Most projects fail, sources of failure are likely to include inadequate management with inadequate planning, an informal or unstructured approach, a lack of consistent review of the work at hand by senior management and/or an absence of accurate and readily available progress reports. As on a PRINCE2 weekend qualification london.
Many of the reasons projects go over budget or over schedule are not immediately obvious to the project manager. However, the failure is not because the project manager has been negligent. The record ones for example, were very likely the result of the project that started without a clear formal structure or structure and which then spiral downwards into the project, without an effective structure in place at the start. All these would be caused by a shortage in the required controls and a limited amount of project resource at best, when the project started. Many other things can contribute to the over budget condition, such as inadequate scheduling systems, insufficient manpower or something as more not affective as in the case of substandard skilled manpower.
Often before the project plan has been agreed, and a sound basis of which to build is prepared, the project manager may find themselves having to deal with a host of other related problems such as changing roles or responsibilities for a project team, limited access to useful information or knowledge, inadequate building maintenance, consultant assistance, blame, etc
Examples of poor performance may be as follows. The chief engineer started a project as a typical data entry operation, they probably liked this, but they soon became complacent about how much they had added to a fixed problem or to the introduction of that data by overloading data-entry operators. The engineers needed to be able to carry on data entry, without adding ancies such as feature-rich applications with over 60 features, which currently their supplier had agreed to supply as required. They had to release information to support planning and future decisions about the project in addition to providing data, the project had to rely on one or two vendors, and the end result was that they had to have a big budget for additional systems to complete the end product, producing long-term costs.
Another example of poor management may be the contractor who has been agreed to deliver an excellent service, but after the working period they have given the management team a hard time for the budget that their contract requires, and insufficient detail for the plan.
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Managing it is seen as essential in the construction industry to get somewhere, the project manager needs to plan the work, review it regularly for potential problems and guide the team, manage and prioritize the work as required. As a project manager, there are two main tasks to complete before you can talk of post launch support.
The first task in managing a project is to create a project plan. A project plan is a specific outline of all the activities that are required for the duration of the project, and the guidance and management that will ensure this is carried through to conclusion and to exit the project in a cost effective manner.
The project plan, together with a dashboard showing the status of activities and completion of tasks against plan, will the information necessary for supporting the project framework as and when time and resource is available. This information must be available for both the project manager and the team members to follow its use – this is a clear knowledge transfer responsibility.
The second, and equally important, task, is to manage the resources available with the project, in varying amounts, to complete the tasks of the project, on time and within budget, to the total advantage of the business, society and ecology.
Both tasks are essential, but in a different order. Managing resources as an internal resource solely will introduce the problem with insufficient resources, energy and time required to complete the tasks. Managing the project against the plan will rung out a variety of problems, regardless of the discipline, methods or knowledge area, and a failed project is likely to be without the necessary resources; the plan will then become just a plan rather than a project plan.
The first step in managing resources is to identify the objects of your understood resources and to consider the capacity within them. Most projects have very interim phases and the project managers are key to whether or not success is achieved.
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