1. Based on the article, the Whittmanhart project team consists of 8 people who filled the 11 roles of designers and developers. Which tool(s) do you think the project manager used to ensure that the resources were allocated according to the project activities?
Tools can be use to enhance the process of project management. For this article, I think that the project manager of Whittmanhart had used milestones, and Gantt charts to ensure that the resources were allocated according to the project activities.
A milestone is a significant event that normally has no duration. To complete a milestone, it often takes several activities and a lot of work. Milestones are useful tools for setting schedule goals and monitoring the progress. Milestones should be specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-framed. Examples of milestones include obtaining customer sign-off on key documents or completion of specific products.
As for Gantt charts, it provide a standard format for displaying project schedule information by listing out the project activities and their appropriate start and finish dates in a calendar format. The image below is a sample of Gantt charts. Notice the image that milestone also can be add into Gantt charts, making it a better tool to use for a project.
3. According to the article, how do you think they measure the success of the project management? Explain your opinion.
In my opinion, they can measure the success of the project management by executing a good project integration management. The project managers must coordinate all of the other knowledge areas throughout a project’s life cycle. Their project managers had plan their project into a life cycle which include, Scoping phase, Analysis phase, Design phase, Development or Implementation phase and, Integration phase. All these phases can assign in to the project integration management processes which include the Initiating process, Planning process, Executing process, Monitoring and Controlling process, and Closing process.
The initiating process will be the scoping phase where the team start by identify the project problem.
As for the planning process, it will be the analysis phase. In the analysis phase, the teams define and determine the project criteria.
Executing process will be conducting the design phase first then the development or implementation phase. During the design phase, the team will develop the application interface. In the development or implementation phase, the project teams build the relevant component within the application.
Monitoring and Controlling process, the integration phase will be undergoing. In this phase, the project teams have to make sure every component of the application is working properly.
The team will reach the Closing process once their customer is satisfy with the application done by the teams.
The teams will able to know whether their project is success by using project integration management as their project life cycle will be conduct in a proper flow to deliver the final success, which is the project application.
Comment on Q1:
ReplyDeleteYou could've shown and elaborated more on the resource loading and resource leveling in MS Project - that would be more towards answering the question.
Comment on Q3:
The key point in this question is "measure". You are right about project integration management, but how the success is 'measured' within that intergration management process? Isn't there any 'monitoring and control' methods conducted? You should be more specific.
Overall, good.
- MsSha