Discuss about the Critical Analysis Leadership of Project Management Plan.
This particular report has been prepared with a motive to analyse the project management that has been undertaken by Willoughby Council, Community Housing Ltd in partnership with The Association to Resource Cooperative Housing which is located in Barton Rd, Artarmon. This project has been undertaken in order to provide affordable housing to the people who cannot afford quality place to live in. The project has been undertaken in the area of New South Wales which is located Australia. The particular report has been structured with an introduction at first and after that, a project background has been provided in order to understand the organizations which have undertaken the project and also what the organizations does. The project will also focus on the issues that why it has been undertaken and also what is the location of the project.
The main audiences of the project are defined, i.e. the main stakeholders of the organizations and what are the benefits of them continuing with the project (Collins, 2011). It will also be discussed that what information the stakeholders need from the project and also how the stakeholders will use the plan of the project. In addition to that, the alternative plans for the project management will also be discussed. Then the contents of the project management plan will also be examined which will provide the critical investigation of the most important sections of the project management plan. In the end a brief conclusion and recommendation will be provided according to the structure of the project management plan.
The project background states that there are two organizations that came together in order to work together in this project which is located in New South Wales. The main motive behind the preparation of this project is to provide affordable housing to the people of New South Wales who are unable to afford quality housing for lack of money. So, this project will help people with less money to afford housing in New South Wales with quality homes in order to provide them with superior living. Mainly two organizations came together in order to complete the project which is Willoughby Council, Community Housing Ltd and The Association to Resource Cooperative Housing located in Barton Rd, Artarmon. They are working in partnership in order to accomplish the project work. Community Housing Ltd. is a company which exceeds the need of the people by fulfilling their housing needs and they also follow Australian National Community Housing Standards by fulfilling the need of the people. They also maintain minimum quality standard in order to exceed the customer expectation (Schurter and Towers, 2006). Willoughby Council also provides affordable housing to the people who are living well below the poverty line and help them to afford quality homes in fewer prices. The Association to Resource Cooperative Housing is the resourcing organization which provides resources to the housing co-operations in order to build quality hoes in New South Wales. The project is taken up by three companies in order to provide the people living below the poverty line with quality homes to live in and the main location of the project is being selected as New South Wales.
Main Audience of Project Management Plan, their need, how the plan will be used and the information needed:
The main audience of the project management plan is intended for the stakeholders of the organizations (Friedman and Miles, 2006). The organization stakeholders are the main audience who contributes towards the project and also a number of information is needed to be provided to them in order to make them understand about the project and there are also various other need for the information to various stakeholders of the organization. The main audiences of the project and their need to know the information and why they need the information are discussed below:
Customers: The customers or the one who will afford the houses are the main stakeholders of the organization. The people who are living below the poverty line are the customers of the organization because they will afford the houses that will be built in the New South Wales under this project. The customers will require information like what are the prices of the house, how many rooms will be provided to them, what is the drainage system that are being provided, the wall paints etc (Freeman and Phillips, 2010). Though there is much information that the customers will want to know, but the main information that they will want to know is that what will be the price of the houses and also the number of rooms that will be provided to them.
Government: The government is the main stakeholder of this project because they will provide the funding of the project. There is various information that the government will want to know from the three companies which are working on the project. Firstly, the government will want to know about all the resources of the project that will be used in order to start the project (Keijzers, 2005). The resources are of various types and they include the budget of the project, i.e. the amount of money that the government needs to give out to the companies working on the project (Hoe, 2009). Also the government will require the information like how much time will be needed to complete the project and what are the machineries that the companies working on the project will require. The government should also be informed about the place of the project where it will be done and the tender should be approved by the government in order to carry on with the project.
Service Providers: The provider of the services or the ones who will build affordable houses for the local people will need information from the part of the government and also from the part of the customers or end users. The information that the service providers need from the government is that whether the exact amount of money is being tendered by the government of the country in order to continue with the project or not (Rovers and Klinckenberg, 2008). The service providers should also get the information that whether the government has approved the place of the project where the project is to be built. From the part of the customers, the service providers should get the information like what are the criteria of the houses that they are going to build. At what prices the customers will be able to afford the house, number of rooms the customers require in each house etc.
Employees: The employees of the service providers are another stakeholder and they need to know about the plans of the housing and they should also be informed that what is the plan for doing the job. The employees should get the information from the service providers that how they will perform their job on daily routine basis and what is the plan of the project.
Suppliers: The suppliers are the ones who will be providing the raw materials and the machineries to the service providers or the organization who are performing the main project (Roberts, 2012). The suppliers need information timely in order to supply raw materials for building the affordable homes. They should get the information before time in order to supply the raw materials to the service providers and their employees, so that there is no idle time in the workplace.
After the analysis of the project management plan, it can be known that the project management plan is not clearly stated and there are various things that can be added to plan of the project management. Now, seeing the project management plan from the view of the traditional project management, it can be said that according to the PMBOK, there are various details that can be added to the structure of the project management plan. First of all, as we can see there are no details of the finance or funding that was provided. So, in the project management plan, the details of the funding that will be required in the project can be mentioned (Patel, 2008). Also, the human resource that will be required in the work can be mentioned. By human resource it is meant that all the employees who will be required to accomplish the project work can be mentioned. Apart from that various other resources that will be required in order to accomplish the project can also be mentioned. The machineries are very important in order to accomplish the housing project (Mehta, 2007). So, it has to be mentioned that what machineries are to be used in the process of achieving the whole project. Also the time is a very useful resource in these kinds of projects and the works in project management cannot run without the time estimation. Time estimation for each work can also be done in the plan of the project management in order to achieve the work in estimated amount of time. In order to make a project successful there are various things that are needed to be planned and they are scheduling of the time, availability of the resources, scope of the project, project modification etc. So, these things are to be kept in mind while planning the project and these modifications can be made in the project plan in order to achieve the project in a timely manner.
It has been observed that a typical project management plan generally consists of various components that include the project integration management, the project scope management, project time management, project cost management, project quality management, project human resource management, project continuations management, project risk management and project procurement management (David et al., 2006). On the basis of the above aspects when the New South Wales project Plan is analyzed it is observed that the project plan clearly indicates the exact date of commencement of the project and also puts forward the fact that the entire project would require a time period of two years within which the project would be accomplished. On the other hand it also states the fact that the project completion might also vary due to complications that might arise during the project that might the delay the completion of the project (Field and Keller, 2008). So, it can be said that the project management plan has clearly indicated the scope of the project in order to clearly communicate to the stakehpdlers about the time duration.
In addition to the above aspects, it is also important that a project plan should be characterized with a definite millstone planning process that mainly focuses upon identifying the key project objectives and the millstones. The different milestones that are set for the project emphasizes upon defining a state or condition that the project should occupy in order to meet the final objective (Martin, 2002). This milestone planning process tends to form a powerful method with the help of which a project can be structured and also it also provides a framework that proves to be beneficial in reporting the progress of the project. In this context, the particular project i.e. the New South Wales Project Plan even though has talked about providing and implementing a new framework for the initiation and completion of the project, it does not clearly points out the exact milestones that need to be covered for successful completion of the project.
Resource is looked upon to be the most important component of a project and so it becomes important that the resource planning should be done efficiently so that the project is adequately funded and it is facilitated with all the necessary resources like human resources and materials and equipments that can prove to be beneficial in accomplishing the project (Morgen Witzel, 2003). Thus, effective resource plan is important in this context. So, the project management team should emphasize upon clearly identifying and quantifying all the resources that are deemed necessary for successful delivery of the project. The important aspects include the internal manpower that emphasizes upon identifying the materials, project management and procurement and here it is better the conduct the process in the activity planning stage rather than simply estimating the things (Rose, 2008). It also involves the external resources that emphasizes upon detailing any resources that are required and not present within the concept that include the specialist skills, approval bodies and the details of the supplier. Again, it also takes care of the tools and equipment that strive towards providing the details of the development equipment and also provides the detail of the organization that is responsible for facilitating the project with the equipment and the list of suppliers if the materials are supplied externally. Moreover this aspect of the project also tends to provide the details of the training requirements, the supplier training and candidate for training (Harrison & Dennis, 2004). In this context analysis of the present New South Wales Project Plan reveals the fact that it does not provide many details of the resources that has been utilized for the project. It provides no information in context to the human resource requirement, the external suppliers and the materials that need to be procured. So, in this context it can be said that the project management plan of the housing project that has been undertaken fails in providing a clear details of the project specifications and so it would have been beneficial if the traditional project management plan should have been adopted (Kerzner, 2007). On the other this traditional method would have facilitated in preparing the project plan with clear details of each and every aspect of the project that need to be clearly mentioned in order to ensure that the stakeholders are aware of the every details of the project that has been undertaken that would smoothened the progress of the undertaken project.
Another most important aspect of the project management plan is the risk and contingency analysis process. This is mainly because of the fact that analysis of the risk inherent in the project is looked upon to be an important aspect of effective project planning and it is conducted in order to effectively identify almost all the critical areas of risk and then on the basis of the areas develop procedures and contingency plans for the minimization of the impact of strategic and conditional risks (Lock, 2010). The contingency analysis also facilitates in examining the risks that poses threat to the critical success factors of the undertaken project and it then rank the issue to the focus management effort and develop the responses and finally it leads to the development of a risk matrix that clearly all the risks that has been identified and then rank those risks in terms of its impact on the project and the probability of the occurrence of the risks. Thus, identifying the potential risks and its impact and probability of occurrence proves to be beneficial on the part of the project management to design and develop strategies so that the identified risks can be mitigated if not eliminated in order to reduce its impact on the project and ensure the projects’ success. So, on the basis of the above aspects when the project under consideration was analyzed it was observed that the project management plan has not mentioned about the risks that need to be managed or how it has identified that risks that might appear during the project (Heerkens, 2007). So, this clearly indicates the fact that project management plan has not been properly structured and is also not informative in order to fetch its stakeholders with the information about what are the potential risks that might occur during the project and how these identified risks can be easily mitigated through the development of effective strategies (federalfinancialrelations.gov.au, 2015).
Thus, on the basis of the above discussions and aspects, it can be said that the project management plan i.e. the New South Wales project Plan even though in some aspects has emphasized upon following the traditional and required project structure, it has failed in most of the aspects like it does not provide required details of the resources that are required for the project, the suppliers that would be involved, external and internal supplies that need to be incorporated in the project and most importantly the plan lacks the risk identification and planning.
Conclusion
Analysis of the New South Wales Project Plan revealed the fact that the provided project plan does not conform to the theories and the concepts that are available in the literature and the traditional project management plan structure that is generally followed. The concerned project management plan do not provide any specific details of the project that include the resource requirements, the suppliers, procurement, project evaluation and training, procurement and risk assessment and contingency plan (Maylor, 2010). So, it becomes obvious that the project plan has failed in critically mentioning the critical success factors that need to be emphasized upon before and during the commencement of the project. Again, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the project plan, it can be said that the project pan has clearly men tinned the details of the project that has been undertaken, the time period within which the project need to be completed, and the required funding for the project. However the weaknesses of the project plan can be elaborated as it does not conform to the project management plan theory and the traditional approach to project management that clearly tends to indicate all the details of the project plan like risk analysis, resource analysis and others.
The projects management plan is developed and structured in order to provide details of the project and the activities that are involved in the project together with providing clear ideas of what are the aspects that need more focus. These aspects are efficiently dealt with in order to ensure the fact that project is completed efficiently within time and within the required scope so that all the objectives of the project are successful achieved. So, it becomes important for the individuals responsible for developing the project management plan to clearly indicate the project scope, project background, the project deliverables, the milestone, the resources required involving a details of each and every resource that contributes to the success of the project (Collins, 2011). Moreover, it should provide details of the areas that can pose threat to the successful completion of the project and also provide a plan and strategies that can easily handle and manage the identified risks that can contribute towards the successful achievement of the objectives of the project. Moreover, in this context, for the concerned project plan i.e. the New South Wales Project Plan, it is strongly recommended that it should emphasize upon adopting the traditional PMBOK approach towards project management plan that would prove to be beneficial for the project to provide each and every details of the project in a structured manner (Tachikawa, 2013).
References
Collins, R. (2011). Project management. 1st ed. New York: Nova Science Publishers.
David I., Roland G. (2006). Global project management handbook. McGraw-Hill Professional, 2006. ISBN 0071460454. Pp.1-4.
federalfinancialrelations.gov.au. (2015). New South Wales Project Plan. [online] Available at: https://www.federalfinancialrelations.gov.au/content/npa/housing/national-partnership/Homelessness_NSW.pdf [Accessed 21 Jan. 2017].
Field, M. and Keller, L. (2008). Project management. 3rd ed. London: International Thomson Business Press.
Freeman, R. and Phillips, R. (2010). Stakeholders. 1st ed. Cheltenham [u.a.]: Edward Elgar.
Friedman, A. and Miles, S. (2006). Stakeholders. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harrison F. L., Dennis L., (2004). Advanced project management: a structured approach . Gower Publishing, Ltd., 2004. ISBN 0566078228. p.34.
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Martin S. (2002). Project Management Pathways. Association for Project Management. APM Publishing Limited, 2002
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Mehta, R. (2007). Project management. 1st ed. Jaipur: Aavishkar Publishers.
Morgen W.,(2003). Fifty key figures in management . Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0415369770. Pp. 96-101.
Patel, V. (2008). Project management. 1st ed. Jaipur, India: Oxford Book Co.
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