Project Managing Business Process Improvement Initiatives - Assignment Example

Business Project Management Name: Tutor: Course: Date: “Project Management is the application of skills, knowledge, techniques and tools for project activities to meet the project requirements.” Introduction Project management is a cross cutting discourse that permeates all disciplines in human life. It involves providing leadership, direction and control of projects and programs to meet customer requirements of cost, time and schedule. Optimization of project resources is the basis of which project management meets client requirements as well as offering room for post evaluation and future integration of projects (Project Management Institute 2008). Meeting client requirements is obligatory in all situations that demand feasibility studies, planning, implementation and project closure. Project management also integrates the various stakeholders and beneficiaries to ensure effective completion and delivery of project deliverables and milestones. To achieve this, the project manager must have a good project mix of the resources, tools, process flow and monitoring and evaluation tools. Identifying project requirements starts with understanding the objectives and goals through log frame analysis. The project manager is tasked with the responsibility of assembling and administration and control of project resources to prevent time, cost and schedule overruns (Project Management Institute 2008). The design brief shows that feasibility studies are important in identifying the needs, purpose, scope and benefits of the project. All the requirements are listed to ensure that project goals are attained within a specified time and cost. Project Knowledge Knowledge and understanding of the project needs emanates from observation or lessons from ongoing and completed projects. It is critical to learn from the environment where the project is being carried out to ensure impact is felt (Winston 2000). Risk assessment similarly allows for project predictability for success. Knowledge can be obtained from primary or secondary sources. The information relating to the project activities are found through observation or learning from past projects. For instance, projects that fail to integrate all the stakeholders through effective communication are bound to fail (Lock 2007). There must be adequate knowledge on the project area to ensure that risks are not ‘gate crashed’ or the assumptions of the project highly amplified to overlook potential constraints. Conducting a monitoring and evaluation exercise shows that sufficient knowledge on the performance of the project in meeting its requirements is done. A checklist is used to find out the capacity of the target population or community in measuring the amount of intervention (Stevens 2002). To tangible projects, the study involves gathering information on the site, communication, accessibility, presence of natural calamities, proximity to raw materials and markets among others. A preliminary market research is essential in finding out the degree of the impact the project would cause in the area or beneficiaries. Knowledge on the capacity of the project work and organizational structure is critical since team work is the driving force of any project. The project manager is wholly rounded and effective individual who understands the new changes required to be made to the project. After carrying out feasibility studies, the project has adequate ground to inform a strong decision which determines whether it is to move to the planning stage or exit at an early stage (Morgen 2003). Knowledge is closely related to skills since people who have been in business projects for over a long time possesses vast knowledge on risks and pitfalls of particular projects. Perhaps online studies or individual interaction with resources persons can be a more effective way of learning and gaining more insights of the project in question. There is adequate information in Web links, books, articles and papers on performance of many business projects (Young-Hoon 2005). Though the setting of these projects may be different, their planning and implementation remain the same. Project Skills Project activities demand acquisition and procurement of excellent skills through identifying education, experience and expertise that matches the required work. In a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), jobs and responsibilities are specified according to level of education and experience. For instance, a system administrator or designer will be judged with the responsibility of developing the proto-type and working on the design protocols (DeMars 2006). The responsibility cannot be done by a civil engineer in charge of road construction. Picking on the right skills and expertise is the function of the project manager who is selects, hires and recruits with respect skills and education levels. Most projects have failed because the job described does not accrue with the skill sets. The job requirements should also ensure that teams have proactive and innovative employees able to guide the project to a successful conclusion (Kleiman 2011). Change management is usually occasioned by changes in skills sets. The risk of losing key persons from the project while in progress is evidenced by departure of skills only replaceable through re-advertising the job vacancies. For a project to be complete, it must have a list of all the personnel by names, qualifications, responsibilities and remuneration. Projects carried out by people who happen to have been selected and recruited without regard to skills, experience and cohesiveness are bound to fail. Skills can be sourced through open advertising or closed bidding. Open advertising involves making open the vacancy through the electronic or print media for those with the mentioned qualifications and experience to apply. Closed selection may demand that a completed project can make use of the employees involved in the just ended or previous projects (Manfred & Vries 2003). This is integration of the workforce owing to the success and satisfactory nature of the completed projects. Skills meet project requirements through administering the correct function and communication success and bottlenecks faced by the project. A thorough understanding of the project constraints is a skill that has been nurtured through time (Harrison & Dennis 2004). For instance, a contractor of a building project must involve the work of an architecture, engineers, masons, and drivers. These set of skills will deliver the project since each one of them has a specific role dispensed in a logical sequence. The team of this workforce when provided with all the necessary materials and methods delivers the building project. Tools and Techniques Project tools and techniques are used to direct and plan project activities to meet time and cost requirements. The project management tools commonly used are Gantt charts, network diagrams, Work break Down structure (WBS), checklist, log frames, PERT and organizational structures among others. The essence of project tools is to capture the performance of the project activities while techniques inform the technology of running the constraints to avoid overruns (Kotter & Cohen 2002). Planning tools like WBS, Gantt charts and network diagrams provide a basis for apportioning and allocating resources to optimize on labor and cost. Many projects use simple planning tools that list activities, duration of completion of the specific activity and the accompanying responsibilities (Frigenti & Comninos 2002). Projects are organized with correct tools because it guides it from employing excessive resources when a small portion could actually apply. Project techniques are essential in ensuring that the estimated direct and indirect costs as well as schedule meets the objectives. The Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is important determining the duration of the project by considering the optimistic, most likely and pessimistic duration of individual project activities. The result is a duration that best predicts the actual project duration when all the factors are kept constant. The Critical Path Method (CPM) identifies the longest time the project can be completed. It considers the duration of individual activities in logical succession so that the longest path absorbs all the free slacks available (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin & Robert 2008). What makes the CPM popular is the degree of accuracy and effectiveness in judging the schedule of the project. Time and cost trade off is a factor of CPM since a project that is behind time can be crashed to reduce on daily indirect costs hence saving on the project cost. Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) tools like checklists, log frames and questionnaires are critical in evaluating the cost of the project against the benefits. Many projects have huge benefits though with a great cost. These tools help in assessing and evaluating the objectives of the project against the constraints. A project that is behind schedule and has overrun the allocated cost will require changes in staffing, materials and time. Allocation of additional resources may require communicating to the project owner or sponsor who evaluates the position and relevance at this stage. Projects with small overruns have the probability of being completed within the stipulated time and resources (Dinsmore 2005). Log frames identify the inputs and outputs vis a vis the objectives and goals. Questionnaires for gathering data on project progress are sufficient as they list all the project activities and whether they are being fulfilled or not. Project work is an intensive exercise since information regarding the performance of the project affects how information is relayed to other stakeholders. Project managers make use of M&E tools in enabling a learning curve to be established. Project risk and communication tools are used to assess and report the level of risk. Risk assessment usually involves identifying risks that can impede project progress and providing immediate and long-term solutions. Many project activities are curtailed by risks that were not initially recognized but are fatal to project implementation. Some business projects require adequate planning and integration of risks into the project (Cleland & Gareis 2006). Projects have to meet certain standards of quality and value. Those projects with design lapses are bound to fail since quality need to have originated from the design brief stage. In the course of project development, learning tools become monitoring and evaluation tools. Many business owners come to learn that they failed to check work progress against the initial plan. Post evaluation tools evaluate the strengths of the project in meeting all the requirements desired by the owner. When the project took more resources hence huge costs will mean more time is taken by the business to break even (Craig 2009). The basis of starting a project is to make it SMART so that potential customers demand its consumption. Objectives of a project whether should be clearly defined and connected to individual goals. Business projects are on demand meaning that their prevalence of project tools is also increasing. Project activities are best coordinated and implemented through an effective mix of skills, knowledge, tools and techniques. Project managers have realized that projects have ‘faces’ in which they depict form. Various projects have challenges owing to imperfection of under allocation or over allocation of resources. Projects with narrow scope, insufficient knowledge and poorly trained or inexperienced expertise will face huge challenges and may never achieve its goals (Bjarne 2007). On the contrary, projects with relevant skills and teamwork achieve greater levels of success. Conclusion As mentioned before, awareness on the prevalence of risks without categorizing the level of impact or frequency is knowledge that is improperly used. Moreover, skills applied based on individual merit, experience and ability to interact as teams delivers great milestones. Project activities can be transformed into outputs once the project manager recognizes the significance of planning, implementation and post implementation tools (Uneja Himanshu & Prachi 2011). In many situations Gantt charts have been used to program projects to completion by assigning resource persons who will take responsibility of guiding their individual activities. The critical path methods are basically a plus in delivering the project milestones. Knowledge and understanding of the project needs emanates from observation or lessons from ongoing and completed projects. It is critical to learn from the environment where the project is being carried out to ensure impact is felt (Abudi 2011). Risk assessment similarly allows for project predictability for success. The project manager is tasked with the responsibility of assembling and administration and control of project resources to prevent time, cost and schedule overruns. All the requirements are listed to ensure that project goals are attained within a specified time and cost. The design brief shows that feasibility studies are important in identifying the needs, purpose, scope and benefits of the project. References Abudi, G 2011, Project Managing Business Process Improvement Initiatives, Allan and Wayne.  Bjarne K 2007, Project Management – Theory and practice.Teknisk Forlag. Craig, S 2009, Merrill Bonus Case Widens as Deal Struggles. Wall Street Journal.  Cleland D I & Gareis R 2006, Global Project Management Handbook. "Chapter 1: "The evolution of project management". McGraw-Hill Professional. DeMars L 2006, Heavy Vetting: Boards of directors now want to talk to would-be CFOs- and vice versa. CFO Magazine. Dinsmore P C 2005, The right projects done right! John Wiley and Sons. Frigenti E & Comninos D, 2002, The Practice of Project Management-a guide to the business-focused approach, Kogan Page Gomez-Mejia, L R, Balkin D B & Robert L C 2008, Management: People, Performance, Change, 3rd edition. New York, New York USA: McGraw-Hill. p. 20.  Harrison F L & Dennis L 2004, Advanced project management: a structured approach. Gower Publishing, Ltd.  Kleiman, L S 2011, Management and Executive Development. Reference for Business: Encyclopedia of Business. Kotter, J P & Cohen D S 2002, The Heart of Change, Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing. Lock D 2007, Project Management (9th ed.) Gower Publishing, Ltd. Manfred F R & Vries K 2003, The Dark Side of Leadership, Business Strategy Review Morgen W 2003, Fifty key figures in management. Routledge, 2003.  Project Management Institute, 2008, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) 4th edition, PMI, Newtown Square, PA, US. Stevens M 2002, Project Management Pathways. Association for Project Management. APM Publishing Limited. Uneja, H J, Himanshu F, & Prachi J 2011, Management, Management Study Guide. WebCraft Pvt Ltd.. Young-Hoon K 2005, A brief History of Project Management. In: The story of managing projects. Elias G. Carayannis et al. (9 eds), Greenwood Publishing Group. Winston W R 2000, Managing the Development of Large Software systems in: Technical Papers of Western Electronic Show and Convention (WesCon) August 25–28, 1970, Los Angeles, USA. Read More