Project management is all about how to manage the project. It can be a academic project or just a small party in-order to have a effective output need to have a proper management from the beginning to the end.
 |
| Figure 1: Project Management (infowit, 2012) |
Today lecturer started the lecture by defining and describing what is a project. According to lecturer's explanation project has main three characteristics of them own. They are time-frame, goal and budget which are used to when defining a project. As mentioned in cs.odu (2012) project has defined as sequence of tasks planned from beginning to end, bounded by time, resources, & required results and defined outcome and "deliverable" within a deadline and which has a budget limits number of people, supplies, and capital.
After gave a vast description of project, lecturer described about stages in a project. They are as followed,
- Initiation- Need to define about the time, type,budget etc.
- Planning- How the party is going to plan. In-order to that breakdown project intosub tasks Ex:- Identify sponsors, sell tickets, decorations, find a place, foods an beverages etc. All the sub tasks should divide among the people who are involved in a particular project/party.
- Controlling- Make sure there are no deviations in the work. All the work need to manage and control as the plan. Need to check whether tasks are performed within time period and the budget.
- Completing- Check whether objectives have achieved or not within the given time period and specified budget.
After that lecturer explained reasons for fail the project. It because not having a proper plan because of that will not be able to complete the project within given time period. Another reason to fail a project is add some tasks while the project on the process. From that work cannot be complete within time period as well as extra amount of money has to allocate for the extra tasks from that project members find difficulties.
Then lecture started discuss about project management. Before skip to the project management. Lecturer had a brief discussion about management. There are four pillars in management. They are,
- Planning
- Organizing
- Leading
- Controlling
Project Scope
Project scope defines followings,
- What the project will do (it’s aims, deliverable, etc)
- What the project will not do
Feasibility
Whether project is worthwhile to persuade. There are four main types of feasibility studies. Such as operational, technical, schedule and economic. Apart from these main types some projects focuses on feasibility studies like legal, social. It depends on the type of the project. As an example government use social feasibility in projects to check whether people will use the particular system and etc.
Operational Feasibility- Check whether particular project solve the business problem and impact to the company.
Economical Feasibility- Identify return of investment. Cost is identified as tangible cost and intangible cost. For this different analysis methods are used like cost-benefit analysis, pay-back analysis, benefit cost ratio, ARR, IRR
Technical Feasibility - Check for available resources and expertise knowledge.
Schedule Feasibility- Check whether project can be done within given time period. For this can use MS project tool.
Then lecturer discussed about how to define objectives and aims.
Aims and objectives should be SMART.
- Make aims achievable
- Make aims specific
- Make aims measurable
Lecturer stated the important of methodology for a project.
Methodology described how you will attempt to achieve the aims- Methodologies has designed to address problems.
Lecturer further described the importance of methodologies. Project can be started without any methodologies but when a problem occur it difficult to solve the problem. But when have the methodology it is an easy task and when a methodology used can have an effective output.
After that lecturer described more about project management.
Project management is discipline of planning, organizing, managing and controlling resources to achieve project goals
Aim activity-project completed on time, within budget, with required functionality and quality (fitness for purpose)
As the final topic of the today lecture, lecturer explain how to manage the project.
- Identify what are the activities need to do
- Work according to series of check points-Check the quality of the work (quality assurance)
- Control the project (utilizing software)-Use CASE (Computer Area Software Engineering) tools like MS Project, MS Visio
- Ensures projects scheduled at earliest possible date, with least drain on resources
- Delays identified-increase resources?
- IS development methodologies e.g. SSADM identify phases, techniques, deliverables
- Sequence
Ex:- Mitigation activities that take for a particular risk- As an example if a member in the group fall sick what are the others members going to do.
Learning Outcomes:-
From this lecture I understood the importance of the project management. This lecture helped me to understand how I can use project management to the projects I do. Up to now I have not used a proper timeline when I was doing my projects. But I some how manage to complete my work and submit it within the given time period. But in the projects I do mistakes. If I follow a proper methodology and time line I could have time to recheck my work and reduce the mistakes that I am doing in my projects. Also in the group projects if I follow a proper time line and divide the work accordingly all the group members get the equal work weight. I am looking forward to follow the steps and techniques that I learnt from this lecture for my future projects. What I can summarize from this lecture is to have an effective output you need to manage the work accordingly from the beginning to the end.
References:-
cs. odu. (2012). Definition of Project. [Online]. Available at: http://www.cs.odu.edu/~cs410/whatisaproject.htm [Accessed 3rd September 2012]
infowit. (2012). Time Management. [Online]. Available at: http://www.infowit.com/images/time_graphic.jpg [Accessed 3rd September 2012]
No comments:
Post a Comment