Describe the type of the organizational structure of the company within your project.

SAMPLES HAVE BEEN ATTACHED AS A REFERENCE

Combine the use of microsoft work and microsoft power point

You may choose a project that is of interest to you. When selecting a project of interest to you, avoid picking one that is either too big or too small. For example, do not decide to build a new stadium for your local sports team (too big) or to plant your summer garden (too small). Select a project with which you have some experience and familiarity. Be sure your selection is an actual project (temporary endeavor with start and ending dates) and not routine work. Do not select a topic, such as a construction project, unless you understand construction well. Projects may vary from a few hundred thousand dollars to a few million dollars and should last between 6 months and 2 years. To ensure you are on the right track, get your instructor’s permission for the project before writing a project charter.

The business case must contain the following.

• Introduction or background
• Business objectives
• Problem or opportunity statement
• Assumptions or constraints
• High-level project requirements
• Budget estimate
• Schedule estimate
• Risks

The next step is to create a project charter. The project charter is important as it provides stakeholders with an understanding of what the project entails and other relevant information so that all parties have a good understanding of the purpose of the project. Remember, the project charter is a living document that stakeholders, especially ones that join the project in the later phases, understand and can help better define stakeholders’ roles. The following are important sections to be included in your project charter.

• Project Title/Name: What will the project be known as? What shall we call it? Each project is normally given a unique name.
• Project Description/Mission/Purpose: What is your project going to accomplish? How does this project relate to overall goals and objectives of the company? Is it part of a program or larger project?
• Statement of Work: What will this project create? What is the product of the project? At a high level, how do you plan on doing the work of the project? What are the high-level deliverables for this project?
• Objectives: What objectives, if any, of the company is this project designed to meet?
• Business Need: Why should we do this project? What will be gained, changed, or modified? Is there a financial or business reason to do this project? This area should contain any feasibility studies, NPV, PI, PB, or PBD used to advance the project.
• Project Manager and Stakeholders: Who will lead this project? Who are the major stakeholders?
• Milestones: What are the key milestone dates associated with the project?
• Budget: What is the order of magnitude budget for this project?
• User Acceptance Criteria/Quality: What are the minimum success criteria as defined by the key stakeholders?
• High Level Assumptions: What are the assumptions on which the project is based?
• High Level Constraints: What are the major limiting factors that affect the project?
• Exclusions and Boundaries: What are the boundaries of the project? What is to be included and what is to be excluded from the project?
• Major Risks: What are the major risks affecting the project?
• Sociocultural Factors: Describe the issues pertinent to your project, such as political issues, technical issues, ethical issues, and other sociocultural factors.

Your project is moving along nicely. Now let’s look at communications and meetings for your project. Your communications management plan, which must include a meeting agenda, is due this week.

• Create a communications management plan and discuss the types of meetings that would be needed. You must also include a progress meeting agenda that you would use with your team.
• You may use the Communications Management Plan Sample located in the Project Document Samples section.

Communications Management Plan

The goal of a communications management plan is to ensure that communication, which is important for all projects, is established so that the lines of communication are defined so that project managers, project team members, the client/customer, and all relevant stakeholders understand how to properly ensure communication is directed and recorded so there is no confusion regarding proper communication. Remember, your responsibility as a project manager is to control the flow of communication. Not having an effective communications management plan can reduce the influence a project manager has. Also, keep in mind communication and types of communication are different for every organization. Therefore, you can use a template, just make sure you adapt the plan to the organization and the stakeholders of your project that was approved via the business case and that you consider the different types of communication that exists. Your communications management plan must at the very least include the five required elements of what, when, delivery format/location, the sender, and the audience. Research the communications management plan for an understanding of the different plan types that exist. Use a template or table if you like. Again, make sure you adapt the plan according to the organization you are completing the plan.

Meeting Agenda

All meetings during the life of a project are required. Rather than conducting meetings without any planning, create the meeting agenda that has what you feel needs to be discussed on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis. Understand that the agenda can be updated for each meeting, but having a structured template gives a you a strong base to ensure meeting will be productive.

It is now time to write the project scope statement. This week’s lesson will be of great help in creating this document.

In addition to the project scope statement, you will also need to create your work breakdown structure (WBS). The WBS helps to break down the project into smaller more manageable pieces (work package or individual activities). After you complete the WBS, you can begin planning your scheduling the activities. Therefore, it is important that you work to complete the WBS activity.

• Project scope statement: Using the information established in the project charter and additional research, create the project scope statement in MS Word. The Scope Statement Sample in the Project Document Samples section can be useful.
• WBS: Following the sample from the Project Document Samples section, create a WBS in MS Project. Although you are using Microsoft Project, understand there are different methods used professionally.

On to the next step. Now that you completed the project charter and scope statement, we can begin creating the project schedule. The project schedule helps us understand when the activities will happen and allows more insight on how long the project will take. In addition to having the schedule, we can begin to assign resources to the different tasks. Resource allocation is crucial as it helps set expectations of the needs a project manager requires. Because you want needs to be completed, as the project manager, assigning resources is necessary.

There are two Course Project deliverables this week.

• Create a project schedule using Microsoft Project and the WBS you created in Week 3. As you create your schedule, make sure you consider possible new information you may have discovered since last week.
• Once you create your MS Project schedule, create a column for resources and add the resources associated with the activities in your schedule. Make sure that you not only consider human resources but also other resources (i.e., meeting space, construction equipment, etc.). This exercise will help you more accurately assign costs later in this course.

Most projects have fixed costs that have to be taken into account. These are such things as mortgages and other costs (assets, rent, etc.) that do not change with production. Fixed costs need to be accounted for in projects. If your project has fixed costs, complete the following steps.

Step 1: Update Microsoft Project with Fixed Cost Information

• Go to the gray area at the top of the project on the duration column and right-click and choose Insert Column. Type in fixed cost column title and press Enter.
• Enter the fixed costs above in the Fixed Cost column as listed adjacent to the appropriate tasks.

Step 2: Update Microsoft Project with Variable Cost Information

Most projects have variable costs. These are costs that change with the amount of work being done. These are commonly seen as dollar per hour costs. Follow the steps below to enter this data.

Resource Variable Cost List Instructions

Using the information below, go back into the resource sheet to update the hourly rate for each resource.

• Click on View. Click on the Resource Sheet icon under the resource views section. The resource sheet icon is the middle icon on the right of this view with two heads. Check to make sure the type field is work and enter the dollar amount above for the hourly rate for each resource in the Std. Rate column.
• To access various reports with cost and other information, select reports under the project.

. Next, we want to investigate rick management and quality management, which are both crucial practices to ensure the benefits of the project are maintained and that the practices of all those involved in the project are efficiently conducted to reduce potential project disruptions. As professionals, all of you will be able to relate to such practices as we all practice risk management or quality management to some degree.

Risk Management

Create a project risk management document using the elements from this week’s lesson and reading. The document should be in Word and include the following elements.

• Planning: Describe your strategy for handling risks in your project.
• Identification: List at least seven negative risks and three positive risks for your project.
• Qualitative analysis: Use a probability and impact matrix, past experience, or some other technique to prioritize the risks.
• Quantitative analysis: Based on the prioritization of the risks, determine a number for each risk, such as a monetary figure or days the risk event will affect the project if the risks occur.
• Response planning: Determine the strategy to handle each of the risks: escalate, exploit, enhance, share, or accept for positive risks and escalate, avoid, mitigate, transfer, or accept for negative risks.
• Response implementation: Assume three of the risk events occurred and describe how the responses you chose worked to handle each risk.
• Monitoring: Describe how you will monitor your project for new risks and review the implementation of responses for risks that have occurred. Tools such as data analysis, audits, and meetings can be used for monitoring.

A table in Word may be used for the identification, qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis, and response planning sections. The other sections can be in paragraph form.

Quality Management

• Quality assurance is critical as it increases the success of your project. For your project, create a quality assurance plan using any format you desire. Just make sure that your plan is explained with details and supporting evidence if necessary. Remember, every project is unique, therefore, you must create a quality assurance plan that is directly related to your project. If you decided to use a template (Note: you can research the internet to find templates.), make sure you adapt it to your project.
• Quality control is equally important because rather than looking forward, you are looking backward to determine if work completed was completed according to specifications or specific design requirements. Create a quality control plan for three specifications you believe are important for your project’s success. This plan is critical as it helps ensure the benefits of your project are maintained as any deviation from specifications and or requirements possibly reduces the project output’s effectiveness.

Your project has been successfully planned, and you are ready to move into the performing stage. Before you do, take a closer look at how this project is fitting into the broader organizational structure and how you see this project being structured within the organization.

There is one Course Project deliverable this week. Create a Word document that contains the following elements.

• Describe the type of the organizational structure of the company within your project.
• Include the advantages and disadvantages of this organizational structure, compared to the other structures.
• Research a responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) or a responsible, accountable, consulted and informed (RACI) matrix. (i.e., https://www.projectmanagement.com/deliverables/234137/RACI-Matrix (Links to an external site.))
• Create a RAM or a RACI matrix for the key stakeholders in your project within the same document.

ou will now prepare a status report for the project sponsor. Assume you have completed the project and the project deliverable has been completed.

You will incorporate the project assignments from previous weeks into a comprehensive project status report. In addition to the sections you have already completed, you will add a lessons learned section to describe the strengths and areas of improvement within your project. You will also expand on the discussion of sociocultural factors, and you will describe your leadership style related to the project.

Section A: Summary

• Part 1: Overview: Describe the project, including the project deliverables, overall time frame and estimated budget.
• Part 2: Business Strategy Alignment: Provide a discussion of the needs of the organization and show how the project is aligned to the business strategic objectives. (Use your business case to help you.)
• Part 3: Project Charter: Include your project charter with all the relevant information, such as project purpose, objectives, milestones, budget, user acceptance, assumptions, constraints, and key stakeholders.

Section B: Scope, WBS, Schedule, and Budget

• Part 1: Project Scope: Provide the project scope statement with the statement of work, deliverables, constraints, limitations, assumptions, exclusions, and technical requirements.
• Part 2: WBS and Schedule: Include the WBS and schedule in Microsoft Project with dates and resources. You may have to take a screenshot of the file or convert the project file to one you can insert in the project status report.
• Part 3: Project Budget: Include a detailed project budget and a comparison of the actual and budgeted costs for the project.

Section C: Communications, Risks, and Quality

• Part 1: Communications: Include the communications management plan with the five required elements of what, when, delivery format or location, the sender, and the audience.
• Part 2: Project Risks: Include your risk matrix from earlier in the course, and describe how you developed innovative solutions to minimize risks and optimize positive impacts.
• Part 3: Quality Management: Summarize the result of your quality assurance and quality control exercises, and explain the significance of the actions you proposed.

Section D: Leadership, Sociocultural Factors, and Lessons Learned

• Part 1: Leadership and Management: Research and describe a leadership style you would use in your project. Include how you motivate team members to deliver a competitive advantage with the completed project. Make sure you take into account the organizational structure and RAM/RACI efforts you conducted in Week 7. Cite at least two scholarly articles.
• Part 2: Sociocultural Factors: Provide more details related to sociocultural factors in your project. Describe the benefits and challenges working with those from different backgrounds (educational level, language, nationality, religion, ethnicity, culture, ethics, etc.).
• Part 3: Lessons Learned: Describe the lessons learned in the project to include strengths and areas to improve. Explain what you would do differently in the next project and what you would continue to do.