Fundraiser Project Plan Risk Assessment Budget and Project Communications an International Business School wishes to celebrate the end of the academic year

Fundraiser Project Plan Risk Assessment Budget and Project Communications an International Business School wishes to celebrate the end of the academic year with a one-day charity fundraising event. The event will take place in June 2019 and the aim is to raise at least £2019. You are appointed as the project manager for this event and have been asked to present a comprehensive Project Plan during the first week of May. Project PlanSubmit a Project Plan (approx. 2000 words) which will cover all areas of the project, including Project Overview, Risk Assessment, Project Schedule, Project Budget and Project Communications.Use the document attached as reference and please provide MLA citations Project Management Notes
Week 1: Intro
Project: a temporary activity undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.
– Every project is unique in its own way and have dates or timescales for completion.
Project Management Institute (PMI): An association designed to bring together project
management professionals and systematically capture project management knowledge;
published Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).
Project Manager: an individual with a diverse set of skills – management, leadership,
technical, conflict management, and customer relationship – who is responsible for initiating,
planning, executing, controlling, monitoring, and closing down a project.
Effective management leads to better use of resources and improved results.
Requirements for successful Project Management:
• Completed on time.
• Within budget
• At the desired performance level
• With acceptable quality
• Offering at least the minimum agreed functionality
• Utilizing the assigned resources effectively and efficiently so that the system is accepted
by the client
• Used by the intended users
• Delivers promised benefits (which should ideally exceed the costs)
Top 5 Causes of Project Failure (OASIG Study)
1. Lack of attention to human and organizational factors
2. Poor project management
3. Poor articulation of user requirements
4. Inadequate attention to business needs and goals
5. Failure to involve users appropriately
Project Management Life Cycle
1- Initiate potential projects are identified and evaluated in terms of importance to the
organization
2- Plan scope, time, cost and risk management planning takes place
3- Execute project plan is followed
4- Control project performance is measured against the project plan
4- Close final paper work completed and sign off by all stakeholders
Most project management lifecycles have 4-5 phases, but some have 10 or more. The basic
lifecycle follows a common generic sequence
1- Opportunity
2- Design and development
3- Implementation
4- Handover
5- Post-project evaluation review
This sequence focuses on technical aspects or the construction of some kind of system
solution. In fact, the actual management activities concerned are often on-going across the
lifecycles.
Organization Structure Types
Functional: a traditional hierarchical organization, sometimes thought of as resembling a
pyramid, with top management at the fulcrum, direct workers at the bottom, and middle
managers in between.
Projectized: a type of organization structure where people from different functional
backgrounds work with each other throughout the lifetime of the project.
Matrix: a type of organization structure which typically crosses functional design (on one
axis) with some other design characteristic (on the other axis).
Week 2 : Project Selection
Changes in the organization’s mission and strategy
• Project managers must respond to changes with appropriate decisions about future
projects and adjustments to current projects.
• Project managers who understand their organization’s strategy can become effective
advocates of projects aligned with the business’ mission.
Mistakes caused by not understanding the role of projects in accomplishing strategy:
• Focusing on problems or solutions with low strategic priority.
• Focusing on the immediate customer rather than the whole market place and value chain.
• Overemphasizing technology that results in projects that pursue exotic technology that
does not fit the strategy or customer need.
• Trying to solve customer issues with a product or service rather than focusing on the 20%
with 80% of the value (Pareto’s Law).
• Engaging in a never-ending search for perfection only the project team really cares about.
Strategic Management
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Requires every project to be clearly linked to strategy and provides theme and focus of
firm’s future direction.
Responds to changes in external environment (environmental scanning).
Allocating firm’s scarce resources to improve its competitive position; internal responses
to new programs.
Requires strong links among mission, goals, objectives, strategy, and implementation.
Four Activities for Strategic Management:
1- Review and define the organizational mission.
2- Set long-range goals and objectives.
3- Analyze and formulate strategies to reach objectives.
5- Implement strategies through projects
Project Portfolio Management
Selection Criteria
Financial models: payback, net present value (NPV)
Non-financial models: projects of strategic importance to the firm.
Multi-Weighted Scoring Models : Use several weighted selection criteria to evaluate project
proposals.
Benefits of Project Portfolio Management
• Builds discipline into the project selection process.
• Links project selection to strategic metrics.
• Prioritizes project proposals across a common set of criteria, rather than on politics or
emotion.
• Allocates resources to projects that align with strategic direction.
• Balances risk across all projects.
• Justifies killing projects that do not support strategy.
• Improves communication and supports agreement on project goals.
Financial Models
The Payback Model
• Measures the time the project will take to recover the project investment.
• Uses more desirable shorter paybacks.
• Emphasizes cash flows, a key factor in business.
Limitations of Payback:
• Ignores the time value of money.
• Assumes cash inflows for the investment period (and not beyond).
• Does not consider profitability.
Nonfinancial Strategic Criteria
• To capture larger market share
• To make it difficult for competitors to enter the market
• To develop an enabler product, which by its introduction will increase sales in more
profitable products
• To develop core technology that will be used in next-generation products
• To reduce dependency on unreliable suppliers
• To prevent government intervention and regulation
• To restore corporate image or enhance brand recognition
• To demonstrate its commitment to corporate citizenship and support for community
development.
What specific strategy does this project align with?
What business problem does the project solve?
How will we measure success?
Who is the project sponsor?
What is the impact of not doing this project?
What is the project risk to our organization?
Where does the proposed project fit in our risk profile?
What is the value of the project to this organization?
When will the project show results?
What are the project objectives?
Is our organization culture right for this type of project?
Will internal resources be available for this project? Will we build or buy?
How long will this project take?
Is the time line realistic?
Will staff training be required?
What is the estimated cost of the project?
Is this a new initiative or part of an existing initiative?
How does this project interact with current projects?
Is the technology available or new?
Week 3 : Project Scope Management
Scope refers to all the work involved in creating the products of the project and the processes
used to create them.
A deliverable is a product produced as part of a project, such as hardware or software,
planning documents, or meeting minutes.
* The scope management plan is a document that includes descriptions of how the team will
prepare the project scope statement, create the WBS, verify completion of the project
deliverables, and control requests for changes to the project scope.
* Key inputs include the project charter, preliminary scope statement, and project
management plan.
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Creating the Work Breakdown Structure; decomposition: subdividing the major project
deliverables into smaller, more manageable components.
The top-down approach: start with the largest items of the project and break them down.
A WBS item is the responsibility of only one individual, even though many people may
be working on it.
A unit of work should appear at only one place in the WBS.
The WBS must be a flexible tool to accommodate inevitable changes while properly
maintaining control of the work content in the project according to the scope statement.
Variance is the difference between planned and actual performance.
Week 4 : Project Time Management
Managers often cite delivering projects on time as one of their biggest challenges. Schedule
issues are the main reason for conflicts on projects, especially during the second half of
projects.
Different cultures and even entire countries have different attitudes about schedules.
• Activity definition: identifying the specific activities/tasks that the project team members
and stakeholders must perform to produce the project deliverables.
• Activity sequencing: identifying and documenting the relationships between project
activities.
• Activity resource estimating: estimating how many resources a project team should use to
perform project activities.
• Activity duration estimating: estimating the number of work periods that are needed to
complete individual activities.
• Schedule development: analyzing activity sequences, activity resource estimates, and
activity duration estimates to create the project schedule.
• Schedule control: controlling and managing changes to the project schedule.
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Types of dependencies
Mandatory dependencies: inherent in the nature of the work being performed on a
project, sometimes referred to as hard logic.
Discretionary dependencies: defined by the project team; sometimes referred to as soft
logic and should be used with care since they may limit later scheduling options.
Don’t start detailed design work until users sign-off on all the analysis – good practice but
can delay project
External dependencies: involve relationships between project and non-project activities
Delivery of new hardware; if delayed can impact project schedule.
Network diagram is the preferred schematic display of the logical relationships among, or
sequencing of, project activities.
Arrow Diagramming Method (ADM)
• Or Activity-on-arrow (AOA)
• Activities are represented by arrows
• Nodes or circles are the starting and ending points of activities
• Can only show finish-to-start dependencies
• Can ignore activities that have no dependencies
Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM)
More popular than ADM method and used by project management software
Activities are represented by boxes
Arrows show relationships between activities
Better at showing different types of dependencies
Gantt charts provide a standard format for displaying project schedule information by listing
project activities and their corresponding start and finish dates in a calendar format.
Critical Path Method is a network diagramming technique used to predict total project
duration, or a series of activities that determines the earliest time by which the project can be
completed.
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Its longest path through the network diagram and has the least amount of slack or float,
the amount of time an activity may be delayed without delaying a succeeding activity or
the project finish date.
Its not the one with all the critical activities; it only accounts for time.
forward pass through the network diagram determines the early start and finish dates.
backward pass determines the late start and finish dates.
PERT attempts to address the risk associated with duration estimates by developing
schedules that are more realistic
* Instead of providing activity estimates as a discrete number, such as four weeks, it’s often
helpful to create a three-point estimate. An estimate that includes an optimistic (3 weeks),
most likely (4 weeks), and pessimistic estimate (5 weeks).
Project managers should use empowerment, incentives, discipline, & negotiation.
Week 5 : Project Risk Management
Risk utility or risk tolerance is the amount of satisfaction or pleasure received from a
potential payoff
Constraints are not the same as risks or issues. Constraints are what you start the project with.
Common constraints including budget, time, inside resources, & outside resources.
Risk is an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on
the project objectives. Examples: Funding, Time, Staff, Customers, Project size /
complexity, Organisation structure,& External factors.
Risk Management is the systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and responding to
project risk. It includes maximizing the probability and consequences of positive events and
minimizing the probability and consequences of adverse events. It is an ongoing activity
throughout the life of the project. There are three main times where you will be employing
risk management techniques Project Initiation, Project Planning, Execution and Controlling.
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Known Risks: can be clearly identified at the outset. They may not happen, but it is
always predictable that they may do. Draw on previous experience and the history of
similar projects to identify these.
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Predictable Risks: can be predicted as being possible during the analysis of project
activities.
Unpredictable Risk: can never identify and name all the things which might go
wrong. Make some allowances for the things you were unable to foresee.
Avoidance: identified risks are avoided through a different course of action.
Transference: transfer of risk to another party through the use of contracts.
Mitigation: steps are taken to reduce the occurrence or impact of stated risks.
Acceptance: risks are accepted and contingency strategies are planned.
Week 6 : Project Cost Management
Cost is a resource sacrificed or foregone to achieve a specific objective or something given
up in exchange, usually measured in monetary units like dollars.
Project cost management includes the processes required to ensure that the project is
completed within an approved budget.
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Cost estimating: developing an approximation or estimate of the costs of the resources
needed to complete a project.
Cost budgeting: allocating the overall cost estimate to individual work items to establish a
baseline for measuring performance.
Cost control: controlling changes to the project budget
Profits = Revenues – Expenditures
Profit margin =

Life cycle costing or total cost of ownership = development + support costs
Cash flow analysis determines the estimated annual costs and benefits for a project and the
resulting annual cash flow.
Learning curve theory states that when many items are produced repetitively, the unit cost of
those items decreases in a regular pattern as more units are produced (economies of scale).
Reserves is money included in a cost estimate to mitigate cost risk by allowing for future
situations that are difficult to predict.
Contingency reserves allow for future situations that may be partially planned for (sometimes
called known unknowns) and are included in the project cost baseline.
Management reserves allow for future situations that are unpredictable (sometimes called
unknown unknowns).
Earned Value Management (EVM) is a project performance measurement technique that
integrates scope, time, and cost data. You must enter actual information periodically to use
EVM. More organizations around the world are using EVM to help control project costs.
Baseline is the original plan plus approved changes which is used to determine how well the
project is meeting its goals.
Rate of performance (RP) is the ratio of actual work completed to the percentage of work
planned to have been completed at any given time during the life of the project or activity.
Week 7 : Project Communication Management
Communications planning: determining the information and communications needs of the
stakeholders.
Information distribution: making needed information available to project stakeholders in a
timely manner.
Performance reporting: collecting and disseminating performance information, including
status reports, progress measurement, and forecasting.
Managing stakeholders: managing communications to satisfy the needs and expectations of
project stakeholders and to resolve issues.
* Getting the right information to the right people at the right time and in a useful format is
just as important as developing the information in the first place. Use technology to enhance
information distribution and don’t be afraid to report bad information.
• 58 % of communication is through body language.
• 35 % of communication is through how the words are said.
• 7 % of communication is through the content or words that are spoken.
Status reports describe where the project stands at a specific point in time.
Progress reports describe what the project team has accomplished during a certain period of
time.
Forecasts predict future project status and progress based on past information and trends.
Lessons-learned report is a reflective statement that documents important things an
individual learned from working on the project. The project manager often combines
information from all of the lessons-learned reports into a project summary report.
Week 8 : Intro to Program Management
A program is a temporary organization for the performance of processes of medium and
high complexity, which are closely coupled by common overall objectives.
Advantages cited by organizations using programs include:
• greater visibility of projects to senior management and more comprehensive reporting of
progress at higher levels.
• better prioritization of projects.
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more efficient and appropriate use of resources.
projects driven by business needs.
better planning and coordination.
explicit recognition and understanding of dependencies
Portfolio Programs include relatively independent projects that have a common theme.
Emphasis is efficient resource utilization and leveraging existing knowledge or skills.
Goal-Oriented Programs enable the management of initiatives or developments outside the
existing infrastructure or routine. Provide a means of dealing effectively with situations
where uncertainty prevails and learning is a prerequisite to making progress.
Heartbeat Programs enable the regular improvement of existing systems, infrastructure, or
even business processes, via increments to functionality or occasionally an overhaul of the
system or facility itself. Minimize disruption to operations, and Maximizing the amount of
new functionality or capability delivered to the business.
E.g. Projects related to core IT systems.
Selection Models
• Non-numeric models
• Sacred cow, operating necessity, competitive necessity
• Numeric models Payback, NPV, ROI
• Scoring models
• Weighted factors models
• Risk models

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