Project Management Assignment: Human Resources IT Systems Implementation
Question
Task: Use your acquired knowledge, skills and insights in order to improve the project management practices in your organization by preparing a Project Management Lessons Learned Brief.
The Project Management Lessons Learned Brief will examine a past project of your choice (preferably a Human Resources department type of project) and evaluate its performance against a set of established parameters, i.e. project goals and objectives, contributions towards company strategy, methodology used, triple constraint analysis, etc.
The aim of this project management assignment is to identify the project management practices and outcomes, which have led to project success/failure, and most importantly, identify areas for improvement in the form of concrete recommendations.
Your work must include a critical analysis into the project management methodology used, highlighting areas for improvement or modification, taking into account suitable and relevant developments within the PM discipline.
Be sure to differentiate between ‘symptoms’ and ‘causes’ when preparing your brief. Tip: using root-cause analysis tools may be useful to derive analytical insights.
Additionally, a set of concise action points must be mentioned on how these issues will be tackled, by whom, when, and how will improvement/progress will be measured and tracked.
You are encouraged to make use of charts, graphs, diagrams, tables and other word-efficient means of presenting information; so as to ensure that the message is effectively communicated, thus increasing the chances that your recommendations are acted upon.
Answer
Project Overview
The project explored in this project management assignment is the human resources IT systems implementation project. Information technology has become an important component for business institutions around the globe. There are several capabilities that the businesses can have with the effective use of IT. Human resources are the assets of a business firm that must be managed properly. The use of IT is one of the effective mechanisms to manage and keep a track of the human resources. The implementation of the Human Resources IT systems had to be conducted as part of the project objectives (Kerzner, 2017).
Project Original Targets
There were estimations made for the project in the initial stages to make sure that the project execution was conducted accordingly.
The project schedule originally estimated was 180 days and it was estimated that the project will be completed in the budget of $50,000. The scope of the project covered the activities as initiation and planning, design of the HR IT systems implementation project, development and deployment, testing, and closure processes (Heerkens, 2015). The system had to include the functionalities as login and logout, resource profile management, attendance tracker, performance tracker, allocation and de-allocation, skill maps, and training details. There were non-functional requirements also identified for the project and these included availability, reliability, security, and performance (Hobbs, 2015).
Lessons Learned
During the overall lifecycle for the given project, there were few issues that emerged. Also, a number of project areas and activities could be executed as per the expectations. It is important to record all the learnings and lessons to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and improvements. Also, these can be used as future references. There are lessons that are acquired during the project and these are covered in the table below.
|
Category |
Issue |
Project Problem/Success |
Impact |
Improvement Recommendations |
|
Project Schedule |
Schedule variance |
The project schedule that was originally estimated was 180 days; however, the project took 200 days to complete. The project is found to be 20 days ahead of the schedule with approximately 11% variance from the original target (Iyer & Banerjee, 2016). |
The project was negatively impacted due to the overrun of the schedule with the increase in the project costs and deterioration of the client satisfaction score. The net promoter score was requested from the client and it reduced with the increase in the project schedule. |
The project team developed the project schedule in the initial stage of the project and did not monitor the variance levels all throughout. It is recommended that the project manager and leader used the earned value analysis technique to keep a track of the project schedule. |
|
Project Budget |
Cost variance |
The overall project cost was estimated to be $50,000. However, the final project costs that were calculated came out to be $54,000. The variance of $4000 was calculated in the estimated and actual values of the project costs (Hwang et al., 2017). |
The impacts of the cost overrun were negative on the project. The project areas are closely linked with each other. The variance in one area can have an impact on the different areas of the project. With the increase in the costs, there was drop in the quality that was witnessed with the issues in the management of the project stakeholders. |
The estimations of the cost should have considered the probability of the project risks and uncertainties. The cost reserves were not considered to deal with the scenarios as schedule overrun. Also, the earned value analysis technique is recommended to keep a track of the project costs and the variance levels. |
|
Project scope – changes |
Ineffective management of the project changes |
The project scope comprising of the project activities and the functional and non-functional requirements to be included in the project were defined in the initial stages. There were changes requested by the project client and these were incorporated without discussing the same with the other stakeholders or members of the project team. |
The project changes were accepted without effective confirmations and discussions. These led to the overrun of the project costs and schedule levels. The additional budget and the timeframe was not analysed leading to the unrest among the project resources (Dalcher, 2015). |
It is recommended that the change control board is established for the project comprising of the senior management representatives. The change control board shall have the authority to confirm or reject the project changes. The ones confirmed shall be passed on to the members of the project team for further analysis of the impact, need, and requirements of the change(s). The change implementation shall be conducted accordingly. |
|
Resource conflicts |
Timely resolution |
There were certain conflicts among the members of the project team in terms of the project decisions and methodology to be adopted. The conflicts also emerged due to the cultural differences and diversity of the employees. However, the effective communication among the resources enabled the timely resolution of the conflicts. |
The impact of the conflicts was initially negative as it had an impact on the resource productivity levels; however, ultimately it had positive implications as the discussions among the resources enabled the enhancement of the collaboration levels of the employees. It also enabled the selection and implementation of the best alternatives and ideas in the project. |
It is recommended that the multiple modes of communication are used in the project. With the varied communication modes, it becomes possible to streamline the communication activities enabling the enhancement of the overall collaboration levels. |
|
Non-functional requirements and aspects |
Equal focus on functional and non-functional aspects |
The HR IT system comprised of the functional and non-functional aspects that had to be incorporated in the system. The project team could successfully implement these requirements while maintaining equal focus on the functional and non-functional aspects. |
The impact was positive on the the given quality of the project. It is critical that the non-functional elements, that is, the system qualities are included in the project. With the effective focus on all the project requirements, the project team was successful in maintaining the availability, security, performance, and reliability of the system at all times. |
It is recommended to include the non-functional testing techniques and activities in the project. With the inclusion of performance testing, load testing, and security testing, it becomes possible to enhance the system quality at all times. |
|
Ethical and legal compliance |
100% compliance rate maintained |
The ethical code of conduct and the legislative norms, such as Privacy Act, IT Security laws, Cyber laws, Copyrights, etc. were adhered with at all times. There was not a single instance of non-compliance during the complete project lifecycle. |
The impact was positive on the project and all the associated project stakeholders. The team performance was appreciated by the client due to the maintenance of the compliance levels. Also, the guidelines were followed to maintain standardization at all times. |
The ethical and legal reviews and audits shall be part of the project monitoring aspects. With the compliance with the ethical codes and legal norms, the overall project quality will improve. The audit and review processes will provide an understanding of the gaps in the compliance levels with the information on the improvements that can be made. |
Additional Recommendations for Improvements
- It is recommended that the selection of the project methodologies is carried out after adequate analysis. The methodology must be selected on the basis of the project requirements, resources, and targets. The development and management methodologies must be in line with one another (Snyder, 2015).
- The project areas are dependent on each other. The plans for managing these areas shall be created considering the project dependencies. For example, the stakeholder management is heavily dependent on the communication management (Eskerod et al., 2015). The respective techniques for managing the stakeholders and the communications must be developed accordingly. Similarly, such project dependencies must be identified in the initial stages so that the overall project execution is smooth.
- There are automated tools developed for managing the project tasks and activities. The use of such tools in the project is recommended so that the overall project is streamlined. The automated tools can handle the project communications, updates, etc. in an effective manner. Trello, for example, is one of the popular and effective tools that can be utilized for project handling and management (Portny, 2017).
Conclusion
The human resources IT system implementation project comprised of several activities and tasks. There were a few issues that were identified for the project. These were primarily in terms of the variance in the schedule and budget aspects. Also, there were issues identified with the management of the project changes. These issues have provided the lessons that can be followed in the future. The earned value analysis technique, for example, can be used to monitor the values of schedule and project budget to avoid any gaps. The change control board and the change management techniques can assist in the effective monitoring and management of the project changes. The collaboration and communication levels were adequate. Also, the incorporation and implementation of the non-functional requirements was conducted in the project. All of this assisted in the management and maintenance of the quality levels in the project.
References
Dalcher, D. (2015). Going Beyond The Waterfall: Managing Scope Effectively Across the Project Life Cycle. Project Management Journal, 46(1), e2–e2. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmj.21475
Eskerod, P., Huemann, M., & Ringhofer, C. (2015). Stakeholder Inclusiveness: Enriching Project Management with General Stakeholder Theory. Project Management Journal, 46(6), 42–53. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmj.21546
Heerkens, G. R. (2015). Project management. Mcgraw-Hill Education.
Hwang, B.-G., Zhu, L., Wang, Y., & Cheong, X. (2017). Green Building Construction Projects in Singapore: Cost Premiums and Cost Performance. Project Management Journal, 48(4), 67–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/875697281704800406
Iyer, K. C., & Banerjee, P. S. (2016). Measuring and benchmarking managerial efficiency of project execution schedule performance. International Journal of Project Management, 34(2), 219–236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2015.10.008
Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management?: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling (12th ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Snyder, C. (2015). A user’s manual to the PMBOK guide--fifth edition. Wiley?; Chichester.
