What is contained in a progress status report? Who is it useful to and why ?

A project status report is effective in your project management strategy and can be highly beneficial to the project team.

In a progress status report you must firstly include the general information of the project, for example what the current schedule of the project is and what will be the cost of the project. All of the resources must be listed also to ensure that the stakeholders will have an idea of what the project is about and where it is going.

Following the introduction I believe that it is important to list the milestones for the project. I think its important that the work breakdown structure should be included here because we can see all the small tasks that are required to be completed and that will show us a timeline of how the project should look. I also believe the responsibility matrix should be included to see who is responsible for each task and who are the key stakeholders to the project.

Now that we have the resources are set out we have to make sure that we include tasks that face the issues for example, our network diagram. We need to make sure that we know our critical path to follow in order to complete each tasks and we must fix problems of slack that can occur in our tasks with the use of our resource loading schedule and our Gantt chart which will help us can an exact estimate of how much the project is actually going the cost and how long it will take which gives us an answer for our triple constraint.

Finally it is important that the risks are identified through the use of a risk breakdown structure, risk assessment form and your risk response matrix with a developed contingency plan to have at the ready if those risks ever come in tact with the project.

The project status report can be use to the project manager and members of the project team as it will allow him to keep for future projects to allow them to learn from their mistakes build on their project skills for the future.

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Key objectives of project risk management and the relationship between risk management and change management

Risk is an uncertain event that, if it occurs, has a positive or a negative effect on project objectives or in some cases can call for a complete stoppage to the project. This is why risk management is introduced as it is A proactive attempt to recognize and manage internal events and external threats that would affect the likelihood of
a project’s success.

The reason for managing risk in the early stages is because making changes is expensive towards the end of the project, so we need to act early or even before risk occurs to sustain better future control and reduce surprises or negative consequences.

The risk management process consists of 4 stages.

Risk Identification
Risk Assessment
Risk Response Development
Risk Response Control

An example of this would be the risk associated with a new TV show that will be airing on a new channel. They would firstly enter all the risks associated with the show in a brainstorm for example if an actor was ill how would we replace them or what type of locations will be used in a recording process.

Then when we have our risks brainstormed we will then draw up a risk assessment/ security matrix. There we will be able to scale the likelihood and impact of such risk if it was to occur in the duration of the project.

Then following those two steps we can look at our risk response development and risk response control where we can mitigate or transfer the risk and do our best to control the risk and establish a change management process.

The objective of the Risk management and Change Management is to give the project manager the necessary knowledge and instruments to be able to face any events that might have an impact on the project’s products, resources, stages or objectives. (PM4SD, 2018)

Risk management and change management procedures are a project managers responsibility so it is extremely important for their correct application and that the correct people are involved during the various steps of the procedure to help them with decision making activities. The impact and probability assessments and overall monitoring of the effect of the events on the project objectives to ensure project success.

Credits:

PM4SD. (2018). Risk, Issue and Change Management. Available: http://pm4esd.eu/the-method/components-3/risk-issue-and-change-movement/. Last accessed 20-March-2018.

How can a project manager ensure that estimates are accurate and explain how bad estimates can lead to good projects failing

Estimating plays a key role in project management as it allows for a project manager to approximate the time and cost of completing tasks and deliverables for a project.

Estimating allows for a concise breakdown of work packages / other project being ran parallel .time, Broken down into tasks that need to be carried out for example

Estimating can be carried out by senior management and people with the most knowledge on the subject ie , carpenters estimating for carpentry related projects.or broken down using a WBS and estimated per work package to get to gain an insight into costs duration and risk involved with the project.

A good project manager would be able to properly integrate an estimation programme into projects in which they are involved in.

The ability to correctly estimate projects will generally come from experience in the field. Experienced estimators will understand that all projects will not be plain sailing that mistakes may be made and things could go wrong which should be incorporated into estimates.

Poor estimations can mean over allocation of resources that may not be readily available causing backlog of projects and further delays with other projects that are linked to the projects stalling.

How and why is the WBS constructed and how can it be used to identify risk.

A work breakdown structure known as a WBS in project management is a tool that once implemented is useful for breaking down a working project into its discrete key components. A WBS helps the user to organise the workload and provide a scope of works which need to be carried out, in other words it provides a map of the project that can be easily followed as it is broken down into small work packages.

A WBS is basically a hierarchy of work packages that start at the higher levels of management that are broken down into smaller work packages the more it filters through the management chain. For example Top tier management may set a Goal of growing market share through increased sales.Top tier management cannot complete this task by itself it must be broken down into yearly , quarterly , monthly , weekly and finally daily work packages that can be carried out by sales reps etc.. The combination of daily , weekly , monthly etc. work packages ensures that constant deliverable are met that bring the company closer and closer to their main goal. Below is an extract taken from “Project management the managerial process” highlighting the makeup of a WBS

A Key component of a WBS is the ability of identifying risks associated with the overall goal that has been set. As the Goal is subdivided into different departments (again using the above example ) possibles risks that could arise can be identified as the project has been broken up into bite-size deliverable s allowing the employees , group members , teams to identify risks as they have experience within the field in which the work packages have been broken down into.

Once risks have been identified contingency plans can be put in place to minimise the damage that could be caused. Similar to how car drivers buy insurance. The insurance acts as a contingency to ease the problems that may arise if a driver was to get into a car accident. Crashing a car is never a planned action (in most cases) similar to problems arising when completing a project, risks are not wanted but a contingent must be put in place as there is always a chance of problems arising through a series of unfortunate events.

Key activities and outputs associated with project definition & how it minimises risk

“Project definition phase” is the second phase which occurs after a project proposal has been accepted. This definition phase is lists out all of the requirements that will be associated with the overall projects results such as scope and budget , work breakdown structure (WBS), a communications plans and risk management . The “project proposal phase” is designed to clearly identify the expectations of all involved parties. The plans designed during this phase will act as a blueprint to help manage factors such as time , change , cost , risk and issues which may arise throughout the project which could have devastating consequences on the project outcome.

In this phase the projects Scope and Budget must be set:

The project scope and budget clearly sets out and defines a specific list of project goals , features , functions, deliverables and tasks to be carried out, and ultimately the overall budget. In layman’s terms the project scope consists of all work that needs to be completed in order to deliver a project.

After the project scope has been set the triple constraint matrix can be implemented which allows the team members to define whether the cost , scope and time of the matrix will be constrained , accepted or enhanced depending on the expected outcomes of the project.

Developing a communications plan can prove to be a useful tool when providing the company stakeholders with information. A projects outcome must be beneficial to the Shareholders of the company with the main aim of maximising shareholder wealth. There should be truthful and clear communication provided to shareholders informing them of progress throughout the projects lifecycle, any negative setbacks in terms of the project may affect the shareholders negatively.

In the “project definition phase” assessing the levels of risk before they arise can prove beneficial in minimizing the risk associated with the project before a potential risk can arise and cause problems when the project is in full swing. Being able to properly assess risk beforehand can allow teams to have a contingency in place if a problem was to arise which will give the team the ability to solve it quickly and efficiently as it has been documented as a possible risk during the “project definition phase”. Managing risk beforehand will minimise the chance of problems related to the risks occurring as they have been foreseen ahead of time.

WHY PROJECTS FAIL

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Lars Mieritz in his article “Gartner Survey Shows Why Projects Fail” uses research which classifies IT project as being small, medium or large. Review the failure rates for each classification and suggest reasons why each fail.

Lars Mieritz classified It projects as being small, medium or large depending on the projects budget:Small project= budget of less than $350,000,medium project = budget between $350,000-$1 million and a large Project = budget above $1 million.

A survey was carried out in 2012 and consisted of 150 companies over 5 countries the results of which are on the graph below coupled with the main reasons why the projects have failed.

The survey showed almost a 50% increase in the failure of Large projects in comparison to smaller projects, but why ?

Larger projects are harder to control especially if they are implemented over a longer period of time they can lose the run of themselves due to a variety of reasons.

Poor risk management: Not appropriately evaluating financial risks and how to lessen possible impact.

Inexperience: Inexperienced team members.

Lack of leadership and communication: key figureheads are required to become a point of contact between all levels of management involved in the project aiming to ensure a smooth flow of information between all departments to avoid miscommunication which can ultimately add to the cost of the project.

These are however just a few key reasons why Large Projects fail. A suitable example of a failed large project is London 2012 Olympic project which came in at over £9 billion pounds , three times higher than it was expected.

(Symonds,2011)

Medium/Midsize projects face problems in terms of functionality issues in terms of actually completing the desired task with 24% of medium projects failing due to these issues.

A poorly designed project scope : Not planning , determining and documenting a specific list of desirable outcomes or goals will almost certainly lead to project failure as there is no predetermined path of success.

Inaccurate estimates: For project with a limited budget the mistake of an inaccurate estimate would completely shatter and hopes of project failure as going over budget may not be an option.

(Symonds, 2011)

Small Projects have been proven to be the most successful and manageable and as according to Gartner “many small brooks make a great river”. That is not to say that all small projects will be successful this is not the case.

A small project may be forced to strictly adhere to a small budget without much room for leeway.

Lack of experience: smaller companies with smaller projects may lack the experience required to properly carry out and complete the project, due to budget constraints it may not be possible to hire the experience required.

Lack of detail: Due to shorter project lengths and smaller budgets some key assumptions may be overlooked as time constraints may not allow for in depth analysis of required details.

(Symonds, 2011)

15 causes of project failure

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