Reflect on the assigned readings for Week 2 and then type a two page paper regarding what you thought was the most important concept(s), method(s), term(s), and/or any other thing that you felt was worthy of your understanding. Define and describe what you thought was worthy of your understanding in half a page, and then explain why you felt it was important, how you will use it, and/or how important it is in project management. After submitting your two page paper as an initial post in the “Reflection and Discussion Forum,” then type at least two peer replies in response to your classmates posts (200 word minimum each).
responses
1) response for Rahul
According to Kloppenborg, Anantatmula & Wells (2019), a project charter is referred to as an informal contract entered between a team of a project and the sponsor of the same project. In a contract, two or more parties are involved freely, and each party benefits from it. Also, contract documentation can evolve with the changing conditions that may occur. Moreover, a project charter serves crucial roles to the project team; for instance, this charter authorizes the project managers to proceed with the operations. Secondly, it helps in the development of common understanding amongst the parties involved. Thirdly, it leads to the creation of commitments of resources to projects and finally screening out the poor projects.
Furthermore, another important aspect of this week’s discussion is the discussion on the elements of a typical charter project that comprise of the title of the project charter, overview of the scope, case of the business, business’ background, milestone’s schedule, potential risks, estimates of the budgets, plan for the requirements, among others. Additionally, in this discussion, steps for constructing a milestone schedule have been discussed. Description of the present situation requiring the project and the successful completion of the project are the first two steps involved in the construction of a milestone schedule (Kloppenborg et al., 2019).
This week’s discussion is important as it has enabled me to understand what a project charter is and how it is beneficial to the success of the business. Also, this discussion is important has it has outlined the crucial elements of a project charter, and it has described how each element is useful (Kloppenborg et al., 2019). Furthermore, using the knowledge gained from the discussion, each section of a project charter can be created easily. Lastly, this discussion has provided the skills of milestone charter creation and the steps involved.
Additionally, the knowledge obtained from this discussion is crucial in the management of the project. One of its essentials is that it authorizes the manager of the project to proceed with the project activities by authorizing the resources allocated to a given project. Again, for proper management of the project, this charter is responsible for the provision of the official status within the parent organization. Again, understanding the project charter results in the development of teamwork amongst the stakeholders involved in the execution of the project (Kloppenborg et al., 2019). It also leads to the effectiveness of the management of the project as there is mutual agreement, trust, and commitments amongst the parties involved.
Understanding the scope overview of the project helps the management in the prevention of the unnecessary expansion that may occur that was not earlier agreed. Business case, on the other hand, binds the project to the strategy of the organization. With the project charter, the management can tell when a project is needed and hence estimates and budgets for the requirements to execute the project. Again, the management can learn from the present project, and the lessons obtained can be beneficial to other projects (Kloppenborg et al., 2019). The management can identify the possible risks and plan for them before they occur. Finally, the project sponsors, managers, and the core team can make agreements at higher levels using the project charter.
REFERENCES
Kloppenborg, T., Anantatmula, V., & Wells, K. (2019). Contemporary project management (4th ed). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
2) response for Sri surya
Hi everyone,
To begin with, the chapters “Project Selection and Prioritization” and “Chartering Projects” covered several topics and I want to discuss about few important topics. Mainly the strategic analysis plays a vital role and “The strategic analysis is often called strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats (SWOT). There are few selection criteria for projects such as
- How well does this project fir=t with at least one organizational objective?
- How competitively can the company price the project results?
- What unique advantages will the project provide?
- How sustainable will the project results be?
- What risk are there if we do not perform this project?
Based on the available data we can create a project selection and prioritization matrix, each and every organization needs several changes as a part of continuous improvement, so in such cases this matrix plays a vital role. Even the project manager generally considers few issues such as
- The urgency of each project
- The cost of delaying the expected benefits from various projects
- Practical details concerning the timing
- Opportunity costs associated with the project etc.
The next step or the first step for any project is “Project Charter”, usually it is an informal contract between the project team and sponsor. There are four major purposes for a charter i.e.
- Authorizes the project manager to proceed.
- Helps the project manager, sponsor and team members if any are previously assigned
- Helps the project manager, sponsor and team members commit to the spirit of project
- Quickly scree out obviously poor projects.
Later steps include creating timelines and milestones schedules, so there is a need for acceptance criteria. For such situations, the author mentioned about the six-step-procedure i.e.
- Step 1: Current state of the project
- Step 2: Targeted or future state predicted state
- Step 3: Final project deliverables
- Step 4: Key points where quality needs to be verified
- Step 5: Allot primary shareholder for each milestone
- Step 6: Realistic expected completion dates for each and every individual milestone
The chapters pretty much determined the project scope as key element for any kind of successful project management irrespective to their line of activity. So, the key objective was to determine whether the project scope has an impact on project measure like cost, schedule and percentage completion. Project success was considered as self-defined, besides it showed the importance of Project scope for making the firm more efficient. It helps us in monitoring or getting real time data such as:
- Initial Planned and actual project budget
- Initial Planned and actual project schedule
- Percentage completion
Thank you,