Project Management

Project Management Analysis

Project Management Analysis

Introduction

A project is a collection of various complex and interrelated activities which has to be accomplished within many constraints. It has a defined beginning and end and undertaken to accomplish unique objectives and goals. Management of any project is accomplished through the application and integration of the project management processes of initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing (Lewis 2007, pp.4). The aim of project management is to accomplish all the objectives while taking into consideration all the pre defined constraints. These constraints can be divided into primary and secondary constraints. Primary constraints include limited resources and budget, and quality. Secondary constraints include optimization of input allocation and integration of these inputs to achieve the pre established goals.

The project that I want to discuss is one in which I was once involved in concerning the air powered engine design. It was a group project and we were a group of eight people who conducted the entire project. The first thing that we did was the delegation of responsibilities among the group. The group consisted of people from different disciplines i.e. marketing, finance, procurement etc. I was appointed as project leader or project manager and assigned the task of managing this cross functional team and ensuring that everyone in the group is clear about the objectives of the project and everyone is along the same track. The main and most important task in project management is identification and implementation of various phases of project management and the processes that run through all these phases. Detailed explanation of these steps is included in the discussion in the next section.

Discussion

Project Management Phases

Dividing a project into different phases makes it possible for the leader to lead in the best possible way. Through this bifurcation, the total work load of the project is divided into smaller workings, thus making it easier to supervise. The requirements for each phase are identified from the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for it. Being the team leader it was part of my activity top draft a WBS and then pass them on to other members for the approval for the same. Once the requirements as mentioned In the WBS are approved by all the members then the team can go through to the next phase. The phases we identified for our project were divided as follows.

Initiation phase

The initiation phase is the beginning of the project. This phase is mainly concerned with the idea exploration and also to examine the feasibility of the project. It also concerns the delegation of the responsibilities and involves decisions regarding who is doing what in the project. Being the project leader I gave the proposal of a research on the air powered engine design. It was basically to be a research and development project whose aim was to deliver a report that would examine the technological feasibility of the air powered engine design. The idea of this type of study was approved by the ...