Techniques of Project Management

Surname 1 3. Administrative Performance Overseeing the BI project was to be done efficiently; as such, tasks were divided among the team members by the project managers. It was also the task of the group members to crosscheck each other's tasks to ensure adherence to all project requirements. Such requirements included proper resource allocation, resource availability, as well as ascertaining that estimated time for fundamental tasks was not violated.

Reynholm, the Junior Vice President, issued an internal memo addressing the first project update. This memo was indispensable in enhancing the OpenProj file as well as elaborating how to deal with resources scheduling.

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Surname 2 Changes were made on the statement points upon careful discussion and understanding. Through the statements, it became clear how to handle constraints and excessive allocation of resources. The statements also helped differentiate between tasks tackled by the vendors from those tackled by the BI project team. Since the statements were clearly understood, the team did not hesitate to implement them so as not to miss the deadline. There were mixed responses regarding change requests; in the three requests that had been made, only one was approved. Surprisingly, it was the unexpected request that was approved. The reasons for failing to approve the other requests were convincing. Despite the request for extra IT resources being approved, more workload followed as the Vice President went ahead and gave more work to consider in the project. There was the need to integrate the Business Intelligence software known as Datadudes in the BI project; thus a request was made accordingly.

In addition, there was also a request to implement an extra deliverable phase, similar to the Quicksmart and Braintime which were already in existence. Task modification and implementation of new tasks were done as done as requested.

Overall, requested tasks were executed successfully by the team, despite a few challenges in allocation discrepancies owing to the 50% availability of Eric (PM), Denise (IT) and Eric (IT). This called for careful determination of resource allocation as regards which resources to allocate to whom and when. Team members such as Charlie, Andrew and Belinda were available on fulltime basis. These three members were always available for allocation of tasks when were deemed appropriate. Nevertheless, it was not possible to assign them all the resources; thus they were not fully engaged per day as required. This meant that some resources had to be used in the project during

Surname 3 overtime. This problem can be circumvented by having a day off or exempting the full time members from overtime hours some times.

There was individual allocation of resources and implementation of lags so as to cut down on the critical path, allocate more time to some resources and complete the project in time (Pinto 2010). It is notable that the end date is behind schedule when checked against the baseline completion deadline. This is because the team could not reschedule the end date. This meant that there would be a 2 days delay, resulting into completion of the project on May 30, 2012 at 4.16 pm. It would have been wise for the team to reconsider resource allocation and working hours for different tasks so as to avoid the delay.

The project management tram encountered several team performance challenges. It was, for instance, difficult to control the multiple variables like OpenProj issues and scope creep, among other concern issues that arose. This would often lead to inability to manage the project as per the schedule. The entire team experienced challenges in managing the shifting variable. For instance, a new vendor came along with the OpenProj software, leading to a challenge in making the team work in cooperation.

Several reasons led to the difficulty in cooperation upon introduction of the new vendor. In the first place, coordinating multiple stakeholders in the project was confusing as real time communication was difficult. It did not make any sense to have all stakeholders read from the same page, no matter the means of communication used.

To resolve this problem, a chain of command was instituted so as to spell objectives

Surname 4 clearly, and create a communication channel. Despite all these efforts, communication remained one-sided i.e. Dennis versus the team.

Difficulty in cooperation could also be attributed to lack of technical expertise despite a lot of tutorials and sufficient time with the software. As a result, critical issues regarding project costing and scheduling remained unresolved. The PM tool came in handy in providing the way forward as to how critical issues were to be tackled by the software. Due to lack of specific costing and resource allocation expectations, the team remained in the dark on how changes were occurring. There were challenges in managing scheduling to match with the available resources. It became more difficult to match the budget with available resources when scope creep was experienced. The program did not succeed in managing resource allocation and costing seamlessly. With such an understanding, it is advisable that future project managers should give serious attention to costing and resource allocation, especially when scope creep is considered.

4.0 Techniques of Project Management An array of techniques found use in the implementation stage of the project.

These techniques were vital in ensuring that the project was delivered within set deadlines. Among the techniques that were used include scope creep, analyzing risks in the project, use of Gantt Charts to monitor the project, resource leveling, as well as making changes in scope definition. The use of OpenProj to manage the project could be said to have been overly successful given the technical intricacy of the project management tool.

It was initially projected that completion of the project would be accomplished using the available resources, with each team having its unique availability of resources.

Surname 5 However, there was a bugging issue; OpenProj fell short of scheduling resources on the basis of their availability successfully. This is despite the OpenProj managing to document availability of resources. Changes in the schedule were, therefore, inevitable since focus shifted to using OpenProj to schedule and level resources. Critical challenges were encountered in the process of project scheduling and costing, owing to difficulties in leveling resources. The team circumvented this challenge by trying to introduce lag in the non-critical path drawing experience from the Critical Path Method (CPM) concept (Pinto 2010). Devastatingly, no positive changes were recorded in project scheduling and costing after introducing the lag. The problem became bigger since OpenProj pushed each task's deadline to June 2013, which implied that the team had to narrow down on the lag between activities on the non-Critical Path activities. The overall effect was that resource leveling was affected as indicated in the OpenProj file where some resources worked more than 100% or 50%.

There are serious criticisms regarding the PM tool OpenProj, terming it as inadequate. Nonetheless, it is a powerful tool in providing visual representations of the project. Gantt Charts were indispensable in tracking and monitoring the project since they were integrated with WBS, RBS and Responsibility Assignment Matrices (RAM).

OpenProj remained unmatched in providing visual representations and immediate feedback on project rescheduling. The overall project success was, however, hampered by failure of the OpenProj to conduct baseline project scheduling and costing seamlessly.

There was also the challenge of having to accommodate an extra vendor since this meant alteration in the scope management. Controls always come in handy in

Surname 6 prevention of further scope creep. It is the duty of project managers to carry a candid vision regarding the project scope, the priorities thereof, as well as the deliverables in the project. One way of controlling is by documenting. As such, the current project utilized change requests and update reports as the principal forms of documentation (Pinto 2010). Tasks are efficiently assigned and easily managed by using WBS and PERT charts to keep detailed description of various tasks.

According to Zowghi and Nurmuliani (2007), some aspects that showcase instability of specifications include major changes in user requirements especially in the final stages of development. In addition, presence of disparities between initial and final specifications in a project is an indicator of requirements instability. In most cases, the different requirements observed at the last stages of the project are mulled by disunity and disagreements among users regarding the requirements.

Bringing in a third vendor during the final stage of the project will require going through the project scope controls. There are two expectations; rejection of the project or the management will have to provide additional resources. In IT projects, it almost impossible to avoid scope creep; nonetheless, the responsibility of any unseen outcomes was transferred to the top management effectively via change requests (Pinto 2010). This, however, was done under the management's full awareness of alterations on the official scope of the project.