Sample Project Management Workshop Assignment

Project Management - Workshop Assignment Sample

Task Summary

You need to answer all the written questions and complete all the activities suggested. Your responses must be word processed and must be submitted to your assessor, once complete.

Provide answers to the following questions and complete all the activities:

1. Who or what are project stakeholders? Define stakeholder analysis.

2. What should be considered when identifying a project’s information requirements?

3. What communication methods could be considered for the communications management plan? Describe each of the methods, including why they would be advantageous. Summarise the inputs required to effectively manage project communications

4. What is the project management information system? What is an information retrieval system and what does it allow you to do?

5. When assessing communications management outcomes, why is the reporting performance process important? What does the process entail?

6. Think of a project example in which you can describe stakeholder interests and segment them into roles (position/ title), priority, placement, and interests to determine their forms of engagement. Also, make note of the key stakeholders. You might like to present your response in a table.

7. What is an influence diagram? Create a matrix that could show the placement of stakeholder groups and briefly explain the levels of engagement for each. List at least five general stakeholder groups/ individuals and two methods of stakeholder communication for each found in any project.

8. Read the provided case study on Shell and complete the following activities:

• Identify and list at least three Internal and External stakeholders.
• Take any two stakeholders and explain their interest. What actions can shell take to address them.
• Select any 4 stakeholders and prepare a communication plan for them.
• Complete the following stakeholder register:

9. Describe the four processes used in managing project human resources.

10. How can you align competencies with project tasks?

11. Identify and briefly outline the inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs for each of these elements of the project human resources management process.

• Human resource Planning

• Acquire project Team

• Develop Project Team

• Manage Project Team

12. Read the case study provided on Tarmac and prepare complete the following template on activity resource requirement.

Solution

Question 1

In a project, stakeholders mainly provide requirements based on the needs of the project. Identification of the key stakeholders are very crucial in a forecast. Project managers are the potential stakeholder in a project. The project manager monitors the entire project and focuses on accomplishing the project on time correctly. For Assignment Help Team members are another important stakeholder, as the quality of the project completely depends on their performance. According to Torelli et al. (2020) maintaining the resources during the conduction of the project is very crucial, as it helps to reduce the excess cost of a project. It highlights that resource management plays a crucial role and is an important project stakeholder. Investors are another stakeholder of a project, as the entire project will be carried forward based on their investment completely.

Figure 1: Stakeholder Analysis
(Source: Productplan.com, 2021)

Stakeholder analysis is a process that mainly helps to identify the stakeholders before the starting of the project. It also helps to group all of them based on their participation, involvement, and interest accordingly. This analysis helps to group the stakeholders based on four categories and that is: "High power, high interest, high power, low interest, low power, high interest and low power, low interest".

Question 2

The expectation of all the stakeholders regarding the project outcome has to be considered properly during identifying the information requirement of the project. As per the views of Yoo (2021) expert judgment and data gathering is very crucial during analysing the requirement of the forecast. After that, proper decision-making is very crucial that also helps in the accomplishment of the project correctly. The capacity and skill of each team member need to be analysed correctly and it is very crucial to make the project high graded and it is one of the major requirements accordingly.

Question 3

The communication management plan mainly considered both the formal written, formal verbal, and informal verbal communication methods. As per the guidance of Imamura et al. (2018) the formal written method is very important as it shows that all the communication will be held in the written format. It is particularly used during complex problems. The use of this method is advantageous, as it helps to plan project management and helps to communicate over long distances. Formal verbal is mainly used when there is only oral or verbal communication in between the communicators. It is advantageous as it is used during the presentation of the entire forecast. It creates more strong conversation and clear doubts related to the project completely. Another method is informal verbal. Granizo et al. (2021) stated that this type of communication is mainly used during meetings or conversions. It is done in a free environment; it highlights that all the team members easily shared their views or perspective without feeling any pressure. This method is a more flexible communication method than the formal one.

Proper communication and resource management plans are very crucial to manage project communication effectively. The stakeholder register and their engaging plan are also vital. Further, the reports based on quality, risk, and work performances contribute to managing the forecast communication correctly.

Question 4

A project management information system (PM IS) is the logical process of information that mainly contributed to execute the project effectively. Andersson (2019) stated that it is a methodical process that aids to gather information and also guides to utilize all this collected information during the conduction of the forecast successfully. PMIS aids to gather this information by using more than one software application completely.

“Information retrieval” (IR) system is a system of a set of algorithms. That played an important role and helps to show the relevance of all the important documents to searched queries. According to Rajhans (2018), this system focuses on the queries of all the users and based on that, ranks and sort all the documents correctly. This system is very important for an individual, as it provides access to individuals to journals, articles, books and also helps to protect and manage all those registers completely. It has been found that web search engines are one of the most visible applications of IR.

Question 5

Reporting performance in business is important as it enables the organisational management to identify and understand the growth potentials of the firm within the market. According to Shad et al. (2019) performance reporting is necessary within the business as it helps in the development of a strong communication network. The communication network between various stakeholders helps the managers of the firm toward the collection of proper market-based data that further help in the development of effective organizational strategies and plans. As per the statement of Kurochkina et al. (2017), performance reporting helps a firm in proper measurement of its key metrics and thereby help in mitigation of any kind of issue within the organization. Further, the stated reporting in communication management provides the performance report of the parameters of inventory, customer satisfaction, sales volume and companies growth rate in the market.

Question 6

For the project, involving the “management and use of non-renewable energy resources”, the key stakeholders of the project included the Board of Directors, suppliers, and consumers.

Table 1: Tabular presentation of the stakeholder’s interest
(Source: Created by the Learner)

Question 7

An influence diagram can be termed as a visual display of a decision situation. According to Zheng et al. (2017), an influence diagram consists of certain key elements that depict the decision, objectives and uncertainties through various colours and shapes. Concerning this, in a business, an influence diagram is used as a conceptualizing tool that helps to represent the causal relationship between external factors, uncertainties, decisions and the resulting outcomes.

Figure 2: Representation of an influence diagram
(Source: Zheng et al., 2017)

Question 8

• Stakeholder matrix

Figure 3: Stakeholder matrix
(Source: Created by the Learner)

• Method of communication

For communicating with the higher power stakeholders like the directors, mainly verbal methods of communication are followed with projects like “management and use of non-renewable energy resources”. In the verbal method of communication, scheduling of meetings, scheduling of virtual presentations and emails are followed for making communication with the “keep the satisfied group” (Brunton et al. 2017). Further, for communication with the supply chain and technical teams, again a verbal method of communication including scheduling of meetings is followed within the mentioned organisational projects. For making communication with the customers, a preferable online method using blogs, posts and campaigns are followed (Palmieri and Mazzali-Lurati, 2021). This way of communication help to generate awareness among the people on the project mission and visions. Lastly, to communicate with the legal department of the project, usually emails and fax methods are followed.

Question 9

According to the case study, employees and suppliers are the internal stakeholders and customers are the external stakeholder.

Employees and the customer are the important stakeholders of the company Shell. The performances of an employee are very crucial, as the entire presentation of the shell completely depends on the performance of each employee. On the other hand, according to Imamura et al., (2018), customers are very important for this organization. The profit rate of an organization completely depends on the sailing rate of the products and for that, raising the customer retention rate is very crucial. Similarly, fulfilling the needs and demands of each customer is very crucial, as it raises their satisfaction level and helps to create a loyal and good relationship with all of them effectively.

Communication plan:

Table 2: Communication plan
(Source: Created by the researcher)

Stakeholder register:

Table 3: Stakeholder register
(Source: Created by the researcher)

Question 10

The four major processes used in managing project human resources include:

- Plan Human Resource Management

The first process of managing human resources in a project includes proper planning. This process of managing resources involves the identification of the number of human resources and scheduling and distribution of the work among the individuals to mitigate any kind of confusion in the work (Dwivedula, 2019). This plan of action thereby helps in the proper assessment of the teamwork and also help in managing any kind of conflict.

- Acquire Project Team

The second process of managing human resources include acquiring a project team. In this process, the project members are mainly selected through advertisement jobs, interviews and hiring processes. The members for a project are selected based on their time-intensive activity and multi-decision-making criteria (Momeni and Martinsuo, 2018). This process of hiring human resources help in the development of a new team and thereby help in the proper distribution of the work to accomplish the project on the scheduled time.

- Develop Project Team

The third process of managing project human resources include the development of project teams. In this process, team members are trained with the required capabilities and constant activities to improve the performance of the project.

- Manage Project Team

The fourth process of managing project human resources include management of the project teams in which the changing role and responsibilities within a team are recorded to manage the project work. In this process, the team performance assessment is done to ensure the success of the project.

Question 11

For aligning the competencies with the project tasks, three major steps can be taken:

• Step 1: identification of the project roles
• Step 2: Assessing the project competencies
• Step 3: Assigning responsibilities to the human resources based on the competencies.

Question 12

Table 4: Inputs, tools and techniques and outputs for the four major processes in human resource planning
(Source: Created by the Learner)

Question 13

Table 5: Activity Resource Requirements
(Source: Created by the researcher)
 

References