Describe about the Audience and structure of the project management plan and Contents of project management plan of Bendigo?
Bendigo in a big community in Victoria , Australia . It constitutes an important part of the socio-economic part of the country. So, government is interested in the improvement of the community. An important requirement of the community is a good and up dated education system. There are only one primary, four secondary and one senior secondary schools in the area. The students of the community is dependent on these schools. Now the schools are in trouble to meet the expectation of the parents, there is problems related to retention and attendance of the students. The contemporary classroom based educational system is no more effective with the dynamic requirements in the changing world, so the education department of the government has undertaken an education plan that will reshape the education system based on the requirements of the students. It will be more related to personalized student education.
The project plan of the Bendigo Education Plan has been released, but it needs some critical analysis to validate it against the project management plan framework used in project management. The analysis will be backed up from the theories of project management. Finally the critical analysis of the project management plan needs some recommendation based on the outcomes of the analysis. The analysis has found several shortcoming and lack of information in the project plan when comparing the same to standard project management plan.
The aim of this report is to analyze the project plan for Bendigo Education Plan from different critical aspects. The project was supposed to deliver a better education plan to the students from Bendigo area. Being the second largest municipality of the Victoria area, Bendigo has a huge population. The youths from Bendigo needs to have better education, a future with dynamic learning networks and revolutionary learning processes. The Bendigo Education Plan was an attempt to blend technology with education and building a better educational framework for future generations. The plan has several recommendations and categories of those recommendations. (BEP, 2006)
In this report, the project plan for Bendigo educational plan will be analyzed based on some proposed pmp framework.
To proceed with this report, there will be several sections and subsections. After this introductory section there will be discussions on project background. The context of the project, along with the information about the project owner, project sponsor, activities of the organization, location of the organization, etc. Will be described. Then the audience structure for this project management plan, content of the project management plan covering the areas from project management plan framework. Finally there will be conclusion and recommendation for the project. All these aspects will be critically reviewed. All required details like the project plan for the Bendigo Education Plan etc. Will be added to the appendix part. The director of the Bendigo Education Plan projects is responsible for the communications and all required implementation of the Bendigo Education Plan plan by staying within the budget limit. There are communication strategies detailed project plans and budget for each of the individual projects under Bendigo Education Plan. (BEP, 2006)
The project, Bendigo Education Plan has been undertaken by government of Victoria , Australia . The government. Mr. Ian stevens is the chairperson of the steering committee and the working group of the project. Mr. Rob hallisey is the executive officer of the steering committee and the working group.
There are one primary, four secondary and one senior secondary schools in bendigo. In many cases these schools have failed to meet the expectations of the communities also, it has various difficulties in catering the need of the huge number of students coming from bendogo and nearby areas. There are private schools in the area, but the education system in Bendigo is dependent on these government schools. The project, Bendigo Education Plan has been undertaken to bridge the gap between the current educational systems of the area to the requirements of the students from the community, their expectations from the schools, building a better teacher-student relationship, training teachers to provide better educational environment in the schools. Under Bendigo Education Plan, there are several individual projects. There are 39 recommendations for achieving the goals of the Bendigo Education Plan. These recommendations covers requirements of students, teachers, courses, community and governance. Many projects under Bendigo Education Plan are interrelated. From these projects the student attendance and retention are supposed to be improved. (BEP, 2006)
For the project management plan for Bendigo Education Plan, there is a larger audience base. The audience base includes the community of bendigo, the students and teachers, the management committees of the government schools there and other persons who are stakeholders of Bendigo Education Plan. (BEP, 2006)
There are four main categories of stakeholders in the Bendigo Education Plan project. They are the community members including the teachers, parents etc. And the students.
Students are the main audience of the project. The project is basically developed for them, their future and current educational needs.
The project management plan is also for the owner and sponsor of the project. Here the owner or sponsor is the government of Victoria , department of education. They need this plan to understand the scope, purpose and applicability of the project. The project management plan describes details of the different projects under Bendigo Education Plan that are proposed for the 39 recommendations in the Bendigo Education Plan plan.
In the first section of the Bendigo Education Plan project management plan, there is an introductory section that describes the background of Bendigo Education Plan. It describes the three critical pillars of the Bendigo Education Plan plan as the requirements of the Bendigo youths in terms of education and extra-curricular, requirement of the dynamic schooling rather than contemporary schooling process and revolutionize learning by different learning choices, depth, challenge, authenticity and technical connectivity. (BEP, 2006)
It also describes the groups under which there are 39 recommendations of Bendigo Education Plan. The scopes of Bendigo Education Plan project is also described in this section.
As a part of the project management plan, this section clearly outlines the background and the scope and objectives of the project.
Following the introductory section, there is a section called ‘project’. It has different sub sections having details of the projects under Bendigo Education Plan from different categories.
Details of total 18 projects of Bendigo Education Plan are listed under the section called ‘project’. Each of this project has a description of how the project will be carried out, what is the timing and inter dependencies of the project, what are the key deliverables and who is responsible for the project. There is an accompanying project gantt chart showing these project, the relationships and timings. The format is different than formal project management report. (BEP, 2006)
In the next section there is a risk management section. There are detailed information about the risks management process including identification, evaluation and management of the risks associated with the projects.
The final section of the project management plan contains details of the project governance. There is a project governance structure showing the working parties involved in the project governance and how they are involved.
According to national competency standards for project management or ncspm, the structure of project management should include details of (Heldman, 2013)
All information about these topics should be a part of the project management plan. Project integrative processes includes the details of the integrations of other eight factors, scope, time, cost, quality, human resource, communication, risks and procurement. It states how the integration will be done within the boundaries of the scopes of the projects. The agreed baselines in the contracts with the supplier or clients, made in the project should be followed. There are many tradeoffs between different sets of competitive forces in a project also there are other alternatives. The project objectives should meet at any situation and those should not be crossed. The rule is to fulfill the baselines and this is to be followed throughout the whole project life cycle. There may be influences from environments. The project planning and project management process should consider those and decide how to deal with those. (Hill, 2009)
The scope management process related the work needed to produce the end results or products from the project to the expected products of the project. There should be an initial justification of the project start up, details of the deliverables by the project, project constraints and objectives. Defining project scopes is like making the foundation of the project management plan, based on this plan rest of the plans will be done and integrated with the scope management plan.
Next part of the project management plan in the time management plan. The activities in a project like the development, analysis and controls of the projects have some schedule, timeline, inter-dependencies. Meeting those properly is a critical part of the overall project management plan. The project objectives should be met but the limits of the schedule and the time frames allocated for each activities should not be broken. Time management helps in balancing the cost, capability and quality of a project. The right balance of these is very important success factor of the overall project.
Any project has some budget. In the cost management process, the expected cost to carry out each project activities is considered and the total project cost is refined. It helps in producing a realistic project budget with enough analysis. This is an important role player that controls the cost of the overall project. Cost management is also a critical success factors for a project that helps in balancing, time, capability and quality properly.
Next comes quality management. As already discussed, other than schedule and cost, quality of the project deliverables and the overall project is a critical role player in success of the project. The activities in a project are needed to be carried out is such a way that the quality policy of the project is optimized. The standards are posed on the objectives of the project through project quality management. The larger goal and aspect of quality management is to gain more customer satisfaction. Quality planning is a continuous process. The control and assurance of quality management is also the same, these brings continuous improvement to the overall project along the entire life cycle of the project.
The human resources or the project teams should work in a cohesive way. The common purposes of these teams is adherence to the project objectives. In the human resource management process, the requirement of human resources in each of the project activities is identified and evaluated. During identification of the requirement of human resources for each of the project activities, it needs to consider the organizational mix and he core project teams. Recruitment of staffs, selection and providing training to the selected staffs, all comes under human resource management process. This is to be done according to the changes during the life cycle of the project. (Heldman, 2013)
Communications is an important part of any organization and any project. In the process of project communication management, the communication across of the project teams, client etc. Are managed. There will be sharing of ideas, information etc. In an organized and optimized way as a result of effective communication management process. It generates, collects, and disseminates, stores and disposes information related to the process through some formal processes and structures, helps in decision making activities, controlling networks of informal communications and helps in meeting the project objectives. procurement
Risk management is the process of identifying, evaluating, mitigating and managing risks though out the life cycle of the project. The basic aim of project risk management is to optimize the positive risks or opportunities and minimizing the impacts of negative risks of threats. It also need to record the risk management process and outcomes, knowledge gathered from the process. (Heldman, 2010)
The final one is procurement management, there are lots of activities in procurement management. It handles all market analysis, contractual information etc. There may be tendering for seeking contracts from vendors. Other than that it includes, monitoring, managing and administering the contracts from the very beginning of the project management. However, the procurement activities are started to be recorded from the beginning of the project planning and this is refined throughout the entire project life cycle. The objectives of the project are needed to be made in procurement management also. (Kousholt, 2007) (Fleming, 2003).
In case of Bendigo Education Plan, these information are not structured in this way or information are missing. First of all, there is no structured information about the project integrative processes. The integration of project budgets, schedule, risks and contracts to the scope of the project has not been described in the Bendigo Education Plan project management plan. Details of the external and internal influential environmental details are also not given in the document. (Kloppenborg, 2014)
The scopes of the project have nee outlines, but there is mention of the scope management process. The time management details is also absent in the Bendigo Education Plan project management plan. There is no reference to any type of information about the project cost, budget management etc. Also there is no information about the quality management for the project, what standards are to be followed etc. Human resources is a critical aspect of the Bendigo Education Plan projects. No details about the human resource management process is also present in the Bendigo Education Plan project management plan. There is no information about the communication management and procurement management also. However, there is enough information about the risk management for the Bendigo Education Plan projects.
Thus, the Bendigo Education Plan project management report lacks critical information about the project management details.
As already stated, the project management plan for Bendigo Education Plan, has not all required sections of a project management document. It consists of an introductory section, a brief details of the projects that are supposed to be carries out under Bendigo Education Plan, a schedule of the project plans, risk analysis and project governance plan. So, there are a lot of information missing or partially provided. In this section, the given information will be analyzed only. (Cohen, 2001)
At first there is an introductory section that describes the o0verview of the project. It basically contains the scopes and objectives of the project. It will helps to understand the context of the project.
Then, there is a section outlining the projects under the Bendigo Education Plan. There is very brief information about the project. It just gives information of the outlines of the project. It lacks the details of the activities, requirement of the resources, and scope of each project. Based on these outlining information a schedule Gantt chart have been prepared. The Gantt chart also gives an idea of the project duration and interdependencies among the projects. (Young, 2013)
Then, there is a risk management section. It outlines, the risks associated to the Bendigo Education Plan as a whole. The risks related to Bendigo Education Plan has been identified as project budget, variations and constructions, implementation of the projects under Bendigo Education Plan recommendations within the stipulated time frame. A risk register is also drafted for outlining the identified risks associated to the projects, the levels of impacts for each of those risks, probable mitigation plans.
The risk register contains lot of criteria for evaluations of the identified risks. For example, it contains a risk reference number for referring to some identified risk uniquely, a category of the identified risk. The risk categories have been identified and developed from a risk categorization matrix. No explicit information about the risk categorization matrix for the risk register has been given there. There are other risk register attributes like, risk description, risk owner, impact score, likelihood score, raw risk score, acceptance of risk, current mitigation actions, mitigation effectiveness ratings, residual risk score, acceptance of risks, required treatment actions, timing and review date. Two five point rating scale has been developed for risk impact matrix and risk likelihood matrix. A risk owner can be the person who is responsible for the risk. The person may be some private party, government etc. Residual risk score has been calculated as the product of impact rating, likelihood rating and mitigation effectiveness rating of a risk. The final residual risk score sets the priority of the risk. (Heldman, 2010)
Finally there is a description of the project governance of the Bendigo Education Plan. The overall responsibilities of the project is laid on Bendigo Education Plan board. The main responsibilities of the project are, approval of the strategic and operational planning of the project, delivery of the Bendigo Education Plan, oversight and approval of the communication strategies to be followed in Bendigo Education Plan projects, overseeing the milestones and achievements of Bendigo Education Plan milestones, approval of the overall project budget. There is a list containing the name and details of the Bendigo Education Plan project board, who are there for which responsibility. (BEP, 2006)
The accountabilities of Bendigo Education Plan project director are also stated in the project management plan accountabilities are strategically management and facilitation of the Bendigo Education Plan implementation meting the objectives, scope, budget, community expectations and other considerations, identification of the authority provided for active management and advices, development, management and implementation of the communication strategies, development and maintenance of partnership with various key stakeholders, management of the interdependencies and interrelationships in the project. (Fusco, 1997)
The lists containing the members of the implementation committee, working practices to be followed in the project, master planning committee and its role, etc. Are also given as a part of the project governance under project management plan. The master planning committee has a role to oversee the build program. The build program is a project under the Bendigo Education Plan. (BEP, 2006)
Even there is lots of missing and partial information, still the Bendigo Education Plan helps to understand context of the project, expected duration of the project and the objectives of the project. But there are a lot of important information that are missing and it makes the project management plan incomplete. There is no information about the budget and quality of the project. For project management, budget, schedule and quality are very important. Also there is lack of information about the integration of all aspects of project management with the scopes of the project. There is also very little information about the external and internal environmental influences in the project. Expectation of the community is a driving factor behind the project. It describes the requirements of dynamic and more technical education environment for the youth in bendigo. The opportunities and threats in the given context is not describes in the risk document, hence, the documentation also lacks details. (Larson & Gray, 2011)
Conclusion
To conclude the discussion on critical analysis of the project management plan from the Bendigo educational plan, it can be said at the first place that the project management plan is incomplete and lacks important details of most of the aspects of an effective project management plan. As described in the report, if it is compared to the theoretical project management plan framework, then there is lots of dissimilarities. There are total 8 aspects of a project management plan according to the theory. Those are the scope, time, cost, quality, human resource, risk, communication and procurement. The project plan of Bendigo Education Plan lacks most of it. As discussed, the plan has described the scopes, but it lacks details of the scope management and how different aspects of the project management plan integrates with the scopes of the project. There is only a schedule having terms as project duration. There is no specific project duration, the schedule only outlines the projects, and it does not give any details of the work break down structure of the projects. As there are many projects under the same Bendigo Education Plan, so the WBS of each project is needed to understand the big picture. There is no information about the budget of the project, how quality control management will be carried out, how human resource management will be done, how procurement and communication management will be done. There is only a detailed information about the risks of the project.
The aspects like scheduling, budget and quality controls are important for success of any project. The strengths of the project is it is a government initiated project and covers the requirement of a vast portion of the community. The weakness is, there is lack of clear understanding of the project management plan, and it may create confusion about the project management in later part of the project life cycle.
The chosen PMP framework is a complete and detailed project management plan framework. It covers almost all aspects of a project management plan. It will help to carry out the project development in a more organized and hassle freeway. It is recommended for Bendigo Education Plan project to follow the PMP framework. That will help them to uncover different aspects of the project. As this is a larger project and the impact will be significant on the lives of the parents, students, teachers of Bendigo, so, the project should be carried out in the best possible way. To do so, it needs to have a detailed and solid project management plan. Otherwise issues may rise up in the middle of the project development that may lead to severe consequences. For example, there is no clear understanding of the schedule and cost of the project. As there are critical projects to be carried out and there are interdependencies among the projects, so, there are high changes to be tangled up in the activities and interdependences in the middle of the project, risks of schedule slippage, cost overrun etc. To avoid such cases, it needs to have a good project management plan, possibly as guided in the given project management plan from theory.
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