In Milestone Three, you identified quality auditing tools that were executed during the control phase. After completing your textbook reading on quality management, discuss how well you believe the pr

Project Milestone Three: English National Stadium

Darlene Ames

QSO 645

January 8, 2018

Project Milestone and Analysis: English National Stadium

Project Control Techniques Utilized During the Project

Project Auditing Tools

The project team that was charged with the responsibility of constructing the English national stadium at Wembley managed quality issues by conducting independent audits and reviews. External auditors were contracted to undertake third-party reviews on the quality issues that affected the project. The primary reason for undertaking the quality audit was to identify possible ineffective activities or procedures and processes that were not performed in accordance with recommended project practices. First, a quality assurance process was undertaken with the purpose of determining organizational process assets updates, changing requests, and providing project document updates. The quality audits were undertaken on a periodical basis by third-party reviewers. During the process, there were various tools and techniques that were used. They included: affinity diagrams, process decision program charts, as well as prioritization matrices. Prioritization matrices were quality management tools that were mainly utilized to change the project scope in order to make it comply with the resources that were available.

Third-party quality auditors were drawn from the government and private sector. They performed quality analysis in order to examine the process improvement from organizational and technical perspectives. As a result, they were able to identify problems experienced while conducting the project, constraints witnessed while delivering tasks for the project, as well as inefficient and ineffective procedures identified during the process operation. The recommended corrective actions were then acted upon immediately. This involved undertaking corrective actions in form of default repairs.

Specific Reporting Metrics: Recommendations

The stadium construction team should have considered reporting metrics that serve as vital indicators for keeping projects on course. These metrics allow the team to accurately report on project progress and improve their understanding of the spot trends that might be overlooked. The first metric includes cost ration (Heldman, 2015).  Cost ratio is a measure of the actual costs versus planned costs. The second metric is effort ratio, which measures the actual progress or effort versus planned progress. These metrics are commonly referred to as the earned value, since they allow the project manager to understand where the project stage is versus where it should be. It is important to compare the cost metrics to the efforts metrics in order to determine if the project team is making significant progress at the same rate at which the team is spending resources and funds. These metrics should also be included in the status reports, together with a honest explanation of the present risks and issues (Gurjar, 2016).  In steering committee meetings, it is important to ensure that the project team highlights challenging areas in order for the stakeholders to assist in resolving them. This includes determining to what degree the project team ensures that metrics are used and the degree of honesty and accuracy found in the project reports.

Communication Plan Used

Critique of the Communicating Tactics Chosen for the Project

The project team faced criticisms for embracing poor communication techniques. For instance, key stakeholders such as the government and members of the public were not being regularly updated on the progress that is being made by the team to complete the project within the stipulated time. This increased worries and concerns over possible delays. In addition, the team would sometimes fail to give other members design information, which made them underprice the steelwork. Furthermore, some decisions appeared to have been made hurriedly without communicating the plans to all stakeholders who had funded the project. As a result, British parliament had complained about several alterations that were made at the ulterior stages without communication. Therefore, the project team members were practicing closed communication strategies in which there is no room for feedback. In such as communication model, the project team sends messages to stakeholders without receiving any feedback. The role of receivers is to consume the message without questioning it. As a result, most decisions were being made without proper consultation and open discussion on the requirements.

Recommending Effective Communication Strategies

Communication is crucial for the successful and timely completion of a particular project, on budget and within the scope and goals required. The project manager and upper level managers should agree that effective communication strategies are essential to the completion of a particular project and for the organization to attain its strategic initiatives. In light of these concerns, there are various recommended strategies that the project team should have utilized in order to promote effective communication with stakeholders (Hedeman, Van Heemst & Fredriksz, 2012).  First, the team should have developed a communication management plan that includes a description of the ways in which, and the frequency with which, stakeholders are updated with information. The communication plan should also take into account the results of stakeholder analysis and the unique information that different types of stakeholders need. The communication strategy that should be used is not supposed to merely revolve around just sending information. Instead, it should be a two-way process. This includes assessing the different types of information that stakeholders require and the data that must be supplied to the project. Moreover, the project team should work on ensuring that feedback from members of the public are included in the process of decision making (Hedeman, Van Heemst & Fredriksz, 2012 Therefore, instead of embracing a one-way or open communication model, there is need to embrace two-way communication that accommodates feedback and complaints from all stakeholder groups that are important to the project. This promotes sharing of divergent views, thereby improving project quality.

Resource Management

Resource Conflicts Identified in the Project and How it was Handled

Resource conflicts occur when the resource demands exceed supply. This situation also takes place when the project scope is expanded beyond the allocated resources. In the case of Wembley national stadium, resource conflicts emerged when the project scope was changed and the money allocated ended up to be insufficient for the completion of the tasks. Initially, approximately 757 million pounds had been allocated for the completion of the project. The football association provided 148 million pounds whereas the banks financed the project with 433 million. The remaining funds were provided by the government and sports England. While this budget was supposed to meet the needs of all project expenditures in accordance with the previous project, changes were later made in the project scope and stadium design. This resulted in the budget costs surpassing the budgeted amount. As a result, stakeholders of the project were compelled to add more funds in order to meet the project costs before the deadline could reach. This provided a clear case of resource conflict.

Best Practices in Resource Management

One of the most effective ways in which resource conflicts can be minimized is by arranging each project task and requirements in accordance with their slack times. In case this is not sufficient to address resource conflicts, the availabilities of the affected resource types need to be temporarily increased in the corresponding periods (Klein, 2014). This can be attained by approving work or lending equipment. However, this may result in additional costs. Therefore, in order to keep the resource requirements as low as possible, time-constrained scheduling can be considered. This may involve rearranging non-critical jobs within their slack times such that the total additional costs are reduced and the project termination is not delayed. Moreover, balancing a single project can help to ensure that its personnel demands do not go beyond the financial capacity (Klein, 2014). Time-phased resource and asset utilization plans can be laid out in tables and graphs and be generated by project management software packages.

References

Gurjar, N. (2016). A forward looking approach to project management: tools, trends, and the

impact of disruptive technologies, http://www.springer.com/us/book/9789811007811

Heldman, K. (2015). PMP project management professional exam deluxe study guide: updated

for the 2015 Exam, https://www.slideshare.net/vadimkhan/kim-heldman-5th-edition-pmp-study-guide

Hedeman, B., Van Heemst, G. V., & Fredriksz, H. (2012). Project Management, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300727894_0800_Organization_Management_OM

Klein, R. (2014). Scheduling of resource-constrained projects(Vol. 10), https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4615-4629-0_3