Introduction to Project Management
Discuss about the Project Planning and Control Techniques Institute.
The significant practice of initiation, planning, execution, control and finally closing of the team work for the proper achievement of several goals or objectives is known as project management (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). The project is supposed to be completed within specific time and should meet all the criteria or requirements. This project is the temporary endeavour that is eventually designed for the perfect production of any unique product or service or an outcome that comprises of a defined initiation and completion. The beneficial changes or alterations are brought with the help of this project. The person, who is responsible for managing the project, is known as the project manager (Burke, 2013). The most significant challenge of this project management is the achievement of each and every objective within provided constraints.
The following report outlines a brief discussion on the concept of project management. This report will be focusing on the key threats that are solely related to the improvement in the quality of IS projects. The identification and assessing of the value of the IS projects will also be given here. The project management documents are also provided here. The final part of the report describes about the project processes and outputs.
Project Management Plan: The project management plan is the specific plan that covers everything that are needed for the project such as variances, project tolerances, approach of change control, work breakdown structure, cost baseline, scope baseline and schedule baseline (Larson & Gray, 2013).
Project Management Quality Management Plan: This type of plan comprises of the list of things for managing the overall quality of any project. There are three important processes present in this plan (Schwalbe, 2015). They are the Quality Planning or QP, Quality Assurance or QA and Quality Control or QC.
Business Case: This document starts the entire project and comprises of the problem that is to be delivered. It contains every detail and summarises the project problem.
Statement of Work: This particular document comprises of the description that the project is going to deliver (Fleming & Koppelman, 2016). The tangible deliverables are provided here.
Project Charter: This document provides the authority in acting as the project manager for any specific project.
Action Log: The next important document of project management is the action log. It helps to track the actions of the project team and it covers all the tasks of the project.
Key Threats Related to Improving Project Quality
Risk Management: This PM document tracks all the possible risks of the project (Walker, 2015). These risks are extremely vulnerable for the project and the main requirements are risk name, description, impact on project and the probability of occurrence of risk.
Procurement Management: This PM document contains all the details of the project procurement and how the project is to be delivered.
Project Budget: The budget of the project is tracked with this document and so that the expenses does not exceed the budget (Harrison & Lock, 2017).
Status Report: The final document of the project management is the status reports. Constant tracking of the project and the status of the project is checked with this.
There are various major threats that are solely related to the improvement of quality in the IS projects (Heagney, 2016). The main threats are as follows:
Confidentiality: The first and the foremost threat for the improvement of quality in any IS or Information System project is confidentiality. This is the other named of privacy. Confidentiality can be defined as the collection of various rules and regulations, which eventually restricts the access to information (Leach, 2014). If this confidentiality is breached in any project, there is a high chance the project would be at stake. Any IS project comprises of various confidential information and thus any type of breach would be extremely dangerous for the project.
Integrity: The second important threat in any IS project is integrity. If the information is altered or changed, the integrity of the project is lost.
Availability: The third significant threat to any IS project is the availability. If the information is available publicly, there is a high chance the information would be hacked (Snyder, 2014). The quality of the project is thus hampered due to this.
Risks in Assets: The project resources are the assets of that project and thus if these assets would be stolen or damaged, it is an important risk to the project. The assets of an IS project mainly include the data or information, software, equipments, records, files and facilities.
The value and impact of the IS project management is completely related to the legal issues and all ethnic cultural differences (Mir & Pinnington, 2014). This is majorly observed when the project is being executed in global teams. The IS project management refers to the management of information that is being executed by the project manager. It has a strong impact as well as value on the organization that is operating the project. There are various legal issues that are related to this project (Verzuh, 2015). The major legal issues are as follows:
Important Documents Used in Project Management
Risk Insurance: When any specific project is started, there are various risks with it and these risks should be overcome with several methods.
Project Contract: The second legal issue is the project contract. There are several obligations, while the contract is made and these obligations should not be avoided.
Imposing Restrictions: The IS project should impose various restrictions or limitations within the project and these restrictions should be followed by the project members (Turner, 2016).
Contract Interpretation: The fourth issue is the contract interpretation. The law could involve the interpretation of the contract for understanding it.
The cultural differences with culturally diversified team members are extremely dangerous for any project. The major examples of cultural diversification are as follows:
- i) Growth of Stereotyping: The stereotyping within any project is enhanced with the cultural diversification and thus the IS projects often face losses (Kerzner, 2018).
- ii) Problem in Language: The second cultural diversification is the language problem. Since, the project members are from various backgrounds, there is a high chance the other team members will not be welcoming the culturally diversified person.
The processes of the project management are as follows:
- i) Initiating: The project direction is set in the first process and the objectives are defined (Pemsel & Wiewiora, 2013).
- ii) Planning: This is the second process of project management, which produces a workable scheme for accomplishing the project objectives.
Executing: In this process, the plan of the project is being executed.
- iv) Controlling: The progress is measured here and hence corrective actions are taken, whenever required (Martinelli & Milosevic, 2016).
- v) Closing: The final process is the project closing and the project is completed after this process.
The closing process of any IS project comprises of various outputs. The phases of the closing process of IS project are conducting review meetings, documenting the lessons, releasing the project resources and updating the organization process assets (Heagney, 2016). The outputs of the closing process are final product, service and result transition and update of organizational process assets. These outputs are solely utilized in the IS projects.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that project management is the core discipline for utilizing the established policies, procedures and principles in order to manage any specific project right from the stage of conception till completion. This project management is the overseeing the planning, organization and implementation of the project. The project is the typical undertaking with defined starting and ending points for scheduled outcome. A project is completely different from any ongoing process like asset management program or governance program. The plan of the project management is expected to fulfil all the features of the project from starting to finishing point. The budget of the project should be maintained and followed for every project and thus this helps in understanding the importance of the project eventually. The project plan eventually starts with a project charter and identifies the potential challenges in this sector. The project manager is responsible to complete the project properly. The above report has properly outlined the concept of project management. There are various documents in project management and several key threats in improving the IS project quality. Moreover, the impact of project management is related to the legal or ethnic cultural differences. This impact is also mentioned here. The utilization of project processes on the IS projects is also provided in the report.
References
Burke, R. (2013). Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA.
Fleming, Q. W., & Koppelman, J. M. (2016, December). Earned value project management. Project Management Institute.
Harrison, F., & Lock, D. (2017). Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge.
Heagney, J. (2016). Fundamentals of project management. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.
Kerzner, H. (2018). Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. John Wiley & Sons.
Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Larson, E. W., & Gray, C. (2013). Project management: The managerial process with MS project. McGraw-Hill.
Leach, L. P. (2014). Critical chain project management. Artech House.
Martinelli, R. J., & Milosevic, D. Z. (2016). Project management toolbox: tools and techniques for the practicing project manager. John Wiley & Sons.
Mir, F. A., & Pinnington, A. H. (2014). Exploring the value of project management: linking project management performance and project success. International journal of project management, 32(2), 202-217.
Pemsel, S., & Wiewiora, A. (2013). Project management office a knowledge broker in project-based organisations. International Journal of Project Management, 31(1), 31-42.
Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Snyder, C. S. (2014). A guide to the project management body of knowledge: PMBOK (®) guide. Project Management Institute: Newtown Square, PA, USA.
Turner, R. (2016). Gower handbook of project management. Routledge.
Verzuh, E. (2015). The fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley & Sons.
Walker, A. (2015). Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.