Project Management Assignment: Resource Capacity Management

Question

Task 1: Using the knowledge and understanding you have of scope management techniques, for an example project of your choice:

1. Define the project scope.
2. How will you monitor and control the project scope?
3. What factors are likely to Impact on your project scope?
4. Develop a scope management plan.
5. What is project initiation documentation? How can you use this within your project?
6. Outline the formal change-control processes that you would consider within your project.
7. How could you measure the progress of your project against your plan?
8. How could you measure the outcomes of your project against your plan?
9. Describe your methods for segmenting and documenting a work breakdown structure.
10. Outline the procedures for reporting scope change.

Task 2: Explain how you can or have assisted with the following. You should draw on your own workplace examples where possible.

1. What Is project initiation documentation? What can it be used for and what does it cover?
2. What are project deliverables? Give examples.
3. How can you measure project outcomes? How can this be used to evaluate project performance?
4. What is a scope management plan? Describe the process of developing a scope management plan.
5. Give examples of the relevant project authority that may need to agree to scope.
6. What change control procedures and performance measurement procedures can be used when undertaking project work?
7. How can non-compliance be dealt with?
8. Explain the methods that can be used to measure the progress of a project.
9. What is the appropriate way to report scope changes?
10. Explain the methods that can be used to review the outcomes of a project.

Answer

Introduction
This project management assignment deals with a resource capacity management issue in a moderate level organization. Most of the resource information was based on inaccurate data, therefore, the aim was to improve the data quality of future resources and trigger better project choices. So, the scope management plan for this data improvement project is discussed below.

Task 1:
1. Project scope definition:
This project is a transformation project here the application of IT will help in portfolio and resource management of the company. The previous data and decisions made on the same were inaccurate because the data were collected in the manual spreadsheet. Moreover, the company and its different departments have used Microsoft project as well as other homegrown applications too (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). As there are communication gaps, therefore, the resource management process was inconsistent and have produced erroneous data. Among the employees, only 60% of the employees were submitting the timesheet in the right time and data categorization process was primitive. Therefore, this resource management project has the following scopes:

• It can increase the data management standard with proper data categorization
• The tasks will be well-defined to reduce errors
• The process of archiving and financials will be loaded at an acceptable frequency
• Resources will be managed efficiently reducing the delays and other risks

2. Monitoring and Controlling the scope:
To monitor and control the scope the company will use one specific software (covering the enterprise resource plan) for all the departments instead of different applications which increase the risk of inconsistency. Therefore, the company will try Planview work and resource management software to deal with all the challenges.

3. Impacting factors:
The factors that can impact the project scope are given below:

• The IT, product development, finance, and other services can make the data management process tiresome (if done manually or with a team based diverse applications)
• The different standards (data & resource management) in departments can limit the enterprise-wide visibility while disturbing the end-to-end solutions (include the trade-off, adjustments)
• The wrong information access and visualization process can disrupt the insight analytics as well as phased reporting affecting the final documentation (Turner, 2014)
• The wrong information access and visualization process can disrupt the insight analytics as well as phased reporting affecting the final documentation (Turner, 2014)

4. Development of the SMP:
The scope management plan refers to the collection of the key processes which can be helpful for the project while removing the processes not required. There are five key steps for the SMP implementation. They are given below:

Requirement collection: In the first step, the requirements cover the major needs of this project. The needs cover the complete solution for different resources in terms of intake, planning, execution, as well as updated delivery. That means the data management process should be efficient enough to provide the users with the mini product, investment, application data in an integrated (phase based way). Moreover, the resources (including financials) will be able to capture demand, optimize the capacity while prioritizing the portfolio.

WBS creation: This process includes a scope statement, WBS, WBS dictionary, as well as the statement of the work. The WBS and WBS dictionary are key elements here and they subdivide the project scope into smaller components.

WBS demonstration (source: continuing professional development)

Scope verification: The process compares the deliverables with the original scope of this resource management project covering the overall lifecycle with review and standard approvals.

Role and responsibility definition: The roles include sponsor, director, steering committee, stakeholders as well as the team members. The sponsor will provide approval for execution while considering the budget ownership and deliverables (Golini et al., 2015). The director will check the accountability of project charter while the committee is for assistance and reaching the milestone. Moreover, the stakeholders and team members will function as delivery recipients as well as analyzing, designing and improving the model respectively.

Modification & Acceptance: If any scope change is required this process will help the modification process considering the stakeholder acceptance.

5. Project initiation Documentation:
The project initiation documentation is an important document for the foundation of the project. It works as the key reference point for both the users and the project management team. This is also a decision document which determines the implementation process. It is actually a PRINCE2 controlled document which has two purposes in this case:

• It provides the project commitment in terms of resource,budget, and people
• To control the progress without error

In this case, it has the following components

• Goals: Accuracy, accountability, integrity and deployment options
• Project size and involvement: Incremental & long with high involvement
• Limit & Risks: miscommunication, scalability, and wizard-based approach issues (Too et al.,2017)
• Checking tools and reporting method: Visual metrics, drill down options

6. Change Control Process
This systematic process will manage all the changes made in the project. As the resources are the critical points of the project, therefore, the necessary changes will be documented while removing the unnecessary changes. Again, the proper use of information technology here will decrease the disruption issues with sequential and interlinked steps. Including Planview in the business environment can be defined by the software feature addition, team communication, analytics identification as well as changes in the network. The steps are given below:

Change request Documentation: Considering the current risks and client requests the informal system assessment is made and recorded with defined features and categories.

Assessment & planning: The formal assessment is done and considering the resource capacity the planning introduce the implementation of Planview for the ERP.

Design & test: As Planview is comfortable with several business settings, therefore, team identification and rolling back issue determination are covered here (Hornstein, 2015). Adding the Opensuite integration data sharing and system collaboration will be done while the team will monitor the data using guided analytics.

Implementation with the review: The team will implement the ERP software opening the scope of stakeholders’ review.

Final views: The client satisfaction rate can close the change control document but otherwise, a reassessment will be done.

7. Progress Measurement:
The Plan view software has its own progress tracking system which can link the capacity definition with business outcomes. As an example, the process governance system will cover the investment and project lifecycle while execution and delivery segments will control the approval, decision and complete data charts. Again, the stages of progress will be covered by gate based approach while the PPM pro will control the resource time management.

8. Outcome measurement: According to the Planview data sheet, the software and its features can measure the outcomes efficiently. As an example, the centralized portfolio will increase the source and execution visibility while the top-down planning will arrange multiple portfolios linking the different types of stakeholders (Ubani et al.,2015). Moreover, the scoring features will measure the outcomes of gathering project lifecycle scores in each step. Finally, the predictive portfolio analysis will identify the optimal mix of agility, business goals, and capabilities.

Source: Planview

9. Methods of segmentation and WBS documentation:
Combing the resources with the right project options is the major goal here which means the segmentation and documentation of WBS include:

Request Management: Collecting the current work request and linking the same with new project request will be documented by drill-down reporting.

Demand & capacity plan: This documentation covers the what-if analysis, role-based planning, and forecasting.

Time-tracking process: The third segment and relevant document cover the team functions as well as actual project hours, expense management, capitalization, and resource utilization.

Real-time data management: The one-click reporting method will help business information visualization in terms of Big Data too.

10. Scope change procedure reporting: In this segment of the project management assignment , the effective collaboration will help the team members understand the changes done in the current project. Therefore, they will use the formal documentation for the need of change and the scope of change and the same document will be signed by the project manager for the approval of implementation.

Task 3:
1. PID Usage:
The project initiation document is also called the definition document provides the information regarding the importance of the project with defined deliverables. Therefore, this can be an active interface between the PM team and the sponsors. That means the PID covers the followings:

• The reasons behind the project (objective, motivation, capabilities)
• Flow diagram and breakdown structure based boundaries
• The success criteria
• The responsibility specifications (team leader, members, sponsors, suppliers, representatives)
• The delivery model (Agile/ waterfall/others)
• Stakeholder communication model with the type of tests (Harrison & Lock, 2017)
• The limitations (risk, issues, rigidity)
• Budget and time

2.Project deliverables:
The deliverables are the output or production of the project which will meet the aims and criteria of the project. As an example, the resource management project wants a high rate of data quality and data submission rate with standard networking structure. The application of Planview can produce deliverables like

• 99% timesheet submission rate improvement in the case of an 18-month plan
• Actual data drove decisions and forecasts
• Portfolio visibility
• Time alignment with resource capacity
• And enterprise cloud network

3. Performance evaluation:
Application of Planview Enterprise can identify both outcomes and measure the performance via the following methods:

• The on-time and on budget deliveries will focus on the work and resource alignment during the execution and that means the innovative and transformative initiatives will measure the rate of outcomes (Whyte et al., 2016)
• The dashboarding and reporting will increase the visibility with time-to-value features
• Planview offers dashboarding in terms of role, department or individual so the performance measurement will be visible and easy here

4. SCP:
The scope management plan covers the set of processes to define and map the project scope. In this case, process development can be done by three steps and they are:

Planning: It captures and defines the jobs required for the project success

Controlling: In this step, the focus is on the document tracking, change approvals/disapprovals, score creeps etc

Closing: The final step deals with audit and assessment of the outcomes in terms of the original plan

5. Project Authority:
In this context of the project management assignment, the project director will manage the overall project. That means the person has the authority to establish a project charter, developing and managing the work plan, securing the resources while ensuring the success rate of the project (at the closing point). Moreover, the director will agree with the scope in terms of team reports, administrative duty handling as well as increasing the project accountability (Turner, 2014).

6. Procedures:
Change control:

• Change proposal in terms of change request form
• Impact summary in terms of benefits, regulations, timescales, resources using the changelog
• Decision making in terms of voting, acceptance, and rejection (team )
• Change implementation and closing while updating the changelog

Performance measurement:

• Encouraging ad-hoc, cross-functional and structured team jobs
• Task execution and collaboration with real-time conversations
• Integrating the core applications like fixed delivery, cost-cutting policy, de-risk points
• Homegrown ad off-the-shelf networking

7. Non-compliance:

• Identifying modular resistance
• Identifying modular resistance
• Choosing the inner circle program

Source: Planview

8. Methods:
Tracking: The outlook, excel, SharePoint will be accessible by different devices and the modular report will show the progress graph.

Customer community: Connection will share the best practices and comparing the current internal practice can be helpful.

Customer success center: Integrating enable program, features, best practices with proper ratings

9. Scope change reporting:
The process of this project management assignment two steps and they are:

• Determining the scope statement in terms of description, completion, risk, constraints, dependency, assumptions (Hornstein, 2015)
• Scope verification in terms of deliverables and approvals while integrating all the team members ideas and reporting the same to the director and the shareholders

10. Review methods:
As this project management assignment is time and budget limited with high enterprise risk quotient, therefore, it can use the following review methods:

CPM: The critical path identification will remove the work pressure and focus on the major risks and constraints (Whyte et al., 2016).

CCPM: Here the resources will be the key important points while avoiding disruptions

EP: The extreme programming will cover teamwork and customer satisfaction rate using communication, simplicity, feedback

Conclusion:
The project management assignment deals with resource management issues of a company and the major risk was different deployment and working standards. Therefore, the scope management plan proposes the Planview software to deal with the issue using the fast-tracking, collaboration and core applications. Moreover, the dashboarding, success center, community, SAAS based solution will provide the scope of excellent data and time sheet management in the company. Project management assignments are being prepared by our management assignment help experts from top universities which let us to provide you a reliable assignment help online service.

References:
Golini, R., Kalchschmidt, M., & Landoni, P. (2015). Adoption of project management practices: The impact on international development projects of non-governmental organizations. International Journal of Project Management, 33(3), 650-663.

Harrison, F., & Lock, D. (2017). Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge.

Hornstein, H. A. (2015). The integration of project management and organizational change management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), 291-298.

Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Too, E., Le, T., & Yap, W. (2017). Front-end planning-The role of project governance and its impact on scope change management. International Journal of Technology, 8(6), 1124-1133.

Turner, J. R. (2014). Handbook of project-based management(Vol. 92). New York, NY: McGraw-hill.

Turner, J. R. (2014). Handbook of project-based management(Vol. 92). New York, NY: McGraw-hill.

Whyte, J., Stasis, A., & Lindkvist, C. (2016). Managing change in the delivery of complex projects: Configuration management, asset information, and ‘big data'. International Journal of Project Management, 34(2), 339-351.