Posted: April 10th, 2015

Project Management

Project Management

Order Description

Analysis of project management techniques
Strategic analysis tools
According to Young et al (2012), one of the reasons public projects fail is because they do not have a clear strategic guideline. While strategy has been used in other areas of management, it has just become part of project management (Young, Young, Jordan, & O’Connor, 2012, p. 889). This is despite there being an agreement that strategy is the main reason why projects would be initiated (Office of Government Commerce, 2009). Some of the tools suggested in the analysis of the strategy include a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) and PESTLE (political, economic, social, technology, legal, and environmental factor) (Srdjevic, Bajcetic, & Srdjevic, 2012, p. 3380; Williams & Figueiredo., 2011).
In making the business case for the project, it was argued that a key strength of Birstall Park and ride would be improved security within the area. It was intended that with the installation of closed circuit cameras and improved lighting by way of bright street lights, actual crime and the fear of crime would be brought down significantly. However, it was opined that building the project would undermine the historical heritage that is associated with Leicester. This is because there would be digging up of old streets that date to the Roman era and a possible removal of historic buildings to make way for new structures. There was the opportunity that the development of the park would lead to the development of more housing projects within the area. The expected result would be an increase in business activity within the new bus park and greater benefits for the city and its residents. However, these opportunities would come at the cost of greenhouse emissions, which the project’s business case notes to be unavoidable.
As a public project, political issues were a part and parcel of Birstall park and ride project. While the political aspect is not defined directly in the business case, the project is the result of policies that have been brought forth by politicians who have vested interests. However, the business case does consider the economic impacts that the project is expected to have on the residents. For instance, it was expected that city-based employers will be able to attract employees and that there would be development of tourism and housing projects within Birstall. The project also considered legal issues such as delays in development due to residents of houses that were set for demolition refusing to move out.
Birstall project’s business plan makes a strong case of the use of SWOT and PESTLE tools in analysing the impacts that are expected once the project is complete. There is the identification of key strengths, slight, or moderate benefits. At the same time, the case identifies the negatives that are to be drawn from the project. It also identifies various environmental factors that will have an impact on the project’s success, including political, legal, and economic aspects. Such an analysis paves way for an extensive risk examination to be conducted. However, the strategic analysis is not complete as it does not consider the very-long-term impacts that the project will have on the community. For example, it does not consider the possibility of the bus park being converted into a train centre to cater for an expanding population.
Critical Analysis

Recommendations
Stakeholder analysis
Stakeholders have been defined as those groups that affect, or can be affected, by an activity (Freeman, 1984). A stakeholder analysis should be done in the light of the impact that these groups have on the project. The reasoning behind the selective description of stakeholders is because a project can have tens of groups that are influenced by its outcomes but not in equal measures. Therefore, a selective analysis leads to the prioritization of stakeholder needs and matches them to project goals (Ireland, West, & Smith, 2012). The implication is that it is not enough to simply identify stakeholders for the project managers must go ahead and match the needs of these groups with the objectives that are to be derived from the project.
In a public project, such as Birstall Park and ride, the immediate beneficiaries are the individuals being targeted to benefit. In this case, the business case identified the community within the park’s surroundings to be a major stakeholder group. These residents were likely to benefit the most by virtue of an efficient transport system. On the other hand, they were likely to suffer the most if the project was to stall midway through increased traffic congestion. However, the community does not benefit in the same ways. For instance, the business case notes that the greatest benefit of the park and ride project would be improved security and lighting. Therefore, those living more than a mile from the new project are not expected to benefit as such merits are confined to the parking lot and the adjacent bus park. A case is also made for the severance of school-going children who walk to institutions east of highway A6. With the building of footbridges, it is expected that these stakeholders will benefit from reduced severance despite benefits being classified as moderate. Other stakeholders included the residents of Hallam Fields, which had approximately nine hundred homes. The business case estimated that five hundred of these homes would be dependent on the proper functioning of the park and ride project and could be considered to be major stakeholder. Other stakeholders were the politicians, whose interests in the project’s success was critical even when they have not been included in the project’s business case.
The team that developed Birstall Park and ride can be argued to have identified major stakeholders and engaged with them constructively. The business case notes that there were public discussions regarding the project and that these were held with major stakeholders. The implication is that major stakeholders were looped in on the project and their objections and ideas taken seriously. For example, the business case notes that there were objections to the project from some stakeholders who were of the opinion that it would erode the viability of existing bus services. Other concerns that were voiced during consultations were the impacts that the project would have on the environment. Birstall park and ride project took these conversations seriously. For example, the completed projected took into account its impacts on the environment and ensured that the completed project was 30% landscaped by planting shrubs (British Broadcasting Corporation, 2009). So as not to erode existing bus services, the Birstall project hired private transport firms that would compete effectively with other services. The new park would also be linked with another park and ride centre in Enderby whose completion was to be one year earlier.
Critical Analysis

Recommendations

Risk analysis
The modern manager has to develop strategies on how to deal with several risk categories that include the impact of technology, financial risk factors, environmental safety, and the impact of regulations (Lock, 2007). Risk analysis becomes even more important in project because of its pull of various organizational arms and the high levels of uncertainty that are associated with projects. For illustrations, it is important to observe the project team that was tasked with the building of Birstall Park and ride facility that is illustrated in Figure 2. As illustrated, the project drew officials who represented various council and county departments from finance, legal, street lighting to archaeology and ecology departments. Despite the vast inclusion of every major department, there is the stark reality that the project might never come to realisation.
Birstall park and ride project managers developed a risk matrix that qualified major risks that had some level of impact on the entire project. These were aggregated by virtue of an impact on the project and the probability of occurrence. Thereafter, a mitigation policy was developed and responsibility assigned to one of the project team leaders. For example, a delay in the acquisition of land was expected to have a devastating impact on the entire project because without land, there would be project to talk about. Therefore, this risk had a maximum impact factor of five. On the other hand, the probability of this risk occurring was low because planning for the park and ride project had begun almost a decade in advance. The only ongoing land negotiations were for the parking space that could accommodate one thousand cars. Therefore, the probability of this risk occurring was rated as two out of a possible four. There was also a timeline of how long the project would be setback should the risk occur. The team even set aside a sum of money that could be used to handle the costs of arraying this risk amounting to £28,000.
According to Zwikael and Ahn (2011), project managers perform poorly in risk planning and the development of effective strategies to counter the stated risks. However, project managers at Birstall Park and ride could be argued to have been exhaustive in their risk analysis. To begin with, they separated risk probabilities from their impacts on the project. The distinction is important for the manager who wishes to rank risks using the weights of the two factors. The project team also assigned each risk to individual members. The result is that each individual within the team knew what his role was towards accomplishing project goals. Should the risk occur, there would be no panic as there was someone responsible for heading that area (Maylor, 2010). Therefore, on the matter of risk analysis, it can be argued that the Birstall park and ride project is a template example of how the critical issue can be handled in both public and private projects.
Critical Analysis

Recommendations

Work breakdown structures and Gantt charts
One of the key roles of a project manager is the planning of the entire scheme of operations (Zahra, Nazir, Khalid, Raana, & Majeed., 2014, p. 45). One of the commonly used tools is the Gantt chart as introduced by Henry Gantt in the 1910s (Zahra, Nazir, Khalid, Raana, & Majeed., 2014, p. 43). In a Gantt chart, the list of activities is listed on the vertical axis together with their corresponding timelines. On the horizontal axis, the duration of these activities is mapped to correspond with start and ending dates (Ward & Daniel, 2006). The result is a visualization of the entire project on a single plane. This makes it easy to understand the flow of task as well as their dependencies (Department for Business Information and Skills, 2010). The flow of these tasks leads to a breakdown of the work that is to be carried out and is referred to as the work breakdown structure.
The Birstall project had seventeen major tasks that had to be completed before the project could be considered as success. As illustrated in Figure 2 and 3, each assignment had a specific person tied to its accomplishment. The first task was the raising of funds through the Common Infrastructure Fund from the United Kingdom government, which was done as early as September, 2008. The raising of funds was systematically followed by the receipt of business cases and the designing of the site. These tasks correspond with the new procurement process where contractors are let-in on the design in the very early stages of the project. Other major tasks included consultations with stakeholders, which took a whole month. The project’s Gantt chart shows that there was heavy emphasis on the seeking of permits and permissions from relevant authorities and stakeholders, processes that took a whole year to complete. Actual construction took nine months only, which points to a speedy completion of a well-run project. The last task was landscaping. The entire work breakdown structure shows great emphasis on the consideration of risks. It also points to a systematic order of tasks, which is critical when carrying out large projects.
Critical Analysis

Recommendations.