The New New

Project Management Tools and Proper Planning

Busa 611: Project planning and Management

6/19/2011

Within the spectrum of business and production, planning is the ultimate key to ensuring the successfulness of a company. Although planning is the key, there are certain difficulties that can arise when planning for a specific project. In our readings we find that the service operations often face more difficulty in project planning more often than their manufacturing counterparts. Organizations tend to make capacity decisions on three different levels: long term, intermediate terms, and short term. The difficulty for project planning arises when trying to take into consideration the big picture or approach an entity needs to take when prepping for delivering its service. A specific plan and assessment of risk, affirmed sponsorship, and team building is required, in order to properly meet the demand of all the parties that are involved with the project. If a plan is not properly set for the projects of a company, it could in turn set the business up for failure overall.

In the article “Project Plans in the New World” James Rosenwinkel discusses three hard facts about the planning process, stating that a decision needs to be made as to whether a project plan is really needed. Rosenwinkel states this because he believes that, not all projects need a project plan, discussing the usefulness of a project plan is a first step in managing free-wheeling employees, and a project plan is an investment of time and money. In the article Rosenwinkel states “If a manager decides to use a plan, reviewing the project variables will help provide ideas on the best project plan mechanics to use to control the project. These project variables can be broken down into people variables and project variables” (Rosenwinkel, James). Late last year I was placed in charge of prepping my store for the move into a larger location. I faced many difficulties during the transition and had I not...