The Importance Of Project Management Best Practices

Project Risk is an undefined event that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative impact in the project’s results. There are two types of risks can affect the project, they are threats and opportunities. The first affects negatively and the second affects positively. These risks can be individual risks or overall project risk.

Having identified the risks and grouped them according to severity, the first trade-off the manager has to make is the decision to forego managing the less severe risks and focus on those which pose the most severe threat to the project. More significant risk may include risks which require the entire redesign of the project, whereas less severe risk may include those which cause little or no material changes to the project. Since the less severe risks are likely to cause little or no material changes to the project and use less resources, it is reasonable to trade-off these risks in favour of managing the more severe risks. On the other hand, these risks will remain and continue to pose a threat to the project, therefore they should be recorded in the risk register and dealt with as secondary risks. Risk response strategies should then be implemented to deal with both the severe and less severe risks which have been previously identified and analysed (Elkington & Smallman, 2002).

In Business, project management is used regularly to accomplish unique outcomes with limited resources under critical time constraints. There has been a rapid increase in the number of firms that use project management methodologies as the preferred way of accomplishing almost every business undertaking. There are a number of approaches to managing project activities and in project management these approaches are referred to as methodologies. This paper attempts to explore the many different methodologies in project management and allow the reader to determine the best approach for their organization.

Project Management is all about managing your tasks and goals with the best use of available resources within a fixed frame of time. To achieve the fixed time, the project manager would need the proper coordination of all possible inputs required to carry out the task successfully. One of such inputs is the project management maturity model which allows for improvement of project management processes and systems (Crawford, 2006). Project management maturity is the progressive development of an enterprise-wide project management approach, methodology, strategy, and decision-making process. The appropriate level of maturity will vary for each organization based on specific goals, strategies, resource capabilities, scope, and

Gantt charts presents a means of easily communicating, understanding and describing of project activities showing the project schedule with start and finish times. (Wilson, 2003)

When considering project management and the project life cycle, the process of identifying risks that could have a positive or negative effect on the outcome of a particular project should be considered. All project managers and project teams need to have a good understanding and knowledge of these possible risks in order to plan ahead and increase the chance of project success. This paper discusses the process of risk identification, evaluation, and management in a project and demonstrates why this process is needed to help ensure project success measures such as budget limits, deadlines, and stakeholder satisfaction are achieved.

Prince 2 is a widely recognised project management methodology in the UK. For this task you are required to provide an overview of Prince 2, critically evaluate this methodology and identify the types of project it is best suited to.

Risk is not a problem; risk is an issue that could possibly develop and affect the outcome of a project (Risk Management Plan, 1997). The cost of the project, quality, scope, and schedule could all be affected if a risk surfaces. This does not necessarily mean that the risk is negative; risks can create a positive opportunity (Project Management Institute, 2013). For example the vendor informs us that the specified wood flooring is no longer available; as a result he will be substituting a better product for less cost. The sour lemons have now been turned into sweet lemonade. In this paper risk will be analyzed as it applies to project management. The project manager’s role in managing risks concerning

The way a project is conducted can have a significant impact on the success (PMBOK, 2013, p. 1) and that is why best practices for project management are needed. A project’s goal is to create a product, service, or result, which can be tangible or intangible, but always needs to have a clear beginning and ending (PMBOK, 2013, p. 3). Even though every project is different and unique, all projects are created for long lasting outcomes (PMBOK, 2013, p. 3). Because of these reasons, projects need management. Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques that guide the project to meet its purpose (PMBOK, 2013, p. 5). There are five process groups that are: initiating, planning, executing,

According to Kendrick (2009, p. 17), roughly 75 percent of projects fail when project teams refuse to adopt some form of risk monitoring and control. Ken Black (1996), an associate professor of decision sciences, published an article listing twelve factors that contribute to the failure of projects. The article highlighted risks, as one of the factors that can negatively affect project constraints (Black, 1996). A risk, as defined by Kendrick (2009, p. 1), is an event or series of events that occur due to the level of uncertainty associated with the project outcome. If a risk occurs, it threatens the success of a project because it can halt or prolong the project’s constraints.

There are numerous project management methodologies available for project managers to choose from. The best process or methodology must take into consideration the unique aspects of the project, including factors such as staff size and system criticality, as determined by the project manager and the core team (Cockburn, 2000). From my vantage point, the primary concern is the team member buy-in and keeping the process participatory, while managing the interaction, communication and contributions from the various team members towards the fulfillment of the objective. It also goes without says, that meeting time, scope, costs and performance, and quality standards are of the utmost importance; to guarantee that the final

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(Partington, 1996) States that with the rapid transformation from bureaucratic and hierarchical structures to more flexible, organic and matrix organizations conferences, seminars and organizations proliferated on how to manage projects. The PMI (Project Management Institute) was founded in 1969 as a nonprofit organization with the sole objective to “foster recognition of the need for professionalism in project management; provide a forum for the free exchange of project management problems, solutions and applications; coordinate industrial and academic research efforts; develop common terminology and techniques to improve communications; provide interface between users and suppliers of hardware and software systems; and to provide guidelines for instruction and career development in the field of project management” (Healy, 1997).

Project Management is the essential part of an organization to take necessary efforts to create a product or a result. As the organization grows large the complexity and the risk factors goes high. Each project has a project manager. Managers have to monitor and coordinate different projects at the same time and it is an art or skill to getting things done by others. Every project has its life cycle that means a start and end point. Some may be successful and some may not. There are some critical factors which restrict from success and eventually lead to project collapse. Apart from the critical factors, all organisations should have clear understanding of why particular project is important. Is this project is prioritized? .WHAT to achieve, WHEN and HOW to complete the project (Sara Marcelino-Sádaba a and Angel M. Echeverría Lazcano b 2014). Primary analysis of these questions are necessary for the success.For a project “requirement and specification” plays a vital role. Design, planning, use of resources and cost estimation of a project are done based on the requirement and specification. A project with well defined objectives with efficient definitions shows the way to success.Functions of Project Management includes activities such as planning, cost control, quality control, risk management and safety management in order to achieve project goals (Sara, Angel, Pedro, 2013).

The importance to teach project management skills through this course cannot be emphasized enough as it remains to be the most sought after expertise for organizations across the work force industry. The knowledge imparted through this course has influenced the ability to manage projects by introducing specific frame work customized to the project needs. As the coursework required analyzing projects from diverse industries, it provided an opportunity to assess the project cycle with respect to their individualized preferences. The projects evaluated included Government funded initiatives; NGO led projects as well as individual past projects that involved self-involvement. This process led to a detailed understanding of the diverse