Project Management: Aspects, Principles, And Guidelines Essay.

1. Was this course easier/ harder than expected? What did you do well? What could you have done better? What would you advise students who are thinking about taking it next semester?

2. How did you accomplish the various sections of integration management? Did you choose a good group? Did you work with that group? On assignment 2? Studying together? Can you give us any suggestions as to how we could improve group work for next semester?

3. Did you work with the stakeholders that you had listed? Were there others? Were there some you didn’t interact with. What have you learnt about stakeholders? How is your sponsor?

4. What have you learnt about scope?

5. What have you learnt about resource management?

6. What have you learnt about time management? Did you have time to QA assignment 2?

7. What have you learnt about cost management? Have you kept within your budget?

8. What have you learnt about risk management? Did any of the risks you mentioned actually happen? What about your risk mitigation strategies? Have you had other problems that maybe you could have mitigated against?

9. What have you learnt about quality management? Have you got the marks you hoped for? Did you go to the lectures and tutorials? If not, why not and what could we do to improve your attendance?

10. Did you purchase all that you stated you were going to? Was your decision to purchase or not purchase the textbook / a laptop the right one or have you now purchased it / regretted purchasing it?

11. How did you communicate with your stakeholders? How was the group communication? Was it harder to do group work than you expected? How could we have helped?

Overview of PMBoK Guidelines

The paper is a report about management of projects and considers various aspects of Project Management. These aspects of project management are in accord with the PMBoK guidelines. PMBoK is Project Management Body of Knowledge and contains guidelines and principles for management of Projects both large and small and of various industries. The various aspects include stakeholder management, time management, cost management, project scope, integration, quality management and risk management among others. This paper includes a reflection of the course I overtook and how I adapted to it and what I learned from it. It will include my personal opinions and understanding as well regarding the project management.

[version control so that we know you’ve spent some time on the document]

This course was not particularly harder than I expected. Since, I have an interest in project management, I adjusted well to this course. The entirety of project management world that I learned in this course, struck the right chords with me. However, certain aspects were difficult to grasp. These especially includes the risk management and gantt charts. These are difficult because`I have not yet fully acclimatized to them. However, other areas such as resource management and stakeholder management are my strong suits.

I would advise students starting next semester read up on some interesting case studies in project management and perhaps even watch some amazing documentaries on large complex projects and they would have a background idea of what project management is all about. This would not only get them curious but also would prepare them with a background knowledge of project management. This way when they are starting next year, it will be much easier for them and they would be quickly relating to the project management subject and its intricacies in a better way.

I begin with listing out all the activities and core processes of project management. These activities and processes are selected based on my research about other projects. These projects may or may not be similar. Once this is done, I prepare the main plan for the integration. This is then continued throughout the project while keeping a track on whether or not the objectives are completed.

As far as improving group work for next semester is concerned, the group must be introduced with each other first and be given a smaller and achievable task before beginning with the major project. This would ensure that the group is compatible with each other and if there is any kind of incompatibility or some ironing out needed, it can be done before the major project has been handed over to them. 

Reflection on Course Experience

I had included various stakeholders that are either directly or indirectly involved through me on this project. Besides these there were no major stakeohlders. I did interact with my stakeholders especially my friends and classmates in terms of this project. The stakeholders who have sponsored this project indirectly includes the bank for funding the educational loan and partially my family members as well. The stakeholders thus form an integral part of the project. They are very critical to the project and have a major impact on shaping up the project. It is because of the stakeholders that this project has been viable and I had gotten the opportunity to be involved with the project.

Scope provides a clear cut and well-defined boundary for the entire project. In this regard it’s an extremely important area of project management. It is the scope which gives a perimeter to the project and clearly defines what is well within the scope and what is to be considered an out of scope. The scope allowed me to define a set of requirements and deliverables that I wanted to achieve with my project. This well-defined scope would thereby help me in achieving with my objectives and thereafter completing the project with desired outcomes. On the other hand, an ill-defined scope can ruin the project and may even push the project in limbo to something called as scope-creep.

Resources are everything to the project. It is the resources through which the project is achieved. As a result, the selection of resources has to be done in a careful manner. The resources such as people, facilities, materials and others need to be acquired by the project manager after having understood the project requirements thoroughly. These resources would allow the project to be completed and these resources should not be over-estimated or under-estimated for the required project. Simultaneously, resources should be selected in a way that they are not under-utilized or over-utilized at the end of the day. The resources should also be continually monitored so that they are performing in the desired way and if not, any corrective measures should be applied as and when needed.

Time is an important constraint in project management. Nearly, all projects in project management are bound by Time. As a result, it’s a critical defining trait of project management. The time that needs the project to be complete has to be precise and estimated systematically. It cannot be merely set by the client on purely his wishes, although it is given an importance. I have learnt that the completion of the project on a specified time involves several variables and some of these variables may not be in our control. This means that, sometimes, merely increasing the resources involved or incorporating different project management methodologies would not actually reduce the time. The time has to be monitored, controlled and managed so as to ensure that the project gets completed on time, otherwise this can be a costly-affair.

Activities and Core Processes of Project Management

Similar to time, budget is another major defining factor for project management. Also, it has to be estimated at the beginning of the project. This has to be done very carefuly as there is only a limited scope of elasticity in terms of cost associated with the project. An ill-defined cost for the project may make the project fail miserably while on the other had and over-estimated budget of the project may not be as dangerous although an over-estimated budget can lead to incorporation of unnecessary resources and thereby wastage of them. Cost has to be kept under check and needs to be monitored continuously so as to ensure that the budget does not overrun. If at all it appears that the project may exceed his project, additional funds for the same needs to be secured beforehand.

There are many different risks associated with the project. All projects have different set of risks be the project a construction, software or development based. In my case, the risks associated were about the name not being registered, or an allocation of in appropriate hostel or an hostel which is far away, or the risk of failure in the exam and even the risks associated with language barriers. However, I had planned for some of the risks well beforehand. Some of the mitigation strategies that I had planned for was finding out a temporary hostel facility and then moving on to a closer one after few weeks, then ensuring that my concepts and topics were clear so that I don’t fail my exams and I also started interacting with potential students before moving to this place so as to reduce language and cultural barriers associated with living in a foreign country. 

Similar to anything being produced be it a food item or a complex state-of-the-art parking system, the overall quality of the output really defines how successful the project was. Thereby quality management is an important aspect of project management. It ensures that the output is something that is usable, that will perform in the long-run, that will be durable, work as intended with fewer issues, bugs and complications. In my case, quality management simply means that I score good marks in my exams and at the end of the course, I should have understood well the concepts being taught in my course. This would help me prepare in the real-world. If I feel that I may not have performed well or that my ultimate score would not be as desired, I would increase my study hours, attendance and overall devotion to my studies.

Project procurement management means the materials, tools, equipments or any other items that are essential and are core ingredients of completing the project. These tools, materials and equipments should be of high quality because the ultimately quality of the product is heavily depdendent on the kind of materials that goes in it. In my case, I had acquired all essential items carefully after long research and I do not regret any of my purchases.

Communication with stakeholders are important and without an effective communication plan it becomes difficult to really achieve what one has set out to achieve. In my case, most of my communication has been great and I’ve incorporated the use of ICT in my communication such as emails, audio-video conferencing and even instant messengers.

Conclusions

I understood that a lot of activities that I was undertaking had been similar to what goes in a professional project management. I had never looked at these things from the eyes of a project manager and now that I have done, I understand a lot about project management and how these basic principles are universal throughout the field of project management. The very same principles get applied to complex projects as well as now that my foundations have become clear, it would be easier for me in the next phase of my studies.

References

Carter, N. (1988). The Project Manager: An Emerging Professional. Journal of Information Systems Management, 5(4), pp.8-14.

Dvir, D., Sadeh, A. and Malach-Pines, A. (2006). Projects and Project Managers: The Relationship between Project Managers' Personality, Project Types, and Project Success. Project Management Journal, 37(5), pp.36-48.

Leavitt, A. (n.d.). Becoming a project manager.

Mascia, A. (2014). Project manager: leader, influencer e conflict manager. PROJECT MANAGER (IL), (20), pp.19-23.