Project Characteristics, Scope, Duration, Risk Management, And Essay.

The Gantt chart and critical path of the project has been shown in the image below.

There are various approaches that may be used for generating the project budget.

• Top-down Approach: This is the high-level breakdown structure in which the costs for the top-most process are determined followed by the subsequent efforts and costs. The work items under each package are assessed in terms of the costs that shall be used for the execution of the project tasks and activities (Tannu, 2014).
• Bottom-up Approach: It is the reverse of the top-down approach as it involves the estimations of the cost at the bottom. These costs are then combined to understand the costs at one level up. As a result, the overall project costs are calculated.
• Time-phased estimation: It is the process in which monthly estimation of the project costs is done which are then calculated on a cumulative basis.
• Analogous Estimations: The historical data and information from the similar processes is used for estimating the project costs (Sequeira and Lopes, 2015).

There may be various risks that may come up in the projects, such as technical risks, operational errors, security risks, market risks, schedule/budget overrun, legal risks, ethical, and quality risks. These risks arise due to security vulnerabilities, technical faults, operational inefficiencies, changes in market trends, scope inflation, decrease in resource productivity and other factors (Sanchez et al., 2009).

These risks can be managed by a defined risks management process. The first step in the process included identification of the risks which are then assessed, analysed and evaluated. The risk treatment and monitoring is carried out followed by control and reporting of the risks (Pimchangthong and Boonjing, 2017).

There are evaluation, monitoring, and control methods that are executed to ensure that the project quality is maintained.

These include verification and validation methods to assess and maintain the project quality. The project managers and leaders shall carry out the process as audits, reviews, inspections, and walkthroughs to assure that the quality of the project is maintained across all the project activities. These processes shall map the quality standards with the expected values and standards and a gap analysis must be carried out. The increased gaps would indicate non-adherence to the desired standards and vice versa.

There are also testing processes that shall be executed to maintain and manage the project and product quality. These processes shall include system testing, integration testing, regression testing, performance, and security testing. The results of these processes will provide the list of defects and bugs present in the project and the systems developed in the same. These methods will ensure that the defects detected are resolved and the required quality standards are maintained (Ingason, 2015).

Gantt Chart and Critical Path

The project is a merger project being carried out by ABC PLC, UK based food and drinks retailer. The company has a good reputation in the market and has been successful in mergers and acquisitions. The company already has a list of food and drinks manufacturers and retailers that it has acquired. It is now considering merging with DEF Ltd, a high street frozen food retailer. DEF Ltd has its outlets in most of the cities in UK.

The project will be managed by John, the Project Manager and it would be intended to utilize the in-house expertise to bring down the overall costs of the merger. The terms and conditions put forward by ABC PLC have been accepted by DEF Ltd and the merger is expected to be a friendly process.

The following activities will be carried out by the project resources during the timeline of the project.

• The conduction of feasibility analysis and studies to understand the success of the merger and organization of the start-up meeting to discuss the highlights.
• Project chartering activities and development of the charter (Leger et al., 2013).
• Information collection and analysis to understand the specifications and tasks to be included in the mergers process and the market performance expected as an outcome.
• Project planning and estimations
• Execution of the merger of the two companies and management of the changes
• Reviews and inspections
• Continuous improvement processes and quality checks

The project team will not cover the activities as negotiations with the suppliers for the tools and equipment required during the merger, advertising of the merger process on various marketing and advertising channels (Ogunberu, 2016).

The project activities will be managed by the project management methodology as Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). According to this methodology, there will be five phases in the project as project initiation, project planning, project execution, project control, and project closure.

The phases that will be carried out in the merger project will be integrated with the PMBOK phases to make sure that the project goals and objectives are achieved. The methodology puts the Project Manager as the primary resource in the project responsible for overall management of the project (Gasik, 2015). The phases that will be associated in the project life cycle have been listed and described below.

The initiation phase of the project will begin with the conduction of feasibility studies on social, technical, environmental, economic, and operational aspects.

The results of these studies will be analysed and a start-up meeting will be conducted followed by the chartering of the project.

The techniques that will be used for the purpose of information investigation will include interviews, domain analysis, e-surveys, and observations.

These techniques will be executed to collect the data and information sets and the information gathered will be analysed using automated tools.

The project methodology will be determined as Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). According to this methodology, there will be five phases in the project as project initiation, project planning, project execution, project control, and project closure. The phases that will be carried out in the merger project will be integrated with the PMBOK phases to make sure that the project goals and objectives are achieved.

Project Budget and Risk Management

This phase will then include the estimations of project scope, schedule, budget, effort, communications and risks (Zwikael, 2009).

The merger process will be carried out followed by reviews and inspection processes along with the highlighting and implementation of the changes.

The changes detected will be managed by carrying out the phases as change planning, change execution, and change reinforcement (Jamali and Oveisi, 2016).

The final phase will be the control and closure phase. In this phase, the control activities will be carried out, such as quality control and continuous improvement.

The closure activities will then be carried out.

The resources and the set of responsibilities that will be performed by these resources have been included in the table below.