ITECH2250: Critical Analysis of an IT Project Management Plan

This report offers a critical analysis of a Project Management Plan (PMP) for the development of the Sovereign Hill App. The report dissects the plan's organization, including the project name, description, sponsor details, and team structure, highlighting areas for improvement. It evaluates the management and technical approach, scrutinizing deliverables, documentation, references, definitions, project responsibilities, and technical processes. Key areas of concern include the project name's lack of clarity, insufficient detail in the project description, and the absence of a clear risk management strategy. The report provides specific recommendations to address these shortcomings, emphasizing the need for a more descriptive project name, detailed budget estimations, a defined project team hierarchy, a comprehensive risk management plan, and clear project objectives. Overall, the report aims to identify weaknesses in the PMP and suggest improvements to enhance the project's success.

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IT Project Management
[Author Name(s), First M. Last, Omit Titles and Degrees]
[Institutional Affiliation(s)]
Author Note
[Include any grant/funding information and a complete correspondence address.]

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The project plan under critique is for the application development if Sovereign Hill App, which
shall be the main focus of this report. Typically, the plan has a detailed approach that shall be
used to plan and execute the development of the Sovereign app which is envisioned to be a
cutting edge application that shall run on both Android and Ios making visitor plan for their trip
in prior before embarking on the journey. The initial phase involves the plan on how the project
shall be executed.
A critical analysis of the plan of the project management has been detailed in this report with the
key recommendation given focused on addressing the key issues raised by this critique. It is
typical of the project manager to use the various modern software project management toolkits to
give some high-level simulations before a commitment of resources for the project is committed.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive summary.....................................................................................................................................2
1 Introduction.........................................................................................................................................4
2 CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF PMP.................................................................................................................4
2.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................................4
2.2 Organization................................................................................................................................4
2.2.1 Name...................................................................................................................................4
2.2.2 Description...........................................................................................................................5
2.2.3 Sponsor’s Details..................................................................................................................6
2.2.4 Project manager and details of team...................................................................................7
2.3 Management and Technical Approach........................................................................................7
2.3.1 Deliverables.........................................................................................................................7
2.3.2 Documentation....................................................................................................................7
2.3.3 Details of References...........................................................................................................8
2.3.4 Definitions............................................................................................................................8
2.3.5 Project responsibilities.........................................................................................................8
2.3.6 Management and the technical processes..........................................................................9
2.3.7 Management objectives......................................................................................................9
2.3.8 Project controls..................................................................................................................10
2.3.9 Risk management..............................................................................................................11
2.4 Work To Perform.......................................................................................................................11
2.4.1 Work breakdown structure................................................................................................11
2.5 Schedule....................................................................................................................................14
2.6 Budget.......................................................................................................................................15
3 Conclusion.........................................................................................................................................15
4 Recommendation..............................................................................................................................16
References.................................................................................................................................................16

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1 INTRODUCTION
Any project requires a comprehensive project management plan to ensure the project start and
ends within the stipulated time and within the budget. The current PMP to be critiqued shall be
focused on the areas of project scope, the project sponsors and any other key PMP components
that the analysts deemed important to dig deep into.
The documents are structured into sections with the first sections describes the project whose
PMP is under criticism. The second section is the actual criticism where key components of the
PMP is looked deeply for flaws which are highlighted. The last section details some of the key
recommendations to the project manager based on the issues highlighted by the critique. These
recommendations are critical for the correction of the issues raised by the critique
2 CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF PMP
2.1 INTRODUCTION
The following components detailed in the subsequent sections details the various components
that formed part of the critique
2.2 ORGANIZATION
2.2.1 Name
Every project starts with a good name hence it is very critical to come up with a name that users
can instantly relate to and gives the descriptive information of the whole project. After a
thorough evaluation of the project name “Sovereign Hill App”, the critique has finds the name no
to reflect on any of the actual designations of the project. One is left to wonder what the Hill App
is all about since the name is somehow confusing and has nothing to do with travel.

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A more interesting title could have been “Crossing Sovereignties App’, this title not only
provides information that actually relates to traveling across different sovereignty but also
provides critical information about the project under development and to some extent provides a
purpose for which the project is to be done (Furlong & Al-Karaghouli, 2010).
2.2.2 Description
The description of the project answerers the “why” and the “how” the project shall be
implemented. The PMP has failed the benchmark for a complete project description as it has not
covered the way the project timeline and key milestones which are somehow specific for each
PMP documentation. The project management plan has not provided any estimation of the
budgets. The only part the project description has scored is the clear and simple language the
project management plan has used in describing the project.
A sample project charter is as shown below

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2.2.3 Sponsor’s Details
The project sponsor forms key project stakeholder as it is the sponsor who commits most of the
resources for the given project. It is therefore vital for the details of the project sponsor to more
detailed in the project management document. A thorough analysis of the project management
plan has revealed it has the sponsor’s telephone contacts, the sponsor’s email address contacts,
and the complete name of the sponsor. It is however noted that the project management plan has
not provided secondary emergency contact that can be used to reach out to the project sponsor in

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an event the primary contacts faile and the sponsor is critically required to be contacted
especially in an emergency (Talley Jared L., Schneider Jen, & Lindquist Eric, 2016).
2.2.4 Project manager and details of team
A good project team set up should have a reflection on the hierarchy of the associated roles and
responsibilities of each of the members of the project team. The project management plan under
critique does not provide such a hierarchy of team members in terms of roles and responsibilities.
The project management plan has only provided the contact details of the team members with no
mechanism to know the roles and responsibilities that each member of the team shall do with
relation to their skillset.
2.3 MANAGEMENT AND TECHNICAL APPROACH
2.3.1 Deliverables
The project management plan under scrutiny has provided a means to classify deliverables based
on the milestones achieved in the implementation strategies of the project. Each of the phrases
that are successfully completed is what forms the deliverables. It is, however, important to note
that, although keenness has been done in trying to identify and provide documentation of the
deliverables, there is no proper framework in place to have the deliverables in terms of resources
requires to achieve such deliverables.
2.3.2 Documentation
Documentation is a critical project management plan component. After thorough scrutiny of the
project management plan, the document, contrary to the expectation has indicated rather a

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deficiency in the details on how the project configurations and the complete source code are not
protected by necessary copyright laws and any special permissions under which the code can be
altered based on business or legal requirements. Protection of the source code is critical in any
project management plan hence no loose ends should be left out in the vendor-client
relationships
2.3.3 Details of References
It is always a best practice to have a reference section that details the project management plan.
The details in the references section should be accompanied by details of the project section or
deliverable which can be used by the team for accurate implementation of the project and future
maintenance practices. The project management plan under scrutiny has failed to provide
technical references section for the team member making errors prone in the execution of the
project.
2.3.4 Definitions
The definitions indicate the detailed meaning or the implied name. The project management plan
under review clearly lacks any section set up for the definition of terms and should be urgently
updated to meet the requirement.
2.3.5 Project responsibilities
A good project management plan should have a detailed portion of the roles and the
responsibilities that are assigned to the team members. The best mechanisms to outline these
roles and responsibilities is through the use of RAM(Responsibility Assignment Matrix). The
standard procedure is having some tool to check the effects of the various reviews on the general
progress of the project.

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The document under scrutiny has a lot of confusion shall be experienced in the execution of the
plan since there is no clear mechanism that the management can audit the progress of the work
against any benchmarks established. Besides this, there is generally inefficient resource
allocation which has the potential to affect the execution of the project deliverables. A more
efficient means is to first have s detailed framework which details the assigned roles and
responsibilities.
2.3.6 Management and the technical processes
The technical details of the various processes that are to be implemented by the project are key.
Such details will form the basis of hiring the correct personnel for a given deliverable. Critical
analysis of the project management plan shows rather shows that the project manager has not
taken into account the key technical details of the various processes, This will raise issues with
the implementation as risks related to software procurements, hardware procurement and any
other technical components needed to deliver a given project deliverable may arise. The
management of quality and the scope are critical components of the technical processes that must
be taken keen of.
2.3.7 Management objectives
Most successful projects teams are always constituted under a good project leader and supportive
management who are keen on the overall project objectives. The set objectives act as the guiding
light during the whole life of the project. The objectives can be used by the team members to self
evaluate their activities, track their project progress. Any deviations realized from the objectives
shall be corrected earlier to make sure the project is always on track.

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The project management plan under criticism has not set project progress objectives clearly
enumerated to act as the guide for the team. Therefore, high chances of confusion during the
execution of project deliverables are bound to happen with possible loss of track. It is therefore
critical that the project manager addresses these important issues by ensuring the business
requirements plans are set up and enumerates the key areas that the team needs to address
immediately.
2.3.8 Project controls
It is critical for a project to have some level of controls, monitoring and evaluation since the
project without controls tends to lose progress track, the resources get poorly allocated, deadlines
are mostly missed and key milestones are severely missed which may result in the overall poor
implementation of the project, worst case failure of the whole project.
The project management plan under scrutiny has no mechanism to carefully track the project.
There is a missing component of roles and responsibilities, a delegation of duties hierarchy
which is key in driving the project to implementation. The plan lacks any strategic approach that
the project manager can implement to address issues of quality assurance and quality control,
quality management and how to review interactive processes periodically.
Another rather key issues are the lack of a clear plan of how the complete project is to be handed
over to the clients, the various benefits of the application, both short term and long terms. The
project plan should at least document the various benefits that are accrued to the implementation
of the project for the client.

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2.3.9 Risk management
Every project has some level of uncertainties before, during and even after the implementation of
the project. Nearly all the phrases of the project have some risks associated with it. It is,
therefore, critical for the project manager to have some mechanisms in place to address project
risks during the project lifecycle. A good project management plan should, therefore, include
some mechanism to identify, assess, plan and make implementation and strategies to mitigate
some of the risks envisioned.
The project management plan under scrutiny lacks an essentials documentations on how the
various risks are to be managed and the mechanisms to share the risks among the various project
stakeholders. A good risks management plan should again detail of how the exit of a key
stakeholder can affect the project execution. Contingency plans are therefore necessary to be in
place to address this risk. Moreover, the document seems to lack the details of the various risks
that the project is likely to phrase during the application development lifecycle. Some of the
essential risks that the project manager should focus on includes, technical, financial, skills in a
situation where the skilled project team leader dessert the project team or they falls sick, system
functionality risks in case the developed software does not meet the various operational
performance matrix
2.4 WORK TO PERFORM
2.4.1 Work breakdown structure
The work breakdown structure details the various tasks and its related activities for each of the
employees is one of the project management tools that a project manager can use to track the
progress, allocate resources and demands, track project milestones. The document under review
clearly lacks a means that the project manager can deploy to identify project milestones.

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It is vital to ensure details about the work in incorporated into the work breakdown structure to
indicate the various assigned tasks and key deliverables which is important for tracking to be
done more effectively and efficiently. In conjunction with the work breakdown structures, the
project plan should include some graphical tools that indicate the various approach taken in
detailing the project activities. The various project dependencies should be included in these
graphical tools to ensure task dependencies can be easily noted
A sample workbreakdown structure is as shown below,