Project Management Report: Key Elements and Implementation

This report provides a comprehensive overview of project management principles, covering key aspects from initiation to closure. It begins by identifying the key players in a project, including the project manager, functional managers, team members, and upper management, emphasizing their roles in ensuring project success. The report then delves into the development of a strong project proposal, highlighting essential elements such as research-backed ideas and clear articulation of project activities. It further outlines the crucial steps involved in project planning, from stakeholder identification to risk assessment. The report also examines the critical role of a project manager in effectively implementing a well-designed project plan, emphasizing skills such as risk management and resource planning. Finally, it discusses the major activities in the project close-out phase and techniques to improve project schedule accuracy and reliability, providing a complete guide to successful project management.

Running head: NORMS OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Principles of Project Management
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Table of Contents
Answer to question 1:......................................................................................................................2
Key players in a project:..............................................................................................................2
Answer to question 2:......................................................................................................................3
Development of a good project proposal:....................................................................................3
Answer to question 3:......................................................................................................................4
Steps involved in a project planning:...........................................................................................4
Answer to question 4:......................................................................................................................5
Role of project manager for an effective implementation of a well-designed project plan:.......5
Answer to question 5:......................................................................................................................7
Major activities involved in the close out phase of a project:.....................................................7
Answer to question 6:......................................................................................................................7
Techniques to improve the accuracy and reliability of project schedule:....................................7
References:......................................................................................................................................9

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Answer to question 1:
Key players in a project:
Key players within a particular project or situation are the most important aspect that is
involved in it. In project management, key players play a vital role in the matrix environment and
are a critical factor for the project’s success (Young 2016). The key players within a matrix
environment in a project management includes-
1. Project manager: Project managers are one of the unique key aspect of project administration
and is responsible for the entire scheme activities to complete them satisfactorily. The role of a
project executive within a scheme includes:
 Determining the scheme objectives, scheduling and resourcing the budgets.
 Ensuring the feasibility of the project plan while reaching out to the performance targets.
 Managing the project risks while identifying them.
2. Functional managers: Besides the project manager, functional managers also play as the key
players in project management who are responsible for orchestrating the assignments of the
staffs in different projects while providing them the necessary resources in accordance to their
skill set.
3. Project team members: Another important key player of project management is the project
team members who are responsible for satisfying the request of both the project managers and
functional managers. The role of project team members includes performing tasks with high

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standard technical skills; performing assignments based on the budget of the project and
maintain the skills asset of other team members
4. Upper management: The role of the upper management within the project management is to
create an organizational environment while developing policies and procedures required for the
development of the project. As a key player, the role of upper management includes creating
mission and goals for the selected project.
Answer to question 2:
Development of a good project proposal:
A well-defined project proposal is an unique set of documents that helps in selling a
project to the stakeholders and sponsors (Africa and Ethiopia 2015). Different projects have their
unique set of project proposals focusing on the substance of the proposed plan of the project. A
well-developed project proposal should include the following:
1. It should deliver a reasonable arrangement of the idea obtained via research method.
2. It should exemplify the implication of the idea.
3. It should reflect the relationship of the impression with the past actions.
4. It should clearly articulate the activities needed to be adopted for the proposed project.
A well-defined project proposal must consist of two elements which forms the base of a
solid project proposal. These are project planning and proposal writing where the entire project
plan will be converted to a project document (Camden et al. 2015). A well-formed project
proposal can be developed while outlining the detailed and direct manifestation of the project

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design that can be presented to the outside world in an approved format so that it can be
recognized and accepted universally.
Answer to question 3:
Steps involved in a project planning:
An integral part of project management is project planning that relates the scheduled
tasks with the Gantt charts and subsequently plans the progress of the report within the project
environment. A successful project planning includes procedural steps in project management
while creating detailed documentation of the project to ensure its success (Aga, Noorderhaven
and Vallejo 2016). The documentation related to scheme planning includes all actions that are
required to define, coordinate and integrate additional plans within a project. A project plan helps
in defining the execution stage, monitoring stage while controlling and scanning the
requirements in depth based on the structure of the project. The steps that are involved in project
planning includes the following:
1. Identifying and meeting with the stakeholders: Stakeholders are the ones who get affected due
to the result of the planned project. It includes customers, end users etc. Identifying and meeting
the stakeholders helps in keeping the objective of the project aligned with the interest of the
stakeholders while creating a project plan.
2. Setting and prioritizing goals: After enlisting the needs of the stakeholders, it is important to
prioritize the goals of the project by outlining its main objectives and conveying the same to the
other project members.

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3. Defining project deliverables: Identifying the project deliverables is as important as
identifying the project goals as it also includes setting out deadlines for specific deliverables.
4. Creating project schedules: After identifying the project deliverables, the next important step
is to allocate time for each of the tasks under the project schedule (Nicholas and Steyn 2017).
Developing a project schedule also helps in identifying the project responsibilities and the
detailed execution process of the tasks.
5. Identifying issues and completing risk assessment related to the project: Each and every
project has some risks associated with them and so assessing those risks is one of the vital part in
project planning as doing so will help in reducing the risks in upcoming after the achievement of
the scheme.
6. Presenting the project plan to the stakeholders: After addressing each and every step in project
planning the last stage includes conveying the project plan in detail to the stakeholders to avoid
any type of conflicts on addressing their ideas and expectations.
Answer to question 4:
Role of project manager for an effective implementation of a well-designed project
plan:
The overall responsibility of any project lies with a project manager as he is responsible
for initiating any plan, design, monitoring, and execution of the project while ensuring to control
the risk associated with it (Bredillet et al. 2015). For implementing a well-designed project plan
a project manager must have a combination of various skills including the ability to detect
assumptions and resolving conflicts with management skills (Kerzner 2017). A good project

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manager should also have well-defined risk management skills in order to formally address the
risks impacting the likelihood of the success through the entire lifetime of the project (Harrison
and Lock 2017). Besides attaining these skills, the role of project manager should also include
the following activities:
1. Preparation and describing the project scope
2. Development and sequencing the activities related to the project.
3. Planning the resources effectively.
4. Developing schedules based on the project timeline.
5. Approximating suitable timings for the scheme tasks.
6. Estimating the costs of the scheme effectively.
7. Developing overall budget of the project.
8. Creating charts and schedules
9. Analyzing the risks associated with the project.
10. Regularly monitoring and reporting the progress of the project.
11. Planned influencing
12. Commercial Associating
13. Regulatory the excellence of the overall project deliverables.
14. Realizing the benefits of the project.

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15. Implementing Scalability, Interoperability and analyzing portability within a project.
Answer to question 5:
Major activities involved in the close out phase of a project:
Among all the phases that fall out under project management, project conclusion phase is
the fourth stage of the assignment lifecycle (Fahri et al. 2105). The closure stage of project
development contains of closing of the project in a formal way in order to generate a report
based on the general achievement of the scheme sponsor. The significance of the closure phase
of project lifecycle includes providing a fixed point at which the entire project will be accepted
while recognizing the objectives of the deliverable set during the actual phase of project
initiation.
The key activities that falls under the project closure phase include:
1. Acceptance of deliverables:
2. Finalizing the outcomes achieved from the project:
3. Developing the project report
4. Updating and archiving the documents:
Answer to question 6:
Methods to recover the accurateness and dependability of project agenda:
Estimating the exactness and consistency of project schedule is defined as an informed
assessment of uncertain events within a project (Hussein et al. 2015). It is the owed

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responsibility of the project managers to accurately improve the reliability of the scheme
schedule through proper planning and execution phase (Willems and Vanhoucke 2015). The
techniques that project managers can apply in in order to expand the precision and reliability of
project agenda are as surveys:
1. Top-Down Estimates: In this technique the project manager looks for projects that are similar
to the project hand. This enables him to estimate the project schedule at a similar duration with
proper accuracy and adjustments.
2. Bottom-Up Estimates: This technique involves estimating the project tasks with detailed
accuracy rolling up to higher levels. This technique includes detailed completion of the work
breakdown structure.
3. Three point estimating technique: This technique includes estimating procedures which
includes-pessimistic estimate, optimistic estimate and most-likely estimate (Chen, Che and Lin
2016). Using this technique does not require any prior experience and results in accuracy of the
project schedules within a single point of estimate.
Implementing this technique is a great benefit for project managers as it helps them in
comparing the actual cost to that of the base line costs.

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References:
Africa, H. and Ethiopia, I., 2015. A PROJECT PROPOSAL. Final Proposal (unveröffentlichtes
Manuskript).
Aga, D.A., Noorderhaven, N. and Vallejo, B., 2016. Transformational leadership and project
success: The mediating role of team-building. International Journal of Project
Management, 34(5), pp.806-818.
Bredillet, C., Tywoniak, S. and Dwivedula, R., 2015. What is a good project manager? An
Aristotelian perspective. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), pp.254-266.
Camden, C., Shikako-Thomas, K., Nguyen, T., Graham, E., Thomas, A., Sprung, J., Morris, C.
and Russell, D.J., 2015. Engaging stakeholders in rehabilitation research: a scoping review of
strategies used in partnerships and evaluation of impacts. Disability and rehabilitation, 37(15),
pp.1390-1400.
Chen, H.L., Chen, W.T. and Lin, Y.L., 2016. Earned value project management: Improving the
predictive power of planned value. International Journal of Project Management, 34(1), pp.22-
29.
Fahri, J., Biesenthal, C., Pollack, J. and Sankaran, S., 2015. Understanding megaproject success
beyond the project close-out stage. Construction Economics and Building, 15(3), pp.48-58.
Harrison, F. and Lock, D., 2017. Advanced project management: a structured approach.
Routledge.

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Hussein, B.A., Ahmad, S.B. and Zidane, Y.J., 2015. Problems associated with defining project
success. Procedia Computer Science, 64, pp.940-947.
Kerzner, H., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and
controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Nicholas, J.M. and Steyn, H., 2017. Project management for engineering, business and
technology. Routledge.
Willems, L.L. and Vanhoucke, M., 2015. Classification of articles and journals on project control
and earned value management. International Journal of Project Management, 33(7), pp.1610-
1634.
Young, T.L., 2016. Successful project management. Kogan Page Publishers.