Assessment 2
Table of Contents
Conclusion, findings and recommendation 8
Figure 1: Work breakdown structure 5
Figure 2: Network diagram with project task ID 8
Project charter
| Project name: Office renovation | Project number: 1.0 |
| Date: 10-03-2022 | Revision number: 1.0 |
| Project goals Star-tech provides consultation services for digital transform. It wants to renovate office component such as conference hall and two staff rooms for furniture, acoustic panels, projector and other equipment to meet the business requirement. The project aims to deliver a quality-experience to guest and customers in conference room and add technical tools such as projectors for better presentation of the products and services. | |
| Deliverables Design drawings Proposals Renovation as required Project documentation | |
| Scope definition Project has three tasks in scope: installation of acoustic panels, furniture and technical equipment. It includes repaint on walls after changes in network infrastructure to ensure compatibility of new devices. It also provides related technical and non-technical items such as sofas and projector screens to deliver the intended features. However, it does not include any demolition and reflooring of the selected and other office area. | |
| Project milestones Design blueprints Procurement request proposals Installation of new equipment Repainting and cleaning Project documentation and closure | |
| Assumptions, constraints and dependencies It is assumed that the business manager and one employee is available to the project team to get assistance within time regarding any query. It is assumed that the project scope is not expanded to other areas and available cost and time is sufficient to meet the requirements. It is expected that the organisation is providing internal supports for resources and there are timely approvals and audits to lead performance (Heagney, 2016). The project is assumed to have no changes in requirement once the procurement of the material is received. It has constraints of time and cost because most of the project work cannot be managed in business hours due to disruptions in business operations. Cost is also limited and cannot be extended for the same deliverables (Meredith et al., 2017). It is a constraint that required quality of acoustic panels may not be available in local market due to limited number of resellers. | |
| Project organisation structure Sponsor: business manager is acting as sponsor. The person has role to guide and monitor the project execution and outcome through decisions on various project designs and requests. Project manager: As a head of the project, the person aims to deliver the proposed outcome while ensuring optimised use of the capability and constraints to complete the project with team. Team members: These people work under contractor and project manager to accomplish the required tasks within quality criteria (Richardson and Jackson, 2018). Contractor: The person/ business finalised after request for proposal for procurement of various materials. A contractor has role to deliver specific features in the project such as repaint of the interior within given time. | |
| Estimated cost Project has estimated cost of $50,000 considering estimated cost of materials ($35,000), cost of labour ($10,000) and overhead and miscellaneous cost ($5,000) | |
| Risks and issues Following are major risks identified during initial investigation of the project and business case: Labour shortage and productivity issue Health and safety hazard Sub-contractor default Change orders Design error and omission | |
| Related document The project includes request for order, site permits and approval letters as related document. | |
| Project authorisation | |
| Approved by: Business manager | Date: |
| Approved by: Project manager | Date: |
Literature review
Classification of project life cycles
Project are accomplished using a certain pattern and such patterns are called life cycles. It is significant to determine the project life cycles to determine how the project can deliver the results. Project life cycles can be classified into three categories: predictive or fully plan-driven, iterative and incremental; and adaptive or agile (Heagney, 2016). In predictive life cycle, project constraints such as cost, time and scope are identified earlier and comprehensively. Later, project phases are created as breakdown of the work whereas project phases can be overlapping or sequential. Once project stages are identified, in-detailed project plan is created for the entire project and it is sometime referred as rolling wave planning or progressive elaboration (Richardson and Jackson, 2018). High-level plans are used to guide the execution but detailed planning is used for near future tasks. Predictive life cycle is an implementation of waterfall approach in project management.
Iterative and incremental life cycle also emphasises on breakdown of the project into phases where phases may be overlapping or sequential. In a comparison to predictive life cycle, scope is not determined ahead of the time and in detail. It only determines the scope for the first iteration and next scope is determine for new iteration (Crowder and Friess 2015). It focuses on basic functionality or minimum viability of the product in initial iteration and subsequent iterations are expanding scope and product features.
For complex projects, it is challenging to move with predictive approach because it creates constraint on change management and it may result in significant loss of time and resource capabilities. Iterative and incremental approach is closer to agile or adaptive approach but it lacks stakeholder engagement and dynamic change consideration. In adaptive project management, there is higher emphasise on rapid change and therefore, processes within an iteration also may be in parallel execution to deliver the outcome quickly. Adaptive approach determines scope for the current iteration but it ensures that iterations are more rapid to deliver rapid functional products (Layton et al., 2020). It breaks the scope into deliverables and prioritize them to deliver in short time period such as maximum of four weeks. At the end of iteration, customer and other stakeholders review the outcome and feedback is used to improve over the next iterations.
Phases of different project life cycles
In predictive life cycle, requirements are defined upfront before to start the development. It has constraint on change and key stakeholders are engaged only at specific milestones. Project execution depends on detailed plan created for eventual deliverables so that risk and cost are controlled for each task as per the plan. It has mainly five stages: analyse, design, build, test and deliver. Analysis stage is associated to conduct feasibility assessment of business and identify requirements. Design phase includes blueprints of the designs to consider for implementation. Build phase is dedicated to construct or code the requirements into deliverable form. Test phase validates the product against the customer requirement and changes are considered with re-initialisation of new life cycle for the change (Harrison and Lock, 2017). Final phase in life cycle is to document the project, provide training and support and close the contract.
Iterative and incremental phase has similar number of the phases. However, all the phases are within several iterations. For instance, all five stages are part of first iteration and same stages are also included in second and so on. Adaptive project management may have iteration-based or flow-based agile phases (Crowder and Friess, 2015). In iteration-based agile approach, project has several sprints to deliver features whereas initial iteration has role to plan and estimate execution to determine framework deliverables. Flow-based approach uses Kanban method in which iterations are used but work is not restricted to a particular iteration.
Apart of these, the project phases can be classified into two categories: sequential and overlapping. In sequential execution, next stage can be started only if ongoing/ previous stage is finished. In such phases, there is fewer opportunity to compress the schedule and optimise the resource utilisation. In overlapping phases, several phases can be started and execution in parallel. It allows better distribution of the resources and capabilities (Kerzner, 2018). However, it also demands adequate planning and increased number of resources in team.
Work breakdown structure
Figure 1: Work breakdown structure
Schedule plan
Gantt chart
Gantt chart has main purpose to represent time-constraint activities and associated resources and constraints such as deliverable, assigned resources and cost constraint (Harrison and Lock, 2017). The presented Gantt chart indicates that project has mainly six phases and each phase have several sub-tasks to accomplish. The project has mainly five milestones that needs to be delivered on time to ensure project can be completed within time.
Table 2: Project schedule
| Task Name | Duration in days | Start | Finish | Predecessors |
| Office renovation | 57 | 10-03-22 | 27-05-22 | |
| Initiation | 7 | 10-03-22 | 18-03-22 | |
| Define goals | 2 | 10-03-22 | 11-03-22 | |
| Create a business case | 2 | 14-03-22 | 15-03-22 | 3 |
| Complete project charter | 3 | 16-03-22 | 18-03-22 | 4 |
| List of stakeholders | 1 | 16-03-22 | 16-03-22 | 4 |
| Planning | 7 | 21-03-22 | 29-03-22 | |
| Define scope | 2 | 21-03-22 | 22-03-22 | 5 |
| Create a budget baseline | 3 | 21-03-22 | 23-03-22 | 5 |
| Create project plan | 2 | 24-03-22 | 25-03-22 | 9 |
| Set roles and responsibilities | 2 | 28-03-22 | 29-03-22 | 6,10 |
| Design | 6 | 28-03-22 | 04-04-22 | |
| Project schedule | 2 | 28-03-22 | 29-03-22 | 10 |
| Design blueprint | 4 | 28-03-22 | 31-03-22 | 5,10 |
| Procurement strategy | 1 | 30-03-22 | 30-03-22 | 13 |
| Testing strategy | 1 | 30-03-22 | 30-03-22 | 13 |
| Resource allocation | 2 | 31-03-22 | 01-04-22 | 15 |
| Change approval process | 1 | 04-04-22 | 04-04-22 | 17 |
| Implementation | 35 | 28-03-22 | 13-05-22 | |
| Site permits | 5 | 28-03-22 | 01-04-22 | 10 |
| Kick-off meeting | 1 | 04-04-22 | 04-04-22 | 20 |
| Repositioning of existing materials | 2 | 05-04-22 | 06-04-22 | 21 |
| Site cleaning | 3 | 05-04-22 | 07-04-22 | 21 |
| Noise cancellation certain | 3 | 08-04-22 | 12-04-22 | 23 |
| Demotion of unwanted construction | 8 | 13-04-22 | 22-04-22 | 24 |
| Request for proposal | 1 | 04-04-22 | 04-04-22 | 20 |
| Contact potential suppliers | 5 | 05-04-22 | 11-04-22 | 26 |
| Finalise the supplier | 1 | 12-04-22 | 12-04-22 | 27 |
| Contract for delivery | 3 | 13-04-22 | 15-04-22 | 28 |
| Contract for carpentry work | 3 | 13-04-22 | 15-04-22 | 28 |
| Installation of acoustic panels | 10 | 18-04-22 | 29-04-22 | 30 |
| Repaint | 10 | 02-05-22 | 13-05-22 | 31 |
| Installation of projector and other equipment | 7 | 18-04-22 | 26-04-22 | 30 |
| Monitoring and control | 40 | 04-04-22 | 27-05-22 | |
| Track efforts and cost | 20 | 04-04-22 | 29-04-22 | 20 |
| Monitor project progress | 20 | 02-05-22 | 27-05-22 | 31 |
| Procurement validation | 2 | 13-04-22 | 14-04-22 | 28 |
| Carpentry work quality check | 2 | 18-04-22 | 19-04-22 | 30 |
| Installation quality check | 2 | 27-04-22 | 28-04-22 | 33 |
| Completion | 9 | 29-04-22 | 11-05-22 | |
| Handover deliverables | 1 | 29-04-22 | 29-04-22 | 39 |
| Review deliverables | 1 | 02-05-22 | 02-05-22 | 41 |
| Get approval on results | 3 | 03-05-22 | 05-05-22 | 42 |
| Documentation | 3 | 06-05-22 | 10-05-22 | 43 |
| Sign-off | 1 | 11-05-22 | 11-05-22 | 44 |
Milestones
The project has five milestones:
- Complete project charter- 18-03-2022
- Create project plan- 25-03-2022
- Design blueprint- 31-03-2022
- Installation complete- 26-04-2022
- Sign-off- 11-05-2022
Deliverables
Table 3: Deliverables
| Project phase | Deliverable |
| Initiation | Business case and project charter |
| Planning | Scope statement, cost estimation, project plan and stakeholder analysis |
| Design | Gantt chart, design blueprint and documents contain strategies and process |
| Implementation | Permits, Contract copies and quality checklist |
| Monitoring and control | Test results |
| Completion | Documentation, training material and contract copy |
Network diagram
It is used to understand the sequence of the activities and determine critical path in the project. Critical path is a sequence of the longest path that consumes comparatively more time and resources in the project and can cause failures (Heagney, 2016). Network diagram shows that highlighted sequence of the activities is a critical path for the project and remaining are easy inflow activities.
Figure 2: Network diagram with project task ID
Conclusion, findings and recommendation
The presented project can be completed within time and cost considering project schedule and available resources. It is identified that the project has some critical activities and for that there is need of rescheduling, more resources or cost to ensure desired outcome. It is recommended to define role and responsibilities of the project resources so that desired outcome can be achieved within time. Also, it is recommended to conduct initial feasibility study and engage the stakeholders at milestone delivery date to meet acceptance criteria (Kerzner, 2018). It is recommended to use agile approaches throughout the project if there is availability of more resources because the project has constraint of time due to no disruption in routine business operations at workplace (Richardson and Jackson, 2018).
It is concluded that the project can help the organisation to renovate the office building within defined constraint. It is also concluded that project management tools such as Gantt chart and work breakdown structure can help to ensure systematic execution with optimisation of the capabilities.
References
Crowder, J.A. and Friess, S., 2015. Agile project management: managing for success.
Harrison, F. and Lock, D., 2017. Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge.
Heagney, J., 2016. Fundamentals of project management. Amacom.
Kerzner, H., 2018. Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. John Wiley & Sons.
Layton, M.C., Ostermiller, S.J. and Kynaston, D.J., 2020. Agile project management for dummies. John Wiley & Sons.
Meredith, J.R., Shafer, S.M. and Mantel Jr, S.J., 2017. Project management: a strategic managerial approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Richardson, G.L. and Jackson, B.M., 2018. Project management theory and practice. Auerbach Publications.
Appendix
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