OPS 935 – Assessment 2 – Rock N Bands

To ensure that the project is completed on time, several management should be done step by step.

Firstly, making the project plan to organize the success. Specific scheduling problems and constrains should be known clearly. The project’s mission is to hold a music festival that should be completed in 10 weeks. According to the original project network, the critical path to be activities D, F, I, spending 12 weeks. In addition, another two long paths are C, B, J and D, H, I separately, spending 11 weeks. The duration of this nodes should be compressed reasonably to make sure the schedule is realistic. There is a labour resource constraint in this project, having 4 workers are available normally and no more than 5 per week. Considering the budget should be minimized, two workers per task will be arranged as little as possible when reducing project time, because additional worker should be paid $300 per week. Furthermore, listing WBS to make the whole project into smaller and more detailed goals, noting all the necessary materials, when they're needed, and how to get them.

Secondly, anticipating any risk to prevent potential problems happened. For example, the bad weather may affect the festival, the MTV recorder may not work, or travel visa is postponed. Corresponding precaution should be made before the plan is executed. When the project is in progress, the overall progress should be reviewed at the individual parts, if there are some problems it can be adjusted and improved timely. (wikiHow. 2017)

Thirdly, the resources and budget arrangement should be in line with project plan and baseline. For example, Parallel activates will be arranged as much as possible based on the labour limit and work process. In addition, try to arrange one people per task, minimize the extra labour cost and overtime cost due to Inefficient cooperation. Organize everything needed for the project in one location 1-2 hours before required. Finally, coordinate with team partners and communicate with team members to make sure the project can be carried out effectively.

• There are many skills the project manager should have for achieving success in project management.
• Communication skill is a critical skill for successful project. At first, it helps to convey and explain the strategy and purpose of the project for their team, by using well-understood words and setting goals and planning enable team members understand both blueprint and lower level priorities, who can focus on the details of finishing tasks. The following is that manager actively listen and understand others to get their feedback and behind meaning, which can prevent a lot of misunderstanding and conflicts. Another one is trust and respect that also help manager building good relationship among team members. The last one is encouraging team members to co-operate and share information for creating more benefit than sum of its parts. (Pmi.org. 2017)
• Leadership skills can be used to effectively motivate and inspire their project team to accomplish assigned tasks and achieve the group objectives and goals.
• Managers as team leaders should possess organizational skills, who must understand the internal organisational functions and be skilled in personal organisation to develop their teams and realize their common goals.
• Human resource management skill requires manager hiring the right people who is competent to accomplish tasks. Like this case, if the additional worker cannot coordinate with the existing worker, the task will not be completed efficiently and may lead to project delays, lower quality and extra cost.
• Time management skill can help manager hold their schedule and deal with time consuming barrier in process. That requires manager choose the right tools and equipment to assist improving effectiveness. Project managers also need to learn how to delegate the tasks effectively and make key decisions by focusing on the big picture. Besides, different social and cultural background should be noticed among team members which help to eliminate misunderstanding and ineffective communication. (Pmi.org. 2017)
• Budgeting skills undoubtedly should be mastered to monitor and save the cost. Cost estimation, budgeting, and control are three key processes to help manager fulfil the project under the approved cost.
• Negotiation skills requires managers must effectively deal with relationships among stakeholders, customers and team members throughout the whole project. For example, manager should negotiate with music group and roadies to approach the agreement.
• Risk management skill is another critical aspect. It is important to forecast, assess and control risk throughout the life of project. Manager should have the ability to alleviate the risk even some issues are uncertain. (Harrin, E. 2017)

Other skills including conflict skills, planning skills, management skills, team-building and motivating skills are important in project management as well.

• The successful project should ensure that the deliverables meet customers’ expectations within the specified time and approved cost. It can be measured from six aspects.
• Schedule---meet target dates. All work packages and activities should be completed on time according to the project schedule. Keeping the strict deadline requirement, achieving the milestone plan and delivery time, and completing the project by the due time (GpmFirst. 2017). In this case, the project should meet the ten weeks’ deadline or additional $2000 per week should be paid because of negative publicity effect of the company.
• Scope. The project deliverables should meet requirements and specifications, other missions including training the end users, documentation management, and contractual obligations are essentially measured as well.
• The Budget is usually the most critical factor during the project life cycle. It is assigned across the scheduled activities and time based on the project scope and available resources. The total cost, including both direct and indirect cost, profit, each WBS element price and pricing of changes should be tracked and controlled enable managers to know where they stand in terms of money spent. For example, balance sheet, the payback, ROI and net present value (NPV).
• Customer satisfaction means that the project meets user expectations, it can be measured through customer’s survey or questionnaire.  
• Team satisfaction. It is also important to know how our team members evaluate project results, project management and team work, which provide precious feedback through inside views that can be used to optimize the organization management and improve the team environment (Anon, 2017).
• Project quality. It can be assessed by health promotion, project planning, project organization and implementation, documentation management, goal attainment and sustainability.
• Commercial success. Some projects update rapidly, so strengthen the interaction with end users can quickly improve company’s ability of innovation adapting the new market environment. Correspondently, commercial success considerably increases.

• Provide a Gannt chart of the project.

According to the original project network, the critical path to be activities D, F, I, spending 12 weeks. In addition, another two long paths are C, B, J and D, H, I separately, spending 11 weeks.

Path:

D3-------F4------I5      12 weeks

D3-------H3------I5      11weeks

C2------B5-------J4      11 weeks

Considering the cost, firstly, crashing D by adding one person to compress 1 week, it become to:

D2------F4-------I5      11weeks

D2------H3------I5      10weeks

C2-----B5------J4       11weeks

C2-----B5------J4 is an independent path, crash any node can realize 10 weeks, but the task J is about car park arrangement, which is more easy to hire one more people coordinating with each other, so crash J:

D2-----F4------I5       11 weeks

D2------H3------I5      10weeks

C2-----B5------J3       10weeks

Because the task I is about processing travel visa, the time is up to immigration department, so it’s hard to be crash, then crash F:

D2-----F3------I5       10 weeks

D2------H3------I5      10weeks

C2-----B5------J3       10weeks

Finally, all the paths can meet 10 weeks’ deadline.

Reference

Pmi.org. (2017). Core Competencies of a Successful Project Manager Skill. [online] Available at: http://www.pmi.org/learning/library/ore-competencies-successful-skill-manager-8426 [Accessed 22 Mar. 2017].

Harrin, E. (2017). 15 Top Skills Project Managers Need. [online] PM Blog. Available at: http://www.esi-intl.co.uk/blogs/pmoperspectives/index.php/15-skills-project-managers-will-need-2015/ [Accessed 22 Mar. 2017].

wikiHow. (2017). How to Complete a Project on Time. [online] Available at: http://www.wikihow.com/Complete-a-Project-on-Time [Accessed 22 Mar. 2017].

GpmFirst. (2017). Project Success Criteria and Success Factors. [online] Available at: http://www.gpmfirst.com/books/managing-quality-projects/project-success-criteria-and-success-factors [Accessed 22 Mar. 2017].

Anon, (2017). [online] Available at: https://pmhut.com/project-success-criteria-acceptance-criteria-document http://pmtips.net/blog-new/project-success-criteria [Accessed 22 Mar. 2017].