The Great Pyramid of Egypt

The Great Pyramid of EgyptOverviewThe Great Pyramid of Egypt is deemed as unrivaled of the Worlds Seven Wonders. For more than 43 centuries, the pyramid was ranked as the t every last(predicate)est structure in the earth. But aside from its magnificence what makes it as a true inquire is how these Pharaohs managed such an enormous feat when on that point were no engineers and construction equipment to use. As such this will al panaches remain a mystery but for todays managers in order to create something as grandeur as the Egypts pyramid, it will nevertheless take proper thrust charge skills to successfully political machinery break through a jut out.Nowadays, retchs be ubiquitous. From the simple objective of political campaign to the complicated tasks of launching a rocket, jump out management is used everywhere by everybody. With this, it is considered as the thrust force in most industries for leaders recognize that they atomic number 18 increasingly managing workin g class-driven organization. They recognize that to be successful, they need to be conversant with and use modern project management techniques.Likewise to parti everyy illustrate the importance of such tools, this paper shall discuss different approaches to project planning and control particularly in managing resources. These techniques as well as its benefits and limitations will be presented through the use of two business cases.Case I Bojan Ltd.Bojan Ltd. operates in a rent a car industry that caters to other commercial businesses. To further satisfy its customers, the comp either is in the midst of searching for a supply of its vehicles. As such, the trade union movement Manager (PM) is tasked to precis all the activities addressed to this problem using compute Net execute Diagram (PND), Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and Critical Path Method (CPM).To bl end off the project, the PM listed 18 activities that must be put to deathed to produce the project deli verables. (See plug-in 1.1) This list also shows the relationship amongst the project activities and the estimated number of work periods that are needed to complete the individual activities.PND was drawn out of these data and was used to determine the start and finish dates of each task and the entire project. meet 1.1 shows the PND including the detailed schedule data for each activity shown in Early Start (ES), Early Finish (EF), Latest Start (LS) and Latest Finish (LF). The plot also presented the critical path wherein the nodes in red represent the critical activities. These activities were identified by subtracting the activitys ES from its LS. If the float is zero then it falls as a critical activity otherwise the activity has a slack wherein it is allowed to be delayed without affecting the projects total duration. In this project there are six non-critical activities (F, G, J, M, P, R) which totals to eighteen days of float.As shown above, the activities A-B-C-D-E-H-I- K-L-N-O-R make up the critical path and by adding the duration of each activity it shows the shortest time in which a project tolerate be completed. For this project adding the entire critical paths duration (1+1+ 4+5+8 +10+10+6+8+10+12+1), it will take 76 days for its fulfillment. For workout if the project will commence on May 3 and assuming that there will be no delays and will be completed using a 5 day working week, the project will be undefiled on its 16th week specifically on the 23rd of August.If in case non-critical activities are delayed, it will not bring about delay for it has a slack. If the delay is equals or less than its slack, it has a time leeway that gage be used without adverse effect on the project time completion. For example a one day interruption occurred during Activity P will have no effect on the projects target end date for only its EF and LS will be affected. (See Table 1.4) This case is also the same if Activity Q is one day delayed and if two day h oldup happened during Activity M. passim the project, PND was applied since time management is often the main source of conflict and using such tool will second PM to tinker with the relationships between tasks and create alternative solutions to increase productivity, profitability, and the diligence of a project. Moreover other than this function, PND also serves four other purposes (Super Business, n.d.).Case II Carr Ltd.Carr Ltd. supplies an array of fitness equipment to divers(a) health and fitness clubs. further the company wants to expand this offering by diversifying its product and market. In this light, the organization will be undertaking a series of activities to launch hydraulic resistance machines to various school gyms. To manage all these tasks, project integration management will be conducted to coordinate all the project elements throughout its lifecycle. jut out 2.1 illustrates the integrations seven main bear ones to ensure the projects completion.Project C harterThe project charter is an announcement that names the new project, the purpose of the project and the PM (Verzuh, 2005, p. 41). Form 2.1 shows the project charter for this specific project.Preliminary Project Scope StatementThe scope statement is a document used to develop and confirm a common understanding of the project scope. As such Form 2.2 describes the work to be accomplished in this project as this will help in preventing project creep the tendency of a project scope to get bigger and bigger (Schwalbe, 2008, p. 149).Project Management PlanThe project management plan provides a snapshot of the whole project as it contains all the necessary data for project execution and control. The plan aims to coordinate and integrate all other project management knowledge area. Moreover it is kept flexible in order to adapt to future project changes. The contents of the projects management plans are as followsProject OverviewThe project overview contains the basic idea of the proje ct. It gives the project management police squad a compact of what should and should not be accomplished at the end of the project.Management and Technical Approach This part of the plan consists of various documents on the ways the project will be run through. As such it is carve up into four parts and these are management objectives, project controls, risk management and project staffing.Management Objectives identifies the top management views, project priorities and constraints. Through this, the team can concentrate on what must be make and can recognize the probable project limits. Form 2.4 shows the projects management objectives.Form 2.4 Management ObjectivesProject Controls describes the observe of the projects progress and its change management. For this project, the team has decided to conduct a weekly status review to ensure that the project is completed on time as well as to handle the change effectively. Moreover every after the progress meeting, a project statu s report is to be filled out and if there will be a need for change, a project change request must be first completed before any change implementation.Risk Management identifies the risks and the ways to manage and control perils that will restrain the projects success. Form 2.7 lists the projects risk management techniques that will allow the team to bring in for the risks and on how to react on them.Project Staffing describes the human resource needs of the project. This document identifies the skills required for this project. As such, Form 2.8 provides a list of the qualifications needed for the project to ensure that it will be completed with highly skilled team members.Scope ManagementThe scope management defines the work required to complete the project. This supports the feeler scope statement for it clarifies and provides more specific details. With this end, a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is created to define the total scope of the project. Although this does not sho w the tasks dependencies and duration, the WBS provides a basis for planning and managing project schedules, costs, resources and changes (Young, 2007).Project OrganizationThe project organization is represented by the Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS). An OBS shows the decomposition of the projects responsibilities based on its WBS. Through this, the PM can allocate responsibilities, and to distribute the work fairly and evenly among the team (Young, 2007, p. 132).Project ScheduleThe project schedule provides a summary of the overall project schedule for it gives a baseline date of the projects completion. As such Table 2.2 identifies the project schedule that will be used to quantity the projects progress to ensure the timely finish of the project. The table lists the relationships of each activity, the critical four dates and its critical path that are essential on identifying the projects duration.Project budgetThe project budget consists of project estimate and project budget wherein project estimate is the approximate cost of the resources needed to complete a project enchantment project budget involves allocating the overall cost estimate to individual work items to establish a baseline for measuring performance. For this project in estimating its total cost, bottom-up estimate was done. Bottom-up estimate which is often called Activity Based Costing involves on estimating individual work items and summing them to get a project total (Schwalbe, 2008, p. 274). In this project, labor cost, production of promotional tools and the school presentation consume most of the budget. Form 2.9 provides a summary of the projects estimated cost.Project ExecutionProject execution is the stagecoach of performing the actual work as approved in the plan. This phase probably takes 90 percent or more of the projects effort. As such, the activities identified on the WBS are now be implemented to produce the project deliverables (Verzuh, 2005, p. 38). (Refer Figu re 2.2 for the projects WBS)Consequently this point of project lifecycle involves on managing and performing the work expound in the project management plan and so as to ensure that the project will be undertaken accordingly, the PM must perform these three tasks coordinate planning and execution Providing strong leadership and a supportive culture and Capitalizing on product, business and application area knowledge.Project Monitoring and ControllingProject monitoring and controlling involves collecting, measuring and disseminating performance information. In this stage project status reports play a pivotal role wherein all the activities are organism tracked to metre the overall health of the project. Seven criteria are used for effective tracking and these are Work (is it to estimates (both time and cost)? Measurement (is everyone clear how to measure progress?) Timescales (are work plans being completed on schedule?) Quality (are standards being met in accordance with specific ations?) Teamwork (are responsibilities being adhered to?) Changes (are problem-solving tools being used effectively?) Stakeholders (are they being kept informed, consulted and involved?) (Young, 2007, p.211).In addition to this, since scope, schedule and cost comprise the success criteria for the project, these three are the primary focus on monitoring the projects progress. Table 2.4 lists various methods on monitoring these factors.The purpose of tracking the projects progress is to ensure that the team always have the information to make an accurate assessment of what has happened and comparability it with what should have happen according to the plan. Through this comparison, the team can take corrective actions to such variance. For example, it was identified that the project is lagging behind, specifically in doing the trade plan due to conflicting ideas. As such, various proposals were raised and one of these is to work overtime. With this corrective action, the impending effect on project schedule was countered. Figure 2.3 summarizes the monitoring and controlling system for this project.Integrated Change ControlIntegrated change control is a management process for requesting, reviewing, approving, carrying out and controlling changes to the projects deliverables (Wallace 2007). use the Project Change Request Form (Form 2.6) the project can achieve an efficient change control through understanding the source requiring the change, identifying the pros and cons of adapting to the change and preparing plan in implementing the change. With this end, Figure 2.4 illustrates the projects change control process (Westland, 2003).After recognizing the need for change, Configuration Management is then implemented. Configuration management controls the different versions of the project. It focuses specifically on how to implement approved changes as it keeps everyone in the project reading from the same sheet of music. For example, if the product proposal was changed midway through the project. This should be communicated to all the team members through updating the project reports so that the sub-teams responsible for the other parts of the marketing plan can make adjustments. If this is failed to do so, this will lead to enigmatic marketing plan. As such if the product package is targeting the low-end schools but the pricing suggests a premium rate for the fitness equipment, this results to inconsistencies. To avoid this kind of scenario, they must perform this three configuration management step Identify the items that will be controlled, position up the control structure, and assign responsibility for control (Verzuh, 2005, p.302).Project hitchProject closure is the smallest phase of the project but no less than important than the others. This stage is signified by all tasks and specific deliverables, documentation manuals and process procedures are finished and to identify if the project is finally completed Table 2.5 lists a clo sure checklist.When the project is deemed as completed, a close-out meeting is conducted to culminate all the efforts of the team member. The purpose of this meeting is to reach an agreement with the sponsor, in this case with Carr Ltd, to formally close the project. As such, Form 2.10 shows a sample of close-out meeting agenda.However the close-out meeting is not yet the end of the project for final report are yet to be done. This report includes project evaluation and project appraisal. Project evaluation is used to review the project processes and the management of the project. There are two modes of evaluating the project active evaluation is conducted when the project is still in the whole kit and caboodle while post-project evaluation is after the projects turnover to the sponsor. On the other hand, project appraisal assesses the project as a whole for it determines the gains and losses of the project. These assessments are done with the purpose to learn from experience and t o improve future projects.In addition to this in every project undertaken, benefits are always expected on them. In some cases, benefits are achieved after sometime the project has been concluded. In this project however, the benefit has been realized even before the project closure. Carr Ltd gained a new in have pullulate in this diversification project via the agreed upon contracts with the customers (schools) for it signifies the payment terms (tangible benefits).ConclusionProject integration management is often regarded as the key to overall project success for it ties together all areas of project management. Thus this holds the primary focus of a PM. SummaryProject management has come a long way since the formation of the pyramids in Egypt. Nowadays organizations have a renewed interest on this specific field as the number of projects continues to grow and their complexity continues to increase. This can be majorly attributed to the rise of modern project management tools and techniques for projects differ from the ongoing operations of a firm, managing those presents a new set of challenges. With this it resulted to developing tools and techniques that will transmit with these challenges (Verzuh, 2005, p. 1).Accordingly throughout the paper, it presented various project management techniques. In the first case of Bojan Ltd, the use of network diagram was illustrated to stress the importance of completing the project on time. On the other hand, Carr Ltds problem of managing its new initiative was resolved by the project management integration that aims to ensure that all project elements come together at the right time to complete the project successfully. As such, the use of these tools emphasized that project management is a valued skill set in organizations across the spectrum.ReferencesBooksSchwalbe, K., 2008. Information Technology Project Management. 5th Edition. Philippines Cengage Learning Asia Pte Ltd.Verzuh, E., 2005. The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management. 2nd Edition. New Jersey butt Wiley Sons, Inc. Young, T., 2007. The Handbook of Project Management. 2nd Edition. United Kingdom Kogan PageE-booksWestland, J., 2003. Project Management Guidebook. United States of America Method 1-2-3. E-book Available at http//www.thoughtware.com.au/documents/method123-ebook.pdf Accessed on 11 March 2010WebsitesBurns, M., 2005. Never Say No Managing Change in a Project. Online Available at http//www.easyweb.co.uk/articles/change-control.html Accessed on 11 March 2010Super-Business, n.d. Creating a Project profit Diagram. Online Available at http//www.super-business.net/IT-Project-Management/172.html Accessed 23 February 2010Wallace, S., 2007. Scope Change Control. Online Available at http//www.epmbook.com/scope.htm Accessed 11 March 2010