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Conduct research using the Internet and identify the type of software or management tools that you would utilize to help with each of the major steps in developing the project plan. Summarize the software/suite selected and identify its key capabilities, advantages and disadvantages.
The value of an organization is extremely important to the management team and the stakeholders of the organization. In reference to Enterprise Project Management, what does the word value mean? What are the two responses that directly impact the value of an organization?
Development Models like Waterfall, Agile, and variations on each have their strengths and weaknesses. While the textbook may explain the theoretical strengths and weaknesses, time and case studies may give you a better understanding.
Research online discussions
Research online discussions by evangelists on both sides, as well as locate some case studies. Explain in your own words how each of these development models works. Add your opinion as to which approach you like and why. Can you think of a project at your company that might be best suited to Waterfall Style? What about the Agile Style? Explain your reasoning.
Consider the project scenario we have used during this term. As the project manager, you are in the finishing stage of the project, and it is apparent that one of the project’s deliverables will not be completed before the project is wrapped up.
What options do you have for this uncompleted deliverable?
Provide an example of how poor escalation of a project problem can create additional problems.
Explain your rationale.
You are tasked with identifying an environmental evaluation practitioner on management with whom you will conduct informational interview. I encourage
you to identify someone who works in an area of interest to you and reach out to that person. This is an important professional skill. During the conversation,
take thorough notes; these will be turned in.
In this interview, you may consider addressing the following topics:
– how the individual became involved in evaluation
– their approach to evaluation
– the evaluator’s specific sector and/or workplace setting (e.g., internal or external evaluators, independent practitioner vs. part of an organization, etc.)
– key lessons or points that have facilitated their evaluation work, and key factors that have hindered their evaluation work
– other topics as relevant or as there is interest
You will prepare a 2-3 page memo that: (1) provides information about the respondent and summarizes key points from this interview, and (2) addresses how this information contributed to your understanding of evaluation and/or the work of an evaluator. These reflections will be posted for everyone in the course so we can learn from each other’s interview experience.
(a) Discuss the factors which a franchisee needs to observe. (30 marks)
(b)Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of franchising for McDonald based on the case study
(40 marks)
Question 2 Describe the three trends that will affect Information Management Systems. (30 marks)
CLO 2: Perform industry analysis using the necessary analytical tools
CLO3: Propose ideas for new product or services and managing the creative process in an organisational context
“Agile Modeling and Prototyping” and reflect on only one (1) of the following topics:
“Agile vs Structured”: How is Agile Modeling better or worse than Structurred Methods?
“Agile Types”: What types of Agile Modeling exists and which seems better?
“Prototyping”: How important is Prototyping and when would it be used?
What is a project, and what are its main attributes? How is a project different from what most people do in their day-to-day jobs? Discuss the importance of top management commitment and the development of standards for successful project management. Provide examples to illustrate the importance of these items based on your experience on any type of project. Discuss the unique challenges that an IT project presents.
Great Books Publishing is continuing to grow. The customized eBooks line of work is continuing to expand, and they now have a lot of experience from the eBook projects that they have completed for their first eBook customer, a local college, and for their newer customers. However, as new projects come in and start to run into problems, some of the project managers in the project management office and their manager, Sophia, were discussing how it seems like it is déjà vu all over again – some of the same problems that they thought they had solved in working with supervisors and their teams on past projects keep on occurring. The eBook projects are functioning well, and customers are happy with the results. Repeat orders are coming in and new customers are turning to Great Books for their eBook production needs. However, there are just some problems that seem to keep popping up. One of the project managers even described dealing with these problems as being like playing the popular arcade game of “Whack-a-Mole” – as soon as you deal with one to make it disappear, the same one or another one just pops up. It seems like a never-ending struggle to try and solve some of these problems, especially when some seem like they were already solved on another earlier project.
In the PM handbook that Sophia had implemented, when projects were completed, the supervisors finished tracking all of the actual effort and costs and turned that information over to cost accounting for billing purposes. As Sophia and colleagues implemented the Project Management Office (PMO), they modified the PM manual to have a copy of this information also shared with the project management office. They have found this information to be sometimes useful as historical data to help develop estimates for new projects as requests for new eBooks come in from their customers.
The PMO team was discussing making changes to the PM manual and holding a short training for supervisors to implement some improvements to their project completion processes. They wanted to change their standard job template to incorporate these additions: • a planned task for supervisors to close out the project, • a task to lessons learned report, and • an optional task for a closing celebration for the team to mark the end of the project. They felt that it was important that the PMO start capturing lessons learned. These could be collated by the supervisors at the end of the project, or they could encourage supervisors to plan, schedule and hold a project closing meeting with their team members to thank the team members and to collect lessons learned from all of the team. They could also invite feedback or participation from the relevant Customer Service Representatives and account managers. The PMO received management approval for these changes, updated the PM manual, and held a brief training for supervisors. Supervisors liked the ideas, especially because the close-out meeting or team celebration would give them a chance to recognize and reward team members and would serve to motivate the teams for future projects.
As time went on, the PMO started collecting these lessons learned from many projects. The PMO staff started to look at the data from the lessons learned across the projects. They examined frequency of the six kinds of issues that were being encountered on the projects. Based on feedback from the leadership training that they had done with the supervisors, they had thought that the major cause of delays and extra costs on projects were part-time student employees calling off from work at the last minute, leaving planned work not performed until another resource could be assigned to it, which was often difficult as there were few slack resources. They felt that this made tasks late and sometimes delayed projects from completing on time. Their analysis showed that that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, only three of the problems on projects were caused by unplanned absences. In their Pareto analysis, the PMO staff identified three key problems, which they highlighted in red. Delays in obtaining necessary reprint permissions from certain publishers were the largest cause of problems, accounting for 34% of the problems encountered by eBook projects. Production staff calling in sick was the next most frequent problem, accounting for 28% of the problems. Customer changes, which often caused rework and delays, were the root cause of another 20% of the problems. The PMO now knew what the most important issues were that were causing eBook projects to be delayed and could make recommendations to mitigate each of these problems.
Comment on the following aspects of the case study:
a) What are some of the reasons why it is important to close out a project? What can project managers accomplish in closing out a project?
b) Why should projects capture lessons learned? What are some ways that the project team members, project managers and the organization can use lessons learned?
c) What benefits come from celebrating project accomplishments? Do you believe that rewards and recognition can serve as motivators for staff?
You will be using this scenario in your assignments.
The following builds on the project scenario explained in Unit 1.
The CIO wants to make sure that your project schedule is accurate, that the project does not bring big surprises that are not planned for, and that he can be
sure that what is needed gets accomplished. Your presentation to the project staff on the PERT techniques was highly appraised. However, having reviewed
your WBS and the project time estimates, the CIO is now concerned about the project schedule and would like to see if the schedule can be shortened.
Review your project WBS and activity durations and estimates and perform schedule compression techniques such as crashing, fast-tracking, and scope
reduction. Then, write a memo to him assuring him of how you have reviewed ways to shorten the schedule and how all these things are controlled; explain
the value of PERT estimating, critical path, schedule compression techniques, risk matrices, and earned value management. In your write-up be sure to
advise the CIO whether or not your review techniques resulted in shortening the project duration, and indicate whether or not this will affect the overall
project cost and quality.
Assignment Guidelines
Using your course materials, the textbook, the library, and the academic quality resources, research the following:
The value of Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) estimating
The value of Critical Path Method (CPM)
The value of schedule compression techniques
Risk matrices
The value of Earned Value Management (EVM)
In 750–1,000 words, address the following:
Explain how each of the above project management elements or concepts affect the scheduling and controlling of a project.
Explain how the above project management elements or concepts affect a project manager’s ability to make project and segment trade-offs.
Submit your updated MS Project WBS.
Use correctly formatted APA-style references of solid academic quality for your resources and use correctly formatted APA-style in-text citations to your
references to substantiate your information and positions as well as to give credit to other author’s work.