Question

1. Discuss and explain the fundamental concepts of project management and the tasks required in managing a project.

2. Outline the project process and evaluate projects, preparing and analysing project budgets.

3. Identify and apply project management tools in scheduling; understand and plan basic resource allocation.

4. Be able to report on a project’s progress; design and prepare closure evaluation and reports.

Please can someone help me with this. Thank you very much

Answer 1

Q1. Discuss and explain the fundamental concepts of project management and the tasks required in managing a project.

      Project management is the application of processes, methods, skills, knowledge and experience to achieve specific project objectives according to the project acceptance criteria within agreed parameters. The purpose of project management is to foresee or predict as many dangers and problems as possible; and to plan, organize and control activities so that the project is completed as successfully as possible in spite of all the risks.

There are the fundamental concepts of project management.

1) Project initiation

This is the start of the project, and the goal of this phase is to define the project at a broad level. This phase usually begins with a business case. This is when you will research whether the project is feasible and if it should be undertaken. If feasibility testing needs to be done, this is the stage of the project in which that will be completed.

2 )Project Planning

This phase is key to successful project management and focuses on developing a roadmap that everyone will follow. This phase typically begins with setting goals. Two of the more popular methods for setting goals are S.M.A.R.T. and CLEAR:

S.M.A.R.T. Goals – This method helps ensure that the goals have been thoroughly vetted. It also provides a way to clearly understand the implications of the goal-setting process.

Specific – To set specific goals, answer the following questions: who, what, where, when, which, and why.
Measurable – Create criteria that you can use to measure the success of a goal.
Attainable – Identify the most important goals and what it will take to achieve them.
Realistic – You should be willing and able to work toward a particular goal.
Timely – Create a timeframe to achieve the goal.

3) Project Execution

This is the phase where deliverables are developed and completed. This often feels like the meat of the project since a lot is happening during this time, like status reports and meetings, development updates, and performance reports. A “kick-off” meeting usually marks the start of the Project Execution phase where the teams involved are informed of their responsibilities.

Tasks completed during the Execution Phase include:

• Develop team
• Assign resources
• Execute project management plans
• Procurement management if needed
• PM directs and manages project execution
• Set up tracking systems
• Task assignments are executed
• Status meetings
• Update project schedule
• Modify project plans as needed

1. Project Performance/Monitoring

This is all about measuring project progression and performance and ensuring that everything happening aligns with the project management plan. Project managers will use key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine if the project is on track. A PM will typically pick two to five of these KPIs to measure project performance:

5) Project Closure

This phase represents the completed project. Contractors hired to work specifically on the project are terminated at this time. Valuable team members are recognized. Some PMs even organize small work events for people who participated in the project to thank them for their efforts. Once a project is complete, a PM will often hold a meeting – sometimes referred to as a “post mortem” – to evaluate what went well in a project and identify project failures. This is especially helpful to understand lessons learned so that improvements can be made for future projects.

The tasks that a project manager is responsible for typically include:

1. Planning: First and foremost, a project manager is responsible for formulating a plan to meet the objectives of the project while adhering to an approved budget and timeline. This blueprint will guide the entire project from ideation to fruition and will include the scope of the project, resources necessary to complete it, anticipated time and financial requirements, strategy for communication among relevant stakeholders, plan for execution and documentation, and proposal for follow-up and maintenance. If the project has not yet gained approval, this plan will serve as a critical part of the pitch to key decision makers.
2. Leading: An essential part of any project manager’s role is to assemble and lead the project team. This requires excellent communication, people, and leadership skills, as well as a keen eye for others’ strengths and weaknesses. Once the team has been created, the project manager assigns tasks, sets deadlines, provides necessary resources, and meets regularly with the members. An ability to speak openly and frequently with all stakeholders is critical.
3. Execution: The project manager will participate in and supervise the successful execution of each stage of the project. Again, this requires frequent, open communication with the project team members and stakeholders.
4. Time management: Staying on schedule is crucial to the successful completion of any project. Time management is therefore one of the key responsibilities of a project manager. When derailments arise, project managers are responsible for resolving them and communicating effectively with team members and other stakeholders to ensure the project gets back on track. Project managers should be experts at risk management and contingency planning so they can continue moving forward even when roadblocks occur.
5. Budget: Project managers are tasked with devising a budget for a project, and then sticking to it as closely as possible. If certain pieces of the project end up costing more (or, in a perfect world, less) than anticipated, project managers will be responsible for moderating the spend and re-allocating funds when necessary.
6. Documentation: A project manager must come up with effective ways to measure and analyze the progress of the project to ensure it is developing as planned. A couple common strategies for documenting a project include data collection and verbal and written status reports. Further, it is a project manager’s job to make sure that all relevant actions are approved and signed off on, and that these documents are archived for future reference.
7. Maintenance: Just because a project has been completed doesn’t mean the work ends. There needs to be a plan for ongoing maintenance and troubleshooting. That’s where a project manager comes in: He or she will devise methods for properly supporting the final deliverable going forward, even if he or she is not directly overseeing the day-to-day operations of the initiative.

Q2.Outline the project process and evaluate projects, preparing and analyzing project budgets

          The project process means a process as a unique action and represents the whole project implementation and the internal processes in the project. Work instructions, procedure methods, network plans and tools are also considered. The difference between project process and project management process is: the organization of the project belongs to the goal fulfillment, to the project process and the choice of the corresponding project management elements belongs to the project management process.

           Project evaluation is a systematic and objective assessment of an ongoing or completed project. The aim is to determine the relevance and level of achievement of project objectives, development effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability. Evaluations also feed lessons learned into the decision-making process of the project stakeholders, including donors and national partners.

                The purpose of the project budget analysis page and reports are to allow a manager to view a project in summary or detail against the current budget. Anywhere in the system that a budget analysis is shown, there are a common set of columns made available to you. You are able to select the columns you want to view and store these as memorized reports.

           One main difference between the budget analysis and the profitability reports is that unapproved transactions are shown and they do not interact with the general ledger (in other words they may not tie out exactly to a profitability report).The Project Budget is a tool used by project managers to estimate the total cost of a project. A project budget template includes a detailed estimate of all costs that are likely to be incurred before the project is completed.

Large commercial projects can have project budgets that are several pages long. Such projects often have a large number of costs associated with them, such as labor costs, material procurement costs, and operating costs. The Project Budget itself is a dynamic document. It is continuously updated over the course of the project.

Q3.Identify and apply project management tools in scheduling; understand and plan basic resource allocation.

• Scheduling tools and techniques

Project Managers can use a range of tools and techniques to develop, monitor and control project schedules. Increasingly, many of these can be applied digitally (using programs such as Excel, Microsoft Project and so on). These are the tools and techniques in project management.

• GANTT chart

This is a horizontal bar chart plotted over time (e.g. days, weeks or months). Each activity is shown as a bar (its length based on a time estimate). Depending on task dependencies and resource availability, these bars may be sequential, or run in parallel. Each bar is plotted to start at the earlier possible start date. The plan laid out when the GANTT Chart was created can be compared with actual times taken (plotted below the planned time bars in the chart).

• Schedule Network Analysis

The schedule network is a graphical display (from left to right across a page) of all logical interrelationships between elements of work — in chronological order, from initial planning through to project closure. As a project progresses, regular analysis of this network diagram is a check to ensure the project is proceeding ‘on track’.

• Critical Path Method

The critical path of a project is the sequential string of activities that takes the longest time to complete, recognizing any dependencies between tasks in this sequence (e.g. one cannot start till another finishes). Arrowed lines represent activities with circles at each end representing milestones (start and finish).It determines by adding the times of all activities on the critical path, the earliest time that the project can be completed

• PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique)

PERT charts differ from CPM charts in the way times are calculated for activities. They allow better for uncertainty. For each activity, three estimates of time are obtained: the shortest time (SP), the longest time (LT) and the most likely time (MT). The estimate assigned for the activity is a weighted average of these three estimates. The formula is:
Expected time = (SP + 4(MT) + LT) /6.

• Schedule Compression

A schedule can be shortened two ways:
• crashing: using more resources than planned on the task
• fast-tracking: adjusting the schedule so, mindful of task dependencies, more activities are done in parallel than was planned

• Risk multipliers

This involves building in a time or resource contingency for tasks considered to be at high risk of overrun.

Resource allocation

Resource allocation is the process of assigning and scheduling available resources in the most effective and economical manner. Projects will always need resources and resources are scarce. The task therefore lies with the project manager to determine the proper timing of those resources within the project schedule. Resource allocation is the process of assigning and scheduling resources to project tasks.

Resources are the life blood of project management. Resources are used to carry out the project, and are returned to their owners if not consumed by the project.

There are 6 steps to performing a proper resource allocation:

1. Divide the Project into Tasks

2. Assign the Resources

3. Determine resource attributes

4. Resource Leveling

5. Re-allocate as necessary

6. Track resource utilization

These are explained below,

• Divide the Project into Tasks

In project management, the project is divided into tasks and managed on a task, rather than a project, level. Resource allocation is an integral component of this process because each task is assigned the necessary resources, and the resources are managed by task.

• Assign the Resources

Each task requires resources in order to be successfully performed. As a minimum, most tasks require a human resource to carry out some actions. Usually, the person starts with some input materials which are used to produce an output.

• Determine Resource Attributes

Each resource comes with attributes (project manager lingo) which must be sufficient to carry out the project work. These attributes include:

§ Grade
Grade refers to the technical specification level of the resource. In this case, the length of the fenceposts, the depth of the holes, and the strength of the fence material are all characteristics of grade. In short, the resources must be adequate for the task.

§ Skill
Skill is the same as grade but specific to the human resources. Bill and Bob, in this case, must know how to pound the fence posts and be strong enough to drive the posts.

§ Quality
Quality and grade is not the same thing.  Quality refers to the degree to which the resource meets specifications, that is, if poor quality fence material arrives at the site it is not acceptable and must be rejected, adding unexpected costs and schedule implications. This is different from the grade of the fence material, which can be low. The fence may not need high grade fence material. Low grade is acceptable (in the right circumstances), whereas low quality is never acceptable.

§ Resource-specific attributes: Size, shape, length, speed, color, strength, etc.
Each resource has many specific attributes that define its function. for example, if the paint is supposed to be brown, but a green paint arrives on site, it is probably still high quality as well as grade, yet not sufficient for the project. The required attributes must be determined individually for each resource.

§ Availability
In project management lingo this is called a resource calendar. The resource calendar can range from a simple listing of employee vacation time to sophisticated material tracking software. But its purpose is to ensure the project resource is available when needed.

• Resource Leveling

Project schedules are usually created without the resources in mind. That is, the network diagram and Gantt chart are manipulated to minimize the schedule duration based on the number of hours or days required to carry out each task, but the resources assigned to the task might be highly volatile, incurring sometimes major cost and schedule implications.

• Re-allocate as Necessary

Throughout the project, resource re-allocation tends to be a constant and inescapable function of the project manager.

Resources are scarce. They sometimes do not show up on time, are needed by other projects, or lose their usefulness over time. Many things can happen that require a shift of resources from one task to another, or a change in the project schedule or budget.

• Track Utilization Rates

It is a surprisingly common occurrence that a resource arrives at a project and sits idle for a long period of time.

It is equally common that project managers have no idea that the resource is being paid for but not being used.

Q4.report on a project’s progress, design and prepare closure evaluation and reports.

      A progress report is exactly what it sounds like – a document that explains in detail how you far you’ve gone towards the completion of a project. It outlines the activities you’ve carried out, the tasks you’ve completed, and the milestones you’ve reached. A progress report is typically written for a supervisor, colleagues, or client. You might write it on your behalf or work with your teammates to produce a team progress report. Depending on the scope and complexity of the project, you might need to give a progress report weekly or monthly, or for every 25% project milestone.

A project closure report is the final document that assesses the success of the project and also catalogs project deliverables and officially ends the project. The primary objective of a project closure report is to provide a complete picture of the successes and failures of a project. The project closure report should include all important project information that would help stakeholders, auditors, and future project managers to clearly understand what was accomplished during the project and how the work was completed.

Objectives of the project closure process are to:

• Verify client acceptance of the project’s products.
• Make sure that the products can be supported once the project is disbanded.
• Review the project’s performance by comparing to baseline documents.
• Assess and review the benefits to the project that have been realized, and the benefits that will be realized once the project has been completed.
• Work on any risks and issues that remain open by following up on recommend

Writing a Project Closure Report is not as simple as it seems. There are key steps to be followed. The steps relate to a specific part of the project and must be followed to the dot for effective results. Here are the steps to help you write your Project Closure Report.

1. Give The Project Overview Including A Summary Statement

The first step to writing a project closure report is to give your general overview of the whole project and the summary statement. An overview statement is a brief description of what the project was about. It looks at the ‘what’ side of a project. It looks at what needed to be done during the project and how it was actually done. In addition, an overview looks into and describes things like the Opportunity/Problem, Goal, and Objective, Success Criteria and any risks or assumptions about the project.

2. Describe The Results And Outcomes Of The Project

Before you set out to do your project, chances are, you first wrote down your key performance and indicators and key targets. In addition to the KPI’s, another thing you probably had was outcome targets. On this section, the goal is to look at the whole project in relation to the Key Performance Indicators that you would have set and see the outcomes achieved from that.

What are the project outcomes? Project outcomes refer to the level of performance or achievement that would have occurred due to the activities of the teams on the project. However, measuring project outcomes correctly is not an easy task. There are three metrics that you can use to determine if your project outcomes were positive or negative. The metrics are stakeholder satisfaction, project cost, and overall quality of the project.

3. Describe The Project Scope, Project Schedule, And Project Cost

This step is closely related to the above but independent in its own way when it comes to your project closure report. Defined, the project scope is the part of a project where you document the specific goals, deliverables, features, deadlines, and the tasks of a project. It looks at everything that’s needed to get a project through from beginning to completion. This part of the Project Closure Report will look at the overall scope of the Project in relation to the actual project schedule and ultimately the cost.

4. Project Performance Analysis

The project performance analysis can easily qualify as the most important step of the whole project closure report. The performance analysis expands on step 3 and really dives deep into the budget and compares the actual costs and schedule of the project with the set baseline. To be effective, the performance analysis has to be subdivided into three parts namely, the Goals and Objective Performance, the Success Criteria Performance and the Schedule and Budget Performance.

5. Project Highlights (Important Aspects Of The Project)

The project Highlight Section looks at the highlights of the whole project throughout the whole timeline. It usually includes high-level project information such as the requests and any other issues that arose within the project.

Compiling the highlight report and adding it to the project closure report should not be hard. It is recommended that you should at least make a highlight report at the end of each week throughout the course of a project updating the different stakeholders involved in the project of the project’s current progress.

6. Write and Outline The Challenges Faced And Risks

Every Project has its challenges and risks. This section will enable you to highlight all the challenges that might have been faced throughout the course of the project. One thing about challenges especially in relation to projects and project management is that they can be difficult to foresee. Apart from that, no matter how carefully you plan at the inception of the project, you can never plan around every potential challenge.

7. Write About The Lessons Learned During Implementation

One source of valuable lessons for any project is the challenges. When you overcome the challenges faced when doing a process, chances are, you will learn one or two things. Use this section of your Project Closure Report to highlight what you learned.

8. Add Recommendations Based On Lessons Learned

The final part would be writing the recommendations. Recommendations can be anything from the proposed improvements to the maintenance schedule for the final product. In addition when writing the lessons learned, if there are some things on the lessons that affect the project directly, then such lessons should go with their recommendations for easy referencing.