Gantt And PERT Chart For Project Planning Essay.

Project Planning with Gantt and PERT Chart

• Justification: The selected organizational project is implementation of student portal system for the university. The project is needed and valid to implement with an integrated and user friendly system for the students. It provides tools for the staffs to perform the administrative tasks.
• Deliverables and objectives: The project deliverables are included system design report, project proposal, engineering report, project charter, risk management plan, communication management plan. The objectives are included implementation of integrated and reliable database system, provide user friendly and easy to use system with efficient documentation and create ad hoc reports.
• Acceptance criteria: The system is user friendly and allows the staffs and students to complete the project in scheduled deadline. The budget of the project is not exceeding its calculated value.
• Project exclusions: The project is excluded to provide technical training to the university staffs, student records management and academic assessment work.
• Constraints:  The issues that may hinder the project included scope, budget and project timeline.
• Assumptions: The project assumptions included the project is completed in scheduled timeline, not exceeding the project budget, take prior approval from the sponsor.

i Completion of initiation phase

ii Completion of planning phase

iii Completion of execution phase

iv Completion of monitoring and controlling phase

v Completion of closure phase

a. Acceptance criteria- The list of the project requirements expected for the project deliverables.

b. Action item- The activity or the job which are required to complete.

c. Activity- Smallest unit of the work required to finish the work package.

4. The project is involved with total cost of $70,000 included for the installation cost, development cost, operational cost, human resource cost and office material cost.

5. There is required to consider some of the accepted standards like:

• State coordination bodies
• Protocols defined in the legislation
• Organizational processes and procedures

6. The two types of collaboration techniques are team collaboration and network collaboration. The team collaboration included interaction among the project team members and stakeholders to get better project performance (Ika et al., 2020). The network collaboration included interaction among people and business organizations those are geographically distributed in terms of the operating environment.

7. The technologies and digital technologies used are internet, E-mail, project management software and project system.

1. Two examples of the project management tools are:

Gantt chart: This tool is included graphical schedule for the project planning as well as recording of the project progress based on various project phases. It is a tool that can represent the schedule as the bar charts.

PERT chart: It is used for identification of the critical path of the plan and this technique is used to simplify the project planning as well as scheduling. It creates realistic estimation of duration for each project activity (Müller, Drouin, & Sankaran, 2019).

2. The documents used to define the project parameters are basic design of the system, functional and non-functional specifications document, project proposal, and service specifications.

3. The processes used to identify and manage the risk within the project are:

• Identify the risks: This step is included identifying the project risks that can affect the plan and document the causes of the risks.
• Risk analysis: Quantitative and qualitative analysis is performed to prioritize identified risks that are subject to impact the project success.
• Plan risk responses: There is development of options plus actions to increase in the business opportunities and also reduce the threats to the project objectives.
• Monitor risks: Through the project lifecycle, the risks are monitored and controlled by means of risk management strategies.

4. Outline of the project

• Project title: Implementation of student portal system for the university
• Organization’s mission: The mission of the university is accessing to the college specific information through the student portal system.
• Goals: The purpose of the system is login to the website of the school to access to the program details.
• Objectives: The objectives are included implementation of integrated and reliable database system, provide user friendly and easy to use system with efficient documentation and create ad hoc reports.
• Operations: Contains information related to course offered, email programs, schedule of the exam, timetables of the classes and department contact details.
• Relate to the project: The project plan is ensured to meet with requirements of the project client, delivered on scheduled timeline and work in the estimated budget.

5. Organizational procedures and processes

• Lines of authority and approvals: It is chain of command within the business that can confer to power to order the subordinates to perform the project task.
• Quality assurance: It is a way to prevent any defects in the manufactured products and avoid the issues when delivering of the services to the customers.
• Human resources: Division of the business those are focused on the activities related to the employees.
• Budgets and finance: It is the financial plan for the defined time period and it included planned sales volumes as well as revenues.
• Recordkeeping: It is the system that can capture and manage access to the records through the time (Armenia et al., 2019).
• Reporting: The reports are recorded information related to the project plan.

6. Work health requirements for the project included health as well as safety of the team members and organizational employees.

1. Parameters of the project

• Project scope: The project scope included implement student portal system for the university with user friendly, ease to use, online collaboration and delivery of information to the staffs and students.
• Project stakeholders, including own responsibilities: The project stakeholders are project manager, project sponsor, supervisor and staffs. The project manager is responsible to plan and organize the project plan based on the goals and objectives. The sponsor is responsible to fund the project. The supervisor is responsible to lead the project work and organize the work as per the client’s needs (Bjorvatn & Wald, 2018). The project staffs are responsible to handle the technical work to implement the system.
• Relationship of project to organizational objectives and other projects: It ensures that the end users are having input in the project process and allows the department to have deeper understanding of the system development.
• Reporting requirements: Financial accounting report, employment records, training records and sales records.
• Resource requirements: Physical resources are table, chairs, and human resources are manager, supervisor and staffs.

2. Implement project plan

• Deliverables

The project deliverables are included system design report, project proposal, engineering report, project charter, risk management plan, communication management plan.

• Work breakdown structure 

• Budget and allocation of resources

Resources	Allocation	Timelines	Budget
Human resources	HR Manager	By 10th Jan	$25,000
Materials	Project Manager	By 20th Jan	$30,000
Marketing	Marketing Manager	By 31st Jan	$15,000

• Timelines

Project phases	Time expected to start
Project initiation	2nd Jan, 2022
Project planning	13th Jan, 2022
Project execution	28th Jan, 2022
Project monitoring and controlling	6th Feb, 2022
Project closure	19th Feb, 2022

• Risk management

Type of risk	Probability	Impact	Mitigation
Scope risk	High	High	Proper scope planning
Schedule risk	Medium	High	Proper timeline schedule using project management software
Budget risk	Medium	Medium	Proper budget planning including all project expenses

• Recordkeeping and reporting
• Documentation is the best way to keep record of work to be done, usage of the strategies and changes occurred.
• Database management system is used to record the online records of the project information and reports required to do the project work (Ma et al., 2018).

3. Implement and review of the project plan

Stages	Meeting	Discussion	Completed
Stage 1	By 5th Jan, 2022	By 6th Jan, 2022	By 7th Jan, 2022
Stage 2	By 10th Jan, 2022	By 11th Jan, 2022	By 12th Jan, 2022
Stage 3	By 15th Jan, 2022	By 16th Jan, 2022	By 17th Jan, 2022
Stage 4	By 20th Jan, 2022	By 21st Jan, 2022	By 22nd Jan, 2022
Stage 5	By 29th Jan, 2022	By 30th Jan, 2022	By 31st Jan, 2022

 4. Support project team to achieve deliverables

• Conducting a performance review

Performance review is conducted by appraisal of the project team members and engages them with survey and interview sessions (Aanbari & Kwak, 2018).

• Identifying training needs

Training is required for the non-technical staffs so that they can help in the implementation work of the system.

• Resolving conflict or other issues
• Acknowledge of the difficult situations
• The individuals should express their feelings.
• Defining of the project problems (San Cristóbal et al., 2018).
• Finding solutions to satisfy the client’s needs
• Conducting a debriefing session
• Start talking with people
• Sequence of the discussion sessions
• Usage of various formats to engage with the project group
• Open ended questions to be asked to project team

5. The project is to be worked as expected, following with the project scope. There is also maintaining of the communication among the project stakeholders and team to avoid the misunderstandings (Hair & Sarstedt, 2021).

6. Document project outcomes

• What did you learn?

Management of the project plan is to be learned from the project work.

• Did you identify best practices?

Communication is the best practice to avoid any project misunderstandings among the project team members.

• Could you use what you learned for other projects?

The learning is to be taken such as defined project scope, project deadlines and timelines, team definition and others.

• What recommendations would you make for the future?

The project staffs are required to learn from the mistakes so that it will not happen in the future project.

• What are the main elements contributing to this project's success or failure?

Success: Proper definition of the project, selection of project strategy, technical competence, suitable organizational structure, good communication and quick resolution of conflict.

Failure: Lack of scope documentation and unrealities in client expectations.

References

Aanbari, F. T., & Kwak, Y. H. (2018, June). Impact on project management of allied disciplines. Project Management Institute.

Armenia, S., Dangelico, R. M., Nonino, F., & Pompei, A. (2019). Sustainable project management: A conceptualization-oriented review and a framework proposal for future studies. Sustainability, 11(9), 2664.

Bjorvatn, T., & Wald, A. (2018). Project complexity and team-level absorptive capacity as drivers of project management performance. International Journal of Project Management, 36(6), 876-888.

Hair, J. F., & Sarstedt, M. (2021). Explanation Plus Prediction—The Logical Focus of Project Management Research. Project Management Journal, 8756972821999945.

Ika, L. A., Söderlund, J., Munro, L. T., & Landoni, P. (2020). Cross-learning between project management and international development: Analysis and research agenda. International Journal of Project Management, 38(8), 548-558.

Ma, X., Xiong, F., Olawumi, T. O., Dong, N., & Chan, A. P. (2018). Conceptual framework and roadmap approach for integrating BIM into lifecycle project management. Journal of Management in Engineering, 34(6), 05018011.

Müller, R., Drouin, N., & Sankaran, S. (2019). Modeling organizational project management. Project Management Journal, 50(4), 499-513.

San Cristóbal, J. R., Carral, L., Diaz, E., Fraguela, J. A., & Iglesias, G. (2018). Complexity and project management: A general overview. Complexity, 2018.