Project Plan Management Essay

ABSTRACTIn recent geezerhood, there has been a chew of progress in the go finishedledge argona of sound escortion focussing however, many a(prenominal) companies continue ignoring the techniques and tools that assist the conduct of insures. The disgorge planning phase is considered, by many scholars, a crucial stage for the success completion of a jump out, especi wholey when it comes to multi-project environments where managers and police squad members participate in multiple, concurrent projects. The main butt of this project is to use the many project management techniques and tools to plan a Fitness Festival to educate the Tampa Bay lodge about the bene adapteds of fittingness and health duration promoting the fluctuation of CrossFit. task HISTORYEach year, the unify Health Foundation and the Ameri john Public Health Association aggroup up to rank the health of Americas states. I was impress to read that Florida was ranked event 33, behind many states like co nscientious objector (ranked 8), and Minnesota (ranked 3). How could a state named The Sunshine State be so low in the rankings? And how could I help change that? Three years ago, I was introduced to CrossFit, and since hence, my own health has changed radically. I stopped smoking, started to exercise often, and while learning about nutrition changed the way I eat. It non altogether changed my lifestyle, but I noniced it started to change my family and friends as tumefy. In educating sight around me about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, they became motivated to try it themselves. sick OBJECTIVEThe purpose of this project is to create Fitness Festival that puke educate the confederacy about the benefits of fitness and health while promoting the sport of CrossFit. CrossFit combines aerobic conditioning, Olympic weightlifting, gymnastics along with some other old-school t distributivelying elements like kettlebell, rope climbs, tire flipping and sledgehammer into daily WO Ds ( growout of the daylight) (Upton 2013). By apply Project attention skills, I go forth be able to hand over a vision of what the project is to achieve, communicate the vision to all involved, go over that allone stays focused on the vision, motivate all involved, as well as coordinate all tasksnecessary to have it away the project (Kleim, 1998).PROJECT SCOPEThe first step in the planning process was to break exactly what was to be delivered as well as the major elements of discipline (Heerkens, cc2). The main goal of the project was to educate the community about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, but we likewise wanted to focus on promoting CrossFit. We k presently that CrossFit jocks are very competitive, so what a come apart way to assist the sport, but to create a friendly contender among Tampa Bay Crossfit athletes? any tasks had to be completed under the approval budget of $1000. DELIVERABLESFinalize perspective of EventDevelop Competition WorkoutsPlan M arketing Strategy enumeration of EquipmentObtain Sponsors and/ or VendorsObtain commitment of Resources/ VolunteersEntertainmentMILESTONESReserve aspiration location- January 18th 2014Create event flyers, website and social media- January 31st 2014Finalize workouts-February tenth 2014Confirm vendors and volunteers- February 17th 2014Organize swag bags- February 24th 2014Host Competition- adjoin 1st 2014TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTSLocation must accommodate the int stop number of athletes and spectatorThere must be at least(prenominal) 1 judge for every team competingLocation must have bathrooms every(prenominal) Athletes must sign a release formASSUMPTIONSAt least 15 athletes will sign up to competeVolunteers will non receive monetary compensationSponsors and vendors will render an entry giftLIMITS AND EXCLUSIONSSponsors and vendors will bring their own tent, table and chairsDJ is responsible for all music equipment including a microphoneCUSTOMER REVIEWTaylor metalworker and Nicole S mithWORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTUREThe Work Breakdown Structure (west by south) is positive by sub-diving a process, product, project, or service into its major work elements, then breaking the major work elements into sub-elements (Stewart, 1995). The WBS is the skeleton and foundation of every project and acts as the projects major support appliance (Dow, 2010). I have found it to be useful in not only projects, but also in any brainstorming session. It helps team members remember all major portions of work to be accomplished (Stewart, 1995). Creating a focus helps organize the team and therefore, assure that all major deliverables are recognized.The WBS graphically displays all the work items for the project in a single chart (Dow, 2010), so it can be used as a helpful communication tool. The WBS is also used to number the possibility of overlap, duplication and redundancy of tasks (Stewart, 1995). There is a lot of mis apprehensionion that the WBS is an organizational chart or a hi story. PMs have to be very careful in explaining the function of the WBS as it does not have a sequence and should not be used as the projects schedule.PROJECT NETWORKThe network diagrams purpose is to sequence and logically state all tasks on a project. Its an organization of the project layout (Dow, 2010). It allows for the PM to know what tasks are be worked on, their duration, when they should start and when they should finish, along with any predecessors and successors. Furthermore, the PM should identify the projects critical data track in order to assign the best team members to those tasks, as those tasks are critical to maintain salute and schedule nest egg (Warburton, 2013). CRITICAL PATHThe critical path will assist with maintaining come across and keeping the project on schedule. The critical path is derived by execute two manipulations of the schedule- a preceding conk and a backward pass. The forward pass calculates the earliest clock (or dates) that activiti es can start and finish. The backward pass calculates the latest times (or dates) that activities can start and finish (Heerkens, 2002). The critical path is the longest path and the shortest time in which a project can be completed (Warburton, 2013). The critical path activities are the ones the PM involve to pay most attention to as one day of slippage in a critical path activity means one day of slippage in the overall project.COST ESTIMATEI started my project with a high level/ macro estimation. I used my amaze from a previous In-House competition I plotted as the nucleotide for estimating the current competition event I am planning. man this method is less costly than other techniques, in most cases it is also less accurate (Hill, 2009). Even though the end deliverable (host a competition) is the same, there are a lot of differences between In-house and a community competition. The scope is much larger, the timeline is greater, a lot more resources are needed, etcetera Thi s is why a Bottoms-Up or Micro estimate is a better technique. This type of estimate is used when the PM wants to improve the estimate and reckon for risk and estimation uncertainty(Heldman, 2013). Unfortunately, this technique is hard to do in the beginning stage of the project because there is not enough instruction at that time. The best time to use this technique is after the PM finalizes the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). During this technique, the PM will estimate the cost of each activity in the WBS. The cost and accuracy are drive by the size of the individual work packages- smaller work packages gain both cost and accuracy (Hill, 2009).The calculations used in the Program rating and Review Technique ( godless) approach recognize the disagreement inherent in each activity and applies rudimentary statistics in a way that accommodates the variability (Heerkens, 2002). PERT uses three estimates. The most likely time is the effort to complete a task under normal or reason able conditions. The most pessimistic time is the effort to complete a task under the worst conceivable circumstances. The most optimistic is the effort to complete a task under the best or ideal circumstances (Kleim, 1998). PERT CALCULATIONEstimated Cost = Optimistic Estimate + 4* (most likely estimate) + bearish Estimate6$800 + 4* ($1,000) + ($1,500) = $1,0506EXTERNAL BUDGETThis project is not expected to warrant a profit. Its objective is to educate the community about health, nutrition and the sport of CrossFit. Sponsors, including apparel stores, equipment stores, etc. will pay a topple of $250.00 each. The funds will go towards each athletes swag bag (which will include a competition t-shirt). The fee will also be used for the purchase of t-shirts for volunteers and judges. entirely Vendors, including vitamin stores, sports drinks, and any food vendor will pay a fee of $100.00 each. The fee will be used for the marketing of the competition which will include all vendors info rmation and advertising.RISKSRisk management is a proactive attack to recognize what can go wrong and to plan in front (Warburton 2013). Risk reporting is the act of informing team managers and senior management of those risks. RISKSCONSEQUENCESNot enough athletes will sign upPotential cancellation of project Judges/ volunteers taket show up on competition dayDelay and over-allocation of resources Athlete does not sign a waiver and gets hurt during competitionLiability to the Sponsor Property vituperate caused by heavy equipment Cost not in budget get VALUE (EV)The earned value concept consists of examining the past, present, and future in order to determine the end point. IDBaseline EstimateSpent to DateCost to Complete Revised ForecastUnder (Over)1$1,000$200$600$800$2001.2$200$200$0$200$01.3$100$0$100$100$01.4$100$150$0$150($50)1.5$80$95$0$95($15)TOTAL$1480$645$700$1,345$135*** Local companies donated money towards the project in return for advertisement, which covered some co sts within the planned budget*** RECOMMENDATIONS/ LESSONS LEARNEDEven though I understood that the project scope was one of the most important documents, I did not localize an appropriate amount of time to fully understand all aspects of the project (Heerkens, 2002). That caused a lot of wasted time on my part, as I struggled maintaining the timeline and handling over-allocation of resources. During the WBS exercise, I was clueless on what to do, so I kept focusing on how to deliver a task andended up wasting a lot of my teams time. after(prenominal) understanding the purpose of the exercise, I was able to focus on what work was needed to be performed and not how to do it. The PM needs to control sure every team member understands the concepts of what each exercise is. many a(prenominal) SMEs, stakeholders, etc. are not familiar with project management skills. When I was working on the network diagram, I realized I do the wrong assumption on the duration of some tasks, and had to adjust those times in order to meet the deadline.That created even more pressure on the, already stretched thin resources. I also had to combine some tasks in order to simplify the diagram. The once separated tasks of commitment from Athletes, Sponsors, and Vendors are now combined and have the same duration time. After learning the grandness of having the best people assigned to critical activities, I had to shift the assignments of resources and fit other volunteers to help with the planning phase of the project. Also, I could have make a better job recognizing changes in the critical path through the ongoing schedule updates. If not done, the PM could very well return time, money, and resources fighting fires that dont necessarily matter (i.e. not in the critical path). (Heerkens, 2002). Understanding the cost estimate is extremely important as it will drive the project. It took me a long time to understand the concept in relation to my project, as resources were volunteers (not remunerative) and a lot of the budget came from fees paid by vendors and sponsors.In hindsight, I would have preferred picking a different type of project- one that I could clearly explain each cost. The biggest frustration and biggest lessons learned came from MS Project. Not being familiar with the act I struggled completing that assignment. I learned the tool is excellent and anticipate to use in the near future however, the PM should not attempt to promise to deliver something without having a basic knowledge of the process or tool being used. I had planned to run the schedule base on a 7 day/ week work schedule however, could not figure out how to accurately change it in MS Project, so I had to constantly manipulate the tasks and duration to try to fit the timeline. I hope to run the same exercises and use the same tools during the conterminous CrossFit completion I get involved in. I am inquiring to see how I go about it and see the difference in results.REFERENCES Dow, W. (2010) Project Management Communications Bible, John Wiley & Sons, 2010. Heldman, K. (2013). PMP Project Management sea captain Exam Study Guide. John Wiley & Sons, 2013 Heerkens, G. (2002) Project Management, McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2002 Hill, G. (2009). The Complete Project Management Methodology and Toolkit. CRC Press, 2009. Kleim, R. and Ludin, I. (1998) Project Management Practitioners Handbook, AMACOM Books, 1998. Stewart, D. and Wyskida, R. (1995) Cost data processors Reference Manual, John Wiley & Sons, 1995. Upton, J. (2013, May 10). The CrossFit Craze 5 Reasons You affect to Get In on It. Blog post. Retrieved from http//www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-upton/crossfit_b_3240705.html Warburton, R. and Kanabar, V. (2013). The Art and Science of Project Management. RW Press, 2013.