Project Management Q&A

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1. Select a project with which you have been involved. If you have no experience working on a project, select any project on which you can conduct research. What was the project? Briefly explain whether or not the project was successful. What factors contributed to how well the project worked or how it did not work?

The project that I recently completed was the installation of upgraded lighting systems throughout the offices and conference rooms for the manufacturing plant I work in. This project was very broad in scope as it required not only identifying the type of LED light fixtures that every different room required, it also then required writing the capital budget request, getting approvals, purchasing, and finally, the most difficult part, managing the downtime in each room to do installation.

Right from the beginning I knew the project was going to be challenging as the plant I work in has in total 135 rooms that had over 1500 lights to be replaced. The initiative was written up as a cost savings due to the power savings of transitioning from fluorescent bulbs to long lasting LED bulbs. In order to prove this cost savings, I had to put an engineering study together to evaluate the short term and long term cost savings. Next, I had to gather support from within the engineering and maintenance departments and the managers around the plant to supply me with a dedicated work crew capable of doing the installation. Finally, I had to coordinate between all the different offices and conference rooms and their busy schedules the necessary downtime to do the complete installation work.

The project was completed on time and on budget and was very successful although very time consuming and stressful. The keys to success on my project were:

• Identify stakeholders and their success criteria at the beginning of the project
• Established timelines and budgets
• Set up success and failure metrics
• Put together contingency plans to mitigate set backs

By having an agreed upon understanding of the scope of work and the budget and timelines, the project was much easier to manage over the project life cycle and made the plan go much more successful as the objectives were clear (Brown & Hyer, 2010).

2. Describe balanced scorecards. Why is it important to have this type of criteria in place? What is the theory of "do no harm"? Why is it important to have this type of criteria in place?

The balanced scorecard is a management tool that provides a framework for successfully tracking specific project or business metrics against set targets. The scorecard will generally contain specific business related goals across relevant categories such as operations, maintenance, and finance and help keep the overall goals clear and structured and measurable (Kaplan, 2010).

Balanced scorecards also keep the company vision and mission statement as a part of the overall scorecard so that it ties the project back to these core elements. The scorecard articulates the links between all the inputs and processes and outcomes and then focuses on the management of these different components to help achieve the projects strategic priorities (Kaplan, 2010).

The theory of "do no harm" is an essential function for project managers to understand and utilize. Do no harm is an approach to project management that mandates you give your team freedom to operate without harm. In other words, you do not overburden them, you do not micromanage to the point of causing harm to the outcomes, you do not make bold statements such as "failure is not an option" when it very likely could be, especially on very challenging projects.

Taking the do not harm approach means that you as the project manager are considerate and smart enough to evaluate all of the issues involved and the resources and people you are working with and utilize them carefully and respectfully so as to keep things under control and not run amuck with failure which is to cause harm (Kaplan, 2010).

3. What are nine dimensions of project attributes? Select and analyze three project attributes. How do they impact a project? What are examples of these attributes?

Nine dimensions common to project attributes are; time management, people, risks, budgets, costs, deliverables, milestones, stakeholders, and complexity. All of these are equally important as they can make or break the success of the project; however, the three that are very hard to manage and require extreme focus are people, deliverables, and milestones. All three of these work ...