MNG00785: Project Management Essay - Beachside Cottage Repair Project

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments. This essay analyzes project management techniques used in a cottage repair project.

MNG00785
Assignment 3

Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Situations discussed.....................................................................................................................................3
Critical evaluation.......................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................4
References...................................................................................................................................................5

Introduction
This essay is regarding the work undertaken during the project management of Beachside cottage
repairing work. In this essay, a critical evaluation of project management tools and methods have
been presented which includes what was done by the team during the project and what was not.
This also contains a brief introduction of all the project management technique that has been
used in the repairing work. The project was based on repairing the cottage for renting purposes.
The repairing work included painting, washing, and carpentry. This work had to be done with
one contractor and two apprentices. The budget and project duration was already provided.
Hence this essay covers all the methods used by the team to successfully manage and finish this
project such as Gantt chart, risk management plan, and stakeholder communication plan. The
critical evaluation contains negative and positive impacts of the project management methods
used in the project.
Situations discussed
In this essay, the three most important stages of project management which have been discussed
and which have been really helpful for the project team. These activities are a Gantt chart, risk
management plan, and stakeholder communication plan. Gantt chart has been used to define the
activities along with the resources required for it. The risk management plan is used to identify
and provide a solution to the risks that might take place during the project. Stakeholder
communication plane shows the frequency of communication along with the medium of
communication.
Critical evaluation
According to the experience gained as the project manager of the cottage repairing project, in my
opinion, a risk management plan is the crucial part of a project management plan. The project
was based on repairing the cottage for renting purposes. The repairing work included painting,
washing, and carpentry. In larger projects, this plan is highly valuable because there are a lot of
chances of a risk occurring through a project which may include financial risks, risks of theft or
damaged equipment, etc. these risks have to be handled on time so that the project quality, cost
and time schedule doesn’t get affected. Preparing a risk plan is thus very necessary because, in
construction projects, equipment failure is one of the possible risks. Gantt chart has also been
equally important because dividing the project into smaller and more manageable tasks makes
the project less complex. In stakeholder communication plan, all the stakeholder are contacted
within a specified duration of time so as to know the problem they are facing, the tasks which
have been completed and tasks which are remaining.
As the positive aspects of the Gantt chart are that the bigger picture of project management can
be seen by making a Gantt chart and dividing the tasks and assigning human resources and

budget to each task. The negative experience faced during the project management was that
Gantt chart doesn’t let the creative ideas bloom. It only let the team stick to the previously made
plan and sometimes it will get difficult to change the plans. As no project can be strictly followed
according to the plan and changes are needed to run the project successfully as risk management
plan also helps to evaluate the risks beforehand which might occur during a project
(Kloppenborg, Anantatmula & Wells, 2018). Gantt chart also makes the whole team stick to the
dates specified in the Gantt chart which is a negative aspect because it may lead to demotivate
the team members (Ballesteros-Pérez, Larsen and González-Cruz, 2018). Team members don’t
get the flexibility to change the work done according to what suits them the best. Instead of
making the plans too rigid, there should be techniques such as agile methodology in which work
is done in a small sprint cycle and until a cycle gets completed, the other cycle cannot start. This
makes the plan more flexible and the duration of each sprint cycle is also decided with the help
of specific two members, one who work slowest and the other one who works very fast. This
gives the flexibility to the team workers also to manage the work properly (Serrador and Pinto,
2015).
Work breakdown structure also used in the project management gives a little scope of flexibility.
To create a perfect plan for the project, the manager needs to identify all the tasks properly
beforehand. In case any task gets missed which might be due to less interaction with other teams
involved in the project, can make the whole project go wrong? Also at a time, there is too much
work overload on a project team member if the project work structure is decided before the
project starts (Shekhar, S. and Kumar, U., 2016).
According to the challenges faced in the project management, the agile method can be used as
the best-suited project management criteria. Other than that risk management plan has been used
by the team which has been very effective in managing and mitigating the risks that occurred
during the project. During the next project I will make sure to follow the risk management plans
and stakeholder communication plan beforehand and according to the risks identified which have
the highest probability, flexible Gantt chart can be prepared or in other words a sprint cycle can
be made which will allow the team to work according to the plan created for each sprint cycle.
Due to flexibility in work, if one sprint cycle doesn’t get completed, the project activities of that
will move to another sprint cycle.
Conclusion
Conducting the project management of any project with the help of project management
activities such as project timeline preparation, budget evaluation, risk management plan, work
breakdown structure, and Gantt chart, is very important. The risk management plan is used to
identify and provide a solution to the risks that might take place during the project. Stakeholder
communication plane shows the frequency of communication along with the medium of
communication. As these methods help to identify budget, time and resources needed for the
project beforehand although Gantt chart has not been very useful in managing the tasks strictly

and needed a few modifications. Other than this all the methods have been very useful in cottage
repairing project management task.
References
Serrador, P and Pinto, JK 2015, ‘Does Agile work?—A quantitative analysis of agile project
success’, International Journal of Project Management, 33(5), pp.1040-1051.
Ballesteros-Pérez, P, Larsen, GD and González-Cruz, MC 2018, ‘Do projects really end late? On
the shortcomings of the classical scheduling techniques’, JOTSE: Journal of technology and
science education, 8(1), pp.17-33.
Shekhar, S and Kumar, U 2016, ‘Review of various software cost estimation techniques’,
International Journal of Computer Applications, 141(11), pp.31-34.
Kloppenborg, TJ, Anantatmula, V & Wells, KN 2018, Contemporary Project Management, 4
edn, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA, USA, 360-377.