Project Conflict - Causes And Solutions Essay.

Explain also why this knowledge may be important to the effective management of your project

Causes of Project Conflict

The project clash may have happened because of the clash in the project costs and budgets. When it comes to project management cost and budget plays a primary role. Therefore, due to improper funding and unsuitable allocation of budget for every task leads to project failure. Similarly, the project crashed because of ego and personality clash. Accordingly, both ego and personality play a central part of human beings. However, project management becomes incomplete without the involvement of people (Plotch, 2015, p.283). Nonetheless, excessive ego as well as a disorderly personality that can overpower others instead of making them comfortable leading to the ruining of a project. Furthermore, misunderstanding and miscommunication is another major factor in the clashing of a project. For a project to become a success, there has to be a good communication of information to get information done. Unfortunately, misunderstanding and miscommunication happen at the time of the beginning of project meetings, during informal discussion and project update meetings (Salunkhe, and Patil, 2014, p.544). Consequently, a misunderstanding arises as a result of the non-existence of clarity concerning duties and responsibilities. Lastly but not least lack of trust, as well as respect among project team members, contribute to project conflict.    

Explain how it was solved and which tasks were moved to make this happen

Project clashing can be solved in some ways in the following ways:

The project managers should be clear on the value of the project.

Adoption of a proactive approach. The experience and skills of the project managers should be chosen to lead the project because they can know how to handle the customer as a way to avoid failure.

The project should have a plan on the way it has to be executed. Planning is a significant phase of all projects. In many cases, planning is not given enough attention at the time of planning.

Managing goals of a project. It is always advisable to ensure that the project manager is capable of managing the project scope and not attempting to control it. Therefore, good management should involve documenting the agreed upon decisions on the actions as well as the outcome of the project before the commencement of the project (Zou, Kiviniemi, and Jones, 2017, pp.88-90). Accordingly, this should be done at the time of project progression and during the implementation of the project. Therefore, in this case, the project manager should manage the project goals to see to it that it can meet the project deliverables and work well with the requirements of customers o dodge from tax.  

Solutions to Project Conflict

Unrealistic expectations should be avoided. It is important to avoid the setting of unrealistic expectations as well as time frames with project team members, stakeholders, and customers to make sure that the project meets the set-out project deadlines.

Tracking of the project’s progress. The ability to track a project’s progress is carried out in two ways. Firstly, the place where the project has to be conducted and second it is about the time. Thus, to be able to control a project the essential element is a plan. Planning of the project plays a vital duty in helping in determining where the project should be at a specified period (Stephen, 2017). Accordingly, tracking of the project progress enables the project manager to know the portion of that has been completed and that which has not be completed.

Risk identification. The risk is inevitable. Thus, it is something that cannot be avoided and is bound to occur. Therefore the best way to avoid risk is by identifying, analyzing and responding to the risk factor.

Applying the right methodology. As a project manager one should understand the importance of project management methodology in decision making. The used methodology has a major influence on teamwork. However, different project methodologies depend on the requirements of a project. The picking of the right project methodology plays an essential role.

Part A i)  

ID	Brief Name	Resources to be allocated
5	Request BT for connection	M
10	Determine subsystems to be installed	M
6	Schedule downtime for installation	NE
3	Install Ethernet and fast Ethernet	NE
4	Install multi-mode fibre connection	NE

 The Microsoft Project Management gives an illustration of the main task and subtasks. 

Part A ii)

The minimum level of resources required for this project should be five resources that is the client of the project tasked with the responsibility to make a request for BT connection, one manager to determine the subsystems to be installed. Two of three are supposed to be network engineers who are tasked with installing of Ethernet and fast Ethernet and installing multi-mode fibre connection. The process of scheduling downtime for installation will involve all the four project resources. One engineer will be tasked with monitoring the project to ensure that it is run in accordance to the scheduled project activities.  

The minimum number of network engineers that should be allocated without delaying the current project should be three. One shall be tasked with monitoring the running of the project tasks to ensure that they align with the project schedule and the other two shall be tasked with installing of Ethernet and fast Ethernet and installing multi-mode fibre connection. Accordingly this knowledge is important to the effective management of this project because it work to ensure that there is no project overlap of tasks, which could result in delays leading to late project delivery.

Part A

PART B:

Where will your new calendar be used in project? Carefully explain any change in the project finish date and explain why it is useful to reset the baseline.

Show some clear evidence that your dates have been changed to non-working days.

The calendar will be used in scheduling different projects tasks.  The calendar is modified to echo distinct working days as well as hours of particular projects, tasks or resources. The distinct calendar is specifically beneficial when considering issues such as shift work. The change in project finish date is undertaken to enable project teams to increase the remaining working value after accomplishing the planned work on the task. Consequently, in this case the project will be changed in case there are non-working days such as April 19, 2019, April 22, 2019, May 6, 2019 and May 27 2019 because of being holidays. That means that the project shall have to be extended to compensate for the four non-working days so that to ensure the project takes the set out 76 working days to come to completion.   

A baselines is the original cost of a project, scope of the project and schedule. In regard to this project the baseline for this project is that it has to start on Monday, 18 March 2019 and come to completion on Monday, 1 July 2019, which is a total of 76 working days. Therefore, the baseline is tasked with ensuring that it keeps the project on track, which in this case means that the baseline is supposed to track the project and make sure that it starts on Monday, 18 March 2019 and come to completion on Monday, 1 July 2019 and takes a total of 76 working days. As a result baseline is used to measure the extent to which performance deviates from the set plan, and the performance of the project only remains meaningful if it stick to set out plan, in this case the baselines is 76 working days.   

What will happen if public holidays were introduced?

The introduction of public holidays can lead to project crashing to make sure that the project is delivered in accordance with the set timeframe.

When public holidays are introduced in the project, it will lead to the late delivery of the project.  

Effects introducing public holiday in the project

Some of the effects of introducing public holidays include:

Late delivery of the project.

Part B

It can lead to financial constraints due to employing additional workforce to make sure the project is completed within the specified time.               

Describe carefully how each fixed costs is allocated within the program and how each adds to total. Provide evidence for these

For a successful fixed-cost work the project manager shall employ several project management precision and discipline. The type of discipline to follow in this case include:

Defining the scope of the project which entails the working in collaboration to develop the scope of the project, which is task 3 (installing Ethernet and fast Ethernet) and task 4 (Installing multiple mode fibre connection). The next step will be developing a work breakdown structure whereby it helps in sub diving the project into different deliverables. In the case the work breakdown structured will consist of covering management and administrative costs, secretarial support, consumables, photocopying, plan prints and office accommodation, task 3 and task 4). Use of project schedule, it includes determining of every project task as structured in the work breakdown structure. Scope management it is important to carefully and tightly mange the fixed-cost project to make sure there is no incurring of unwanted costs.   

Explain why we track our projects

Project tracking is essential in the making of decisions by project managers. Through project tracking it becomes easy to keep a track of all activities related to the project such as the duration for each task, team performance, taking necessary corrective measures to make sure that the project is being undertaken within the scope, as well as the identification of possible problems (Francom, and El Asmar, 2015). Consequently, the tracking of a project helps to oversee all its tasks and keeping an eye on the activities of the project to ensure it is implemented as initially planned.  

Explain the baseline data, the actual date, and current schedule data

A baseline refers to an approved plan for part of a project. The baseline data is used to make a comparison between the planned project baselines to the actual performance. Typically, each project consists of a minimum of four project baselines (Kaiser, El Arbi, and Ahlemann, 2015, pp.130-133). The project baselines include the budget, schedule, scope, and quality.

Actual date: For the effective project management it relies mainly on keeping track of actual dates in determining its productivity. The actual data marks the start of work on a project scheduled activity.  

Fixed-Cost Work

Schedule data: It is a set of information for describing as well as regulating a project’s schedule. Schedule data consists of schedule activities, schedule milestones, activity elements as well as documentation of all the constraints and assumptions.     

Describe the role current schedule data plays in controlling the project

A project schedule plays a significant in planning, implementation, controlling as well as communicating the delivery of the scope to the project shareholders. The project schedule represents the plan that should be used to deliver a project scope over time (Kerzner, and Kerzner, 2017). The project schedule comprises the dates when the project elements in addition to milestones as planned to take place. On the same note, the project schedule helps shareholders by communicating to them all the elements that the project events are supposed to be completed. In addition, the project schedule acts as a tool that connects project components to the required resources to accomplish the project.  

Explain the cost variance.

Cost variance (CV) refers to the difference between the real-time cost and the budget cost. Accordingly, this formula is significant in project management because it enables project managers to figure out they are within the set budget or have over the budget. If it happens that the budget of a project is under budget, it indicates a positive cost variance while if the cost variance of a project is over budget, it shows a negative cost variance (Mir, and Pinnington, 2014, pp.204-207). Certainly, if the planned cost variance is zero or close by zero it means the project is on budget. In earned value management, the value has to always come down to resources. Therefore, earned value management (EVM) is a project management approach that entails time, scope as well as the cost to predict in a project. Thus, the formula for cost variance is given as:

Cost variance (CV) = (Earned Value (EV)) – (Actual cost (AC))

The formula is used to is used to determine the components of cost variance include

Earned value (EV) is the total amount of money earned from the completed work in a particular time frame. On the other hand, (AC) is the amount of money spent on a project. For example if the variance is £800, it means that the total amount of money required to complete this project in a specified period of time in this case the timeframe is 76 days.

Baseline acts as a point of reference, which comprise three activities in project management cost baseline, schedule baseline, and scope baseline. The combination of these three baselines is known as performance measurement baseline (Kerzner, and Kerzner, 2017). The establishing of the baseline in project management acts as the formal end of project planning and the beginning of the execution of a project and control. Accordingly, control of the project baselines is essential to the success of the project.      

Track task 3 to 7 as completed on budget and show screenshot evidence too

Accordingly, the non-working days are eight days, which means that the project will have to be pushed ahead with eight extra days to compensate for the days that no work was done. Therefore, instead of the project to be accomplished on Monday 01 July 2019, it will have to be extended by eight days. Thus, the project will be accomplished on Wednesday 10 July 2019. 

Francom, T.C. and El Asmar, M., 2015. Project quality and change performance differences associated with the use of building information modeling in design and construction projects: Univariate and multivariate analyses. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 141(9), p.04015028.

Kaiser, M.G., El Arbi, F. and Ahlemann, F., 2015. Successful project portfolio management beyond project selection techniques: Understanding the role of structural alignment. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), pp.126-139.

Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Mir, F.A. and Pennington, A.H., 2014. Exploring the value of project management: linking project management performance and project success. International journal of project management, 32(2), pp.202-217.

Plotch, P.M., 2015. What’s taking so long? Identifying the underlying causes of delays in planning transportation megaprojects in the United States. Journal of Planning Literature, 30(3), pp.282-295.

Salunkhe, A.A., and Patil, R.S., 2014. Effect of construction delays on project time overrun: Indian scenario. Int. J. Res. Eng. Technol, 3(1), pp.543-547.

Stephen C, O.N.W.U.A.S.O., 2017. Impact of Conflict on Agricultural Output: A Study of Clash Between Fulani-Herdsmen And Tiv-Farmers In Guma Local Government Area, Benue State. (2013-2017).

Zou, Y., Kiviniemi, A. and Jones, S.W., 2017. A review of risk management through BIM and BIM-related technologies. Safety science, 97, pp.88-98.