1 Project Management Concepts Muhammad Iqbal The Malcolm Baldrige School of Business, Post University BUS530: Project Management Dr. Jay Fakilede 07-05-2022 2 Project Management Concepts What is the role of a Project Sponsor? The project sponsor is the person who is responsible for the complete success of the project, the appointment of the project manager and his team, defining success criteria, and ensuring the successful delivery of the project. He Aligns the project with end goals, strategy, and objectives and ensures the project's proper launch and execution, manages risks and changes while ensuring the project's quality, verifies project scope, evaluates the project progress, provides feedback, and arranges and maintains funds. Who decides all the tasks that need to be completed for a given project? A project manager is responsible for ensuring his team completes this project on time and meets the client's satisfaction. He coordinates with internal resources and vendors to ensure that the project completes within the scope and budget. He also provides resource availability and allocation, implements risk management techniques to minimize project risks, creates and maintains complete project documentation, and uses appropriate verification techniques to manage project scope, budget, and schedule changes. How does an organization choose one project over another? There are various techniques adopted by organizations to choose one project over another. For a small project that is less complex, the Benefit Measurement Model is helpful. On the other hand, if it's a large, complex project, the Constrained Optimization Method is a better fit. Apart from that, there are non-financial gains such as organizational strategy, and the customer relationship is chief among those that play significant roles in the selection of a project. 3 How is the budget finalized for a given project? The budgeting process is performed at the initial steps of project planning, and typically it is performed in parallel with the project scheduling process. The project manager uses the project's Work Break Down Structure (WBS), the costs estimates, historical data and records, resource information, and policies to identify the monetary resources required. Aggregating the cost estimates of the above activities allows for setting a standard cost baseline. What happens if someone wants to add one extra feature to the project deliverable halfway through the project? Any new requests during the middle of a project are known as 'scope creep.' You need to set up a change management process from the start. Not having a system to handle new requirements can lead to increased time and cost. A project manager must assess the change request and prioritize changes according to a pre-defined method. The next step is to capture the shift in work management software while ensuring more flexibility. Finally, he should reevaluate the risks after incorporating any extra features. Can a construction project manager run a healthcare-related project successfully? How? Project managers' role is abstract; hence they can work anywhere — in any physical location, with a company of any size, small or big, and in any industry. A project manager uses the best practices to complete projects of any nature. No doubt industry knowledge gives project managers an extra advantage, but a construction project manager can run a healthcarerelated project successfully. 4 Halfway through the project execution, you learned that a project is running behind schedule. As a project manager, what would you do? A project manager’s first step is accurately identifying why the project is running behind schedule. There are various possible options to get the project back on track: doing overtime, cutting down some unnecessary procedures, extending the deadline, changing the scope, or having more resources, whichever will be the best fit according to the situation can be applied. Once the option is selected, it will be relayed to everyone on board and ensure that the team and client are on the same page. Longer the project duration, the higher the chances of risk. What provisions would you include in your risk management plan? A risk is an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on a project objective. As a project manager first step is to identify the potential risk and then organize your comprehensive list of potential risks by likelihood and impact (low, moderate, and severe). The next step is to assign ownership for each potential risk and how they will respond to the risks and continuously monitor risks as it is impossible to predict everything if the duration is much longer. Upon project completion, you learned that client is not happy with the final deliverables. What can you do now? If the client has accepted all the deliverables but not the final product, that means something has gone wrong in the last stage. Here the first step is to understand the client's current situation and why the client will not accept the final product and try to convince the client that you have delivered what the project charter has defined as the final product. A 5 compromise option and trying to close the gaps while being mindful of the impact on cost and what a future relationship might bring can be the best strategy. When should a project be marked as complete? A project will be marked as completed if you have delivered what you agreed on in the project's scope while ensuring that all acceptance criteria have been met, the stakeholders are satisfied, and business objectives have been fulfilled. A project completion checklist may include comparing objectives and reality, confirming project completion with stakeholders and ensuring it is within scope, clearing pending contracts and invoices, and post-project report and archiving all documentation. 6 References Asana. (2021, October 19). What is a project sponsor? Breaking down the role and duties. https://www.asana.com/resources/project-sponsor Project Manager Job Description. (n.d.). Workable. Retrieved July 10, 2022, from. https://www.resources.workable.com/project-manager-job-description Usmani, F. (2022, June 3). What are Projects and Operations? PM Study Circle. https://www.pmstudycircle.com/what-are-the-project-and-operation-difference-between-them Watt, A. (2014, August 14). 18. Project Completion – Project Management – 2nd Edition. Pressbooks. https://opentextbc.ca/projectmanagement/chapter/chapter-18-project-completion-projectmanagement