MBA6203 Project Management-International Chain

Quality Plan: The quality of the project would be maintained by complying to certain quality standards defined for the construction material, construction work and the safety of the workers as well as those passing by the construction site during the project as well as those using the resort after it is being constructed.

The project would go through the quality assurance process and quality control. A number of different tools can be used for quality assurance here including checklist, control charts, fishbone diagrams, histogram, pareto chart, and scatter diagram. In this project, control charts and histograms would be used that would record the progressing quality of the project to enable comparison with the plan and judgement on if the quality specifications are being met. The quality would be defined in two forms on the tourism project and those would be product quality involving considerations of materials and construction units and project quality that would be defined by the capacity of the project team to meet the project goals within its constraints.

WBS

Project scope management involves planning, data collection, scope definition, WBS, scope validation, and scope control. The scope management plan would involve use of requirements management plan for planning of scope, requirements traceability matrix for requirement gathering, scope statement for scope definition, and scope baseline WBS. Change requests and work performance information would later be used for scope validation and control.

Scope Management plan

A scope management plan can be developed for the tourism project to ensure that project scope elements are met on time and are controlled such that resources are optimized to be used on the project only as planned.

Project Scope: Activities that are within the scope of the tourism project include –

• Procurement of materials and Designing of the resort architecture for the development work
• Excavation and cleaning of the site upon inspection for building the foundation
• Construction of the resort and the public infrastructure on the island
• Establishment of the agriculture industry with support from resort facilities by integrating their services with output from the agriculture on the island.
• Establishment of the gems and jewellery industry with support from resort facilities by integrating their services with output from the agriculture on the island.
• Establishment of the fisheries industry with support from resort facilities by integrating their services with output from the agriculture on the island.
• Establishment of the hydro-electricity industry with support from resort facilities by integrating their services with output from the agriculture on the island.

The activities that are not in the scope of the project include –

• Marketing of the constructed facilities to the public to gain tourists
• Generating profits from selling the resort facilities to the tourist visiting the island
• Requirements traceability Matrix

Requirement traceability matrix is project management tool that can be used to define the high-level requirements of a project. In the case of the resort construction project, the matrix would record description of the project requirements, associated stakeholder who is in support of the requirement, business justification to include that in the project, and identification of the person who would be responsible for the management of the requirement.

This matrix would be prepared based on the inputs received from the stakeholders during the requirement gathering process in the initiation stage of the project. Some of these requirements are listed in the table below but these are only reflecting upon the major requirements for each type of stakeholder while actual requirements can differ and the list would expand based on the inputs that would be received from the stakeholders when gathering the requirements from them through a formal meeting.

Project Schedule Management 

Project schedule management involves planning, defining, sequencing, activity duration estimation, schedule development and control. The schedule management plan would include scheduling plan, activity list and milestones for activity definition, project schedule network diagrams for sequencing, duration estimates, schedule baseline and forecasts. Some of the tools and techniques that are used in project schedule management include estimating techniques, schedule network analysis, critical path analysis, resource optimization, leads and lags calculation, and schedule compression.

Project Schedule

Following resources are used in the proposed project:

Project cost management involves planning, estimation, budgeting, and cost control. The scope management plan would involve activities like cost estimation cost baseline development, and change request management. Tools and techniques that can be used for cost management planning include data analysis, estimation techniques, cost aggregation, and performance indexing.

Cost Management Plan

Introduction: The cost management plan defined the cost elements of the project and how they would be controlled so that the project expense does not overshoot the initial planned budget for the tourism project.

Cost management approach: WBS would be used as the baseline for the cost control such that the total budget would be distributed to each major element of the WBS for obtaining the needed resources. The allocation of cost would depend on the resource requirements and duration of each activities aligned in the WBS. For establishing control, the funds would not be released at one go but only as per their requirements as and when resources are allocated on the project at each stage of lit as defined in the WBS.

If any major activity of the WBS consumed cost more than allocated then adjustments would be made with resource shifting go that the whole project is not affected and the costs would be adjusted to ensure the progress of the project is also not hampered. In case the project faces some major risks leading to major changes like scope additions that would require additional fund that allocated then the contingency fund would be utilized with limited amount allocated only for the change. The objective of cost magnet still remains that the contingency fund is not needed unless in extreme emergencies and the project is sufficiently completed within the allocated budget.

Measurements: Some measurement metrices would be used for measuring the cost and related figures on the project which would help the project manager establish the needed control over project costs. These measurements include cost variance, cost performance index, planned value, earned value, and actual costs. The major matrix that would define the control parameters and would be monitored on the project would be cost performance index. Cost Performance Index which would calculate as Earned value/planned value and would be in the range of 0.9 to 1.2 reflecting good performance while any value above or below this range would be considered as sub-par or underutilized performance on eh project.

Reporting: The cost of the project would be monitored and recorded by the project manager and it would be reported to the finance manager who is responsible for the approval for the release of funds throughout the project. If there is a variation found in the cost then appropriate action would be taken by the project manager to bring the project cost in control. While finance manager would be releasing the funds at every stage of the project, the actual investment of the funds in activities and resources would be the responsibility of the project manager who would be the final decision maker for the allotment of funds.

Project budget: The project would be completed in $50 million which would include cost for the construction of the resorts. Besides this, $10 million would be invested on the development of the five industries that are planned in the project. Besides this, an addition sum would be kept as the contingency to take care of emergency situations such as natural calamities or major project issues. This contingency fund would be $6 million and would only be used when there is no other option.

Cash flow statement

The figure below depicts the cash flow of the project (with respect to human resources)

Project Risk Management 

Project risk management involves planning risk management activities, risk identification, risk analysis including qualitative and quantitative assessment, risk response planning, response implementation, and risk monitoring. Risk management plan is developed for risk management while the risk identified are reported through a risk register.  Some tools such as SWOT analysis, root cause analysis, assumptions, and constraints analysis can help identify risks.

The identified risks are assessed for their probability of occurrence the impact on the project based on which a response is planned for each type of risk on a project. A risk management plan has some essential elements that include risk strategy, methodology, roles and responsibilities, contingency planning, and risk categorization. Outputs of risk management process include risk register, risk report, and related updates like assumption log, issue log and lessons learned.

Risk Matrix

A risk matrix can be used to determine the severity of a risk which depends on the likelihood of the occurrence of a risk and on the impact, it would have on the project. Based on the level of severity, a decision can be taken on how to respond to the risk. The risk matrix for the tourism project involving construction of resorts and establishment of the five identified industries is shown below:

To develop a risk management strategy, the potential risks have to be identified and the appropriate actions needed to respond to them have to be defined. A risk management strategy would identify various risk categories, specific risks, their levels of impact, likelihood of occurrence, level of severity based on it, response plan, responsibility and contingency measure. Typical ways to respond to any risk are acceptance, avoidance, mitigation, ad risk transfer.

In acceptance, the risk is accepted as it is because it has non-significant or now impact on the project deliverables. Risks that have same significant impact on the project are best avoided but, in the case, they cannot be, appropriate mitigation measure can be taken to reduce its impact on the project outcomes. Some risks can be associated with other parties to contracts such that the risks appearing can have their impacts shared between the contractors and the project owners through a transfer of some level of risk (Raja, 2012).

Lessons Leaned
Project Quality Management 

Project quality management involves planning, management and control of project quality. The project quality is managed as per a project quality plan which is prepared at the planning stage along with identification of the quality metrices. For managing quality, quality evaluation is done on the project and quality reports are prepared. Quality control is established trough control measurements and verified deliverables (Hajsleiman, 2018).

Project resource Management 

Project resource management involves planning, data collection, scope definition, WBS, scope validation, and scope control. The scope management plan would involve use of requirements management plan for planning of scope, requirements traceability matrix for requirement gathering, scope statement for scope definition, and scope baseline WBS. Change requests and work performance information would later be used for scope validation and control.

Responsibility Assignment Matrix

Responsibility assignment matrix identifies the project team and stakeholder responsibilities towards the project deliverable. They can be responsible, accountable, consulting or informed. When a project team member is assigned a task, he or she has to take the responsibility of it and should be made accountable. People who are responsible for a task but not accountable would not be performing at their peak and thus, it is necessary that this alignment is ensured for every person and every task given. There would be some stakeholders or team members who would not need to participate in specific task but may need to be involved because of knowledge such that they are only consulted. Others are only kept informed about the progress of the project.

A team charter can be made for the construction work for resorts which would be guiding the contractor team on the project.

Team Purpose: The team would ensure that all the resort facilities are constructed as per the design

Time: Ensure that the construction is completed within 3 years following the given milestone dates for construction of individual parts of the project

Scope: The scope of project includes excavation, foundation, construction, interiors, exteriors, painting, and road construction.

Members: Members included in the development of the project would be the selected contactors, workers, the project manager, and the quality officer guiding them.

Desired Results: The team desires to complete the construction with high quality and sustainable construction having all necessary requirements of stakeholders fulfilled. The construction should be finished within budget and as per the planned schedule.

Resources: The team would be provided with the funds needed for construction and training on project management by the project manager.

Reporting: The workers would be reporting to the contractor every month and to the project manager every week on the project progress using a formal report for contractor and a review conducted by the project manager.

Deliverables: The deliverable of the project would be the constructed resort with the inspection reports on compliance to standards of quality and requirements of stakeholders (EFFO, 2009).

Hierarchical Chart
Project Communication Management 

Project scope management involves planning, data collection, scope definition, WBS, scope validation, and scope control. The scope management plan would involve use of requirements management plan for planning of scope, requirements traceability matrix for requirement gathering, scope statement for scope definition, and scope baseline WBS. Change requests and work performance information would later be used for scope validation and control.

Project Procurement Management 

Procurement management processes involve planning, procurement, and control. Planning involves documentation of the procurement related decisions including procurement approach and types of sellers to take. Procurement involves getting responses from sellers, selecting one or multiple sellers, and awarding them the contracts. Control is established through monitoring, corrections, and contract close out processes.  Project charter is taken as the input for gathering and processing data on project to be able to come up with a procurement management plan.

The procurement planning would include documentation of procurement strategy, statement of work, source selection criteria, and stakeholder register. Formal policies and procedures are developed for guiding the procurement process in the project organization. Different types of legal contractual relationships can be formed based on which contracts are prepared. These can be fixed price contracts, cost-reimbursable or time and material contracts. Fixed price contracts can be firm fixed price, incentive driven, or with economic price adjustments. Reimbursable contracts can be cost plus fee, cost plus incentive, or cost-plus award.

Statement of Work

Statement of work is prepared to guide an arrangement happening between the project owners and the contractor such that the responsibility of the contractor is clearly identified along with the pricing and acceptance criteria such that the project deliverables are only accepted when they fulfil those criteria.

Introduction: This statement of work is prepared for the agreement between the project organization and the contractor selected for the construction of the resorts with 2,500 accommodations on the Elysium island.

Project Scope: Activities that are within the scope of the project include –

• Procurement of materials and equipment’s needed for construction
• Designing of the resort architecture for the development work
• Excavation and cleaning of the site upon inspection for building the foundation
• Construction of the foundation and the resort
• Construction of windows, interiors, and provision of electrical and plumbing facilities
• Painting outside each of the resort structure
• Construction of the road from resort and the public infrastructure on the island
• Compliance with the quality standards for the construction material and fabricated construction units

Work requirements: The project would be following the four-stage process for the development of it which would involve planning, designing, construction, and review. In the planning phase, the work of the construction would be outsourced to the contractor who would be developing the plan for the construction based on the stakeholder requirements and would identify various activities that are required to be executed.

Once activities are planned, the design stage would begin involving contractors in the process of developing architectural models of the island resorts. These designs would be approved by the project owner and once they are approved, the construction process would begin involving excavation, cleaning, construction, interiors, exteriors, roads, and painting. Upon completion of the project, a review would be conducted on the site by the project manager to ensure that all stakeholder criteria are well met. The review would judge the project outcomes based on the predefined acceptance criteria such that only after the contractor has met the criteria will the project be accepted and the payments would be released to the contractor.

Schedules

Pricing: A total budget of $50 million has been allotted for the construction project with fees assigned for each contract work as per the fixed price.

Human resources cost are shown below:

Acceptance Criteria

The SOW would be prepared between the independent contractor and the project owner of he resorts highlighting the acceptance criteria for deliverables. Each project stage progress would be updated by the contactor to the project manager representing the resort owner. Meetings would then be conducted between the project manager and the project owner to discuss if the project is going as per the plan and there is something needed to be done for the contractor management or project management for improvement.

Each project stage would have some acceptance criteria defined that would be recorded and presented to the owner by the project manager based on which the discussions would happen and decisions would be taken. This would also include review of the project schedule and cost compared to the plan and the budget. The contractors would be updating the project progress to the project manager weekly while the project manager would be communicating the same to the project owner based on major milestones or in the case of emergencies when major discrepancies that can have severe impacts on the project are observed.

The communication from the contractor would go in the form of regular report while project manager would be meeting the owner face to face for a discussion along with the submission of the reports. In this meeting, the approval of the stage completed would be sought and only after it is approved as per acceptance criteria will the next stage proceed. In the final phase of the project, whole project review would be submitted by the contractor to the project manager with the documentation of each acceptance criteria and how they are sufficiently met.

The project manager would have a closure checklist along which this would be checked and if all deliverables are met then the report would go to the project owner for final approval of acceptance of deliverables so that contractor can expect payment and release the resources deployed on the construction project.

The acceptance criteria for each major stage of the project is listed in the table below

Acceptance

The tourism organization and the contractor organization are represented by the people mentioned below who would accept the contract terms in this Statement of Work and would acting as the authority for decision making.

Project stakeholder management involves identification, planning, management, and monitoring of stakeholders. A stakeholder register is prepared that documents that stakeholder management strategies and activities. A stakeholder management plan would document the approaches to manage communication and engagement with stakeholder on the project. A number of tools and techniques that can be used for stakeholder management planning include stakeholder analysis, stakeholder mapping, and stakeholder engagement plan.

Stakeholder Mapping & Analysis

Stakeholder mapping and analysis can be used to identify specific strategies that should be used for managing or engaging the project stakeholders. Stakeholders can be grouped into different types based on the level of influence they have on the project and the interest they carry on the project. An influence-interest grid is commonly used to identify stakeholder categories that help in taking decisions on how these stakeholders can be differently engaged on the project to bring them most satisfaction with optimum use of resources and engagement strategies.

Stakeholders with low influence and less interest may only be kept informed about the project during major milestones but the stakeholders that carry high influence have to be formally consulted from time to time and those also with the high interest have to be engaged with closely. The stakeholder mapping grid below identifies the stakeholders of the tourism project in appropriate categories.

The engagement strategy to be used for each category of stakeholders may be decided based on their location on the influence-interest grid. Those with low power and low to medium influence such as residentials are usually the latent category who just kept satisfied which in the current project involves government. Thus, the project manager needs to ensure that government is well reported to as over governance structure and kept satisfied. Those with high influence and high interest have to be managed very closely such as project manager, project owner and project sponsor through regular or period reporting.

These types of stakeholders are called promotors as they can help promote the tourism project across globe which would increase the chances of gaining revenues from the developments at later stages. Apathetic are those stakeholders with low to moderate power and medium to high level of interest such as labours and residentials. Defenders are the stakeholders who have moderate to high interest but moderate power such as quality officer, suppliers, and contractors, these have to be closely monitored on the project through the use of appropriate reporting and review processes.

Stakeholder Engagement

The stakeholders would be engaged in different ways through the use of appropriate communication strategy, mode and involvement of the respective stakeholder. They could be engaged closely, satisfied or just kept informed based on the category they belong to as identified in the analysis section of this report. Once their category is correctly identified, specific topics of communication can also be identified and accordingly an engagement plan can be made. The table below presents the plan to engage stakeholders of different types involved in the tourism project.

Environment in which a company operates creates an influence on the project. These factors can be internal external environmental factors or internal operational factors. Enterprise environmental factors include organizational culture, governance structures, resource distribution, infrastructure, information technology, resource availability, and employee capabilities.

Organization culture: The organization would follow the project manager structure and thus, eh culture would be shaped accordingly. This would need the realignment of the company personnel for the current project for which they would need to learn about the project management disciplines. The whole project would be guided by the project manager who would be seen as the owner of the project for the execution and the project would follow a chain of command from him. The project would involve others in the requirements gathering stage but once the plan has been constructed, the project manager would be the final decision makers.

However, the project needing a close coordination and cooperation between people, the project manager would follow a constructive approach to leadership such that the individua teams working on the project would be open to giving suggestions for improvement but they would only be approved by the project manager after careful consideration. The culture would be aligned towards the organizational objectives of providing maximum productivity within the given time and utilizing resources to their maximum so that project budget is not overutilized and the project can be completed within budget (BOOM, 2009).

Governance Structure: The governance structure of the project is not just guided by the internal and supply chain organizations but also by the external government agencies as well as others who exist in the external environment of a project organization. They would include the government entire that provide governance structures for the regulation, communities living nearby and the tourists. The government would identify the permits to be awarded and thus, would have to be legally complied to in terms of the following of acts and regulatory guidelines for quality of materials. Quality of construction, use of facilities, safety considerations a d environmental consideration.

Thus, a team of legal procedure management would have to be formed to take care of all the permits and regulatory compliances assorted with the local and national government. The communities would not have a power but an influence on how things are going in third vicinity so that they can support the project as well as hamper its progress and thus, they are needed to be kept satisfied with appropriate information given to them on how the construction project would benefit the community as a whole.

In the current project, the project would generate jobs for local people and establish industry which is likely to receive a good level of support from the local communities. The third part of governance is provided by the tourist who may to have any direct say on the project but their requirements for the safety, tourism facilities and other cultural provisions would have an influence on the environment. If the project fails to have their considerations and needs met then the tourists would not be coming to the island and the project would not be able to earn as desired (Merwe, 2016).

Conclusions

The current project plan has been prepared for the management of the tourism project that is in the second phase of the tourism development in Utopia. The plan followed the PMBOK guideline and identified all the major project management areas with tools and techniques used in each category to develop this plan. It was found that the whole project can be run in an integrated manner while plans and processes can be identified for each of the ten knowledge management areas defined in the guide. Specific tools and techniques are available that could help at every stage of the project development and in managing each area of the emanated.

Some of the tools and techniques that are used in the cure the plan includes requirements traceability matrix for presenting requirements gathered from stakeholders, risk analysis to understand the impact of the risks and create a response plan, and work breakdown structure for highlining that individual activities that would be needed on the project to be completed in order to complete the tourism project. The project would use the five phases of development including initiation, planning, execution, monition and control, and closure. The current project is in the planning stage and accordingly this project plan with multiple sub-project plans for ache knowledge areas of the project management have been developed.

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