Posted: June 10th, 2015

Project Management Assignment 5: Risk and Quality Management Planning

Project Management Assignment 5:  Risk and Quality Management Planning

Assignment Tips

In this exercise you will return to revising your PM Plan to add the Communication, Quality, and Risk Management sub-plans to the PM Plan.   The goal of this exercise is to become familiar with some of the less-used, but higher-performing project management techniques.  Generally, the last assignment expanded your PM method maturity by adding resources and costs.  This assignment continues to expand your PM method maturity by considering risks to project performance, and quality of the deliverables.

Assignment
1.    Resume the planning process by revising your Project Management Plan.  Add the following to your PM Plan:
a.    Complete the Communication Plan section of the PM Plan.  The primary requirement is to complete the Communication Plan table.  See the example from the Project Communication Plan module of the course and also PMBOK Chapter 10.
b.    Complete the Quality Management Plan section of the PM Plan.  The primary requirement is to describe any specific quality assurance and quality control activities that are needed to assure the quality of the project deliverables.  Describe any requirements that are appropriate for your project.  Consider the following by the type of project:
i.    Event Project – evaluate the purchased services by contacting references or sampling.  For a wedding, you should hear the band, taste the food, or contact references provided by the service provider to evaluate quality.
ii.    Product Development – testing of the new product prototypes is often an important QA activity.  Confirming the specifications of the initial production is another method of QC.
iii.    Process Improvement – this is challenging as the deliverable is typically a change in the process – change is difficult.  One thing to consider is the confirmation that the change has been implemented, is effective, and meets the goals of the project.  This kind of follow-through is not common but important.
iv.    General – if you are not sure about qualities, look at the overall objectives of the project and drill-down into them to find deliverables that are important to assure quality.
c.    Complete the Risk Management Plan section of the PM Plan.  The primary requirement is to complete the Risk Register.  You should also begin this section with some simple narrative to describe the nature of risks that are important in the project.
i.    The Risk Register is an Excel table.  Double-click to edit it.  Enter in the information describing the risk, Probability of occurrence, Impact score, and the Severity will be calculated.  See the lecture material on Risk Management for guidelines as to scoring.
ii.    Sort the Risk Register by selecting all rows and then picking the Data ribbon and the Sort button.  Choose the Severity column, and choose that it should sort from highest to lowest.
iii.    For the greatest risks you should identify a mitigation response that you plan to take to reduce the probability and/or impact of the risk.  For some risks with lower severity scores, you could consider a contingency plan.  For the lowest risks, you may identify these risk responses as “watchlist”.
iv.    The evaluation of risks may add activities and budget costs to the PM plan and your project schedule as needed to mitigate the risks.  The column for “Reserve Amount” is used to identify these budget items.
2.    Rename the PM Plan file and your MS Project schedule file names beginning with your first and last name (such as, George Washington – PM Plan)
3.    Upload your completed files to the assignment item on Blackboard by the due date.  Late assignments are subject to the score reduction policy in the course syllabus.

Assessment
A grading rubric has been provided that outlines the expectations of each feature of the assignment.  The quality of your work in each of the features will be the basis for your grade performance.  Although consideration will be given for additional work on the plan and schedule, the required assignment will be only for the specific sections assigned above.