Summary Session

The key segments of Project Management

* Scope - It is important to evaluate and see if the project is within an organization’s ability to complete and deliver. Scope is the important phase of the project as it involves the key decision making factors. The organization has to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses and make a decision accordingly.

* Schedule – Once we know which product to take up, we have to prepare the schedule. Based on competitors and market data the management will decide when is the appropriate time to launch our product. It is important to work internally and make sure that the schedule can be met.

* Cost - The main cost drivers are scope/schedule/resources. These three impact the overall cost of the project.

* Resources – Team work is important to achieve the end result. Allocation of resources decide the costs of the project. It is even important to think about outsourcing options as they help in reducing the costs.

* Process – Organizations should define a process for the successful completion of the project. Process involves status review meetings, performance review, Overtime, etc. In this phase the project is tracked on a regular basis to check how its being progressed.

* Review – This phase involves making prototypes. It is important to have couple of prototype builds to check if the product will meet final requirements. Prototypes help in identifying any failures/defects/issues and provide a chance to correct them in the final outcome.

Team Simulation Results

We had 2 simulations with similar scores but different processes.

With Trial 1, we tried to meet our budget but difficult to meet the schedule.

On contrary, we spent too much budget to meet the delivery time on Trial 2. Exhibit 1. below shows this result with graphs.

Exhibit 1.

Trial 1. Trial 2.

In real business world, it is not so common to see that a project will meet both its cost and schedule targets. Especially if you are trying...