Project Management Strategies for Success

This assignment delves into the crucial aspects of project management, emphasizing efficient strategies for organizational success. It highlights the importance of clear task contracts with vendors, effective communication channels between stakeholders, and a vigilant project manager who proactively addresses potential issues. The text underscores that successful projects are driven by managers who possess practical market knowledge and execute tasks effectively.

Project Management Plan
February 12
2017

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Table of Contents
Task 1:.........................................................................................................................................................3
Project Planning..........................................................................................................................................3
Characteristics of a project..........................................................................................................................3
Significance of Work Breakdown Structure.................................................................................................3
Gantt chart..................................................................................................................................................5
Techniques for investment appraisal..........................................................................................................7
Risk Management Plan................................................................................................................................7
Aspects of project quality............................................................................................................................8
References:..................................................................................................................................................9
Task 2:.......................................................................................................................................................10
Introduction...............................................................................................................................................10
Project definition and scoping...................................................................................................................11
Project failures and successes:..................................................................................................................11
Unique features of IT project management..............................................................................................13
Project management life cycle..................................................................................................................13
Project scope management.......................................................................................................................14
Project time management.........................................................................................................................15
Project cost management..........................................................................................................................16
Project quality management.....................................................................................................................16
Project human resources management.....................................................................................................17
Project communication management.......................................................................................................18
Project risk management...........................................................................................................................18
References.................................................................................................................................................20

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Task 1:
Project Planning
Characteristics of a project
A project can be defined as a set of interrelated activities which are required to be completed
within given a deadline and budget. Following are the key characteristics of a project:
A project has well-defined performance requirements like response time, scalability, the
accuracy of results, ease of navigation, security, workload specifications, energy efficiency etc.
Every project has a pre-decided start date and end date. There may be delays in schedules but the
project manager should ensure to meet the deadlines (Ahmad, Mallick and Schroeder, 2012).
Each and every project is different. The project variables like features, scope, financial resources,
human resources, technical resources, timelines, processes, quality, risks etc. make every project
unique.
The entire project can be divided into several smaller tasks. This helps in project management.
A project is intended to provide benefits to the organization. For example, a construction project
helps to generate revenues (Ahmad, Mallick and Schroeder, 2012).
Significance of Work Breakdown Structure
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is used in project planning and execution. The entire project
is split into manageable chunks of work that can be easily executed by the project team. WBS
helps to understand a complex project in a better manner because each level provides detailed

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information. WBS helps to estimate the project cost and time required for completion (Beghini,
2013). This can be done by allocating time and budget to each section. WBS can also help in
making assessments about possible risks in a complex project. On the basis of WBS, the project
manager can develop a communication plan.
Following is a simple example of Work Breakdown Structure for development for a new
product:
On the basis of the level of WBS, resources are allocated and responsibilities are assigned to
team members. The level-1 of WBS includes market research, product design, product
development, marketing and project management. The level-2 of WBS includes focus groups,
research evaluation, and preparation of design document, bill of materials, production design and
marketing strategy (Beghini, 2013)

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Figure 1: WBS for a project that aims to create a toy for children belonging to the age group of
5-9 years
Gantt chart
The critical path for the given project is: A-B-C-F-H
22 days are required to complete this project.

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Figure 2: Activity on the Node (AON) network diagram
TASK-A
TASK-B
TASK-C
TASK-D
TASK-E
TASK-F
TASK-G
TASK-H
12/26 1/5 1/15 1/25 2/4 2/14
START DATE
DURATION (DAYS)
A(3) B(2)
C(3) E(5)
F(8) H(6)
D(1)
G(2)

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Figure 3: Gantt chart for the given project
Techniques for investment appraisal
It is important for an organization to make assessments regarding long-term and short-term
investments. Investment appraisal is done for equipment, Research & Development activities,
property, promotional campaigns etc. There are several techniques for investment appraisal like
the rate of return, Net Present Value (NPV), payback period, benefit/cost ratio, Return on
Investment (ROI), life-cycle cost analysis etc (Henderson, 2004).
Risk Management Plan
Any project can face unexpected challenges. Risk management plan is an effective tool that
identifies potential challenges that can hamper the project. There are several risks in a project
like technical issues, changes in market conditions, increase in cost, ill-managed schedules,
political issues, manpower shortage, natural calamities etc (Altunel, 2017). Different risks are
encountered in different phases of a project. A risk management plan involves risk avoidance,
transfer, acceptance, and reduction. Risk can be avoided by not undertaking activities that can
threaten the completion of the project or cause deviation from quality standards. Project
managers can reduce the impact of risk by taking corrective actions in a timely manner. Risk can
be transferred by signing legal contracts with clients or third parties like insurance agencies. Risk
management plan involves risk identification, risk evaluation (on the basis of likelihood and
impact), risk mitigation and development of contingency plan (Altunel, 2017).

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Aspects of project quality
Project quality means meeting all the required project specifications while satisfying the clients
or customers. It is important to ensure adherence to expected deliverables. Project quality is
monitored with the help of periodic audits, project testing and preparing checklists (Atkinson,
Crawford and Ward, 2006). There are several aspects of project quality like performance,
aesthetics, conformance to industry standards, reliability, durability, prevention of failure,
customer satisfaction and continuous improvement over time. The project should be designed in
a manner that meets the customer expectations (Atkinson, Crawford and Ward, 2006). The cost
of Quality (COQ) is associated with poor quality and failures. It includes expenditure associated
with prevention of errors, inspection of project elements, internal failure, and external failure. An
organization should strive to improve its products/ services provided to clients and manage
project issues in a systematic manner. The project should be capable of achieving the desired
objectives like Return on Investment (ROI) (Atkinson, Crawford and Ward, 2006).

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References:
Ahmad, S., Mallick, D. and Schroeder, R. (2012). New Product Development: Impact of
Project Characteristics and Development Practices on Performance. Journal of Product
Innovation Management, 30(2), pp.331-348.
Altunel, H. (2017). Agile Project Management in Product Life Cycle. International Journal
of Information Technology Project Management, 8(2), pp.50-63.
Atkinson, R., Crawford, L. and Ward, S. (2006). Fundamental uncertainties in projects and
the scope of project management. International Journal of Project Management, 24(8),
pp.687-698.
Beghini, G. (2013). Work Breakdown Structure, lo strumento cardine della gestione di un
progetto. PROJECT MANAGER (IL), (14), pp.33-38.
Henderson, L. (2004). Encoding and decoding communication competencies in project
management – an exploratory study. International Journal of Project Management, 22(6),
pp.469-476.

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Task 2:
Introduction
This report will develop a great understanding regarding the project management plan. The
objective of the report is to help the project manager to understand how to manage the relocation
project of an organization through his knowledge and skills. The use of the different project
management concepts and theories by the project manager such as the stages of the project
lifecycle, project management schedule and plan and its implementation with the different
methodologies which will be helpful for the success of the project management will be discussed
in the report.
A project has been explained as a non-permanent endeavor that does possess a definite start and
conclusion. It brings out some unique result, product, and the services. The project in concern is
progressively discussed which means that the work is performed in various phases.
The project management is nothing but properly progressing and managing the task by balancing
the constraints of quality, scope, schedule and time with the cost effective resources included
some risks in view. It can be accomplished by planning, Initiating, monitoring, performing,
directing and then at the end closing. A manager of the project should have proper knowledge
and understanding for the project he is working upon so as to get the desired goals accomplished,
he should also have proper skills and appropriate knowledge about the project management tools
and techniques.

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Project definition and scoping
When any of the projects is chosen or considered, its comprehensive feasibility study is acted
upon and performed based upon so many project selection methods such as the Scoring Model,
Expert Review, Cash-flow techniques etc. by which the project is chosen for forwarding
development. Here the project sponsor makes the project charter plus selects a manager for that
project to look after the resources and the project itself. Here, first of all, the Project definition
comes. For Illustration, it may be making up of an Interface that extracts useful data from the
SAP system to main Reporting system (Atkinson, Crawford and Ward, 2006).
All kinds of the Project scopes are very clearly discussed and explained. What are the main or
the most needed requirements as far as the project is concerned? An intelligent project manager
should have the skills to pay proper attention to all the aspects of the project management cycle
plus he should follow those channels with proper attention. The Stake holder's Milestones, name
and business cases are discussed.
Project failures and successes:
Being the project manager of the project will look at the aspects which may result in the success
and the failure of the project. There are so many aspects which result in the failure of any
project; some of the most important kinds of them are discussed as below if proper care being
taken the projects can be saved from being getting wasted:
Failure:
The improper and wrong analyzation of the significant facts of the cash-flows down.In
conditions of any sudden high risks condition, the unavailability of any quick mitigation plan
leads to the failure of the plan. Big and ambitious projects do often get failed in the interim as the

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managers do not possess any such plan which may prevent that plan in case of any future
unexpected risks or challenges (Atkinson, Crawford and Ward, 2006).Most of the time, improper
understanding of the facts of the projects also leads to the failure of the same, wrong techniques
and their selections also results into the project failure.
The Improper availability of funds to run the project efficiently or less budget than to run the
show smoothly or also the security of the availability of the resource leads to the project failure,
schedule mismanagement is yet another fact which results in project failure.
Successes
A project which has been studied completely and whose requirements are well explained to all
the workers working on it, or those projects which are well-defined leads to certain success and
achievement of the required goals.
The efficient and hard working team deployed to run the project is yet another fact which ensures
that the project ends up to be a success story. Improper staff leads to wastage of resources to a
greater extent and finally leads to failure at each step. Apart from the workers, the manager who
is the responsible person to run the show is also to be a learned man, with proper managerial
skills, he is, in fact, the most important key to the success of any project (Ahmad, Mallick and
Schroeder, 2012).
Ability to take quick and big decisions also ensures that the project does not fall prey to the
adverse circumstances if any in future. Plan B which donates the shifting of a plan to another
safe mode if the plan do not works ensures that there is no wastage of the resources and the
productivity of the project do not get hamper.

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Unique features of IT project management
There are so many functional as well as non-functional requirements which are associated with
the information technology project. The functional ones are those which are mentioned in the
proper project charter that comes under a particular scope while the Non-Functional ones are
those such as the perfect usage of bandwidth, speed of the data shifting or transfer, high
scalability and availability are some other requirements that come as the implicit one, which an
information technology project should adhere (Ahmad, Mallick and Schroeder, 2012). It also
has got unique deliverables to its end such as the Code or the Integration templates, Design
documents, the proper Test case files/report etc. Thus each and every stage output shall become
an input refer the succeeding stage.
Project management life cycle
At the time of start, the project follows so many managerial life cycles that have various stages
such as Design, Requirement Gathering, Testing, Coding and the Maintenance. The Water Fall
software development model: Here the whole project gets started and developed in a very
systematic and sequential manner. The comprehensive requirement planning or the gathering is
done well at the beginning (Altunel, 2017). The succeeding stage begins as soon as the previous
stage ends. The resources can be well managed. It is very complex stage to manage any kind of
alteration in scope or any kind of changes in between for the project.

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Iterative: In a project, many people work parallelly in so many areas and in various stages. There
exists a possibility of some risk of rework as well. Agile methodology: Here the requirements
refer the story backlog and are divided into various sprints of around two to three weeks
(Wojciech Macek, 2011)The stories then get developed in various sprints and the change or the
acceptance is taken at the time of demoing at the end point of every sprint. It has been considered
as the most important, effective and present practical approach.
Project scope management
It ensures that the project must have each and every required ability to make sure that the work
gets completed successfully well on time. The task/work is then broken down into some
packages by bringing into use of the technique known as the Work Breakdown Structure
(Beghini, 2013).. It can be processed by the proper surveys, expert advice, building prototypes,
group discussions, benchmarking and context diagrams.

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All kinds of the requirements decisions are to be made as per the Plurality or the Majority.
These work packages or the deliverable-oriented grouping of the project components illustrates
the comprehensive scope of the concerned project.
Project time management
At this stage, the work packages are to be further broken into tasks or activities. Further, these
activities or tasks are to be arranged in a proper sequence and their dependency is written down
which lies upon other tasks. Lags and leads for these activities should be judged and calculated
(Beghini, 2013). Proper logical relationships which lie between the activities are to be found out
and identified, such as in case they have Start to Start or Finish starting relationship.
Using Activity-On-Node (AON) technique activity diagram is created.

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Bu taking the use of the PERT, it estimates the best completion time for any of the WBS
calculation (Beghini, 2013).Taking the use of these, develop the proper schedule of the entire
identified project schedule, WBS or the Time is also calculated.
Project cost management
Each project, either big or small is clearly unfulfilled or incomplete unless or until it does not
come up with a proper monetary budget. In case the cost of the project goes somewhat over the
monetary budget, then the PM does there cost estimation calculations by taking into use the Cost
Estimate Tools with the (EVM) which denotes the Earned Value Management
technique(Wojciech Macek, 2011). The PM is expected to properly measure and access the
performance of the project, kits growth vice versa the Cost and Schedule. Being the project
manager it is required to alert such kinds of variances to the people who are the project sponsors
and arrange to get their affirmation and approvals for further course of action (Butt, Naaranoja
and Savolainen, 2016).
Project quality management
It is a universal true fact that Low or inferior quality is always adverse for the growth of any
project and is basically considered as the most important key to failure(Henderson, 2004).
Quality is something upon which the clients do not compromise, as the guarantee to success is
vested along with the quality, in case any product of inferior quality is rolled out in the market,
there is quite possibility that the clients may ignore to use such items and move toward those
which provides value for money to them(Henderson, 2004). Being Project manager will make

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sure that the product provides a good return to the clients and that the customers are satisfied out
of the services from that particular product (Crosby, 2012).
The important terms such as prevention and correction are significant to be well understood by
the project manager. As the project manager will follow the strict and prevented approach
towards correcting the general processes (Crosby, 2012). Multiple numbers of tools can be
brought into use to ensure that the required end results of the projects are achieved such as the
Seven Tools of quality (Flowchart, Fish Bone, Pareto Diagram and so on), Control charts which
donate the rule of seven), DOE etc.
Project human resources management
The proper human resource department and management plan will be created so as to determine
and ensure that each and every one is involved in the project running process. The human
resource plan also ensures that the hard workers do get a proper reward as per their hard work
(Labuschagne and Brent, 2005)). Being a project manager will also ensure that an MS Project

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Tool or Gantt chart is to be made in order to identify the number of human resources required at
any particular stage how many resources is required at what stage of the project job work.
Proper RACI chart is required to get the best out of the team and also to get the perfect team
rebound which shall lead the others also for the fulfillment of the organizational goals
(Henderson, 2004). The success of the team and the proper completion of the project with
desired goals is ensured only in case all kinds of quarrels happening in the team are duly sorted
timely and also the hard workers are properly appreciated (Rozenes, 2011).
Project communication management
The management success story also depends upon proper communication atmosphere within the
organization. Significant methods such as the Push, is used so as to address the huge volume of
important information (Ahmad, Mallick and Schroeder, 2012). SharePoint, Pull, which is sent to
some of the specific recipients such as email etc and the Interactive Communication like
conceals and physical meetings are taken into use to ensure used all the workers of the
organization are moving into the same and single direction of growth (Ahmad, Mallick and
Schroeder, 2012).
Project risk management
There is always a possibility that even the well-managed project may run into some kinds of
misfortune. In order to have a proper check upon these problems, proper utilization of the risk
planning is required to be done by the project manager at timely intervals so that these do not
rotten the projected growth at any piece of time(Bergeson, 2014).
Well, educated and trained project manager makes a Risk register and records all kinds of risks

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present or future in that in which their severity, impact, owners, and ranks are properly defined.
Project procurement management
The project manager is required to properly manage and administers the concerned vendors. In
the beginning, he has to properly define the task contract between the vendors and his company
which clearly explains the terms and conditions on which both has to work upon (Bergeson,
2014) The terms are to be properly understood by both the ends so that no future conflict arises.
Conclusion
There are various manners which can help us run a business in an efficient manner. The project
manager is required to be extra vigilant refer the timely growth of the organization and have full
concentration on the working of the project, he has to be a line of contact for every employee
working on that project so that any disconnect may not destroy everything (Rozenes, 2011)Any
kind of defect if arises is needed to be dealt with immediately and extra care is given so that this
may not happen again. The one and only difference which lies between a successful and an
unsuccessful project are that the managers of the successful ones are highly alert and learned
ones with practical knowledge of the market changes. These managers do not do different things
but they just do things differently(Bergeson, 2014).

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References
Ahmad, S., Mallick, D. and Schroeder, R. (2012). New Product Development: Impact of
Project Characteristics and Development Practices on Performance. Journal of Product
Innovation Management, 30(2), pp.331-348.
Altunel, H. (2017). Agile Project Management in Product Life Cycle. International Journal
of Information Technology Project Management, 8(2), pp.50-63.
Atkinson, R., Crawford, L. and Ward, S. (2006). Fundamental uncertainties in projects and
the scope of project management. International Journal of Project Management, 24(8),
pp.687-698.
Beghini, G. (2013). Work Breakdown Structure, lo strumento cardine della gestione di un
progetto. PROJECT MANAGER (IL), (14), pp.33-38.
Bergeson, L. (2014). EPA's New, Final Work Plan Risk Assessments and What They Mean
to You. Environmental Quality Management, 24(2), pp.89-96.
Butt, A., Naaranoja, M. and Savolainen, J. (2016). Project change stakeholder
communication. International Journal of Project Management, 34(8), pp.1579-1595.
Crosby, P. (2012). Characteristics and techniques of successful high-technology project
managers. International Journal of Project Organisation and Management, 4(2), p.99.
Henderson, L. (2004). Encoding and decoding communication competencies in project
management – an exploratory study. International Journal of Project Management, 22(6),
pp.469-476.

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Labuschagne, C. and Brent, A. (2005). Sustainable Project Life Cycle Management: the
need to integrate life cycles in the manufacturing sector. International Journal of Project
Management, 23(2), pp.159-168.
Rozenes, S. (2011). The Impact of Project Management Methodologies on Project
Performance. International Journal of Information Technology Project Management, 2(2),
pp.64-73.
Wojciech Macek, W. (2011). Methodologies of Project Management. Contemporary
Economics, 4(4).