Principles of Project Management Essay

1. The Commitment Principle An equitable commitment between the project sponsor and the project delivery team must exist before a possible project exists. The Project Sponsor is considered to be the Project Owner who provides resources such as funds, services and general direction. The project delivery team is the one in charge for appropriate techniques, plans and controls for using the skills needed and work to convert those resources into the required deliverables or product. Dealing with a Sponsor is a matter of developing a trust and understanding between the Sponsor and the team. Project sponsors should set clear boundaries for cost and time, with which the manager should work. If he/she cannot provide the agreed deliverables within these constraints, concerns must be escalated to the sponsor for a decision. Defined roles and responsibilities: A project team in which ALL people understand their responsibilities and sincerely believe they can achieve them. Each person must know how they can contribute to project objectives. Project stakeholders must have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities, to be able know exactly what he or she is supposed to be doing. Project environment is of critical importance and requires definition and understanding. 2. The Success Principle The measures of project success, in terms of both process and product, must be defined at the beginning of the project as a basis for project management decision making and post-project evaluation. Success for a project and how it will be measured after completion needs to be defined at the beginning of the project. The most important reason is to provide an on-going basis for management decision making during the course of the project. The timing of the measurement of success itself may also need identifying. It is not possible to measure its ultimate success without agreement on the project’s success criteria 3. The Tetrad Trade-off Principle The core variables of the project management process — namely, product scope, quality grade, time-to-produce, and 4 total cost-at-completion — must all be mutually compatible and definitely attainable. The term â€Å"Tetrad trade-off† is quite an unfamiliar word, but possibly this is the value of the term to stressed that there are four separate but interactive variables which are scope, quality, time and cost rather than just three as in the old view of ‘Triple Constraint’ (time, cost and performance.) The advantage of viewing the four as a tetrad rather than choosing only three to form a triangle is that it gives more importance to quality. Of the four, the quality of the product is apparently, and in fact, the most stable. 4. The Strategy Principle A strategy encompassing first planning then doing, in a focused set of sequential and progressive phases, must be in place. Before the project start, it is very important that consumers think thoroughly about the products, or deliverables they need. They must be prà ©cised and detailed about their requirements to produce a feasible plan. This makes managing the project much easier and less risky. 5. The management principle The Management Principle begins with â€Å"how it will be done and who will do it†. Policies and procedures that are effective and efficient must be in place for the proper conduct and control of the project commitment. 6. The Single-Point Responsibility Principle This principle is an extension of the management principle and is needed for effective management of the project commitment. Clear communication is very important for the coordination of a complicated project activity. A single channel of communication must exist between the project sponsor and the project team leader for all decisions affecting the product scope. 7. The Cultural Environment Principle Management must provide an informed and supportive cultural environment to ensure that the project delivery team are able to work to the limits of their capacity. Whatever methodology or framework you prefer, it must be modified to suit the requirements and needs of your project. Rather than sticking to methodology, the project manager must be able to get used to procedures to meet the demands of the work in hand. the management of the organization in which the project takes place must be supportive and the environment free of obstacles in the way of project progress. (Wideman, Robert Max; Bing, John A.; Neal, Gerald;, 2000) B. Appraise the viability of at least five (5) project’s success/ failure criteria (1.2) To be successful, a project must have: 1. Agreement or arrangement among the project stakeholders – the project team, customer, project leader skills and management – on the objective of the project. 2. A project plan that shows what is capable, shows an overall path and clear tasks, contains the facts and details for calculating the people, money, time, equipment, and materials needed to get the job completed, and will be used to determine development as the project is taking its course. 3. Continuous, effective communication among everyone that is concerned in the project in order to manage and organize action, distinguish and get to the bottom of problems and respond to changes. 4. A controlled scope or â€Å"stakeholder expectations management†. Everyone involved in the project must know their share of responsibilities. To make sure that everyone concerned understands exactly what can be done within a specified time frame and budget; a systematic method for establishing practical goals for deliverables, cost, schedule, and quality, as well as techniques for maintaining the goals reliable all through the project. 5. Upper management support, â€Å"managing upward†, guiding the upper managers toward appropriate decisions that maintains the project moving – to bring people and other resources, make guidelines, or remove organizational obstacles. The main causes of project failure that were identified were: 1. Lack of User Involvement One of the reasons why projects fail is that users do not participate in the system development process to the extent that they should. the lack of participation in the project by those who will use the system has proved fatal for many projects. Without user participation, it will cause delay to Projects because the management has not allocated people to do the work that users should be doing. If a project is to be a success management and users need to be concerned from the start to end of the progress. This requires time and effort. 2. Long or Unrealistic Time Scales The key advice is that project timescales should be little, which means that better systems should be split into separate projects. There are always problems with this approach, but the profit of doing so is significant. 3. Poor or No Requirements poor requirements are probably one of the most difficult issue that can be faced by a project. The incapacity to identify good requirements has also led to other project delivery problems — such as the desire to narrow the scope of the project so as to minimize the requirements workload and risk. Users should understand what it is they want, and be able to identify it specifically. if you don’t get the business requirements right, however well you deliver the project, the client/business will be dissatisfied. 4. Scope Creep Scope creep is a risk in most projects. it is the change or growth of project scope. Scope creep more frequently occurs during the later stages of a project, such as programming and testing, than during the earlier stages, such as design. This can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled. This is a management issue similar to change control. Management should be able to figure it all out at the start. A project manager often tries to manage scope creep. The goal in managing scope creep is to try to minimize the impact of any changes on the project, such as on the timeline and cost. 5. No Change Control System Business needs are changing even more rapidly than ever before. There may be unavoidable external requirements over which you have no control, such as new regulations for data privacy, changed regulatory reporting requirements etc.So it is not reasonable to anticipate no change in requirements while a project or system is being built. However uncontrolled changes play chaos with a system under improvement and have caused many project confusion and failures. (Anon., 2001) (Suggest additional standard for the project’s success/ failure criteria, M1) Other IT project failure criteria by the IT and project managers were: * missed deadlines * exceeded budget * cost getting out of hand * many projects fail because they use new or unproven technology. * poor project definition by the project’s owner, perhaps because of insufficient consultation with stakeholders or their failure to be specific about requirements and desired outcomes. * lack of ownership and personal accountability by senior management. * inadequately skilled and experienced project personnel. * inadequate reporting arrangements and decision-making. * inconsistent understanding of required project activities, roles and responsibilities. Other criteria for project success were: * meeting the budget * meeting milestones * a well-defined scope and agreed understanding of intended outcome. * active management of risks, issues and timely decision-making supported by clear and short lines of reporting. * ongoing commitment and support from senior management. * a senior individual with personal accountability and overall responsibility for the successful outcome of the project. * defined and visibly managed processes that are appropriate or the scale and complexity of the project. (Find another company that uses success/failure criteria and tell something about how these criteria help the company’s projects , D1) The Calvert Social Index is a stock market index created by Calvert Investments as a benchmark of large companies that are considered socially responsible or ethical. It currently consists of 468 companies, weighted by market capitalization, selected from approximately 1,000 of the largest publicly traded companies in the United States using Calvert’s social criteria. These criteria relate to the environment, workplace issues, product safety, community relations, weapons contracting, international operations, and human rights. This index was created following the success of the Domini 400 Social Index by KLD Research & Analytics, Inc. The Calvert index is used by many so-called socially responsible mutual funds as a benchmark for their performance. These criteria helped the company improve with their business management. They were able to market those specific products that seem to be most wanted by their customers. With these criteria, it helped them improve their product development that made them stand out from their competitors. It also helped the company improve business management in the area of finance and because of this, they have built a good business reputation. (Calvert Investment Distributors, n.d.) B. Discuss the principles behind project management systems and procedures (1.3) The Project Management Process suggest three main deliverables be defined before actual work on the project begins. These are the Project Definition, Project work plan, and the Project Management Procedures. The Project Management Procedures explains how the project will be managed, and are an effective and efficient way to communicate the processes to the project team, customers, and stakeholders. Although they may appear time consuming to develop, in most cases these procedures only need to be created once. When you have a set of procedures that allow you to be successful, you can reuse them on later projects. In fact, these procedures can be written at the company or organization level, and then used as the starting point for all projects in the company. These procedures come from the process for large projects. They should be customized as appropriate for your project, your team, and your organization. In most cases, the processes should be simplified for smaller projects. Although this template is called Project Management Procedures, this document really describes processes. Processes are at a higher level than procedures. You can turn them into procedures by specifying the particular roles, people, and dates that make sense. The procedures that will be used to manage the project will include parts on how the team will manage issues, scope change, risk, quality, communication, etc. It is important to be able to manage the project thoroughly and proactively and make sure the project team and all stakeholders have a common understanding of how the project will be managed. If common procedures have already been recognized for your organization, apply them on your project. (Discuss how to integrate human and material resources to achieve successful projects, M2) Every project that involves more than one person requires a project team to get the work done. Building a motivated project team will be your primary and most critical task, because the success of the project will rely heavily on choosing the right team members and gaining their commitment to the project’s objectives. To utilize the abilities of permanently assigned staff and to fulfill these requirements but if there are required skills that are not available, then other sources must be identified and pursued. Books, educational programs, internet and human involvement go hand in hand to make the task accomplished. With these help, unforeseen errors and miscalculation will be lessened. Coordination will also make time required less for the project to be successful. (Wideman, 1991) (Look for an existing IT Project of any company and evaluate the project management system and procedures, D2) IS Auditing Procedure: P6 Firewalls An information security audit is an audit on the level of information security in an organization. Within the broad scope of auditing information security there are multiple types of audits, multiple objectives for different audits, etc. Most commonly the controls being audited can be categorized to technical, physical and administrative. Auditing information security covers topics from auditing the physical security of data centers to the auditing logical security of databases and highlights key components to look for and different methods for auditing these areas. When centered on the IT aspects of information security, it can be seen as a part of an information technology audit. It is often then referred to as an information technology security audit or a computer security audit. However, information security encompasses much more than IT. By and large the two concepts of application security and segregation of duties are both in many ways connected and they both have the same goal, to protect the integrity of the companies’ data and to prevent fraud. For application security it has to do with preventing unauthorized access to hardware and software through having proper security measures both physical and electronic in place. With segregation of duties it is primarily a physical review of individuals’ access to the systems and processing and ensuring that there are no overlaps that could lead to fraud. (Isaca, 2003) C. Identify the key elements involved in terminating projects and conducting post – project appraisals (1.4) 1. Termination activities should be identified in the baseline plan 2. Verify that all agreed-on deliverables were provided. 3. Organize and file project-related documentation. 4. Assure that all payments have been collected from the customer. 5. Assure that all payments for materials and subcontractors have been paid. 6. Prepare a written performance evaluation of each member of the project team. (Evaluate the key elements involved in terminating projects, M3) Terminating a project should always undergo a process – resources used could be audited and workforce could be evaluated properly. 1. Go back to project plan to check the appropriate balance between resource usage and project duration that directly complies with project objectives. 2. Confirm or prove that all deliverables that were agreed on were clearly fleshed out. 3. Document and organize all files related to the project. 4. All invoices should have been sent to the customer. All collectibles should be received before closing the review. 5. Payments for materials and subcontractors should be fulfilled as well. 6. Evaluate the performance of the project team and properly document it as well. 7. Conduct post-mortem or –project evaluation meetings (Szabelski, n.d.) (Give situations where a terminated project can still be considered again, D3) Hiring a new principal investigator (PI) (or an equivalent person) is the next best solution for projects that were terminated or put on hold. In order to ensure the smooth transition of documents and processes, the old PI should train the new hire Loss of human, funding and other valuable resources, whether anticipated or not, is the most common problem that may force an organization to terminate or put a project on hold. In order to address this challenge, the affected organization should be able to tap other available resources such as funding vehicles and connections or networks for new hires or experts. If an internal assessment or evaluation of the project showed negative results, resources, processes and even the project itself can be adjusted or modified in order to achieve or fulfill set expectations and objectives. (Orfano, 2009) Bibliography Anon., 2001. Coley Consulting. [Online] Available at: http://www.coleyconsulting.co.uk/failure.htm [Accessed 18 October 2011]. Calvert Investment Distributors, I., n.d. Calvert Investments. [Online] Available at: http://www.calvert.com/NRC/Literature/Documents/TL10036.pdf [Accessed 20 October 2011]. Isaca, 2003. ISACA. [Online] Available at: http://www.isaca.org/Knowledge-Center/Standards/Pages/IS-Auditing-Procedure-P6-Firewalls1.aspx [Accessed 22 October 2011]. Orfano, F., 2009. Feministy.org. [Online] Available at: http://www.feministy.org/business-management/re-starting-a-terminated-project [Accessed 22 October 2011]. Szabelski, T., n.d. Modern Project Management. [Online] Available at: bpr-project.eu/./project_management_by_tomasz szabelski.pdf [Accessed 21 October 2011]. Wideman, Robert Max; Bing, John A.; Neal, Gerald;, 2000. Max’s Project Management Wisdom. [Online] Available at: http://www.maxwideman.com/papers/principles/principles.htm [Accessed 16 October 2011]. Wideman, R.M., 1991. Max’s Project Managenent Wisdo m. [Online] Available at: http://www.maxwideman.com/papers/questions/answers.htm [Accessed 18 October 2011].