Assignment

In our previous assignment we developed a project charter which completed the project’s initiation phase. It is now time for our dream house project to enter into its planning phase. During this phase we will develop the project plan for our dream home.

For this assignment, you can assume that the project charter has been approved and you can now take on the role of the project manager in planning the project. You have your project team of knowledgeable people who will work on a project and help you to develop a project management plan.

Assignment Purpose

In this assignment you will develop an approximately 10-page1 project plan (also known as a Project Management Plan [PMP] or a Project Implementation Plan [PIP]) for the construction of the dream home project.

PMBOK®: “A project plan is a formal document designed to guide the control and execution of a project. A project plan is the key to a successful project and is the most important document that needs to be created when starting any business project.”

To prepare for this assignment, read the following sections of the PMBOK® Guide:

• Section 4.2 Develop Project Management Plan
• Section 5.1 Plan Scope Management
• Section 5.2 Collect Requirements
• Section 5.3 Define Scope
• Chapter 6 Project Schedule Management: Sections 6.1 – 6.5
• Section 7.1 Plan Cost Management
• Section 7.3 Determine Budget
• Section 8.1 Plan Quality Management
• Section 9.1 Plan Resource Management
• Section 9.4 Develop Team
• Section 10.1 Plan Communication Management
• Section 11.1 Plan Risk Management
• Section 11.5 Plan Risk Responses
• Section 13.2 Plan Stakeholder Engagement

Assignment Objectives

Your personal learning objectives for this assignment are to:

• Develop an understanding of how a project plan is used within a project environment.
• Demonstrate a practical understanding of the actual information content needed within a project plan.
• Describe a project using project management terminology, concepts and industry best practices as outlined in the PMBOK®.

“Planning your Dream Home” Background

Some information regarding this assignment:

1. While this assignment follows the same theme as your previous one (the project charter), it is intended to be a stand-alone assignment and it is not dependent upon your project charter.

• If you encounter gaps in the information that has been provided, you are allowed to make assumptions (or if needed, simply make up the missing information).

• For this assignment you are not expected to have any previous or specific knowledge of home building or of construction in general. The house construction scenario is intended purely as a way to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of project management principles.

• Your assignment should be approximately 10 pages in length (not counting the Table of Contents, cover page or bibliography).

Alternate Topic for the assignment– if you prefer to work on a topic of your interest rather than on “Dream Home”, feel free to do so. Please consult with the course facilitator about the alternate topic of your choice. The “Content of Your Assignment” will guide you through the assignment items/sections to cover.

Grading: The following grading scheme will be used to assess the assignment.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN WRITING GUIDE

For this assignment, you are to use the information provided in the following template to demonstrate the project management industry best practices, tools, techniques and concepts that appear in the PMBOK® to describe the project.

Content of Your Assignment

The following template has been provided to guide you in your efforts. Your Project Management Plan shall contain the following sections:

1. Title Page: You can have fun with your title page (for example, you can include illustrations and graphics), but at a minimum, the title page must present the following information:

• Your name (or the names of all of your group members, if applicable),
  • The course name,
  • Project name (have fun and think up a name for your project!)
  • The date submitted, and

The following statement: “All material prepared for this assignment was produced by the authors, and material from a third party (such as the internet) has been cited and referenced.”

• Table of Contents: The Table of Contents must be generated using your word processor’s built-in ‘Table of Contents’ generation feature (found within the [Reference] Tab of WORD).

• Project Background: In this section you should present the reader with the key (previously published) information that they need to understand this document. You are to summarize the relevant highlights from your (previous assignment) Project Charter; do not re-publish the project charter – instead, just pick out and summarize the key highlights in a paragraph or so.

• Project Scope: Provide a short description of what the project will produce. For the purpose of this section, the term ‘Project Scope’ is defined as the

‘sum of the products, services, and results to be provided within the project’ (paraphrased from the PMBOK® Glossary). Do not mix up this term up with similar terms such as:

·        ‘Scope Statement’

• ‘Scope Baseline’
  • ‘Product Scope’:

• Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): Based on the supplied ‘Dream House Task Table’ (see below), create a project WBS.

You are to use the information contained in the following table for the tasks that are needed to complete this project – the tasks have placeholder names to identify the various required tasks (note that you do not need to use proper task names such as ‘construct frame’ or ‘install roof)’.

Although you can think of the individual tasks as being actual jobs that would be required on a construction project, for this assignment I recommend that you use the generic placeholder task names as they appear in the following table when creating your schedule and any other section of the project plan that requires these tasks. Feel free to rename tasks, but keep task durations and dependencies as they are listed in the table (otherwise it will take much more time if you would like to completely reconstruct the WBS).

The project related information that has been supplied is as follows:

Dream House Task Table

Options: – As already discuss above, in case you would like to submit a Project Management Plan based on a “real” project from your work place, or you would like to tackle project topic of your choice then by all means do so, but let the instructions here guide you in providing content for the assignment. You can use the above WBS as generic work breakdown structure and replace task names with those matching your project.

• WBS Dictionary: After creating your WBS using the placeholder names, select (or modify to your liking) a house construction task that you are comfortable with and create a WBS dictionary entry for this task. For example, you can select “Landscaping”, or come with your own task like “Painting”, or anything that you are comfortable discussing for the purpose of this assignment. Having selected a task, you are then required to create a WBS dictionary for this task as listed below (i)-(viii).

The information provided in your example WBS dictionary should include the following topics (note that each topic needs to be included as its own sub- heading):

1. Task Name: A descriptive task name.

1. Task Assumptions: Identify assumptions that would be appropriate for a task of this nature.

1. Task Constraints: Identify schedule- or resource-related constraints that would be appropriate for this task.

1. Task Project Requirement): Provide 2-4 examples of requirements that would be appropriate for a task of this nature.

• Task Quality Standard(s): In this section, specify two quality standards and quality requirements for your selected task. The quality standard should describe how the work is to be performed (this is different from a project requirement that describes what must be done).

• Task Deliverables: List three examples of tangible deliverables that would be appropriate for this type of task and provide a short description of each deliverable. (Note: Do not specify the ‘work’ that would be required to produce the deliverable – only identify the deliverables themselves.)

• Task Mandatory Dependency: Identify one or more scheduling-related mandatory task dependencies. A task dependency is another task that would have to be completed before this task could be started.

• Task External Dependency: Identify any organizations, agencies or individuals who are outside the project manager’s direct control, but whose cooperation, support or approval is required for this task to succeed.

• Project Gantt (Bar Chart) Schedule: Using the information supplied in the Dream House Task Table, create a management-level Gantt chart showing the project schedule.

You do not need to use any professional scheduling software; if necessary, a digital image of a hand-drawn Gantt chart will be acceptable.

• Critical Path (Network) Diagram (PMBOK® Section 6.5.2.2.): Prepare a full network diagram (using the critical path method that includes both the forward and backward pass information) for the project.

You do not need to use any professional scheduling software like MS Project; any drawing package using msWord, Excel or PowerPoint, should be sufficient. Even a simple digital image (taken by your phone) of a hand-drawn network diagram will be acceptable (actually, this could be the most efficient way to prepare your network diagram).

9)    RISK MANAGEMENT PLAN (PMBOK® Section 11.1.)

Risk represents uncertainty on a project. In this section you should demonstrate practical examples of events that may or may not happen on the project, and how you would deal with them based on the industry best practices outlined in the PMBOK® Chapter 11.

• Overall Risk Plan Prioritization: Risk can affect many different project characteristics (budget, schedule, quality) – indicate which of these characteristics you feel should be prioritized to be protected within your risk plan, and why you feel that (for this particular project) it is best that the risk plan prioritize and protect this characteristic.

Remember: A risk management plan cannot protect the project from all risks; usually, there is not enough money to manage all risks, and risks are inter-related, so it is often the case that protecting against everything is not possible – for example, protecting the schedule might mean sacrificing the budget, just as protecting the budget might mean sacrificing quality and ensuring quality might mean sacrificing the schedule, etc. As such, you need to prioritize which project characteristic you will protect over other characteristics.

• Contingency Fund and Managerial Reserve Fund: Briefly explain how you would determine the funding requirements of both the project’s 1) contingency reserve fund and 2) managerial reserve fund for a project of this nature. It is important that you describe the formulas or approach that should be used in establishing both of these reserve funds.

• Risk Registry Based on appropriate tasks for a project of this nature, develop a risk registry (also known as a risk log). Using the table below, provide examples of risk information that would be appropriate for a project of this nature and that demonstrate your knowledge of risk related terms:

The following notes provide guidance on how to fill in your risk registry table:

• Risk Likelihood: Using industry best practices identify the likelihood of the risk occurring.

• Risk Impact: Using industry best practices describe the potential impact of the risk on the project’s three primary constraints (schedule, budget and quality impact).

• Risk Strategy: Identify your overall strategy or strategies for dealing with the particular risk and briefly justify the strategy. Strategies include the following:

• For threats: Mitigate, Transfer, Accept, Avoid
  • For opportunities: Accept, Exploit, Enhance, Share
  • Risk Response: Using appropriate industry best practices (such as fast tracking, schedule crashing, buffers, insurance policies, contracting mechanisms, contingency funds, management reserve funds, etc.) to describe how you would propose to manage your identified project risks.

10)  QUALITY MANAGEMENT PLAN (PMBOK® Section 8.1.)

Based on the task that you described in your WBS dictionary, create a quality control checklist that demonstrates how the project could verify that your tasks’ quality standards and requirements (that you identified in your WBS dictionary) could be quantifiably and measurably achieved.

Briefly explain how you would integrate this quality checklist into the project’s overall workflow.

11)  COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT PLAN (PMBOK® Section 10.1.)

Based on the communication requirements of the task that you have previously identified, develop a communication plan that adheres to the communication management plan requirements outlined in the PMBOK® Keep in mind that the project communication requirements should only include formal, contractually required communication that would be appropriate for a project of this nature.

You can use the table below as a communication plan template. Some examples of project related communication can be found in the PMBOK® chapter 13.

12)  HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PLAN (PMBOK® Section 9.1.)

For your human resource plan, identify the following information:

• Demonstrate an example of your team’s organizational chart
  • Select one of your team members from your organizational chart and identify and describe their roles, responsibilities and authority on the project
  • Create a RACI Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) that assigns responsibility for all of your project’s WBS entries to the project team member identified in your organizational chart.
    • Provide a practical example of how you would address one of the following HR-related topics: Team Building; Team Ground Rules, or Team Recognition and Rewards

1. PROJECT BUDGET: Develop a project budget – only include sufficient detail to be able to monitor and control project expenditures and overall project progress.

A basic budget table as shown below will be sufficient for the core financial information (additional rows will have to be added for each WBS item).

Ensure that you fund each WBS level 3 task.

Your budget should also include a line item for your project’s risk management reserve and risk contingency reserve funds. Please note that the cost and time estimates are not withing the scope of this course, so make any estimates you feel are reasonable (you are not going to be graded on accuracy of those $ figures)

Bibliography: You should not have to use third-party material to complete this assignment; however, if you do, it is important that you provide proper citation of all open-source resources that you have used in preparing your assignments.

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