Project Management and newly Appointed Director Essay

Submitted By usmc7985
Words: 957
Pages: 4

The difference between projects that fail and those that are ultimately successful has nothing to do with the fact that one lacks problems the other has. The key lies in the plans that have been constructed to deal with problems once they arise. Risk management is defined as the art and science of identifying, analyzing, and responding to risk factors throughout the life of a project and in the best interests of its objectives (Pinto, 2010, p.201). Even though risk management strategies consist of minimizing the unpleasant combination of uncertainty and potential for negative consequences we must be prepared to tackle unplanned project changes.
The overall objective in our current project requires an effective DRP to be in place at the time of grant submission. The selected project manager has a time frame of six short weeks to successfully deploy the initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing of this project (PMBOK, 2008, p.6). The project manager in this case has stumbled to investigate and discuss potential risks with team members. Risk management is a four stage process that should have been initially implemented in which I believe would have captured all if not most of the four unplanned changes. The first stage is known as the risk identification which would have included the application of a simple method known as brain storming meetings that are designed to generate a list of potential risk factors (Pinto, 2010, p.205). Now we will explore solution methods and possible prevention strategies in effort to satisfy a successful project outcome.
Our first obstacle was introduced in week three which involves the absence of including an insurance company that needed to approve the plan before they would approve the policy for the Museum. In my opinion, this unexpected event could have been identified in the second phase known as planning (Pinto, 2010, p.12). Planning includes all detailed specifications, schematics, schedules, and other plans as indicated (Pinto, 2010, p.12). This is where we could have prevented this mistake by assigning a staff member to take responsibility of this assignment. The assignment should have included important characteristics such as insurance requirements and costs. We need to calculate the implementation of this fixed cost into our current budget. Cost is one determinant of project success; projects must meet budgeted allowances in order to use resources as efficiently as possible (Pinto, 2010, p.15). The insurance requirements along with the state grant requirements should serve as an added check list to the overall project requirements. The enactment of these strategies during the planning phase would have successfully planned and prepared an appropriate outline to have captured these unplanned changes. Overall, this may have an adverse effect on the projects outcome depending on the altitude of the insurance costs and requirements which are unknown at this time.
Another challenge in week three involves the absenteeism of appropriate planning once again. The alarm companies had not been included in the protocol to ensure the alarms would be dispatched from the correct agency. We are currently engaged in the implementation phase which is the period with the greatest worry. The implementation and termination stages are recognized as the point where uncertainty is still relatively high and the amount at stake is rapidly increasing (Pinto, 2010, p.203). The prevention of this situation could have been resolved early on during the planning phase such as the previous issue involving the insurance company. Let’s drift away from prevention mishaps for now and focus on Project Management Process Groups. The Process Groups are not project phases, they would normally be repeated for each phase of the life cycle (PMBOK, 2008, p.41). There are a total of five Process Groups, we will focus on Monitoring and Controlling since it