Project Management and Its Phases
Question:
Discuss About The Management Is Process Of Applying Skills?
Project management is the process of applying skills, knowledge, tools and techniques to be able to control, organize, plan and direct project activities to achieve project objectives. In doing all of these, project managers have to ensure that the project is successful. A project is a contractual activity or performance that is designed to produce a specific end product or service within a certain period of time, scope, resources and cost or budget (Edkins et al, 2013). However, this project product has to achieve the intended change, objective or goal that it was expected to achieve. Therefore, project management basically involves the initiation, planning and executing of all the activities and procedure involved in completing a project. Project management has always been one of the best tools that help in making sure that a project is successful. Project management is managed by project managers. They are people who organize and ensure that project procedures are executed and successful. They are the change agents of a project that use their skills to ensure that the project is complete and successful (Ika, 2009). These managers are in charge of a team of project members who are responsible for different roles and responsibilities. Also, these members are usually experts, professionals, skilled and experienced in some of the project fields. Therefore, project management is a very crucial aspect and part of completing a project successfully. In addition to that, it is an aspect that requires a wide range of skills (e.g. technical skills and team management skills) and an excellent business knowledge and awareness.
This process is composed of five phases, which are:
In this phase, the business owners and stakeholders come up with a project idea and it is analyzed in details. They later get permission from the required authorities to officially start the project. To add to that, the business needs/requirements are analyzed, project needs and requirements, business’s financial status among other things. After analyzing the business and project’s needs, the decision-making team has to prove whether the project will be beneficial to the business or not (Howsawi et al, 2011). This means that the project objectives, aims, project manager identification and change expectations have to be set.
This includes the writing down of the project scope and all activities that are to be performed for the completion of the project. These activities include the actual project schedule, resource list, team members and their roles and responsibilities, project budget estimation, project’s time period among other things.
Quality Management Plan: Key Elements
This phase involves the carrying out of the project’s plan or rather implementation of the project plan, i.e. performing the activities that have been listed in the project plan. This means that every person/team member has to have all the details of their role and responsibility for them to carry out a certain duty.
In this phase, the project performance is compared with the actual project plan to ensure that everything is carried out and complete. In that case, the team members have to ensure that they maintain their schedules. The project managers must ensure that the project is still adhered to, reports presented to the people responsible, project scope is achieved, project quality is maintained and risks are controlled (Howsawi et al, 2011). In other words, the project managers must ensure that the project is adhering to the actual project plan and maintains the right track.
Involves the project result/outcome evaluation after all the project tasks are complete and done with and the project end product is officially approved. This phase includes project team member’s evaluation as well. The project scope is verified to ensure that all the project deliverables and expectations are met and according to satisfactory standards.
Project quality management plan involves ensuring that project management is up to and beyond the client’s expectations. This means that, for the managers to provide quality project management, they have to have a very good, effective and efficient plan on how to carry out a certain specific project. This includes providing more specific details for every project management phase and any activity to the team members as well as to the project decision makers (Zafarani, 2011). Therefore, this makes the implementation of a project quality management plan the first step for project managers in achieving project objectives and success. In that case, the following need to be addressed in a project quality management plan, for every project:
Ensure that project quality is planned
Definition of how the project quality will be managed
Definition of all the quality assurance activities
Listing and defining any quality control activities
Listing and defining the acceptable quality standards
This is a part of project quality management plan whereby the plan indicates how the business organizes will maintain and manage quality from the start to the end of the project. The purpose of this part is to prevent unnecessary reworks, wastes of time and funds as well as resources (Nanda, 2016). Quality management approach of a project, should not always cover the product only, but should also cover the project process as well. This is to ensure that all the activities, roles and responsibilities of the team members are performed to certain specific standards and measures. In addition to that, the quality standards and measures should be communicated to every team member or any other person in charge of the project, e.g. stakeholders and business owners.
Managing Global Teams
Quality Requirements and Standards
This is a section of the management plan that describes the project’s product and process quality standards and measures. These will be determined entirely by the project team members. The quality will be determined by their skills, expertise, experience and knowledge in their specific roles and responsibilities (Misic et al, 2014). However, the organization stakeholders and business owners should also identify and define their quality standards and requirements. These requirements are the ones to be followed and adhered to by the project team members.
This section of project quality management plan explains how the project team members should define and document the quality requirements auditing process of both the product and the process. This section is meant to ensure that the quality standards are met and adhered to, i.e. they go hand in hand with the control measurements recorded or expected. Also, it is for ensuring that the product and process quality are recorded and documented.
In this part, the quality management plan concentrates on describing how the project team members will monitor and record the process of quality project management plan implementation. This section also helps in assessing the performance of the whole project quality process and execution of changes whenever they are needed (Misic et al, 2013). This section is meant to ensure that the accepted quality standards of both the product and process are only those that are listed in the quality measurements document.
This section contains a sample of all the quality measurements taken from the product or project process itself. This list of quality measurements is to be compared with another list of actual standards and requirements for both the product and process (Misic et al, 2014 and 2014). Therefore, the section is meant to ensure that the correct quality measurements are recorded and compared against the actual standards is done. This ensures that the product and process quality standards match.
When it comes to managing global teams, the project quality management plan is extremely essential. This is simply because such a plan will ensure same quality standards and measurements for the project. A project that is being managed by a team from different geographical locations must have a quality management plan for the project to succeed. This is simply because of the different geographical locations have certain differences that may affect the quality of the project. According to Alami 2016, some of the challenges affecting global project teams include:
Conclusion
Differences in political views
Differences in management structures
Differences in cultural practices
Differences in legal regulations related to the project
Challenges in risk identifications and management procedures
Differences in initiating quality controls, quality standards, and measurements.
Differences in technological advancement
These challenges take a large part in affecting any project that may be being performed by a global team. However, with a quality management plan, the team will be able to share and agree on the same issues and procedures. Therefore, global team members in the same project should ensure that they have come up with a common project quality management plan (quality standards and measures for both the product and project process) which will facilitate project success and objective achievement.
This involves being aware of the different cultural practices of every group or member in the team. Therefore, the team should know and address each member’s national holidays, social holidays and religious holidays and how important they are to the individual. The project managers should also find out how these cultural practices will affect the member’s performance during the project. Therefore, the quality management plan should ensure that it does not affect the members.
This will involve getting to visit the laws that govern every member’s country and deriving new laws that will go hand in hand with those laws. Basically, this means that the new laws that will be derived should not go against the previous laws. They should be laws that can be followed without breaking the country’s laws. This may include laws that govern product quality standards, any process activity procedures, product quality control standards among others. This is necessary because for a global team to succeed in executing an effective project quality management plan, all the members should be on board and should be able to attain it (Zafarani, 2011). This is simply because it requires the adherence to quality rules and regulations.
In most cases, different countries have different project management structure and procedures (Alami, 2016). In the case of a global team project, the team should come up with a common management method that can be followed and understood by every member. Additionally, the management procedure should be acceptable by every member as well. In doing this, the team members will definitely be able to work together which will make team’s quality project management plan easier and achievable.
The team member training should always be done before the start of the project. Through training, the members will be able to understand the project’s quality requirements, standards and measures. The training should be used to help the team members share ideas and opinions on most of the differences between them. Also, they will be able to offer suitable solutions to those challenges through discussions. The training will help the members understand each other’s cultures, law differences, rules and regulations differences among other things (Zafarani, 2011). Through this, they will also have an idea of what is expected of them for the success of the project especially in relation to product and project process quality.
With that in mind, it is clear that project quality management plan can be very effective and efficient in organizing and controlling most global teams. However, this will depend entirely on the teams’ collaboration and cooperation in providing suitable solutions to the changes among them (Veronese et al, 2016). For instance, in the case of Information Technology project management, the project team should focus on accommodating any kind of technology idea even from the members originating from countries with poor technological development. It is also clear that for a global project team to succeed in a producing the expected or best quality project product, they should invent a project quality management plan.
Conclusion
Project management is certainly a very essential in ensuring project success. It helps project managers implement the project activities tactically and with a procedure. However, every project manager should be willing to follow the management stages for the process to be complete and successful. Furthermore, the project team should invent a project quality management plan to help them in producing the expected product quality at the end of the project. The quality management plan should focus precisely on achieving the quality standards and measures of the end product as well as the quality of the process itself. The project quality management plan can be a very crucial tool, especially for global teams. This is simply because it will contain common quality standards that will guide all the team members even though they have various differences, especially in relation to product quality standards and laws.
References
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