of the project where goals is set in the life-cycle. In this phase a challenge or an opportunity is identified and solution options are presented. A feasibility study will be conducted to identify the correct solution for the project. The solution needs to be approved and the project are initialized. A Project Manager is appointed and the objectives, scope and structure of the new project is outlined in the Project Charter. The project team and environment is established to head the project.
Project Planning

The Planning phase involves the creation of a set of planning documents witch will guide the project team through the project.

The key stages are as follows:

‘ A Project Plan is critical to the success of the project. It identifies the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) of phases, activities, tasks, dependencies and timeframes to be under taken to complete the project.
‘ The Resource Plan should give a detailed listing of the resources required (labour, equipment and materials) to give the Project Manager a complete overview of the resources needed.
‘ Financial Plan describes the financial resources required for the project. This would be the total cost of labour, equipment, materials.
‘ The Quality Plan list the quality targets that is required for the project. Quality Assurance and Quality Control are implemented to make sure that the level of quality is achieved.
‘ The Risk Plan identifies all risks in the project and minimize the impact on the project.
‘ An Acceptance Plan is created to ensure that the project outcome meet the customer’s expectations
‘ Communications Plan describes a schedule of communication events and activities to be provided to all stakeholders to keep the informed of the progress of the project.
‘ The Procurement Plan identifies all material and products that needs to be sourced from external suppliers.

Project Execution
In the Execution phase the project team create the physical project deliverables outlined by the project plan. A range of management processes are implemented to monitor and control the outcome of the project. This include the following
‘ Time Management – Monitor time spend on project.
‘ Cost Management – Recording the consumption of the project budget.
‘ Quality Management ‘ Ensure that project deliverables meet the customers’ requirements.
‘ Risk Management ‘ Monitoring and controlling project risks.
‘ Issue Management- Involves resolving any unforeseen issues.
‘ Acceptance Management ‘ Carrying out review to gain customers approval of deliverables.
Once all deliverables have been produced and accepted and signed off by the customer, the project is ready for closure
Project Closure
The Closure phase ensure that the project criteria have been fully satisfied. All project stakeholders must be informed that the project have been closed and a release plan need to be identified for the project deliverables, documentation, supplier contracts and resources. Following closure a Post Implementation Review will help to determine if the requirements was met within scope and budget.
Question 3
3.1 Project Scope Management includes all the necessary processes to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully (PMBOK 2000:189)
This definition refers to all elements that is included and not included in the project. The following is the major scope management processes:
‘ Initiation: Commit the organisation to begin next phase of project
‘ Scope planning: Creating a project scope management plan that documents how the project scope will be defined verified, controlled.
‘ Scope definition: Dividing major deliverables in to smaller groups that is easier to manage.
‘ Scope verification: Formalising acceptance of project scope
‘ Scope change control: Controlling changes to the project scope
3.2
Project Name: MFP Printer Project
Project Manager Francois Swanepoel
Project Tracking Number: 123456
Date: 2014-04-14
Project Justification:
The current lease agreement for the multifunctional printers has come to the end of its term.
Overview of Deliverables
The company needs to replace a 115 MFP printers country wide
Specific Project Objectives and Success Criteria
Objectives
‘ A tender needs to be awarded to a suitable company to renew the lease agreement for 60 months
‘ An assessment needs to be done to specify the correct amount of equipment
‘ The new equipment need to enable the company to move to a paperless environment
‘ The management of the equipment need to be centralized
‘ The replacement needs to happen at a cost of no more than R250 000 pm
‘ The rollout needs to be completed by the 2014-07-25

Success Criteria
‘ Cutting paper use by 20%
‘ Replacing the equipment at R250 000 with a cost saving on the amount spend per page printed
‘ Completing the project by the 2014-07-31
Scope Management Issues
‘ There will be a global contract signed for the entire company that will cover all orders for the equipment
‘ Any requests for changes to equipment needs to be email to the IT manager.
‘ Any support issues needs to be logged with the help desk.
Primary Stakeholders and Roles
Francois Swanepoel ‘ IT Manager
Anthony Swart ‘ Enterprise Architect
Peter Grey ‘ Financial Director
Darryl Thomas ‘ Helpdesk Manager
Kate Templeton ‘ Operations Manager

Key Assumptions
‘ There is a Network and telephone point where the printer is located.
‘ There is sufficient power.
‘ The supplier have stock and spare parts
Signatures ‘ The following people agree that the above information is accurate:
Project team member
Project team member
Project team member
Project sponsor and/ or authorizing manager(s):
Project sponsor and/ or authorizing manager(s):
Question 4
4.1 The basis of project integration management is that it contributes to the co-ordination of all project processes and systems to ensure maximum benefit. All aspects of the project should be co-ordinated in terms of cost, schedule, and quality and staffing. For example, when there are changes to the schedule of the project, it will have an impact on the cost of the project and may even have an impact on the quality. The staff an assignment of resources to tasks will also be affected.

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