Question

Mary Kate is a project manager in the IT department for a university. She has been asked to manage a project to create a faculty intranet. The university has multiple campuses in various locations, and professors and other faculty need to be able to easily post questions, schedules and other documents to share in a secure environment.

Mary Kate performed the following steps to begin the intranet project.

She performed a needs analysis. Mary Kate interviewed the university faculty to determine their needs for an intranet and the uses they foresee for it. She discovered that several of the professors were working on a research project and wanted to use the intranet to facilitate group discussions, as well as to host periodic Webinars for professors at other universities.

She chose the project team. Mary Kate enlisted members of the IT department for the project, including someone to install firewalls so users have more secure access to the Internet, and someone to set up the site to host Webinars.

She determined the project constraints. Mary Kate determined when the intranet needed to be live. She considered how long she would have the services of the various team members, how long team members could work on this project before being assigned to other tasks, and when the first Webinar was scheduled. Once she gathered all of this information, she was able to determine the project scope and constraints.

She created the project schedule. Mary Kate worked with the project team to outline the tasks and task relationships required to complete the project. She assigned resources to specific tasks so that each person was aware of his or her role in the overall project plan.

She scheduled weekly meetings for the duration of the project. Mary Kate included the CIO, project team members, faculty members and all other stakeholders in the meetings.

She created a project status report and an issues log. Mary Kate used these documents in each meeting to apprise stakeholders of the project's progress and to introduce any problems or issues that had arisen since the last meeting.

Once Mary Kate had performed all these tasks, she was ready to begin the executing phase of the project.

What tasks might Mary Kate perform in the executing phase? In the controlling phase? In the closing phase?

Answer 1

Tasks might Mary Kate to perform in the executing phase

In the Executing phase where deliverables are developed and completed. This often feels like the meat of the project since a lot is happening during this time, like status reports and meetings, development updates, and performance reports. A “kick-off” meeting usually marks the start of the Project Execution phase where the teams involved are informed of their responsibilities.

Tasks completed during the Execution Phase include:

·         Develop team

·         Assign resources

·         Execute project management plans

·         Procurement management if needed

·         PM directs and manages project execution

·         Set up tracking systems

·         Task assignments are executed

• Status meetings
• Update project schedule
• Modify project plans as needed

Tasks might Mary Kate to perform in the controlling phase

This is all about measuring project progression and performance and ensuring that everything happening aligns with the project management plan. Project managers will use key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine if the project is on track. A PM will typically pick two to five of these KPIs to measure project performance:

·         Project Objectives: Measuring if a project is on schedule and budget is an indication if the project will meet stakeholder objectives.

·         Quality Deliverables: This determines if specific task deliverables are being met.

·         Effort and Cost Tracking: PMs will account for the effort and cost of resources to see if the budget is on track. This type of tracking informs if a project will meet its completion date based on current performance.

·         Project Performance: This monitors changes in the project. It takes into consideration the amount and types of issues that arise and how quickly they are addressed. These can occur from unforeseen hurdles and scope changes.

During this time, PMs may need to adjust schedules and resources to ensure the project is on track

Tasks might Mary Kate to perform in the closing phase

This phase represents the completed project. Contractors hired to work specifically on the project are terminated at this time. Valuable team members are recognized. Some PMs even organize small work events for people who participated in the project to thank them for their efforts. Once a project is complete, a PM will often hold a meeting – sometimes referred to as a “post mortem” – to evaluate what went well in a project and identify project failures. This is especially helpful to understand lessons learned so that improvements can be made for future projects.

Once the project is complete, PMs still have a few tasks to complete. They will need to create a project punch list of things that didn’t get accomplished during the project and work with team members to complete them. Perform a final project budget and prepare a final project report. Finally, they will need to collect all project documents and deliverables and store them in a single place.