Should include:
Business Environment,
Stakeholder
Project vs strategy
Leadership vs management
Vision
SMART goals, and
Risk analysis
WBS in network
The Brief
Having researched your project, you should apply the methodologies and principles learned through the program and critique how well your project
Meet with the standards and application of those methodologies and principles. You should identify where the project did not apply the principles and make an assessment of how much difference that would have made to the eventual outcome of the project.
This will be an individual piece of work, and to be comprehensive will need a thorough examination of the project. To produce the work output required there is no limit on word count for the written piece, but the use of charts will significantly reduce the number of words needed and also it will provide clarity on the issues being discussed. However, as a guide, the piece should be in the region of 2,500 to 3,000 words
You must produce work in the form of a report to a business.
Written Assignment – 100% of total marks (LO1-LO5) The written submission should be presented in the form of a Business Report. It should be succinct and deal with the issues of the Project and appraise them against the methodologies and principles covered in the course. The use of charts will reduce the volume of words needed and are acceptable within the body of the text, rather than as indices. There is no word limit for the submission but remembers that it is a Business Report and as such must cover the issues in an effective, efficient, and persuasive way. As a guide, the length of the piece will be in the region of 2,500 to 3,000 words in order to cover the appraisal to the required depth and detail the written submission must be submitted by midday on 15th May 2020 using “My Page” The written submission will constitute 100% of the total mark. The course decomposes the subject of Project Management into three major components:
- Planning – what does it take to manage a successful project?
- Leadership – how do you distinguish between Leadership and Management, and how do you apply each appropriately through the Project?
- Monitoring and Control – how do you create the Project Network and use it to monitor the progress of the Project against Time, Resource, Budget and Quality and maintain control and coordination of all Project elements? The assignment is to address each of these in turn, specifically addressing the following questions:
1) What was the Mission of the organization in which the Project was established and what was the Business Environment (both internal and external) in which the Project had to operate?
2) How the Project developed and what was the form of its own organization and resource allocation?
3) How comprehensively were Stakeholder interests identified and actions planned and implemented to provide for a positive environment for the Project?
4) How was the Project organized the style of Leadership and Management appropriate for the successful undertaking and delivery of the Project?
5) What Project Management Networks were deployed, and were they used as a monitoring tool or as a forecast of what was likely to happen at subsequent phases of the Project6)
7) What was the projected Project Life Cycle and was each phase completed before moving to the next stage?
8) What could have been improved in your Project to make it more successful?
The Assignment structure should follow a Business Report framework: • Introduction • Executive Summary • Assessment of the three questions above • Conclusions • References & Bibliography Be selective of your content. Use evidence from course work and examples from your own research to support your arguments.
The 6 Steps of Resource Allocation
- Divide the Project into Tasks.
- Assign Resources.
- Determine resource attributes.
- Resource Leveling.
- Re-allocate as necessary.
- Track resource utilization.
- PROJECT MANAGEMENT ASSIGNMENT
GIHE Youth Fest 2018
INTRODUCTION
This written assignment has been prepared by Surjina Pradhan, the 30 years old student who is currently doing a postgraduate diploma in Management at LSBF, London.
This assignment is about the annual project called “GIHE Youth Fest” conducted by GIHE (GEMS Institute of Higher Education) Dhapakhel, Nepal. GEMS and GIHE youth fest is a mega event organized each year by the Student Council of the College of GEMS Institute of Higher Education, Dhapakhel, Nepal in collaboration with the College staff members, different sponsors and stakeholders.
This unique project of GIHE demonstrates the steps undertaken while organizing the fest in the year of 2018.
Detailed below is the unique project management analysis of GIHE Youth Fest organized in the year 2018. Along with the learning outcomes of Project Management and personal knowledge, career experience, different management theories, methodologies, principles, and widely accepted best practices and techniques have been applied. This project will highlight the outcome of the fest in the particular year along with the scope, management plans and deliverables it had implemented to make this project possible. The project demonstrates how the small school project “GIHE Youth Fest” was able to raise the charity donation through refreshing entertainment in the year of 2018.
The assignment highlights the project charter, stakeholders, the SMART goals, and scope; a WBS, milestone tasks, all delivered in range, on time and budget in detail.
This is achieved by assessing the three major components on the subject of Project Management.
- Planning – what does it take to manage a successful project?
- Leadership – how to distinguish between Leadership and Management and how to apply each appropriately through the Project?
- Monitoring and Controlling – how to create the Project Network and use it to monitor the progress of the Project against Time, Resource, Budget and Quality and maintain control and coordination of all Project elements?
By doing so, the project demonstrates how the power of partnership, a disciplined approach to life and self-belief (both mentally and physically) conquers all and delivers the Dynamic Living Principle I live by!
The “P” in project management is as much about ‘people’ management as it is about ‘project’ management.” – Cornelius Fichtner.
Project Management Plan (Planning – what does it take to manage a successful project?)
Starting from 2012, GIHE (GEMS Institute of Higher Education) is one of the trending and famous youth gathering events of GEMS school and the College itself. Organized in the month of April, this has been an instant hit among the millennial of all walk where they can witness the best music in the town as well as enjoy mouth-watering delicious food stalls and have fun with various entertaining stalls on the very day, organized in the massive ground of the beautiful GEMS valley. Moreover, this is a charity event mainly held to serve the community for the sustainable development of the society plus, to help less fortunate people living in the various remote parts of Nepal. After organizing events for eight years, GIHE has been successful in accumulating a substantial amount of money and has been serving the community since then in various forms like cash donation, providing essential items to orphanages, and caring the elderly. The GIHE also played a significant role in distributing multiple items like clothes, bedsheets, and blankets during the devastating earthquake of 2015 that miscued Nepal.
This project is usually conducted by the student Unions (the influential student Council) of the College with the collaboration of College Management. This project is trickier than it actually sounds. As an Academic organization, providing quality education is the main objective. However, projects like this may cause distractions to many in many ways. But the sole intentions of such projects are not to distract the students and earn extra money out of their pocket; it’s more than that, to give an opportunity to students to work in the real world using the power of quality knowledge along with the practical experience and the bags of good memories. The mission of this event is not only one-day events, with the excellent music, but foods and games can also bring to all the audience; the confidence after the event in the face of students is much more to be achieved. However, it can also be the first salary for many young students, whose primary job is to try to sell doughnuts and try to persuade as many audiences as they can, without even the practical knowledge about the real competitive world. This can be fun for a while, but I am sure they will have opportunities to learn more than their textbooks.
The everyday study becomes very monotonous for everybody, students, teachers and staff. In order to bring some changes, The GIHE youth fest has become part of the culture of the organisation. The event is getting wildly popular among young people and is getting better and better every year.
The project is operating in the external environment and has a fierce rivalry with the few Colleges. Porter’s five forces have been used to analyze the situation of the College in the year of 2018. One of the cutthroat opposition colleges at that time was KU School. The date of occurrence is almost very near to each other every year. The previous history shows, the audiences care more about the quality deliveries ( famous musical artists) can offer than our stuff about the YF. Besides that, there are also prominent colleges in the market that are potential competitors and yield possibilities to give competitions.
Likewise, there is also extreme competition among the vendors and suppliers as well.
In the year 2018, they invited Nitesh Jung Kuwar and Swopna Suman, two of the trendy artists of Nepal and it was a grand success.
The success of any project is highly dependent on the 3 objectives of the project:
- Scope
- Time
- Budget
These three elements should always be balanced with each other and take decisions efficiently. GIHE YF also focused on these elements, which are mentioned in the scope of this project. Similarly, project planning can be well defined by the project life cycle of the project.
The project life cycle can be defined as the [3] sequence of phases that a project goes through from its initiation to its closure. The number and progression of the cycle are determined by the management and various other factors like needs of the organization involved in the project, the nature of the project, and its area of application. The phases have a definite start, end, and control point and are constrained by time.
This project has all those essential phases, indeed. However, while preparing the detailed plan of the project, it is very vital to understand the difference between the project plans and strategy:
Strategy Vs Plan:
The Project Plans states “Here are the steps” and the strategy states “Here are the best steps” [2]
The plans are the small steps taken into action to perform each task of the projects. For instance,
1) Organizing weekly meetings with staff, manager, stakeholders.
2) Creating weekly/monthly schedules and routines
The strategies are bigger than plans and help to look at the bigger picture of the project.[2]
- Defining all the requirements (what you need) to achieve it
- Assessing the landscape identifying obstacles Considering all of the alternatives
- Thinking about the numbers, deliverables.
The planning of the project can be well explained by accessing the project charter, the SMART goals, and the scope which will detail every plan and processes taken by the company. They are described below:
Project Scope:
The scope of the GIHE YF 2018 includes all macro and micro-planning and detail processes taken by the company. In order to make the event hit once again, it required the active and enthusiastic students and their participants, the various decentralized vendors, suppliers, and partnership with all of them. The scope also includes the completion of every small task and arrangement, and the success of the project is evaluated by the number of participants who joined the event on the very day of the game.
The success of the project is also dependent on the hard work and the various researches that need to be conducted to perform every small task and job. It is very vital to plan every little mission carefully and do brainstorming to every team member clearly without even looking at the schedule. It is essential to visualize the project and what the activities are can help to know the nature of the project and give clarity on the scope of the project. This is well represented by creating a clear and well structured WBS (Work Breakdown Structure).
[5] WBS (Work Break Structure) tries another definition, this time from the Association of Project Management:
“A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a hierarchical structure of things that the project will make or outcomes that it will deliver.”
This one is far better.
Let’s simplify things further:
“A work breakdown structure defines all the things a project needs to accomplish, organized into multiple levels, and displayed graphically.”
Essentially, the WBS defines the “what” of the project. Everything you need to accomplish in the project is displayed in a single, easy to understand chart. The purpose of this chart is to break down complex activities into smaller, more management constituents.
The ASSESSMENT PROJECT MONITORING AND CONTROL
The other significant key factor of the project is monitoring assessments and controls. The GIHE YF is a short but rather steep event that needs more considerations to initiate. It requires a good number of people in different teams and roles. The financial part is very tricky as finding the right sponsorship is the first and an essential part of the project, which determines the quality of the overall event. The more successful the team to attract the sponsors, the more qualitative the event usually becomes. The GIHE YF 2018 was unclear at first, as the project entirely dependent on the cash flow from the sponsors. Luckily, that year, GIHE was successful enough to collect a total amount of 6920 GB (NRS. 10, 38,000). According to which is collected from the Sponsors and rest from the stall charges for the event. The cash inflows and outflows, and the budget breakdown are mentioned below:
The total cash inflows (Cash budget) =
£ 6,920.00
The total Cash outflows (expenses) = £ 3,953.00
Remaining Cash = £2967 .00
The GIHE YF can be further described by using the Gantt chart,
[4] A Gantt chart is a project management tool assisting in the planning and scheduling of projects of all sizes, although they are particularly useful for simplifying complex projects. Project management timelines and tasks are converted into a horizontal bar chart, showing start and end dates, as well as dependencies, scheduling and deadlines, including how much of the task is completed per stage and who is the task owner. This is useful to keep tasks on track when there is a large team and multiple stakeholders when the scope changes.
GANTT Char of GIHE YF 2018.
The environment analysis:
The internal environment of this project can be defined as the overall elements of the team members, the management team and the culture of the College as a whole.
The internal environment of GIHE YF can be analyzed by evaluating its objectives, plans and policies (which are explained above).
In order to evaluate the external environment, I have used the porters 5 model analysis in this project:
Porter’s Five Forces framework helps to analyze the level of competition within a certain industry. According to this framework, competitiveness does not only come from competitors. Rather, the state of competition in an industry depends on five basic forces: the threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitute products or services, and existing industry rivalry. The collective strength of these forces determines the profit potential of an industry.
Leadership Assessment:
This is the execution part of the project life which is about the team’s efforts to make the project successful by performing various activities like acquiring, managing, developing as well as executing quality assurance of the project. The leader is someone who has the goal to build a strong team.
Effective leadership is the basic fundamental of a successful project. (Sorenson & Epps) stated leadership as a forceful and dynamic personality who really leads from the front; an architect and implementer of strategy; a mediator in conflict situations; an integrator who assures the climate of the organization; a person able to motivate subordinates and who, by persuasion, compulsion or example to others; succeeds in getting others to follow the leader’s wishes. The effective leaders are those who are confident, honest, inspiring, good communicators, passionate and have an ability to make decisions wisely.
The project has the most important part of this project: the leader and the manager.
The leader of this project was the Executive Director of the company whose roles and responsibilities below. The project leader had used the
The leader of this project was the Executive Director of the company who possessed the following roles and responsibilities;
- Motivate and engage the workforce and take care of what needs and critics at macro environments to make this event a grand success once again.
- Attend meetings with the department managers and get the progress reports and details they are working on.
- Constantly making efforts to make the team focused and enacted to reach the final outcomes and then goal.
- Facilitate with proper guidance and support to lead the team in the right direction
- Be respectful, trusting, humble, and inspirational.
- Above all, COMMUNICATE!
Managers are the one who is responsible for managing, coordinate, make plans and initiate the project in the right way and direction, engaging the right amount of people at the right place. The project manager looks at the microenvironment of the project, and the tactical duties related to the projector and are responsible for keeping the team efficient, resourceful and organized. The various job responsibilities include:
- Make necessary planning outlines, prepare and define the project charter, scope, SMART goals, WBS and different executive options towards the outcome.
- Define the team responsibilities, delegate tasks and make updates on the progress and inform the project leader.
- Organize timely meetings and co-ordinate widely.
- Resolve the problems and identify the different variables and make corrections if there is any need.
- Risk management and quality control.
- Prepare reports and documentation.
- Above all, communicate, communicate and communicate.
Leadership VS Management
Most people often confuse leadership with the manager. There are various differences, indeed. In simple words, the leaders are the one who is the visionaries and lead the people and make sure the project is carried through. The project manager focuses on the task and plans the project in the right way and direction, engaging the right amount of people in the right place. (Warren G. Bennis) stated “Managers do things right. Leaders do the right thing.”
The project leader seemed very visionary and inspiring to his workers and students council members as he has given full authority to make decisions as per related departments and responsibilities.
The organizational structure of the project:
The foundation of this project is very strong, giving the opportunity to students from the front-end while supporting them from every possible way from the back-end from the College management team. The sole objective of this project might seem simple and interesting, fun, refreshing, but it is more so to make the students ready for the outer world.
The team had adopted the functional organizational structure in order to get connected up, down and along with the organisation. The leader is Rajesh Rai, the executive director of the College who had the overall authority to manage, execute, lead the team and initiate the project plans and adopt any changes if required. The project had enough number of staff working in many departments as well as a wide range of suppliers, vendors and stakeholders associated with it. All these parties were well connected with each other.
The team consists of financial, quality control, logistic and supply heads, and the responsibilities were delegated equally among the team members. The project manager was responsible for coordinating and providing necessary assistance and resources as demand and mainly communicated with organizational managers on the project progress of each plan and action.
All the financial plans and subsidiary management were reviewed and audited by the manager. However, there were four different sponsors for this project for a philanthropic cause.
Besides these, the GIHE YF had a functional structure in order to initiate the project. Since the event was organized by the college’s staff, student council members and management team, every task was internally structured to initialize every task efficiently. The staff officials for the project of GIHE YF were as follows:
Project Manager:
Project Finance head
Logistic head
Quality control
Digital marketer
Procurement officer
Quality control
Volunteers
References
[1] In-text: (What is Project Life Cycle and its Main Characteristics? | Invensis Learning, 2020)
Your Bibliography: Invensislearning.com. 2020. What Is Project Life Cycle And Its Main Characteristics? | Invensis Learning. [online] Available at: <https://www.invensislearning.com/resources/pmp/what-is-project-life-cycle-and-its-main-characteristics> [Accessed 2 May 2020].
[2] (Konetes, 2020)
Your Bibliography: Konetes, G., 2020. The Difference Between A Plan And A Strategy – Infinity Concepts. [online] Infinity Concepts. Available at: <https://www.infinityconcepts.com/2011/09/the-difference-between-a-plan-and-a-strategy/> [Accessed 2 May 2020].
[3 ]In-text: (What is Project Life Cycle and its Main Characteristics? | Invensis Learning, 2020)
Your Bibliography: Invensislearning.com. 2020. What Is Project Life Cycle And Its Main Characteristics? | Invensis Learning. [online] Available at: <https://www.invensislearning.com/resources/pmp/what-is-project-life-cycle-and-its-main-characteristics> [Accessed 3 May 2020].
[4] In-text: (What Is A Gantt Chart? | Definition & Examples | APM, 2020)
Your Bibliography: Apm.org.uk. 2020. What Is A Gantt Chart? | Definition & Examples | APM. [online] Available at: <https://www.apm.org.uk/resources/find-a-resource/gantt-chart/> [Accessed 3 May 2020]
[5]In-text: (Cohen, 2020)
Your Bibliography: Cohen, E., 2020. What Is WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) In Project Management?. [online] Workamajig.com. Available at: <https://www.workamajig.com/blog/guide-to-work-breakdown-structures-wbs> [Accessed 3 May 2020].