A report on Managing Project Module code: SIM335

Word count: 2527 (excluding references) Originality report: 4% Font: Times New Roman (12) Double space justified.

Task 1 1. A network diagram is a diagrammatic representation of various steps carried out as different activities in completion of a project. It represents not just the sequence of tasks carried out but other vital information regarding a project as well.

Figure: A network diagram representing Jonijanti Companys promotional project.

2. We are provided with various activities represented in sequential manners by alphabets A, B, C, D and so on which ends at final point Q. Here, the numerical representations with the alphabets denote total number of days required to complete the respective tasks. The timings for each task are represented as Earliest start (EST) at upper left of the 4 square box, Earliest finish (EFT) at upper right, late start (LST) at lower left and late finish (LFT) at lower right. Slack is the delay that can be afforded in any task without delaying the whole project. Slack can be calculated by the formula, LF EF or LS ES. We therefore calculate slack from every activity in the network diagram. We found out that Task C cannot be delayed than by 14th day and also that float can be given of 10 days as the task can be started on the 4th day. For instance, Task D starts on day 4 and total days to complete the task is 6 days which means it would finish on the 10th day. As mentioned earlier, float can be calculated by LS-ES. Hence, total float for task C,D,E,J and O is 10, 6, 7, 1 and 6 which is 30 days.

3. We found out that it takes 80 days to finish the project from our view of the network diagram above. The activities involved in the critical path here are A-B-F-G-I-K-L-M-N-P-Q. Thus we can afford no slack in any of these activities if we want to finish our task in time.

4. Considering 5 working days in a week and 80 working days, the project would be complete in 16 weeks. Hence, a calendar view would provide us with the completion date of Monday 05-09-2011 if the project initiates on Monday 16-05-2011. 5. a) Considering delay of 2 days during activity E There is no substantial effect on the overall project because we can afford up to 7 days of slack in the activity.

b) 1 day delay in activity Q The whole project can be delayed if there is a days delay in activity Q as we can afford no slack here.

c) Activity C delayed by 1 day Again, since there is no substantial effect on overall project with the availability of 10 days slack at least if there is one days delay in activity C.

6. Network diagrams are essential tools in project management which help us in communication of various elements required in project completion. Various activities, their sources, task sequence based upon successors and predecessors are all provided by the network diagram. Besides it provides logical relationship between various activities and their ties. To ensure that tasks are related correctly, network diagram helps in finalising the whole project schedule.

Task 2 A project can be defined as a temporary endeavour with definite start and end which is usually constrained by time but also can be by funding and deliverables. Whereas, project management can be defined as the process or managerial discipline of planning, organising, securing and managing of the various resources to successfully achieve specified objectives. Some of the most important features of project management are as follows: Specified goals/objectives. Duration ( life span) Constraint Uniqueness Planning / controlling and monitoring Team formation Resource utilisation Contracting and subcontracting Others.

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A project manager is the professional in the field of project management who is accountable for the accomplishment of stated project objectives. He has the responsibility of planning the activities, executing them and finalising the project. The whole coordination and controlling of the activities in the project is handled by him. He should make sure that the triple constraints of project such as time, quality and cost are considered in project management.

The project manager has to possess several skills and qualification required to identify and prevent risks that may occur during the entire project period. He should have the ability to influence work completion and quality performance so as the specific needs of the consumers as well as concerned stake holders can be met. Every alterations during the project time period and risks arising are to be handled with required level of competency and skill by the manager. The role of a Project manager can be listed as: Scope identification and planning. Sequential adjustment of tasks. Scheduling and planning. Estimation of time and cost. Budget development and quality control. Risk management. Team leading and strategic implementation, Customer satisfaction and others.

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Tibob and Tibob company specialises in installation of water quality chemical control system and also design and sell other chemical controllers regarding swimming pool maintenance in UK. The company is having a new base and plans to build a custom design studio. As a manager, I would like to propose some of the following steps. Feasibility Analysis:

Feasibility analysis in any organization is carried out in order to determine viability of any project. It is an important aspect regarding resource management and hence in decision making process. There are important aspects to measuring feasibility such as: Pay Back Period. It is a methodology by which the measurement of total time required for recovering the investment made on the project is done. The shorter the payback period, better the investment can be considered. We can calculate the payback period with formulae of, Payback period = Project Cost / Annual inflow of cash.

Lets assume our company Tobib has invested 200000 on the project which expects to return annual cash of 50000. Therefore, Payback period = Project Cost / Annual inflow of cash. = 200000 / 50000 = 4 years.

Discounted factor (NPV) Net Present value is a cash flow technique where the difference of present value of cash inflow and present value of cash outflow measured. It is important in capital budgeting to determine profitability of a project because it provides both profitability and time value of money . Net present value can be calculated using spreadsheets such as excel as well. The formulae for NPV is,

Lets assume that the company has immediate outflow of 150000 comprising of human resource, equipments and other tools. The cash outflow for 3 years is expected to be 10000 annually and cash inflow to be 70000 annually. Considering all cash flow is after tax payment and 7% the return rate, we can calculate the NPV for each year as follows:

Cash flow Start year Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

Present value -150000 56074.766 52406.324 48977.873

Adding all the PV for year 1 3 gives us total Net present Value which is 157458.96 and more than the initial investment by 7458.96 which is a positive figure and suggest us to move forward with the project.

Every project has a life cycle termed as project life cycle which includes essential parts of its state such as initiation, planning, execution and closure. A diagrammatic representation of project life cycle would be like as follows:

Project initiation is the foremost part of any project life cycle. In this stage all the required information regarding project are gathered. The scope is defined with all the approaches required for desired outputs. Team members are selected based on their skills and knowledge. Project frame work is also prepared. The important steps to be taken when initiating a project would be as follows:

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Development of business plan. Feasibility check. Project team formation. Project office establishment. Reviewing of the performance phase.

The second phase of project management would be Project initiation. After all the plans are prepared the team together brings in detailed documentation and planning of all the activities that need to be performed. The important activities covered in this stage are; Development of Project plan, research plan and financial plans. Quality and risk check. Develop acceptance plan, communication plan and procurement plan. It ends with contractual agreement with suppliers and phase review at last.

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Project Execution phase is the stage where detailed plans are executed to be delivered. While the delivering activities are being carried on, monitoring and inspection of all the activities carry on too. Managing time, quality, cost, changes and communication with the customers as well as suppliers is all essential parts of this stage. Once, all the deliverables are complete the project can head towards closure stage.

Project Closure is the final stage where all the deliverables are handed over to the customers and documentations provided regarding project. All the supplier contracts are terminated in this stage with announcement of project closure to all concerned parties. A review is undertaken to evaluate performance and success of the project which can be useful for future referencing.

Team Building is an essential part of any project management. The success of a project depends highly upon co ordination of a team. A project manager should select team members based upon their skills and experience rather than for personal reasons. Since, project completion requires lot of objectivity; the team has to be focused and well organised. Team building means there has to be discussions, brainstorming, suggesting, following guidelines and many more that are of benefits to the project success. The manager should also be able to influence the members towards achieving required objectives. In a whole team building requires:

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Supportive working environment. Training and development when and where required. Communication among members. Motivation. Others.

Motivation and its need for team building: Motivation is an essential part of any project completion. This very factor urges one to achieve best in every duty he is performing. In the words of Rick Pitino, the only way to get people to like working hard is to motivate them. Today, people must understand why they're working hard. Every individual in an organization is motivated by something different. Thus motivation of staffs and team members can be done following various theories in management. Some of them are; 1) The X theory by Sigmund Freud. Freuds theory suggests that human workforce is idle by nature and they can be forced to perform better with either reward or punishment.

2) Taylors theory. Fredrick Winslow Taylor suggested that people are motivated mainly by pay and thus they should be encouraged to perform better based upon their productivity. He also admits the requirement for close supervision of their performance. 3) Maslows theory. Abraham Maslow developed his theory of hierarchical needs which suggested that people are motivated by fulfilment of their needs which range from basic at first and then gradually move higher as in different level of their needs. A diagrammatic representation below shows that people need their basic needs to be fulfilled at first and then their need for another level acts as self motivator.

I would suggest Maslows theory of motivation can be beneficial and effective in motivating all levels of employees in every project as it is realistic and achievable.

Work Breakdown Structure. Tibob and Tibob Company are moving onto a new base for which same professionals can be employed. As a Project Manager, I would like to suggest division of department based upon required tasks that need to be performed in the organisation. Also, a department head on each section can be provided who would guide all the members to provide their deliverables in efficient and effective manner. The work break down structure would therefore look as in the diagram below:

Tobib and Tobib Ltd.

Marketing

Finance

Chemical Laboratory Operator

Information Technology

Sales Advertising and promotion

Finance Manager Accounting Budgeting

IT Manager Technician

Gantts chart can be described as a graphical representation of various task completions in regards to time. It illustrates a project schedule such as start and finish dates of various activities involved in the project. It helps in determining the progress of the project, duration spent and remaining and in some cases dependency relation between different activities. Assuming that it takes Tibob Company 6 months to finish this project we can prepare a Gantts chart for the company as follows: Activities Develop plan/design Schedules Resource allocation Budget Implementation Monitoring / controlling Completion and Final handover January February March April May June

Critical Path Network is a project management tool that sets out all the individual activities making up an overall project. It displays the order of activities that have to be undertaken and sorts which activities need to be completed first before starting other. It figures out simultaneous performance of activities and thus shows where certain resources are required. As mentioned earlier in the report, we have determined the critical path where no slack or float can be afforded. Any mishaps in these activities cause delay to the whole project time. Thus it is an essential tool in determining the project completion procedure.

Budgeting: Budgeting is the estimation of funds required for completion of any project. As, the project here is move into a new base; we require budgeting for several aspects. Materials, equipments and training of old staffs and implementation of new technology all need finance from the company. In short, the budgeting can be done as follows:

Budget New building Materials Equipments/ Machinery Staff training Miscellaneous Total :

Amount () 300000 38000 110000 15000 25000 488000

Monitoring and Controlling: Monitoring is the process of accumulating information on every activity in the project and reviewing them on daily basis. The essential elements in any project monitoring would be time, cost and performance standard analysis. This is carried on so as to ensure all the activities, procedure inputs and outputs are proceeding as per the plan. In order to receive feedbacks and avoid any possible variances, we carry out project monitoring activities. Reports can be obtained from project which is useful in performance appraisal. This can be done by calculation of Return on investment where, Return on Investment = Net Profit / Investment.

Monitoring can be carried out by calculating Earned value Analysis where the calculations of several variances are carried on such as: Time variance (TV) Cost variance (CV) Schedule variance (SV)

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Identification of deviations and corrective actions: We analyse our actual performance with the planned performance to determine loop holes and variances that may occur in the project. After determining such variances necessary actions can be taken to rectify them and assure successful completion of the project.

References: Gregory T. Haugan , Effective Work Breakdown Structures (2001), Published by Management Concepts.
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Groth David, Toby Skandler (2005), Network + Study Guide, Fourth Edition, Sybex Inc. ISBN 0-7821-4406-3.

Maslows Hierarchical theory.(figure source):

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/regsys/ maslow.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/regsys/maslow.html&h=38 0&w=576&sz=105&tbnid=XGzsOCF2AFQfM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=134&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmaslows%2Bhierarchial%2Btheory%2Bi mages%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=maslows+hierarchial+theory+images&hl= en&usg=__LeAOsxhRCh46DXW4lqBdANbubl4=&sa=X&ei=gwyhTYe_G5CLhQfs_6zzBA&sqi=2 &ved=0CCMQ9QEwAw assessed on 10-04-2011 at 18:34hrs.

http://tutor2u.net/business/gcse/people_motivation_theories.htm assessed on 10-04-2011 at 11:39hrs.

http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/40904.aspx assessed on 10-04-2011 at16:03 hrs.

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http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/npv.asp assessed on 09-04-2011 at 13:40 hrs. http://www.mindtools.com/critpath.html assessed on 09-04-2011 at 12:17hrs.