Project Review
Project Review
Overview
Imagine that you have completed the same project discussed in your Project Performance assignment. You exceeded the project budget, but you were able to complete the project. However, you were over budget by 20% in terms of costs and completion date. Now, management has requested a review of your project.
Instructions
Write an 810 page paper in which you:
Provide a brief summary of your chosen project.
Identify and analyze the process you would use to close out your project.
Determine the main challenges that would occur during the project closeout process, and provide a strategy to address the challenges in question.
Select and analyze another computer-based tool, other than MS Project and MS Office (e.g., Word, Excel), that you could use in order to manage project costs and scheduling.
Speculate on the overall different project management strategies that you would apply, based on the tool that you have selected.
Analyze whether continuous process improvements would have helped the delivery of your project. Provide a rationale to support your response.
Speculate on whether using risk management techniques would have affected the delivery of your project.
Support your response with at least two examples of using risk management techniques that would have helped you deliver your project on or under budget.
Use at least three quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar websites do not qualify as quality resources.
Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:
This course requires the use of Strayer Writing Standards. For assistance and information, please refer to the Strayer Writing Standards link in the left-hand menu of your course. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.
Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, your name, the professors name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.
The specific course learning outcome associated with this assignment is:
Propose processes, techniques, and tools that can improve the delivery of a project.
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BUS419002VA016-1206-001 – PROJECT EST AND BUDGETING
Project Review
John Corpeningon Thu, Sep 03 2020, 10:17 AM
65% highest match
Submission ID: f2791287-f657-4c3d-a2dd-7afa51512e20
John Corpening Project Review.docx
Word Count: 2,439
Attachment ID: 3356418951
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Citations(3/3)
1. 1Another student’s paper
2. 2Another student’s paper
3. 3Another student’s paper
PROJECT REVIEW 10
Project Review
John Corpening
Dr. Febry
Project Estimating and Budgeting
8/27/20
Project Review
Executive Summary
The Circus Coffee House project is a challenging and interesting endeavor which is aimed at offering coffee consumers a range of choices. With its roots being at Santa Fe and offering a variety of offerings including food, services, entertainment, and of course coffee, the project is predicted to be a huge success in the region. Juice, beer, coffee, and non-alcoholic drinks available on site, the project will require full involvement of all team members for it to be a success. With a 24 hour service of offerings such as breakfast, lunch, and supper, the Circus Coffee House is expected to be involving for all parties during and after the project is completed. To attract as many customers as possible, Circus Coffee House will offer other additional products and services including; full book shelves, tables and benches for customers to enjoy, linen couches and seats for V.I.P customers, table games, daily newspapers, and a public address system for entertainment, and broadcast announcements. With such a wide array of offerings, Circus Coffee House project is anticipated to be rather complex and in need of full cooperation of all team members to succeed.
Process to Be Used To Close the Project
A large and complex project such as the Circus Coffee House project is expected to be rather stressful and involving of team members across the board. Its no easy feat to deal with many independent moving parts on a single project while still keeping everything steady and operating efficiently. Project management of such a project is a task which is expected to have many challenges which have to be overcome if the project is to succeed. Managing such a project requires resilience and vigor on team members and more so on the project manager. To succeed on a feat such as this the project manager has to follow a well-designed process and find mitigation strategies for challenges before they even arise. Some of the challenges to be expected include:
Project team members Cooperation Issues Team Member Motivation Issues Scheduling Challenges Budget and Cost Constraints
For proper motivation of team members and in order to keep the business performing at the peak of its capabilities, goals have to be set at the Circus Coffee House project. These goals are very essential as they are the means by which the company measures progress and keeps track of its development and that of its projects.
Prizes or rewards that team members should receive need to be announced to the team members upon the setting of the goals in order to give the team members intrinsic motivation towards goal attainment. This reduces the amount of supervision needed to keep the team members in line. Intrinsic motivation will take over and lead the team members towards a common goal with minimal supervision. Team building activities should be conducted often to increase harmony among individuals within the company. Cooperation is key when it comes to goal attainment of team members who have different opinions, natures and expertise.
Team building activities will boost cooperation among colleagues within the project. Leaders play the most crucial roles in goal setting and goal achieving. Through identifying the people who naturally connect, the leader plays a vital role in what turns out to be a successful endeavor. The leader also needs to listen to his subordinates feedback about the direction to follow in certain scenarios. This increases the confidence the team members have with their leader and which in turn affects the overall results. Most importantly, the leader is the one responsible for setting goals and making adjustments in the changing business world to ensure their achievements. He/she also has to make sure that the goals set are reasonable and can be achieved within the set period.
Goal setting needs to evolve around the critical path of the companys operations. These operations are the ones which cannot be delayed past their scheduled time for the achievement of the companys short term and consequently, long term goals. The purpose of setting goals around these operations is to keep team members working at the edge of their capabilities to meet the schedule and time constraints associated with such goals. Having a schedule for a project be it a construction project or any other kind of project is of great importance to project managers. It gives project managers a tool to judge the progress of a project. It also allows the construction team to meet expected milestones. Scheduling ensures that the stakeholders in the project have a plan through which the success of the project can be measured. Budgeting also is usually based on the construction project schedule. Therefore having a project schedule ensures that the project can be funded when the investors meet the required deadlines or when they achieve expected milestones. Construction projects sometimes requires the use of materials which are fragile or perishable. Having a project schedule can ensure that the project receives the materials which are required at the right time without incurring any unnecessary risks or without delays.
Scheduling and budgeting usually go hand in hand. Meeting certain deadlines and milestones usually means that a project gets funded to start the next stage. Budgeting and cost estimation of complex projects such as the Circus Coffee House project, is usually complicated as well. Project management of projects of this magnitude in cost estimation and budgeting is a nightmare for project managers. Under estimating results in cash flow shortages and may hinder the progress of the project. Over estimating also has its consequences such as lack of funding for the project, or dropping the project all the same.
Analysis of another computer based tool.
MS Project can be said to be one of the most powerful tools for scheduling purposes. But in the absence of the tool, MS Excel could perform the job successfully. Even if the tool requires more effort to schedule tasks, it provides tools which could enable the project scheduler to do a job that is relatively similar to MS project.
Continuous Project Improvements
The use of effective development methodologies such as the Agile development methodology would give the project a success chance.1The process is an approach of managing software development projects and focuses on the feedback of the clients.
The Agile process enables various stakeholders of the business such as employees and clients offer their own thoughts about robotic adoption in the company (Batra, 2016).
This will enable the company come into a conclusive decision on how to modify the robots to ensure that client satisfaction is effectively addressed.
Client satisfaction is a major aspect of the business that the company has held in high regard ever since it was established.
It is therefore wise to incorporate the new technology while carefully analyzing the clients feedback.
Risk Management
Circus Coffee House sales can set a number of measures to ensure that the major resources are protected. Their customers, their computer resources, and their products. These are necessities rather than luxuries that the company needs to take into account. They are safeguards to make sure that their precious possessions stay safe.
2The physical destruction and loss of their products is the number one item in the list as it has the capacity to cause the majority of losses to the company.
It is a priority for the company to put measures that would protect their goods in case a physical destruction threat arises.
Securing the premises where the products are kept makes sure that physical theft of their products is an impossibility. Security guards, electric fences and computer surveillance on the warehouses are all measures to be used for securing the products. Secondly, having clear fire safeguard procedures for the employees at the store is important to prevent an eventuality that fire destroys property belonging to Circus Coffee House. Installing fire extinguishers, installing sprinklers, and installing a fire alarm are all measures to be put in place to protect the companys products from fire destruction.
2Cyber security companies are available all over the country, and all have expertise in the field of computer security.
Such companies should be brought in to do a complete security analysis of the store and offer their professional advice on how it could be improved.
Hackers prefer businesses which are easy targets and would be repelled to businesses with high security standards.
This is a great solution to the computer security threats like DOS, cross-site scripting, and buffer overflows.
3In case of the occurrence of a disaster in an organization, it is necessary that there exists a plan on how to get the organization to a functional state in a short time as possible.
The survival of the business past the disaster is highly predicated on the effectiveness of this plan.
It is therefore very important for an organization to formulate an effective Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP), before such a disaster occurs (Fallare, 2004).
A Disaster Recovery Plan is a documentation of procedures that an organization can use to get back to operational levels after the occurrence of a disaster which disrupts business operations within an organization.
The first priority in the occurrence of a disaster in the case of the Car Vend sales scenario is to deal with the customer needs first.
The mobile and online services of the business need to be restored first so as to communicate with the customers and explain that the company is suffering from some technical difficulties and that delays in the delivery of services and products may be delayed.
This can be accomplished by hiring a hosting service from third parties to assist in the operations.
Hosting the website and mobile application backend services on third party machines gives the company a swift response to its customers (Antonaides, Markatos & Dovrolis, 2009).
Once the customers are notified, the organization can still take orders of the products and queue them to be filled once the corresponding business operations are restored.
The second phase of the Disaster Recovery Plan should be concerned with restoring the financial aspect of the organization.
This involves establishing connections with financial institutions and establishing payment methods.
This means that Car Vend sales can receive payments for products even before they are delivered to the customers.
Running the business operations from a third party hosting service the customer payment operations can be relayed to banks if clear communication channels are established first.
Many banking institutions have Application Programming Interfaces through which to connect with clients for access to services.
These APIs enable organizations which have financial arrangements with the financial institution to connect to the computer systems and conduct business operations through well laid methods.
By establishing such a connection with financial institutions, the organization can accomplish the payment operations necessary to purchase its products by customers.
The financial resources provided by its customers could be used to further restore critical business operations to the organization.
Finally, when the customers can access the list of the products offered by the business, and place orders and pay for them, the organization can then work on organizing the delivery of the products and services to its customers.
This involves arranging with the trucking companies for car deliveries and other companies involved in the process.
As the company owns the cars and only needs the delivery mechanisms to its customers, the resources needed are not much.
Arrangements for shipping of cars need to be established in an economically viable as the organization is mostly concerned with saving as much of its resources as possible so as to assist in the recovery of the business.
Once a disaster that disrupts critical business operations occurs in an organization, it is important to record all the necessary information about the disaster and the level of impact it has had on the business.
Documentation is important in estimating the amount of losses the business has incurred and the amount of time and resources that will be needed to restore the business to its original state (Rouse, 2019).
The estimation of the impact and recording of the necessary information has to be conducted early enough so as to allow for the execution of the disaster recovery plan among other necessary plans.
Crucial details about the disaster need to be recorded to ensure accurate response.
Some of the details that need to be recorded include:
What kind of an incident it is What resources and personnel are involved The location of the incident The magnitude of the damage The detection mechanism of the incident
After the important information about the incident is recorded, the concerned personnel have to be conducted and informed of the incident.
Some of the involved people include;
the database and system administrator, incident response manager, and security personnel.
These people need to meet immediately to formulate a course of action or a strategy.
Some of the key factors to consider in formulating a strategy include:
How critical is the incident What are the affected information systems Is the incident over or is it still in progress How quick does the incident response need to be What kind of incident is it
After the response team has come up with an effective strategy to combat the incident, they have to implement it with the required urgency.
The team members have to take their roles in the process as defined in the strategy implementation.
The independence of action and least interdependence available in the process will ensure that the strategy to mitigate the incident is implemented fast and with least casualties.
The team needs to have a single course of command in the whole process so as to have a smooth flow of action.
After the successful implementation of the strategies for tackling the incident, the team needs to meet again for a review of the process.
The review of the process lets the CIRT to learn from its failures and therefore improve the process for possible future incidences.
The computer incident response team is very crucial in the implementation of a DRP and ensuring the overall survival of the business.
References
3Antonaides, D., Markatos, P.
E. & Dovrolis. (2009).3One-click hosting services:
a file-sharing hideout.
Retrieved from:3https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1644920
Batra, S. (2016).1Agile Project Estimation by Optimizing Various factors (Doctoral dissertation).
Fallara, P. (2004).3Disaster recovery planning.
Retrieved from:3https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1301248
Rouse, M. (2019).3Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT).
Retrieved from:3https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Computer-Security-Incident-Response-Team-CSIRT
