Structure and contents of the project management plan information technology essay

This section will start to clarify on the analysis of the project management plan whereby the project is defined in the GCL5 and the PMBOK guidelines. Project manager, project team and project sponsor are the main stakeholder in this project where the next section will explain the reason to the audience why the project plan being implemented. The reports of Project management plan breakdown are listed as follow: Structure and contents of the Project management planContents of the project management planThe project management planThe usage of PMBOK guide of nine knowledge areas has been used in the GCL5 project which makes the project management plan more presentable. Each of these areas has been carefully listed out and details of each plan were covered in the areas, however there were some plan which was not listed in the project plan. It is also distinguished that the project most crucial part is to obtain certain management approval and commitment which is fundamental for the project to run smoothly. Last and not least, GCL5 final reports on conclusion and recommendation have been listed down as part of the report where the analyses of staff participation and involvement are seen important in this project management plan. This report reviews the GCL 5 project which is a major upgrade for the company Ernst & Young organization. The purposed of this project is to analyses the requirement and information on how the various aspect of the project can be implemented. This report provides the reader a wide understanding of the project management plan in the areas of the which defines the structure on how the project was build, monitored , controlled and closed while documenting all the phases into a proper project plan. According to the GCL5, the project plan is almost similar with the theory based on the PMBOK guide and the project has 70% of the similarity in the guide described. Those finding in the GCL5 are listed as the phase of initiation, planning, execution, control and closure of the project. GCL 5 project will be based on the guide of PMBOK where implementing the nine knowledge of theories and using the theory. To make the project plan more presentable, software tools is being used to create tables, diagrams, figure where data and information of data is being inserted and explain the information. However there is some limitation in the project plan of GCL5 which are knowledge areas that has missed out and it is only cover briefly in the plan. The report ends with a conclusion of the findings and suggested recommendations. Ernst & Young is a global leader in the field of assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. In worldwide 152, 000 people are united by sharing values and a solid commitment to quality. Their tagline was ” Quality in everything we do” The GCL 5 is expedited to be rolled out by the end of 2013 and this major changes will improved the stability of the software, security and performance in all EY machines. The project is design to start at 15th March 2012 and estimated to finish on the 15th March 2013. This is an IT project which involved medium risk plan. This will be a loadset which will enhance the end user benefit so that they can deliver better quality of work without any issuesThe first stage of initiation phase has been completed where the project now is moving towards the phase two. Phase two is where the management plan has been approved and project manager have the green light to carry on the project according to the plan. Phase three is where the kick off of the project meeting which will be organized by the project manager that involves the project team, stakeholder and the project sponsor. In the GCL5 project, the project manager contains a very strong element of matrix organization which he later used it to combine all the work function of skills and guide and delivery to the project team to achieve the project main objectives. According to the PMBOK Guide definition of a project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. Projects have always required a long term planning, management control and specific outcome of delivery where is covers the knowledge areas of subsidiary parts of the overall project management plan. Early detection and communication with stakeholders is crucial to ensure the success of the GCL5 project by gaining support and input for the project. GCL5 project might have some stakeholders that may have influence of positively or negative element. By initiating early and frequent communication and stakeholder management, GCL5 project can effectively manage and balance these interests while accomplishing all project tasks. Key element that were identify in GCL5 project were project stakeholder, project management knowledge area, project management tools and techniques, project success and the contribution of a portfolio in the entire enterprise which describes the understanding of the project management. Comparison between a few methods of project plans with the GCL5 reviews the current status of the project plan methods that are being used From the which was created by the project manager, it is noted that the GCL5 plan consist of planning, execution, controlling and closing of the project plan which is 70% similar section with the PMBOK guide and Onions’ description. From the above table that was created by the project manager, it is stated clear that the need of the use of project management plan on implementing the GCL5 project. The advantages of using the project management plan are: Transfer of knowledge – The main function of the project management plan is to have a standard approach in the plan when dealing with various sections of the project. The function of this project management plan will help to reduce the risk and assist in achievement of the goalsBetter communication – It serves as a better communication between the team members while ensuring that all team members received the equal amount of information during the phases of the project planTime and cost saving – Project management plan contain timeline and costing which can be advantages in time and cost when it is being planned properly. Project manager also benefit from this because it can display result from a constrain budget from the projectBetter process quality – Quality control plan in the project management plan can assist in the project quality and reducing the project failureBetter team work – Project manager is easy to work with team player since certain task is being allocated among the team. This will benefit the team with an well organized team work planBetter monitoring and controlling the project – with the project management plan being implemented, the project manager will have better control of the project due it is being monitor and control making the project to stay in the proposed planStakeholder are the people in the team which influence the project sponsor, project team, support staff, customer , end user, supplier in the project. Those entire stakeholders have different requirement and needs. Below listed is the stakeholder in the GCL5 projectThe project sponsor would be the potential user of the program. They provide the expenses of the project and they expected an accuracy of the cost involved in the project to meet their project budget. GCL 5 project sponsors also have to ensure that they can afford to keep the project till the project ends within their limited budgets. In this project, the sponsors are also the customer and end user of the project. The project manager mostly deals with the team that is responsible for implementing of the project. The manager teams up with the project stakeholder to ensure all the software requirement meets their order and expectations. The project team for the project which involves the software distributer, team member, system analysis, quality team would need to know their specific task. They are required to communicate within the teams to ensure that related factors of information are involved. In this GCL5 project, areas such as data migration, system debugging and systems testing are required within the teams before delivering the project to end user. Upgrading of windows 7 required suppliers which would able to provide the team requirement such as software and hardware to run the system upgrade and data migration. Supplier for the GCL5 project would expect certain information such as delivery date, item required and similar information so that they can meet the respective deadline. From this above, there are many stakeholders on a project with different level of interest. Once the entire GCL5 stakeholder has been identified, the project team will list and identify each stakeholder. The purpose of doing this is to ensure the stakeholder level of power, ensure the level of influence, and plan the certain level of communications to each stakeholder of the projects. Once this all be completed they are listed down in the matrix which shows the concern level of involvement, and managing strategy for each stakeholder. The table 3. 3. 2 will show the stakeholder and their level of power as the part of stakeholder analysis. The stakeholder analysis matrix will be used to capture stakeholder concerns, level of involvement, and management strategy based on the stakeholder analysis and power/interest matrix above. The stakeholder analysis matrix will be reviewed and updated throughout the project’s duration in order to capture any new concerns or stakeholder management strategy efforts refer toGCL5 project has detected four variables such as time, resource, cost and quality management. It is a challenging job to have those four variables while achieving a project goal within limited resources Those variables in the GCL5 project are listed below: Project scope management involves working with all teams to define, gain agreement and managed the entire task which is required to complete the project plan. Project time management develop and establish time which includes calculating the time on how long to complete the project and ensuring a completion of the project within the timely manner. Project cost management consist of costing and ensuring the budget is enough for the project. Project quality management which ensure the project will meet the quality standards which are pre-defined by EY standard procedure. According to Claude and Brian , project management tools and technique are required to assist the managers and teams to assist in their daily work areas. Comment tools that were found can be in the form of Gantt charts, project network diagrams and critical path analysis. The following content of the project GCL 5 was created to ensure the database will be followed according to the plan of the project. Refer for the content of the databases. Their requirement and needs are important to ensure a good relationship within the project and yet understanding the success of the project expectationsIn E&Y project it can be classified as a challenge of endurance where staff working together as a team to shaped a unique, improved product and targeted outcome over a period of time Refer to shows the project life cycle phase of EY projectBased on the analysis of the PMP structure plan, the GCL5 project has been structured relative to PMBOK Guide which consists of project objectives, resources plan, project scope management, requirement plan management, risk management, expenditure plan and therefore involves the cultural and business environmental On top of that those respective component of the PMBOK has referred and implemented as the GCL5 project planFrom the Appendix 9. 0, it is stated that CGL5 has in generally covered all the elements of nine knowledge areas in the PMBOK guide which are integration, scope, time, cost, quality, human resources, communication, risk and procurement Each of those elements plays an important role in order to make the project run smoothly. According to Milesovich and Pantanakul which they had argue on consistent managerial approach has been essential in the success of certain aspects of project management and contingency approach. This theory applies to the low standardization from the project managers based on the different project management practices. Several factors of the basic element have been considered in the project management practices of GCL5. Those factors include the common perception of the best practices, which involves project management commitment on the daily basis. A further research shows that there are certain areas of improvement which can be implemented in the GCL5 project. According to the PMI 2003, first is the best practice of the management is to agree upon the most basic of their work . This best practice is ” an optimal way to recognize the industry is to achieve the goals of the objective” It is noted that the best practice definition may have to be updated as time goes by so do the change of the contents. Brainstorming is often being used to utilize the method so that the team may have a clear identification of what suits them the best practice type of the projects. Second is the project management team must have enough knowledge such as, past experience and determination to inspire the team in the working environment. Activities such as: Project management are assumed to know the best methods of understanding, identifying and communicate process in the project. A good project management can identify and communicate with the team members while overlapping the project and yet benefiting the work efficiency. Milesovich and Pantanakul stated that the use of performance metrics tools can be used to measure the project management approach. By using this tools, project management can monitor the team performance and yet reducing errors in the project. To control and improve the process might be the most difficult task for the project manager. Project manager are responsible for controlling and improvement the process in the project while identifying and communication within the process. This requires a great skill of the project manager to adapt the courage and innovation skills to pursue as a project managers team. Develop and apply success process or terminate projects skills. Not all project are plan can be successful, a good project management should be able to handle stress and using own judgement in judging the fate of the project. A quick action taken from the project team in determines those projects that are going to fail can save great resources in the project cost. A good team spirit is always essential to any successful project. Creating a good team player may not be a limited to project managers only. A good project manager will be able to impact the people around them in terms of providing more output to the project at the same time, concerning for the team and maintaining the team spirit. In order to provide good result of those activities mention, it is suggested that the organization develop their own capability of conducting those activities. Organization without those capabilities is impossible to achieve any achievement. PMI the best practice and capability is by listing by: Facility the project management activitiesDevelop awareness of the project among the teamsSponsor project management activatesPlan and coordinate project management activities. It is clearly stated in the PMI that the organization achievement in the term of project management activates are the key elements of achievement of best practice. All GCL5 project will be performed internally and none of the project will be outsourced. This scope of project will required a massive change in the operating system which software updates is required and hardware change might take place. The PMBOK has a structure listed out into guidelines for project managers which GCL5 has adopted. Those guidelines are in planning stages, executing stages and closing stages. The nine knowledge of the PMP has been conducted as below. PMBOK stated that the project integration management is a knowledge area which concentrates on the creating of project charter, project plan and the project scope statement. Project management has gone through the process of integration on each plan in different areas which are able to monitor and control the project. Scope statement also been listed in the PMP where project goals are defined. This makes the project management easy to monitor and control over the project during implementation stages. In GCL5 PMP, the project management has listed out the scope statement to ensure the objectives of the project. This scope management is to allowed changes to be done whereby those changes are required to ensure the contribution to the project goals which included quality checklist and documentation. This must be agreed by stakeholders and approved by the management. The project sponsor is accountable for accepting the project’s final results. This approval will be based on a review of all projects documentation which includes beta trial, testing results, and the completion of the final product. Different types of management scope are listed belowScope of work. Verifying the scope. Adapting the scope to ensure the project deliverables. In GCL5 project adapting the scope method was not detected in the plan. Turner stated that the scope is a whole new step to identify sole functions to incorporate changes that will provide perfection in the project and increase the chances to successTime management is one of the important factors in the project management which determines the crucial part of the project. Time management plan covers the project activities, characteristic and how they can fit into the project schedule plan. The GCL 5 project plan covers all the project time management section which is sequencing, resources/duration planning and schedule development and schedule control. Time management plan has been included in the GCL5 plan where activates duration is used to calculate the number of work that is required to complete a task. The purpose of this requirement is to obtain a timely manner which can benefit the resources which can be later used to coordinate resources inputs, to set new schedule availability and to assign a priority for resources to meet specified end dateProject manager will be responsible in arranging the work package which is estimating the duration of the resources and validating the schedule within the project team. Project stakeholder will also be involved in reviews of the proposed schedule and assist in daily validations. Software tools such as MS Project software is used to create the time management schedule. As stated in the meeting plan project status report will be updated fortnightly to stakeholders during the meeting. Every project has their goals. Project Cost management goals is to hit a three dimension target which is to complete the work within the budget schedule and performance requirement. Costing is a task which requires accuracy upon limited information which pertaining to the project availability and how it is being applied on the planThe GCL5 project management plan has covered this plan where the cost will be managed by the project manager. According to Turner there are four types of estimation of counting cost. Those four types are proposal estimate, budget estimate, sanction estimate and control estimate. The cost of this GCL5 project is being measured using Earned Value Management The following table 4. 4-1 shows that the table of performance measurement and costing metric will be used to measure the project costing performance: Schedule Variance (SV)Cost Variance (CV)Schedule Performance Index (SPI)Cost Performance Index (CPI)The performance measure index is being measured between the Schedule Performance Index and the Cost Performance Index. If each of the matrixes has a difference between 0. 1 and 0. 2 the project manager must report the reason for the exception where else if that difference is greater than 0. 2 the project manager also must report the reason of exception and provide management the details of the corrective plan to bring back the project to an acceptable level. Each of those earned value calculations will be compiled and reported at the monthly project status meeting If there is a value that has reaches the limit of the project, the project manager will communicate with the project sponsor immediately. The drawback in the GCL5 project plan that the cost control was not further explain in this area and it is suggested that the cost control to be explained in detail to avoid changes in the project budget that will causes the project to divert form the actual costing planThe purpose of the Project Quality Plan defines that the project was plan at the beginning of the implementation to achieve quality. According to the PMBOK, project quality contains elements of quality planning, quality assurance and quality control. It is plan to ensure product and service contains quality standard. It is a quality assurance standard to ensure the standard of the program can be achieved. ISO 9001: 2008 adapts eight principles which include standards such as customer focus, leadership, involvement of people, process approach, continual improvement, factual approach to decision making and mutually beneficial supplier relationshipIn GCL5 project it is only listed out that requirement and expectation needs in quality planning but quality assurance and quality control was not listed in the plan. Lack of details in the quality plan may lead the GCL5 project to fail without the standard quality plan that has been enforced when executing the projectAccording to the PMBOK, this area highlight the organization of planning, staff acquisition and team development. Organization planning is something which can be done at the early stage of the project which involves identifying, assigning project task allocation, documentation of paper work and ownership task. This is to ensure that a certain human resources are selected within the required needed skills. Human resource are also encourage to provide external/internal training to promote team building strategies if the is a gap that is lack of skills in the team. In GCL5 project, human resources play an important role in staff allocation. Project manager need to plan and ensure that proper team members complete the project within the budget and time frame. Refer to to shows responsibility of each team members in the project. However in this GCL5, involvement in getting a new staff and placing him in a team does not apply due to limited resources of man-power. It is advisable that the project manager spends more time in developing and managing the teamThis communication Management Plan sets the communication framework in this project. According from the PMBOK guide project communication management refer to a general collection of information that is being store for project information usage. It sets as a guide framework in the project and it is keep on updated as the communication plan requirements changes. Areas in the communication plan are stakeholder identification, communication plan and distribution where stakeholder managed and performance report. Project manager shall take the lead in making sure that all effective communication is being channel through the project. The communication matrix table is being used as a reference to all team which it should be communicated between the teams. The matrix of the person roles and the distribution channel can be. Project team directory is also listed down for all communication purposeThere is no performance report found in GCL5. It is advisable to have a report performance such as performance report, organizational process assets updates and change updates reports A proper communication within the stakeholder of the project is vital for the project successIt is where a process to purchase or acquire new products such as equipment that will be used to support this project. This step has to be planned properly to avoid delay of the whole projects which involves the contract approval process services and decision making that needed to perform in a project planProject manager shall be responsible to organise the procurement details and identifies all items which will be required for a completion of the project and submit it to the procurement department. The procurement department will then review the items and determine either to purchase the item. If they do so, they will start to search for selective vendor and then purchase the item following with the administration procurement process selectionOther item in the procurement management plan includes the procurement risks and procurement risk management. This can be listed asHow the cost will be determined? How the standard procurement paperwork be done? Procurement limitation. The GCL5 project includes the risk management which the project team identifies, scores and ranks from various risks. Every detail has made an effort to identify risk in head of time in order to minimize the project from going offset.(Source: self created)Once those risk has been detected, the project manager will then list down and rank them according to the risk that might happen during the phases of the project. The highest points of risk will be highlighted in the project schedule and necessary steps that are taken to resolve it. Upon closing of this project, team manager will analyse each risk includes the risk management process. Based on this report, the project manager will identify areas of improvement that can be used to improve in the future projects. This can help the team to improve as the part of lesson learned knowledge based onIt is also found that GCL5 project only have risk management plan and identify risk in this project. Performance quality risk analysis and plan risk responses are not to be seen in this project plan. This lack of analysis will make the project team to lead to a wrong decision and delaying the further progress of the completion date. Based on the GCL 5, project plan above has covered all the entire nine knowledge areas of the PMBOK. However there were several noticeable areas of the project plan which that are incomplete data and information in some of these. Those incomplete elements that are found inside the project management plan are based on the scope, quality, human resources, procurement, quality and risk. This areas need to be pay attention of to avoid certain issue that might happened such as the shortage of human power, uncertain risk involved and etc. The strength of the GCL5 project is time management plan which has been listed out completely with the help of MS Project tools which is able to illustrate out the information and the schedule plan in a proper design. On top of that, the scope statement and project objective is also listed out in the documentation as the guidelines for the project stakeholder viewing purpose. The weakness that were notice in the GCL5 project is the lack of project quality management and human resources management where there were no assurance quality control of project plan and further man-power to take up the ownership of the project hence making the project out of quality and less man power input. Project management plan is one of the most useful tools in the project lifecycle outcome. A great outcome from a project management plan can provide the team members a clear action and direction of path to follow. If the project plan is not written in a proper way, the project might not even started eventually. This section provides the requirement of the GCL5 project outcome. The overall project has been listed down in details but it is strongly suggest that: Method of Adopting the scope was not provided in the plan. A clear statement shall be noted in the scope management which is to detect the possibilities and the odds of the natural disaster in case natural disaster occur There was no backup plan for natural disaster in this GCL5 project plan. Closure procurement process should be check by the project manager by reviewing the supplier, addressing any issue that happen during the project phase and making notes on the areas of improvement for the future incoming projects. Quality control and assurance control should have been included in the GCL5 project. Both of this management plays an important role in the areas of improvement whereby to create a benchmark among the project plan goals and mission. Team development such as team building activities, external and internal training to create team motivation, reward for team performance should has been included in the GCL5 project management plan It is advisable that the project manager perform an appraisal for the team which performed beyond the expectation of the project plan On top of that, additional man-power should be consider added into the project as a backup team that can fulfil the team members that were on unpredicted terms such as sick leave, resign or a long holidayGCL 5 is a project which relates to IT industry. This involves middle risk during the project plan. Risk analysis has to be listed down in the qualitative matter to avoid any issue besides only explaining the brief section on the common risk. It should be listed out in details where specific action is required during the risk, contingency plan, the time respond to resolved the issue and budget