Overview
Organizations continue to struggle with successful project implementations that support business goals. Strides in project management have been achieved through a consistent approach to project management as defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI)® A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, (PMBOK® Guide), Fifth Edition, 2013. Specifically, the five phases of project management—understand the key deliverables and activities within each phase of this framework in order to achieve business goals.
This project will be a complete project management plan. The plan will be comprised of standard templates used by organizations across all industries. For parts one and two, use two different case studies from the attached resource. For the final project, use a third case study from the attached resources, the HighTower Global Solutions case study, as the foundation for the plan. Consider stakeholder perspectives and communication needs as well as typical project risks and issues. At the end, you will have a complete project management plan that supports a typical project for an organization.
As defined in the critical elements, the following parts utilize the following:
- Part One utilizes the Fabricant Manufacturing Project case study
- Part Two utilizes the ECO-Trans case study.
- The final project utilizes the HighTower Global Solutions case study.
The final project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following outcomes:
- Develop project charters that illustrate the high-level scope of the project as it aligns to organizational strategic needs
- Analyze internal and external stakeholder needs for efficiently navigating organizational structures
- Determine proper approaches to defining business requirements for aligning with business strategies
- Utilize project management software for effectively developing project management plans
- Develop key project management control documents for ensuring effective management plan scope descriptions
- Evaluate agile and waterfall methods for successful project execution
- Determine approaches for project closure that inform ongoing best practices in project management planning
Prompt
Throughout the course, you have been working through the phases of the project management life cycle to develop components for a project management plan that addresses the organizational needs of the organization highlighted in two case studies: the Fabricant Manufacturing Project (Milestone One) and the ECO- Trans case study (Milestone Two). Your instructor and peers have provided feedback for you to consider along the way. Now, you have the background knowledge and the information necessary to complete your project management plan, which utilizes the HighTower Global Solutions case study, available in MindEdge.
Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:
I. Part One_Project Initiation
- Identify the economic, technical, and organizational feasibility of the project. For instance, how is the project a viable fit within the organization?
- Explain how the project aligns to the organization’s strategic goals utilizing the traceability matrix (in Mindedge).
- Develop a project charter that includes a high-level scope of what is to be accomplished.
- Create a high-level timeline and cost estimate to complete the project.
- Identify the concerns of the internal and external key project stakeholders.
- Compare the level of support from all key project stakeholders to inform the course of action resulting in success of the project.
- Complete the stakeholder analysis template.
II. Part Two_Project Planning
- Determine the business requirements for the successful development of the project. Justify your choices.
- Establish who will provide the business requirements. What approach will be used to solicit the requirements from the subject matter experts?
- Categorize and organize the business requirements in a standard requirements template.
- Explain why the format for capturing requirements is important to the overall success of the project. Why would we consider requirements’ traceability?
- Leveraging the business requirements, translate these requirements into a project schedule using project management software through the provided template.
- Estimate the duration of project tasks using common business knowledge, and assign resources to complete each task.
- Refine your estimate of the project cost based on the duration of tasks and resources needed.
III. Part Two_Project Execution
- Determine the best implementation approach—agile or waterfall project—for the organization based on its organizational structure. Provide examples to support your rationale.
- Explain how the project schedule can be resource leveled, fast-tracked, or crashed if needed based upon execution results.
- Propose communication approaches and the frequency that should be used to keep leadership apprised of the project execution. Include examples to support your claims.
IV. Final Part_Project Control
- Describe how you will handle changes in scope to your project management plan. What change management process will be used? What key information will be required for change requests?
- Describe the risk management process that is the best fit for effective project control over your plan.
- Explain how you will document issues and what process will be used to manage the issue to completion. Include examples to support your claims.
V. Final Part_Project Closeout
- Identify what needs to be done to close your project management plan. Include examples supporting how you will minimize the chances of overlooking a step in the project process.
- Justify the need for a warranty period and how the project will transition to business
- Complete a lessons-learned template for the case study project.
Guidelines for Submission: The project management plan should be between 10 and 12 pages, double-spaced, have one-inch margins, and use 12-point Times New Roman font and the most recent version of APA format.
