Homework I: Executing the Project
Provide a graduate-level response to each of the following questions:
o What is the chief purpose of configuration management? In your opinion, why has it become increasingly popular in recent years as a part of the project management process?
o Sustainable project development has many features and can mean many things when beginning a project. If you were to identify three critical messages that explain what sustainable project management really means, what would they be?
o Identify the five major methods for resolving conflict. Give an example of how each might be applied in a hypothetical project team conflict episode.
Homework II:
Case Study A: California's High-Speed Rail Project
A goal of the Obama administration has been to promote high-speed rail across the most populous and geographically-dispersed states in the United States. The idea is to adopt more energy-saving initiatives while also helping to improve state's infrastructure. It is with this in mind that the Federal Government made billions available to various states in the 2008-2010 budget cycles. After the Fall, 2010 elections, several states that had elected Republican governors refused the grants, suspicious that this seed money would not be sufficient to pay for what they viewed as unnecessary construction based on over-optimistic expectations of the need for and use of high-speed rail. One of the states that accepted the money and has moved forward strongly into high-speed rail has been California, which has already begun work on a 65-mile section in the middle of the state, earning the derisive nickname, the "train to nowhere." This case details the state's projections regarding the need for high-speed rail, against the views of infrastructure experts and critics who charge that for a state that is already in a severe budget crisis, this is just the sort of project that makes no sense economically or demographically.
Questions
o Assess the benefits and drawbacks of the high-speed rail project. In your opinion, do benefits outweigh drawbacks, or vice versa? Why? Justify your answer.
o What are the implications of starting a project based on tenuous projections that may or may not come true 10 years from now?
o Could you justify the California high-speed rail project from the perspective of a massive public works initiative? In other words, what other factors enter into the decision of whether to pursue a high-speed rail project? Why are they important?
Case Study B: Columbus Instruments
This case is based on a true story of a once-successful organization that had allowed its project management practices to degenerate to the point where homework to a project team was often a mark of disfavor and a sign of pending termination. The case involves issues of motivation, structural effects on projects, and project team staffing. It offers students an opportunity to see how, if left unchecked, certain behaviors by department heads and others in the organization can work counter to the desires to use project teams to improve organizational profitability and instead make them a dumping ground for malcontents and poor performers.
Questions
o What are the implications of CIC's approach to staffing project teams? Is the company using project teams as training grounds for talented fast-trackers, or as dumping grounds for poor performers?
o How would you advise the CEO to correct the problem? Where would you start?
o Discuss how issues of organizational structure and power played a role in the manner in which project management declined in effectiveness at CIC.
Homework 3:
Answer the following questions based upon the Kloppenborg text and Exhibits presented in the chapter. The length of the paper should be enough pages to properly and fully answer all the exercise questions. As this is an exercise no other sources (except the source describing the project) need to be utilized.
Find a story in your local newspaper or other media/web outlet about a project that is about to start. For that project, answer each of the following questions and justify your answers:
o Briefly provide an overview of the project (answer the basics who, what, where, when and why). Also, provide the source for the information discovered.
o Using the ideas in Exhibit 13.2, speculate on what activities, supplies, or services could be contracted out.
o Create a request for information (RFI) for one portion of the project work that could be contracted out.
o Using ideas from Exhibits 13.4 and 13.5, determine criteria you would use to select sellers for the portion of contract work under consideration.
Format your homework according to the following formatting requirements:
o The answer should be typed, using Times New Roman font (size 12), double spaced, with one-inch margins on all sides.
o The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the homework, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
o Also include a reference page. The Citations and references must follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.