Module Name: Project Management Module Code : 3bem1910
NAME: Tiezheng Gu
*************.uk
Department of management and information Technology
Lecturer: Lin Yan
Data: 26/01/2005
INDEX
1 2 3 4
BACKGROUND ............................................................................................................................ 3 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 4 DEFINE THE PROJECT .............................................................................................................. 4 DESIGN THE PROJECT PROCESS .......................................................................................... 5 4.1 4.2 5.
TIME PLANNING ........................................................................................................................ 5 RESOURCE PLANNING ............................................................................................................... 8
RISK MANAGEMENT ................................................................................................................. 8 5.1. FRAMEWORK FOR RISK MANAGEMENT ..................................................................................... 9 5.1.1. Risk identification ............................................................................................................ 9
5.1.1.1. 5.1.1.2. 5.1.1.3. 5.1.2.1. 5.1.2.2. 5.1.2.3.
Key risk symptoms .................................................................................................................... 9 External sources ......................................................................................................................... 9 TCQ analysis ............................................................................................................................. 9 Likelihood ............................................................................................................................... 10 Effects ...................................................................................................................................... 10 Hideability ............................................................................................................................... 10
5.1.2. Risk quantification ......................................................................................................... 10
5.1.3. Mitigation ...................................................................................................................... 10
5.2. RISK QUANTIFICATION TECHNIQUES -- PERT ........................................................................ 11 6.
DELIVER THE PROJECT......................................................................................................... 13 6.1. 6.2. 6.3. 6.4. 7. 8. 9.
FIGURE 1THE TOPOLOGY ........................................................................................................................... 3 FIGURE 2 ACTIVITIES FOR THIS PROJECT ................................................................................................... 5 FIGURE 3 ACTIVITIES ................................................................................................................................ 6 FIGURE 4 AOA DIAGRAM CHART FOR THIS PROJECT ................................................................................. 7 FIGURE 5 THE FUNCTIONS OF EACH AREA IN AOA .................................................................................... 7 FIGURE 6 ENGINEER AND WORKER FOR EACH ACTIVITY ........................................................................... 8 FIGURE 7 RISK MANAGEMENT SCHEMA .................................................................................................... 9 FIGURE 8 THE Z VALUE OF PERT ........................................................................................................... 11 FIGURE 9 PERT ...................................................................................................................................... 12 FIGURE 10 PROJECT ORGANISATION ....................................................................................................... 13 FIGURE 11 PROBLEM SOLVING ................................................................................................................ 16
PROJECT ORGANISATION......................................................................................................... 13
PROJECT COMMUNICATION ..................................................................................................... 13 PROJECT PROBLEM SOLVING ................................................................................................... 14 PROJECT COSTING ................................................................................................................... 15
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 15 REFERENCE ............................................................................................................................... 15 APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................... 16
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1 Background
In 2001, The No. 5 Middle School of Qingdao (http://www.5middle.qdedu.net) decided to establish a new LAN system in campus. The company HNTC (Hisense Network Technique Corporation http://www.hisensoft.com.cn/ ) which the writer was working for had won the bidding in that project. According to the investor’s demands brief introduction of this project are:
1.1 HNTC is the builder for that project. The project includes two sub-systems, Structured Cabling System (SCS) and Network Integration System (NIS). The SCS Topology Map as followed:
Figure 1The topology
1.2 The whole July is summer holiday; the project must be completed at the end of July. 1.3 Industry Standards for evaluating the project
ANSI/TIA/EIA 568-A5：Commercial Building Telecommunications Cabling Standard TIA/EIA TSB95：Additional Transmission Performance Guidelines for 100 ohm 4-Pair Category 5 Cabling
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ANSI/TIA/EIA 568-B.1：Commercial Building Telecommunications Cabling Standard
2 Introduction The LAN system of No. 5 Middle School of Qingdao is the first project for the writer as a project manager. Following this experience and the knowledge which gained from Project Management course, the writer is going to review and describe that project in this report. Explain which academic theories and models have been used in that project. Discuss each process and critically evaluate it success and failure.
3 Define the project There are many different types of activities, all taking place under the heading of ‘projects’. The purpose of this stage is to outline the process that the project will follow. Different project has different process, according to investor’s demand and the experience which we have. We divide the whole No.5 project into many small units. Figure 1 shows all the activities which belong to this project.
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Figure 2 Activities for this project
4 Design the project process 4.1 Time planning The project planning process has four main stages:
• Identify the constituent activities • Determine their logical sequence • Prepare estimates of time and resource • Present the plan in a readily intelligible format
This last step allows the plan to be communicated analysis. The general approach to planning involves starting with a rough overview and conducting revisions of this through the process shown below. After defining all the activities of this project, according to the
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main four planning process we can work out a rough timetable, it much more like an unsure blueprint (see Figure 2). Because we presume the duration of each activity base on our engineers’ experiments. As the project carry on we have to evaluate it again by other criterions (referred by other parts).
Figure 3 Activities
Come back to The No. 5 Middle School Project, this project stands at middle level of complexity. We had chosen two most commonly used techniques, Gantt chart and Activity-on-arrow Diagram (A-O-A). The purpose of the graphical techniques is to illustrate the relationship between the activities and tome. The preference for graphical techniques is more than ‘a picture telling a thousand words’.
Gantt chart and A-O-A Diagram describe the project from different level. Gantt chart is very useful at low level of complexity. A-O-A Diagram can help many projects which require a higher degree of sophistication and a method. All the information involved by Gantt chart and A-O-A Diagram are based on Figure 2.. Please found Gantt chart in Appendix.
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Figure 4 AOA Diagram chart for this project
For instance, the chart below shows the functions of each area.
Figure 5 the functions of each area in AOA
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4.2 Resource Planning
Figure 6 Engineer and worker for each activity
5. Risk Management An evaluation of potential risks can show at an early stage whether or not a proposal is worth pursuing. Furthermore, there are well-developed procedures for managing risk as an ongoing process throughout a project. The practices are most well developed in industries where the projects are typically very large (such as heavy engineering), or where there is a significant technical risk element (aerospace projects).
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5.1. Framework for risk management
We shall divide the activity or risk management into three main areas – identification, quantification, and response control or mitigation.
Figure 7 Risk management schema
5.1.1. Risk identification
5.1.1.1. Key risk symptoms
This part includes the elements of the project that are likely to be indicators that something is going wrong. The duration of No5 project was in holiday, no students and staff in the school, every office and classroom were locked in holiday, to ensure the locking door would not interrupt the project was the most important thing. So in contract, we required the investor to avoid it.
5.1.1.2. External sources
In addition to in-house brainstorming and consultation activities, it is possible to seek wider opinions. During the evaluation of research grant applications, for instance, experts in the SCS (Structured Cabling Systems) subject area will be asked for their opinions of the application and its chances of success. 5.1.1.3. TCQ analysis
The likely outcomes are that there is the possibility of missing key objectives (unexpected) changes from stakeholders, technological problems, or staffing changes. An alternative is
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to consider how it could be made to go wrong – looking at the behaviour that would conspire to course the failure. Some particular aspects to consider are:
• Time: the critical path or critical chain provide one unit for analysis, as do
activities where there is uncertainty, particularly where there is novelty involved. The duration for this project was definitely in July, in case of can not completed the project on time, we have to organise more engineers and workers. • Cost: the estimates have uncertainty attached to them.
• Quality: do we have assurance of all our processes or is a key part of the project
(e.g. work being carried out by a supplier or customer) outside our control systems?
5.1.2. Risk quantification
The question that we are trying to answer here is ‘just how risky is an event or activity?’ 5.1.2.1. Likelihood
Assessing how likely the event is to occur – somewhere on a scale from improbable to highly likely. 5.1.2.2. Effects
Determining the extent of the effect of the event. Is the effect likely to be :
Critical: will cause the total failure of one or more parts of a project? Major: will hold up or increase costs?
Minor: will cause inconvenience but not set the project back financially or in time? 5.1.2.3. Hideability
It measures how easy it would be for one party to the project to conceal the fact that things were going very wrong with part of the project. This would mean that the problems cannot be detected until it is too late.
5.1.3. Mitigation
• The risk of a critical activity running late can be reduced either through reduction
in the scale of the activity or by ensuring that there is sufficient buffer at the end of the project to deal with the outcome – the project being delayed. These two approaches cover the main items in the scheme of corrective action, and contingencies and reserves.
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5.2. Risk Quantification Techniques -- PERT
As for planning, risk analysis is an attempt to provide a mathematical model of the scenario in an attempt to allow the brain to comprehend the effect of a large number of variables on the outcome.
Project Evaluation review Technique (PERT) is the most widely accepted, with expected value.
PERT was developed for use in the Polaris Project in the USA in 1958. The technique is intended to deal with the likelihood that the single value given as the estimated time for completion of activities is going to have a degree of error associated with it. Instead of taking a single time, three time estimates for each activity are required:
Optimistic time – how long the activity would take if the conditions were ideal Most probable time – time if conditions were ‘normal’
Pessimistic time –- how long the activity would take if a significant proportion of the things that could go wrong did go wrong.
Base on those three time estimates and three steps to get the value of Z in PERT system, my project group had designed a simple software with Microsoft Excel, especially for this project. We can calculate all the data very quickly. For details please see Figure 7, Figure 8 and Appendix 1 is the software.
Figure 8 The Z value of PERT
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Figure 9 PERT
From Figure 8 we know that the Z value of path D-L-S-V-W which begin with SCS for Hypermedia Centre is 0.1601, the date means about 16 percentage chance that this part of the project will be completed in 27 days. The rule for this value is if Z=+2.50 or greater then it can be assumed that the probability of the path being completed by the specified time is 100%. Negative value of Z means path will take longer than expected. For instance, with the software which our group designed, if we change any one of the three time estimates the Z value will be changed automatically. Therefore we can balance the duration of each activity by reassign the resource of each activity. In this case, if we do not want change our plan for that activity; the project group should pay more attention on that in doing the whole project. Even now, when I look back upon this project, the using of the PERT and the software are still the most interesting things.
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6. Deliver the project
6.1. Project organisation
Figure 10 Project Organisation
The No.5 project is not a large one. Based on our plan, we have 5 engineers, 2 supervisors, 1 financial officer, 2 staff in Project Support Service Centre and 25 workers. It most like project focused project management structure. Although there was some disadvantages been emerged, I still think it is the best choice for this project. Because my team has a strong identity and all the members were committed to the project. As a project manager, I have full control over the project, so decision making and problem solving is quick. Moreover, communication direct in project team can improve efficiency. The disadvantage of this structure is that, I have to manage all the things which happened around this project. I have to do all things such as communicate with investor and the company which I was working for.
6.2. Project communication
Communicate with each other in a project group is very frequent activity in doing a project. For oral communication, the members of project have lots of face-to-face meetings and telephone conversations with each other. In testing stage of this project, for testing the network whether access or not, we use interphone for communicating. For big decision making or some problems broken out, we have to meet together and have a formal meeting. The efficiency of a meeting is very important for a project. Moreover, write project report also very important in doing project.
The project manager will often have to chair meetings, so a discussion of the good practice concerning how they should be run is very relevant. This is an exceptional management skill, yet is rarely the case and meetings often break up without any progress being made. The most common types of project meeting are:
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Project status review meetings
Project status review meeting is routine meeting in a project, maybe once a week, maybe twice a week. In No.5 project, we have a project status review meeting around 10 minutes every morning.
Project design review meetings Project problem-solving meetings
A quick response to the identified problem is critical; project manager needs to provide clear guidelines on the authority of the problem-solving team. More details about it in problem-solving chapter.
Project meeting is important action in doing project, here is the way for carrying out effective meetings
a) Confirm the purpose of the meeting.
b) Deciding who should be invited with the minimum requirement of including anyone
who would be offended if they were left out. It is often worth checking by asking the individual concerned if you are in doubt.
c) The pre-meeting preparation – the location and timing, agenda, and any reports
providing background information on the topic under discussion should be circulated in advance.
d) Running the meeting – provide a forum for constructive debate while limiting the
scope of discussion to the matter in hand.
e) Post-meeting follow-up --- send copies of the minutes with action points and who
should carry them out listed against each.
There are many excellent management skills courses which develop the above ideas, including some of the more complex aspects such as conflict resolution, and aspiring project managers should avail themselves of these.
6.3. Project problem solving During the execution phase of a project particularly, the project manager will be faced with the need to solve a whole range of problems rapidly and effectively. Project problem can not be avoided whatever how detailed planning we have done.
We can not avoid project problems, but we can solve the problem in scientific way and avoid it happed next time. Usually, we solving the problem with the following steps:
Identifying the real cause of the problem
Finding the most effective and economic solution to the problem.
The problem-solving model shows the process moving from determination whether a standard procedure exists to choosing a definition for the problem. In doing a project, solving a problem with this model sometimes can save time than other techniques.
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Otherwise, brainstorming will be the best In this project, the problems always happen in establishing Structured Cabling System stage. Because in this school, different buildings were built in different period, so the structure of building is different. Usually, we have to pass the UTP (unshielded twisted pair) through the wall, how to protect the UTP was the biggest problem at that time. Finally, we solving the problem by taking a brainstorming,
6.4. Project costing Finance is often the primary limiting factor in project management situations such as:
Plan projects Create project teams
Buy or hire the equipment required Buy the materials required Create the outcomes of the project
We have a financial officer in project team. He has good skills in finance management. But we also have to think about financial crisis very carefully. Because all the above situations we have to pay by cash, instead of on credit..
7. Conclusion In this report, the writer has described the project which been involved in. The academic theories and models have taken great effects on this project. Project management support the measurement for evaluating. Otherwise, the writer discusses each process in doing project. All the members have accumulated many experience. With the knowledge learned from Project Management, the disadvantages of this project are obvious, such as poor resource planning. But there are also some good points in doing this project, such as PERT analysis. So far, the LAN network system of the No.5 Middle School of Qingdao is still working very well.
8. Reference Books:
1). Harvey Maylor (1999), Project Management,Pearson Education Limited 2). Dennis Lock (2000), Project management, Aldershot : Gower
3). Phil Baguley.(1995), Managing successful projects : handbook for managers, London :
Institute of Management Foundation/Pitman
4). M.Pete Spinner (1992), Elements of project management : plan, schedule and control,
London : Prentice Hall Websites
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1). http://www.apm.org.uk/ 2). http://www.ipma.ch/intro/
(Accessed 11/12/2004) (Accessed 20/12/2004) (Accessed 11/01/2005) (Accessed 15/01/2005) (Accessed 15/01/2005)
3). http://www.mapnp.org/library/plan_dec/project/project.htm (Accessed 29/12/2004) 4). http://www.project-management-software.org/project/ 5). http://www.slashdot.com
6). http://www.ce.cmu.edu/pmbook/
9. Appendix
Figure 11 Problem solving
Gantt Chart and The Excel file with electric file.
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