Chapter 7 Realistic Scheduling Ideas

You can be ambitious about your project but your project should be realistic to be successful.
According to Verzuh, a realistic schedule:
-Includes a detailed knowledge of the work to be done
-Has task sequences in the correct order
-Accounts for external constraints beyond the control of the team
-Can be accomplished on time, given the availability of skilled people and enough equipment

There are steps to follow to create realistic project plan.
Step one: Create a work breakdown structure
Step two: Identify task relationships (Network Diagrams/PERT Charts)
Step three: Estimate work packages
Step four: Calculate an initial schedule
Calculating the schedule is a three-step process; forward pass, backward pass, and calculate float. Forward pass helps you determine the early start (ES) and early finish (EF) for each task. Backward pass determines the late start and late finish dates. Calculate float means flexibility in the schedule and calculated buy subtracting early start from late start. Critical path has no float, so it should begin and finish on time.
Step five: Assign and level resources
Resources mean the people, equipment, and the materials. And the leveling follows a four-step process:
1. Forecast the resource requirements throughout the project for the initial schedule.
2. Identify the resource peaks.
3. At each peak, delay noncritical tasks within their float.
4. To eliminate the remaining peaks, reevaluate the work package estimates.
This detail and realistic schedule may not solve all the problems but wil provide a tool set for solving many of them.

Chapter 6 Work Breakdown Structure Ideas

When the project is big, we need to break it into pieces to balance cost-schedule-quality equally. “The work breakdown structure (WBS) is the tool for breaking down a project into its component parts.” (Verzuh, p. 101)
Building a WBS helps to provide a detailed illustration of project scope, monitor progress, create accurate cost and schedule estimates, and build project teams.
WBS has two tasks; summary tasks and work packages. Summary tasks are a summarization of the subordinate work packages, so it is not actually executed. The work packages are the ones that are actually executed.
What are the steps to provide a guideline to developing a useful WBS?
Step one: Begin at the top.
You list the major deliverables or products.
Step two: Name all the tasks required to produce deliverables
When it is hard to list all the detailed tasks, it is time to invite more team members, with diverse skills, into the planning process.
Step tree: How to organize the WBS
Different ways of organizing work package may emphasize different aspects of a project. And when organize the WBS, every summary task should be meaningful to some stakeholder because the purpose of summary tasks on the WBS is for communication, or visibility.

Chapter 5 Risk Management Ideas

All projects are new because it has never been built before. So, it is very risky business. How can the project manager handle the risk? The project manager should follow three main steps.
First, systematically find the sources of risk in the project.
Second, develop strategies for reducing risk in each case, for example, changes in assignment of responsibility, lines of communication, the scope of the project, etc.
Third, monitor the effects of the strategies the project manager developed on the project.
Then, how to identify the risks? There are two ways to involve the team. One is brainstorming sessions and the other is interviewing. Another way to identify the risks without involving the team is to use a risk profile that
-The profiles are industry-specific.
-They are organization-specific.
-They address both product and management risks.
-They predict the magnitude of each risk.
How to reduce risk?
First, accept the risk which means you understand the risk, its consequences, and probability, and you choose to do nothing about it. A common strategy is that if the risk occurs, the project team will react. As long as the consequences are cheaper than the cure, this strategy makes sense.
Second, avoid the risk by choosing not to do part of the project. But avoiding risks on projects can have low return.
Third, monitor the risk and prepare contingency plans.
Fourth, transfer the risk by purchasing insurance or an expert to do the work or to use a contract for service.
Fifth, mitigate the risk which means “work hard at reducing the risk.” Mitigation covers nearly all the actions the project team can take to overcome risks from the project environment.
How to control the risk?
You need to monitor risks and choose measurements that will indicate the risk’s severity and probability. Keep a record, or log. When update a log you should make sure there is someone responsible for every risk, rank risks by severity and probability, routinely update the status of the risk.

Chapter 4 Making the rules ideas

In order to make a successful project there should be rules to solve problems such as disagreement or changes. There are three crucial factors in writing of the project rules. First, get agreement on project rules. Second, keep the scope of a project clearly defined. Third, have management support.
Writing project rules include statement of project charter, the statement project, the statement of work, the responsibility matrix, and the communication plan.
Project charter states the purpose of the project and demonstrates management support for the project and the project manager. The intent is to give notice of the new project and new project manager. It is sent to everyone who may be associated with the project.
Project charter describes three techniques that document the project rules: the statement of work, the responsibility matrix, and the communication plan. So, project charter should come first to get the agreement written and if a change occurs a new charter should be issued.
Statement of work includes purpose statement, scope statement, deliverables, cost and schedule estimates, objectives, stakeholders, and chain of command.
The statement of work is a tool for managing expectations and dealing with change. When there is disagreement it can be solved by reviewing SOW or change the SOW when it needs to be changed.
Responsibility matrix is ideal for showing cross-organizational interaction. And when there is a change responsibility matrix answer to the question of who is responsible for the decisions.
A communication plan is the written strategy for getting the right information to the right people at the right time. And when make the status report, keep it simple so that project leaders can spend time to solve problems. It is best to have regularly scheduled progress meetings written into the communication plan.

Chapter 3 Proejct Stakeholders

Anyone who participates in the project is a stakeholder. It would be customers, decision makers, vendors, and employees. There are different roles among stakeholders.
For example, project managers define, plan, control, and lead the project. Function management contributes company policy and resources. Project team contributes skills and effort to perform tasks. Sponsor contributes authority, guidance, and maintains project priority. Customers contribute product requirements and funding.

Tips for project manager

-Project manager should ask questions like: What is my authority? Who do I report to? Does this mean I’ll be relieved of other responsibilities? What are my expectations?

-Project manager should keep team members with minor roles informed.

-Ask the right questions about managers like: Which managers will make decisions? Who has veto power? Who is indirectly affected by these decisions?

-In order to determine who fills the role of customer a manager must be guided by two basic questions: Who is authorized to make decisions about the project? And Who will pay for this project?

The project manager of my capstone project is I. So, I define, plan, control, and lead this project. As for project team, there will be no other project team members. So, I will contribute skills and effort to perform tasks. Sponsor would be school advisor because he will guide and maintain project priority. Customer will be Korean school at DLI. Function management will be the department chair Korean school at DLI.

Chapter 2 The project Environment

All projects have a beginning and an end, and produce a unique tangible or intangible product. But ongoing operations have the opposite characteristics of projects. Because of different characteristics from ongoing operations there are some challenges the project managers face.
First, every project has different personnel needs because of the temporary nature of projects.
Second, it is hard to make accurate budget because projects have never been built before.
Third, projects might have to shut down when the budget is underfunded during one budge year.
Fourth, it is not clear who has authority for many decisions when projects cross organizational boundaries.
Fifth, by the time quarterly accounting reports show a project over budget, it may be out of control as to be beyond recovery.
Sixth, communication breakdowns occur because communication channels tend to follow a firm’s operational structure.
One of the most important things as project manager is to balance variables to create the optimal cost-schedule-quality equilibrium.
How to do that? Set realistic expectations about the cost-schedule-quality equilibrium and if the equilibrium changes, make sure everybody knows and accepts the new equilibrium, and deliver the promised product, on time, within budget.
There are different types of companies that favor ongoing operations on the one end and projects on the other, for example, Function-driven firms, Matrix organizations, and Project-oriented organization/Program. In function-driven firms, project managers have no functional authority and must work through the functional managers to assign, monitor, and coordinate work. In Matrix organizations, this structure gives authority to both project managers and functional managers. In project-oriented organization, functional departments exist within the project. Program is another style of project-oriented organization. I think knowing the types of companies is important to project managers.

My capstone project does not need to recruit people and to worry about budget because the scale is small. However, I did have some problem in the beginning of my capstone project because DLI is the function-driven organization, all authority lies on school dean and project managers has almost no authority. For example, I had a problem with my laptop computer and asked if school can support a new computer for my capstone project. But, unfortunately, I got a refusal message from the school dean saying that it is a voluntary work, so they cannot support. Certainly, I did not have any authority on getting a budget for my project.

Chapter 1 Project Management in a Changing World

World is changing fast with the birth of new technology everyday. To live on the fast changing world we need new projects that can work with the newly created situation. The question here is that how can we make the projects successful? Verzuh mentioned that there are five essential factors to the success of a project.

-Agreement among the project team, customer, and management on the goals of the project.

-A plan that shows an overall path and clear responsibilities and will be used to measure progress during the project.

-Constant, effective communication among everyone involved in the project.

-A controlled scope.

-Management support

I think having all the five essential factors will definitely lead to the success of a project. At Defense Language Institute the work is performed as a team. The school provides clear goal and each team leader plans the action. However, many team leaders have communication problem and it caused disagreement between team members and fail to success the goal. So, I think having all the five essential factors are the key to success.
How does it apply to my project? My capstone project will be developed by myself alone but I have an advisor, so still I will need an effective communication skill for the success of a project. The basic thing is to have a clear goal and plan to get approval from my advisor and then communicate with him to make successful project. Also, management support is important in case I need more time to work overtime.