Project Management Methodologies

The budget above helps in estimating an approximate cost of £200k in the development of a student application for the QAHE University.

Timescale: The sponsors want he application to be developed by the next academic year and therefore the time that can be utilized is the time period of five months from February to June 2020.

Objectives: The current project is developed with the aim of developing a student application for the QAHE University ( Eskerod and Jepsen, 2016). This is done to increase the awareness and the objectives can be categorized as follows:

• The management of QAHE wants to develop a common and integrated platform where students can indulge in activities apart from their classes and education.
• The involvement of the students in the external activities and other events, clubs and societies outside or inside of the campus.
• The increase in the number of student recognition awards in the extra- curricular activities and further increased representation of the QAHE University.
• To complete the entire project within the time frame of five months before launching the student interaction application next year.
• To portray an enhanced image of all round development so that further students can be attracted to the university and enrolments can be increased.

Approach: In order to develop a perfect and integrated platform for the students, it is necessary to adopt and implement and error free approach so that objectives can be integrated with the approach:

• Development of a proper schedule where students can work on the project without compromising with studies because students will play a major role in ascertaining the contents or the aspects covered in the development of student application.

• The core team for the current project will involve 5 teachers, all the Hod's of the University, the Dean, student team of 30 students. The dean and the Hod's will be informed regularly about the progress and their approval at each stage will be taken for the project.

• Two external specialists in the app developing field. The specialists will ensure error free development of the mobile application by using the technical knowledge that they posses in relation to the app development.

• The volunteers if any will be selected only if they are found to adequately skilled and collectively, education of the students will not be compromised with.

Key Staff: The key staff will be the core team of students, teacher, HOD and Dean involved in the development of QAHE student Application. The specialists hired and the sponsor of the event i.e. the director of O2 will also form a part of the key staff for the project. The sponsors will be regularly informed of the project's progress. Get Assignment Examples.Talk to our Experts!

Stakeholder Analysis: This stage involves the identification of the interested parties in the project and the impact of their decision in the project (Kerzner, 2018).

The stakeholder matrix helps in determining the power and interest aspect of different stakeholders associated with project. The stakeholders for the current project of QAHE can be categorized as follows:

Work Breakdown Structure

A work breakdown structure details different activity that are to be performed in the project being undertaken in a chronological order (Sanghera, 2019). A work breakdown structure  for this project of building a student application can be detailed as follows where all the activities will be completed in the time frame of five months: 

Critical Path Method

This is important for the project in ascertaining the most productive chronology of completing the activities associated with it. It will ensure maximum productivity by adopting a sequence of rewarding strategies for the application development of QAHE university thus contributing in overall success by reducing time and resource wastage. Order assignment help from our experts!

Risk register

Risk register contains estimation of all the possible risks that can be incurred and their estimation regarding occurrence i.e. probability is defined (Ng, 2018). The action plans that need to be adopted in order to manage the risks better are also illustrated. Following is the risk register for app development and the risks that have been ascertained are:

Cruciality of risk register in success of project

Risk register is an important part in taking into account the different risks that are associated with the project. The risk register helps in identifying the probability of occurrence of the risk if it incurs and also details the actions that are to be taken if such risk arises in the completion of the project (Lyra and et.al., 2018). The most important aspect of the risk register is that it takes into consideration even those risks that are least likely to occur and those that are most likely to occur as well.

For instance, in the above risk register as well, it identified the probability of the risks associated with changes in the external factors that might lead to the act of developing a student application as a redundant task and the action plans that were required to be adopted in such scenarios. This helps the managers in ascertaining that what are the chances that a particular risk might occur and the mitigation strategies helps in avoiding the losses as quickly as possible. Further, the highly plausible risks such as over incurring the estimated budget costs etc. were also included and how the project manager can avoid this over expense right from the beginning was illustrated. This justifies the contribution of risk register in risk management plan where the manager is able to identify the different risks that might incur in the project.

When the development of risk register is not appropriate in a project, it leads to a failure in ranking the importance of the risk and the probability estimates that could have helped in developing the feasibility or mitigating strategies accordingly (Kerzner, 2019). When the team members will not be aware of the follow-up actions that are to be adopted or are not well versed with the backup plan that is to be implemented, then there are very limited chances of minimizing the potential losses that otherwise might have been huge. It also leads to unnecessary time wastage in developing such plans after the risk occurrence that could have been avoided or rather minimized. For instance, initially the risk of exceeding costs in comparison to the budget amounts was a paramount risk and this was increasing the performance level of all team members. The stress level was increasing due to continuous resource depletion but as a manager, this was addressed by redistributing the resources and increasing efficiency to meet the standards set regarding costs. Struggling with your dissertation, get our dissertation editing services at best prices.

Therefore, the importance of the risk register can be justified from the fact that a lot of time and cost can be saved if the core team that is working on the project has already recognized the risk and understands the actions that they have to perform in order to mitigate the problems that have arisen due to such risks.

Justification of the importance of structured communication

It is the duty of project manager make their project successful and therefore, it is necessary to develop strong communication channels where there should be strong interchange or exchange between the different parties and a proper hierarchy should be developed. In order to develop a proper communication channel in the present context, it is necessary to make the team members understand that whom they should communicate with if they face any problems or the communication issues (Fewings and Henjewele, 2019). Interaction Communication model will be adopted because the team will be able to communicate in a two-way pattern. The team members of different committees should communicate with their head and these will be then conveyed to the project manager. If the issue is not resolved, then the communication is further made to the Hod's or the department head and then adequate actions are taken. These will be then conveyed back to the team members thus creating a two-way cycle of communication or interaction. However, since the current project group is smaller there is an increased flexibility of doing direct communications where the team members can directly covey their problem to the project manager.

When the exchange of information is clear and is facilitated by properly segregated, it automatically leads to a more productive team where the members are able to resolve the conflicts or issues that might arise and the QAHE will be able to adopt a proper mechanism where the members can develop a proper application for the university (Dohe and Pike, 2018).      Since this application will act as a platform motivating students to connect with external activities and other environmental changes or trends that the market is currently experiencing, it is necessary to ensure that the desired project is achieved, and the team members are able to integrate the expected results with the actual ones. The hierarchical structure helps in easily communicating the changes that one wants and there is a proper record of the problems that the team members identified and the solutions that were thus developed.

Therefore, developing a proper communication plan using interaction communication model helps in meeting multiple problems that can arise in the undertaking of the project and collectively the team performance is improved.

Critical Analysis of different project management methodologies

There are a variety of project management methodologies that can be adopted in the different types of projects that are adopted and each methodology differentiates on the basis of its complexity and the times that is being consumed (Muller, 2017). Waterfall methodology, Agile Methodology and the Prince 2 Methodology are some of the best methodologies that can be adopted for the project completion.

Prince 2 Methodology: This methodology can be used when the projects are being implemented at a larger scale and categorizes the entire project into different stages. For the QAHE Student Application development, the implementation of this technique might have certain positive or negative aspects associated with it:

Waterfall Methodology: This is best suited when the project is being implemented at a comparatively lower scale and the categorization of different tasks is done in a closely interlinked manner where the next phase can be started only after the initial phase has been completed entirely. For application development, this technique can be analysed in following manner:

Agile Methodology: This project management methodology is implemented when it is possible to break the entire project into smaller and simplified tasks and these are closely linked. The expectations of the targeted customers segment are also integrated with the overall objectives of the project under this technique (Silvius And et.al., 2017). For QAHE Application development, this technique can be reviewed in a following context:

The critical evaluation of all the three methodologies above help in analysing that the appropriate methodology for building a student application for the QAHE University, is the Agile Methodology. This will assist in increasing the communication or integration between the team members and this will increase the chances at success. Also, the increased flexibility in adopting and implementing the changes that arise with the change in market trends will help in incorporating further changes or modifications in the application as and when they arise.

Also Read- Entrepreneurship Ventures and Small Business Management

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