Project Management Report Proof Reading Services

Project Management Report Proof Reading Services

Introduction 

Project management is defined as the disciplineof utilizing standards to deal with a venture from origination through finishing. It is also referred to as PM.Project management supervises the arranging, sorting out and actualizing of a project. A venture is an endeavour with particular beginning and end parameters intended to deliver a characterized result. AProject is not quite the same as progressing procedures, for example, an administration program or a benefit management program.The projectmanagement plan is relied upon to successfully and productively directs all parts of a projectfrom starting to the end of the project, with the perfect objective of conveying the result on time and on budget plan.

A project planfrequently starts with the charter of the project, and it is relied upon to recognize potential difficulties ahead of time and handle any barriers as they emerge so as to keep the project on track. The present study would focus on the concepts of project management with respect to Nightingale Project where a change is required to gain the first mover advantage among the competitors; the project team needs to reschedule the project.

Project life cycle of the project

1. Initiation

This is the first stage of the project where a project idea is examined to identify whether the project is technically and commercially feasible. A project team works on it to identify whether the project is beneficial or not.

2. Defining and planning the project

In this the stage the scope for the project is finalised and documented and all the deliverables are identified. During this stage, project charter is defined and all the stakeholders agree to it. During this stage time lines for the projects are defined and budget is also calculated (Phillips, 2013).

3. Project launch

Project activities are sub divided and are allocated to the teams as per their skills. Each activity is to be completed in the allocated timeframe so that the project is completed in time.

4. Project performance

This is an important stage as in this stage the project managers monitor the project’s progress. This is done by measuring the plan versus actual work. Monitoring is also done with respect to budget to check whether the project is not over budgeted.

5. Project close

Once the tasks for the project are completed and the client has approved the outcomes, project can be considered close. After project tasks are completed and the client has approved the outcome, an evaluation is necessary to highlight project success and/or learn from project history (Kloppenborg.et.al. 2014).

Project management process followed

Scope management

The project management processes include controlling and defining that what kind of elements are going to be used in the project to maintain the accessibility and achievement of objectives. Scope management refers to analyze the limitations and potential of project that can be helpful in decision making for the manager. This process provides information about the possible outcomes of the given project and areas of lacking that need to be improved. This process defines aims and objectives of project that documented in the pre-project planning and areas of working including the performance indicators and monitoring process. In order to achieve the objectives the organization set the scope plan to identify and manage the changes within the project according to condition and risk factors that can influence the outcomes (Whitaker, 2016). This approach has been incorporated by the manager by critically analyzing the standard of project and arrangement of resources.

Through scope planning and management process the manager of organization develop the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) that is a project management technique to complete the project by dividing it into small elements using the hierarchy of working tasks. Additionally, the management process consider and define the time and budget of the project. For better results and outcome scope of the management process helps to incorporate the changes and implementation of activities using the good practices.

Schedule Management

Schedule management is a vital process of project management to ensure the on time accomplishment of project. It provides the guidelines related to the schedule of all the phases of project development. It not only guides the execution team to provide project outcomes on time but it also gives project updates to the stakeholders of the project. Schedule management use various types of charts and graphs such as Gantt chart, PERT chart to prepare a guideline related to the time and schedule of each project activity. For schedule management it is essential for the organisation to identify the estimated time requirement based on complexity and possible risks. It is also require in schedule management to identify the inter dependencies of various activities (Jiang and Tang, 2014).

Because with the analysis of inter relationships better guidelines can be provide to organise the project activities on appropriate sequence and time, one after the other. Schedule management can also use network diagrams to represent different project activities in graphical manner along with their schedule and inter dependencies. Schedule management also includes the simultaneous accomplishment of project control and monitoring. It is the responsibility of the project manager to monitor the timely accomplishment of project along with the quality so that goals can achieve on predefine time limits.

Risk Management

The success of project significantly depends on the possible risks, which may involve in the various stages of project development. Risk management activities analyse the associated risks and make appropriate strategies to eliminate the impact of these risks. Risks are the undesired impact of certain factors, which definitely affects the project in an adverse manner and thus can even cause the project failure without goal accomplishment. Risk management strategies first identify the probable risks of project and analyse the impact of these risks in terms of project damage. For the risks critically influencing the growth of project appropriated mitigation strategies are develop to ensure the error free project outcome (Nguyen and Chua, 2014).

Contract Management

The project implementation and development consist of various stages. Several stages require product and services, which are, not present within organisation and thus are obtain from the sources outside the organisation or from the third parties. It is mandatory to acknowledge the administration about all project requirements such as technical specifications and resources require by each stage of project along with the schedule details when they will be require. So that organisation can ensure on time availability of all requirements and project completes on time.

Contract management involves the following phases.

1.In first phase a resources plan is develop which analyse the all-possible requirements of goods and services along with their quality, quantity and schedule. It also ensures that requirements do not exceed the budget considerations.

2.In second phase implementation strategies are begin by documentations such as proposal request, selection criteria and terms and conditions for contract.

3.In final stage of contract management organisation, select the most appropriate supplier for its project (Wibowo.et.al. 2016).

Budget Management

The projects that the organisation takes needed to be completed on the pre determined budgets set by the finance department. This section requires the greater scrutiny time, when the project is running and even after the project is finished. Financial resource that the management provide will has to managed to ensure the financial viability and profitability along with keeping in mind the requirements of the investors. This section includes the maximum risk as one incorrect allocation of funds or decision or wrong allocation of expenses can lead to instable stage for the projects. These allocations are needed to be fulfilled with the limited budget allotted. Budget management processes involves such activities for framing the budget to achieve the need of the proposal (if donor funded) and budget is required to achieve the accounting requirement of the organisations. The main reason for failure of the project would be poor prediction of the project with related to the budget and further it is been seen at the time of proposal process, organisations are in hurry to achieve the deadlines by cutting the budget processes (Webb, 2016). It can result that while executing the project, the estimation will not depict the clear needs of the projects.

To overcome this problem, the organisations can apply activity based budgets which can be compared with the real needs. In activity based budget, the work breakdown structure is applied to predict the value of every activity and the remaining value to be added till total budget is met. Through this technique cost the relevant cost can be identified of each activity and also total cost of the proposal. The crucial stages in budget process management involves:-

Consultant, material and equipment will fulfil the resource requirement

Cost estimates of all the resources included in the project including human resource too (Parkinson and Chew, 2014)

Creating the baseline for budget that will record and report the expenditures in budget creation.

Information Management

It is the process needed to assure the timely and suitable generation, gathering, distribution, storage and final disposal of information related to budget. It is been monitored approximately 80% of the time manager communicate the project requirement through reports, telephone, meetings and emails. The foremost stage of planning is describing the information requirements of the stakeholders, identify when they require it, how the data, facts and figures will be allocated and last how to assess the reliability, relevancy and usefulness of the information.

The plan will include the explanation of the information that required to be transferred by the project, it will determine who has authority to collect, edit and then distribute the same. Different stakeholder has different needs from the project and gives the prescription of the content and time for the information needed.  Allocating the information is above from the act of transferring the information and involves stages to ensure that information is understandable and especially framed as per the donor’s reports (Mir and Pinnington, 2014). It includes assessment of the usefulness and relevancy of the information allocated and it is crucial stage as it includes the information to develop stakeholders support and to create the relationship with beneficiaries and communities. The plan of communication is basically influenced by the type and requirement of the stakeholders. And for this different report and messages are prepared to communicate to different stakeholders. This is because every stakeholder has interest and the organisations need to fulfil the same by preparing different formats reports.

Change management

Change management is a project management process for identifying a change and further implementing the change. There are three aspects of change management namely adjusting, controlling and affecting the change. For managing the changes, it is important that the organization considers all the three points (Turner, 2014). Change management requires notifying all the relevant stakeholders about the change so that they can incorporate plans to manage the changes.For managing the changes in a project the manager use integrated change control systems. Advantage of the system is that it helps in identifying the scope of the changes.  Following are the change management steps that can be used for implementing the changes:

Scope change control system:

In order to follow the proposed changes and meet the standard with minimum risk this type of change management activity used. According to this, the project manager analyzes the future and current needs of clients that can be vary as per the situation (Burke, 2013). To incorporate the changes in ongoing project the scope change management process is helpful in defining the scope as well meeting the objectives (Cameron and Green, 2015).

Schedule change control system:

The planning of project and process of meeting objectives get influenced by internal or external acts and force to make changes in the define project. For example, the project cannot be run until the proper supply of the raw material as well arrangement of other resources. The delay in the delivery of raw material as well utilization of resources push for changes in the schedule of tasks and activities of individual at workplace. In this change management process the director make the decision for rearranging the resources as well as redefine the time of completing the project. Apart from that, the role of supervisor in this situation is to identify the alternatives process to accomplish the task in the given period of time (Hayes, 2014).

Control system:

To manage control and maintain relation with organizational activities a contract has been made between the buyer and seller. The change in project activities is being done by considering the both sides that are involved in planning of the project. Any progressions that influence the connection between the client and the merchant travel through the agreement change control framework. The venture chief may not manage this specific change control framework, but rather concede to the association's focal contract or acquisition office.                 

Scope change control:

The proposed changes have clear impact on planning and development approach of project. To incorporate the changes as well forecasting for implementing possible changes needs to be done according to scope (Hornstein, 2015). The demand of customers and contribution of the supplier have significant impact on the changes that made by project manager.

Integrated Change Control

During the project execution and implementation, several changes might be introduced to integrate in the project. Integrated change control is associated with the project activities to measure the impact of the changes in the project constraints. Major action in the integrated change control is to accept or deny the changes according the project progress and out coming impacts on the project. However, it is not necessary to integrate all the changes in the project against the requirements.

The proposed change on the project should be indentified for the out coming impacts on project as the cost, timescale, quality, scope and customer satisfaction are important characteristics on which the adaptability of the project sustains (Verzuh, 2015). Therefore, it is recommended to analyze and evaluate the change for all the dimensions of influence.

There are basically two pre-requisites those are used to measure the impact of change:

1.The baseline project plan for realistic activities

2.The complete product as well as process scope

However the changes are inevitable, the project manager has the responsibility to minimize the changes by pre-identifying the roots and causes. The lack in planning for the resources and requirements encourage the changes in the project. It is suggested to make keep the space to integrate the changes in project rather than to tightly couple the project activities on fix number of actions.

Integrated change control is a crucial task and project manager works as the centre to handle the activities according to planning and requirements (Leach, 2014). Following are some of the important questions those are required to be answered in order the changes on the project:

1.Requirement engineering should be robust and near to perfection to determine all the requirements as early as possible.

2.Project risk identification is required in comprehensive manner.

3.Define constraints of cost and time on project.

4.Define the process for change management.

5.Strict to change management process for better outcome.

6.Create temple to introduce and meet the change request.

7.Ensure the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders to approve changes.

8.Re-evaluate the business case if the outcomes from the changes are not adequate.

9.Discontinue the project if the changes are not capable to meet the objectives and are disappointing.

10.The baseline of the project should become the carrier only for approved changes.

Basically the changes can be classified into two categories. On in which the project has no impact on progress and other in which the cost, time, baseline, quality and risk all needs reconsiderations.

Proposed changes for project

Change requirements in the project

The project needs a change in the following activities:

Cost of project management:  The costs of project management would decrease as the activities will be outsourced to other companies for getting the work done in lesser time than it was actually planned (Verma, 2012).

Costs on product requirements: The project requirements like screen, tape mechanism, database, pager, barcode reader and more will be the same. This is because the requirements of the raw materials will be the same.

Designing costs: The costs for designing (Review, Document and Design) will be increased as the outsourcing fee will be paid for getting the work done but if time is considered, the work will be done is a lesser time which will reduce the final or total cost of the project.

Integration and testing costs: This cost will increase as the activities which are outsourced will be required to be tested for quality. The prototypes will be tested and then the final decisions will be taken. This will increase the costs of the complete project (Warner, 2011).

Reduction in time: The time which the team used to take in designing and constructing the equipment will be outsourced. This will bring an expertise to the activities and the time will also be saved. This will help the project team in completing the planned deliverables on time. The project will get the first mover advantage. The target will be achieved before the deadline which will provide sales advantage to the company (Warner, 2011). We should focus on the different project process groups such tasks 22 and 23 where the Lab and Field tests take place for 40 days, reducing it to a total of 20 days will give us advantage, and more explained in the attached excel sheet.

These changes had reduced the project cost almost by 20% lowering it from $1,960,500.00 to $1,663,760.00 with almost a 20% reduced time as per requirements.

Change Control Board

The authority of the project manager can be accomplished to determine the decisions as control authority or facilitate the team to adopt the decision according to change. Change control board is required to review and analyze the change request for manager or team.  The board is made up of key stakeholders in experts, functional managers, sponsors and project manager areas of the organization (Heagney, 2016). The board has complete authority to adopt the change or deny. The changes proposed were approved by the board as it allowed cost reduction and early project completion

Process for Making Changes

Changes are always difficult to attempt within the already going process. Therefore the manager needs to focus on the elimination of the changes in the project so that time and cost on the re-planning can be reduced. After the identification of the root cause of change, it is required to identify the change itself. A change originator can be defined as sponsor, team, project manager, customer, management and ant other stakeholder of the organization. Identification of the impact of change is next step to consider. The project can identify the changes as early as possible to reduce the impact. The forth step of change making is to create a change request which is further followed by change management plan. Fifth process is to accomplish the integrated change control. This step is related to identify the answer how the project constraints will have the impact of changes. Change assessment is required to resolve the question and then look for the alternative (Martinelli and Milosevic, 2016). Then review the change for the approval and document the changes made in project if any.   

Conclusion

From the above study, it is been considered that project management is process of undertaking the proactive process and planning to complete the given tasks with specific requirements. The report has discussed about project life cycle and process of project management as well as explained the budget management activities. In the next, part report has provided information about the change management and integrated change and control to meet the organizational objectives.

References

Books and journals

Burke, R., 2013. Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA.

Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2015. Making sense of change management: a complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.

Hayes, J., 2014. The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave Macmillan.

Heagney, J., 2016. Fundamentals of project management. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.

Hornstein, H.A., 2015. The integration of project management and organizational change management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), pp.291-298

Jiang, Z. J., and Y. X. Tang. "Research on integrated management of schedule and cost in construction projects based on critical chain." In Industrial Engineering and Manufacturing Technology: Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Manufacturing Technology (ICIEMT 2014), July 10-11, 2014, Shanghai, China, vol. 4, p. 135. CRC Press, 2015.

Kloppenborg, T.J., Tesch, D. and Manolis, C., 2014. Project success and executive sponsor behaviors: Empirical life cycle stage investigations. Project Management Journal, 45(1), pp.9-20.

Leach, L.P., 2014. Critical chain project management. Artech House.

Martinelli, R.J. and Milosevic, D.Z., 2016. Project management toolbox: tools and techniques for the practicing project manager. John Wiley & Sons.