Apply specific project management skills


Assignment Objectives:

The objective of the Course Project is to give you an opportunity to apply the skills learned in class to plan a project. These skills are directly applicable toward your senior project.

Assignment Guidelines:

This individual Course Project provides an opportunity for you to practice and apply specific project management skills. This is a great opportunity to select a project that will further your professional or personal goals.

  • What is your passion?
  • What have you been thinking about starting, or what could help you in your current position?
  • Think about selecting a project that will serve you so that you will be creating a project plan that you can use.

Suggestions for Possible Course Project Ideas:

  • The opening of a coffee shop
  • A charity event for a local social service agency
  • A meditation pool and platform in the center of town
  • A redevelopment of a local playground
  • Design and installation of a computer network for a small business
  • Software development project

You are not limited to the list of projects above. Please refer all questions concerning what is acceptable as a class project to your instructor.

A) Mission/Purpose:

  • What is your project going to accomplish?

B) Project and Product Description:

  • What will this project create? How do you plan on completing the work of this project (high level)?

C) Objectives:

  • What objective will be met (high-level objective statement from a business perspective)? For example, how much market shares by when?

D) Milestones:

  • What are the key milestones?
  • What has to be accomplished in what order for this project to be successful?

E) Budget:

  • High-level, rough-order-of-magnitude (ROM) budget

F) User Acceptance Criteria:

  • What are the minimum standards of success as defined by stakeholders, including customers, investors, community, and regulatory bodies?

G) High-Level Assumptions

  • What statements do you believe to be true or will become true about the project but that you are not sure are true at this time?

H) High-Level Constraints

  • What are the limiting factors that affect this project?

I) Exclusions and Boundaries

  • What are the boundaries of this project? What will it exclude? For example, there will no deep fried products for sale in the coffee shop. There will be no desserts for sale in the coffee shop.

J) Major Risks:

  • What are those uncertain events that may impact this project positively or negatively?

K) Key Stakeholders

  • Who are those individuals or groups who are impacted positively or negatively by this project?

Project Scope Statement:

Populate all sections of this Project Scope Template (Links to an external site.) for your selected project, in accordance with the charter template found in the Files section. Here is a summary of the template sections.

Summary of the Project Scope Sections:

For your convenience, here is a summary of the Project Scope sections to be completed.

A) Project Description: In this section of the scope statement, we specifically elaborate on what the project will create. One should also discuss here how the project team plans to accomplish this project. This section should be quite detailed, because it creates the basis for the entire project. This section should be based on information found in the project's charter. This section usually begins with an overview of the project.

B) Project Requirements: In this section, describe the conditions or tasks that must be completed to ensure the success or completion of the project. Provide a clear picture of the work that needs to be done.

C) Deliverables: Deliverables are tangible items or services created for this project. These are generally big-picture items. For example, if the project was to build a shopping mall, the foundation, walls, roof, and parking lot might be examples of deliverables.

D) Exclusions: What is not included in the project? Returning to our example of a shopping mall, is the layout of each store part of the project, or is that the responsibility of the soon-to-be tenant? These exclusions set the boundaries for the project.

E) Acceptance Criteria: Project acceptance criteria are the criteria the stakeholders use to judge whether the project was successful or not. What must this project create in order for the sponsor or customer to be satisfied with the results?

F) Estimated Project Schedule: Include a high-level project schedule. Include major milestones and phases of the project.

G) Resource Requirements: Describe what kind of resources are required for this project in terms of human resources as well as equipment or any other types.

H) Preliminary Budget: This should be more detailed than in the project charter describing costs for major groups such as labor, materials, equipment, or any other major project costs. Include an estimated total.

I) Project Constraints: Project constraints are limitations placed on the project. Many of them are placed by individuals outside of the project. These limitations could be laws, regulations, rules, policies, procedures, or customer or sponsor requirements. Let's say we are only given a budget of $5 million to build our mall. That $5 million is a constraint to the project, because we have no more money than that to complete the project.

J) Project Assumptions: Project assumptions are those things we believe to be true without proof for planning purposes. For our mall, we could assume that all the materials we need to build will be available when we need them. We have no way to know this for sure during project planning, thus it is an assumption for our project.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and Project Schedule

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): A hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work to be carried out by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables.

For this week, you will create a work breakdown structure (WBS) for the project.

Remember that the WBS starts with major deliverables (included in the scope statement) at the highest level. The lower levels have the work package required to complete those deliverables. Review the textbook and the PMBOK® Guide for some suggestions on how to create a WBS.

From your work breakdown structure, develop a project task list with dependencies and add durations, using MS Project.

Develop the work breakdown structure.

  • Your WBS should have a minimum of 50-100 line items in MS Project and be three levels deep.

Resource Allocation and Preliminary Budget

1. MS Project file with schedule and allocated resources with associated costs (50 points)

2. MS Word file with report of project budget and resource management (50 points)

Follow these steps to set up your Course Project with Microsoft Project 2016.

Step 1: Allocate Resources

Once you have the WBS created in MS Projects, assign resources to each activity. Remember, only assign resources to activities, not summary tasks. Before you can do this, you need to create a resources sheet in MS Projects.

To Create a Resource Sheet, do the Following.

1. Click on view, resource sheet.

2. Enter the resource name, whether it is a human resource, a cost, or a material.

3. Include hourly rate or other costing method.

4. For materials, designate the resource as work and identify cost for use (i.e., cost per yard).

To assign your resources to the aligned tasks in MS Project, follow the steps below.

To assign Resources

1. Choose view-Gantt chart.

2. Select resource tab

3. Highlight the first task.

4. Click on the double headed icon on the upper tool bar (assign resources), or click Alt-F10.

5. In the resource assignment window, select the appropriate resource for each activity.

Repeat for all resources and activities according to the resource list above.

Step 2: Review Costs

1. Right click above last column.

2. Select insert column.

3. Select costs.

The costs will appear and roll up to summary tasks. You have now created your preliminary budget.

Step 3: Analyze Your Resource Allocation and Assignments

There are several methods to check for over allocated resources.

1. Click on view, resource sheet-Resource(s) in red color are over allocated.

2. Click on view, resource usage-Resource(s) in red color are over allocated resource(s) by date.

3. Click on project, reports. A dialog box appears, click on assignments then select. Then click the report for over allocated resources, and then select to print or view.

4. Remember with resources you need to assign how much time (by a percentage) each resource will be allocated to each activity. Simply lowering a given percentage may clear an over allocation, but this is not possible. Over allocations usually mean that the project requires an additional resource or the timing of the tasks has to be made concurrent.

Step 4: Project Budget (Cost Management)

1. Explain your approach to estimating the project cost (e.g., top down, bottom up, etc.) and why that method was chosen.

2. Create a table that shows the original budgeted cost (from the charter) and the actual budgeted cost (side by side). Include line items for labor, materials, contract, equipment, travel cost, and so on. Use the costs you now have in your schedule to compare to your charter costs.

3. Compare the budget from the charter to the final budget, and explain any variances that occurred from your original budgeted cost in the project charter and the current project cost (include your original estimated cost for the project).

4. Explain your budget contingency plan and how much is budgeted for contingency.

Step 5: Resource Management

1. Explain the results of your resource assignments. Did you assign enough people to the project? Were there any resources over allocated? What approach will you take to fix any allocation problems?

2. Develop a plan to manage your project team, and define how you will motivate your team and how you will handle team conflicts.

Risk Management Plan:

Remember, a risk is an uncertain event or condition that can have a positive or negative impact on the project.

Use the Risk Register Template spreadsheet found in Files to complete your assignment.

  • Identify and analyze your project risks.
  • Develop a risk management plan to monitor and track your project.
  • Instructions:
  • 1. You will evaluate each task in your project schedule to identify any risk factors associated with the execution of the deliverable.
  • 2. You will then add your list of risk to the risk register template in Files.
  • 3. The number of risks will depend on the project deliverables in your schedule; however, 20-25 risks would be considered the minimum.
  • 4. Review the instructions on the first sheet of the template, and complete your risk register in its entirety.

Stakeholder Management:

Stakeholder management is a critical process in project management. Failure to identify stakeholders who can influence the project can have increase the probability of project failure. Each stakeholder or stakeholder group has unique characteristics in terms of influence, impact, authority, and communication requirements. The stakeholder management plan informs the communication plan.

 

  • Identify each stakeholder and include influence, interest, and support.
  • Define the approach to each stakeholder or stakeholder group, communication method, and frequency.

Communication Plan

Plan Communications Management. The process of developing an appropriate approach and plan for project communication activities based on the information needs of each stakeholder group, available organizational assets, and the needs of the project. In other words, it lists the general communication requirements for the project.

This week, you will create a simple communication plan for the execution of your project. Complete the Communications Plan Template found in the Files section.

Your Final Course Project Plan will include the following sections. Using the documents you have developed, summarize the information in the following sections.

Sections to include in your Final Course Project Plan:

  • Executive Summary
  • Project Charter
  • Scope Statement
  • Work Breakdown Structure
  • Budget and Resource Management Reports
  • Risk Management Plan
  • Communication Management Plan
  • Stakeholder Management Plan

Create the Final Course Project Plan Narrated Presentation using PowerPoint. Include the following.

Final Course Project Plan Narrated Presentation using PowerPoint:

  • Executive Summary
  • Business Case (Summary from Charter)
  • Scope Summary
  • Work Breakdown Summary
  • Budget
  • Resource Management Plan
  • Communication Plan
  • Stakeholder Management Plan
  • Recommendations regarding next steps regarding project

For the students pursuing this course, we offer Project Management Assignment Help service, in order to eradicate all their academic problems with ease. 

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Project Management: Apply specific project management skills
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