Project Management Plan Research Articles

A Project Management Plan to Reach Sustainable Competitive Advantage for a Photovoltaic (PV) Manufacturer

Because the skills, knowledge and management required for exploitation and exploration are contradictory, firms still struggle to utilize useful methods to keep exploitative and exploratory activities balanced. Thus, a mathematical model is proposed to challenge the above vacancy. First, in order to allocate limited resources flexibly when implementing projects, a computer-mediated social groupware with Delphi technique is developed to manage conflicts. However, these operations may result in path dependence or lock-in technologies in the long run. Then, second, in order to adjust unbalanced exploitation and exploration after a period of time, a fuzzy analytic network process with fuzzy goal programming is proposed to facilitate the selection of projects in exogenous and endogenous environments. After investigating a real case of a photovoltaic (PV) manufacturer, the paper concludes that a balanced exploration and exploitation can be achieved, and sustainable competitive advantages can subsequently be reached.

Dust pollution control on construction sites: Awareness and self-responsibility of managers

Dust pollution is a slow-onset process with damaging consequences. While past research mainly deals with the sources of dust, health implications and control measures, very little has been done to investigate the behaviour of those who are responsible for its management. The Norm Activation Model is employed in this study to examine the awareness of consequences and self-responsibility of managers with regard to dust pollution control on construction sites. Managers' own experiences with dust outbreaks, type and size of the company and its commitment to dust pollution control are found to positively moderate the awareness of consequences of managers. Perception of dust pollution as a trivial and isolated event which leads to discomfort was found to have negative moderating effects on the responsibility for control. The view that dust pollution control is less important compared to other activities is also found to have a negative moderating effect. Water suppression emerged as the main dust control method employed by majority of contractors. Managers' self-responsibility is severely affected by the use of water as the main method of suppression because wastage of water is deemed to be environmentally damaging. In order to influence the behaviour of managers, construction companies should demonstrate a genuine commitment to dust control; recognize dust pollution control in environmental management plans and project management plans; implement regular monitoring; reduce over-reliance on water suppression; and use innovative dust pollution control techniques. Managers should alter their perception of dust pollution as a ‘condition’ that need monitoring and control.

They think all of this is new: Leveraging librarians' project management skills for the digital humanities

ABSTRACTThis article will explore how to develop the holistic project management planning (PMP) mindset in different parts of the library when undertaking digital humanities (DH) projects. PMP skills do exist within libraries and librarians, but organizational alignment typically does not allow for the most effective applications of librarians' PMP skills to DH projects. This article will explore how the skills of public services librarians, technical services librarians and administrative librarians align with the PMP phases and the challenges that each kind of librarian has to overcome in completing successful DH projects.

An Overview of Project Communication Management in Construction Industry Projects

Communication is the heart of implemented projects of the construction industry, where project managers consume 90% of their time communicating with project participants. However, some barriers occur during this significant process of transferring project information. Therefore, this review paper highlights these constraints and guide project managers to take proper action to avoid them. Furthermore, as project communication needs to be carefully managed, this paper introduces communication management due to its high value, all long with the communication management plan as one of the main elements of the overall project management plan that aims to meet the stakeholders' requirements by delivering successful projects eventually.

A hybrid grey based artificial neural network and C&R tree for project portfolio selection

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is twofold: the selection of project portfolios through hybrid artificial neural network algorithms, feature selection based on grey relational analysis, decision tree and regression; and the identification of the features affecting project portfolio selection using the artificial neural network algorithm, decision tree and regression. The authors also aim to classify the available options using the decision tree algorithm.Design/methodology/approachIn order to achieve the research goals, a project-oriented organization was selected and studied. In all, 49 project management indicators were chosen from A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), and the most important indicators were identified using a feature selection algorithm and decision tree. After the extraction of rules, decision rule-based multi-criteria decision making matrices were produced. Each matrix was ranked through grey relational analysis, similarity to ideal solution method and multi-criteria optimization. Finally, a model for choosing the best ranking method was designed and implemented using the genetic algorithm. To analyze the responses, stability of the classes was investigated.FindingsThe results showed that projects ranked based on neural network weights by the grey relational analysis method prove to be better options for the selection of a project portfolio. The process of identification of the features affecting project portfolio selection resulted in the following factors: scope management, project charter, project management plan, stakeholders and risk.Originality/valueThis study presents the most effective features affecting project portfolio selection which is highly impressive in organizational decision making and must be considered seriously. Deploying sensitivity analysis, which is an innovation in such studies, played a constructive role in examining the accuracy and reliability of the proposed models, and it can be firmly argued that the results have had an important role in validating the findings of this study.

An Approach to Designing PHM Systems with Systems Engineering

This work shows that given the numerous specific constraints that PHM systems for turbofan engines have to deal with and despite the low level of criticality of such systems, the use of Systems Engineering (or even System of Systems Engineering) methods and tools is essential to ensure project success. Various aspects of the methodology which were applied in our projects are presented here: on one hand general system design and project management considerations, on the other hand transversal methodological items such as model-based systems engineering and methods to manage requirements, hypotheses, interfaces, configuration, change, compatibility, validation, verification and integration. Associated pitfalls and lessons learned from applying these elements are highlighted, especially the importance of defining from the beginning of the design all the project management plans, with a constant focus on customer needs satisfaction, interfaces and design documentation while allowing iterations.

MANAGING CROSS-CULTURAL ONLINE COMMUNICATION IN MULTICULTURAL PROJECT TEAMS: THE CASE OF CULTOUR+ PROJECT

The paper aims to present the process and partnership building in multicultural project teams through the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) taking into account the Cultour+ communication project management plan to build virtual teams. CULTOUR+ is a Strategic Partnership (SP) of universities, local governments, SMEs and NGOs, that following the mainlines of the Higher Education Modernization Agenda, will offer high quality and innovative courses and tools, integrating innovation, international mobility and cross-border cooperation to enhance capacity building in higher education curricula in the fields of cultural tourism and hospitality, cultural management and shared cultural heritage. This paper aims to enhance the effective use of ICT in project work by analyzing the way it fits in with various project activities having as an example the Cultour+ project. This approach may facilitate the choice of appropriate tools by each project team and show how ICT can support key processes like leadership, management, communication and co-operation within other European project teams.

Charting the Future of SPN: The SPN Strategic Plan

Charting the Future of SPN: The SPN Strategic Plan

THE EVALUATION SYSTEM OF DESIGN SOLUTIONS FOR RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY ON THE PRE-INVESTMENT STAGE THROUGH NEURAL NETWORK TECHNOLOGY

Ever since the Soviet Union design solutions were evaluated according to different criteria and indicators. At the present stage of evaluation systems of design solutions stands systemengineering doctrine is allocated. It is complemented by the theory of efficiency and financial sustainability investment project in view of the general market concept. Also great attention is paid to the virtual object modeling. It is urgent to include the behavior prediction of an investment construction project model at each stage of its life cycle. The high cost of all phases of this life cycle makes it necessary to calculate the feasibility of the investment. Very urgent to do it as accurately as possible and before we start of design works on the stage of the investment plan evaluation. Belarus has legislated pre-investment stage of construction project development. To evaluate the design solution at this stage is necessary to develop an investment justification, a project management plan and a business plan. They will evaluate and will compare several options for future objects by the complex. This requires not only time, but considerable financial costs. In order to optimize the process to develop an evaluation system design solutions based on existing projects. It allows the customer (investor) choose design solutions to build the object without developing of pre-design documentations for several options. This system it is advisable to try out the example of apartment house building with the assistance of the national fund of project documentation and objects-analogues data bank. The developed evaluation system of design solutions for residential real estate objects in the pre-investment stage is supposed to use the theory of neural networks and neyroprogramming. This system bases on the input parameters projects. The hidden layer neurons are trained to choose suitable projects of apartment houses with their classification. The projects will be classified depending on the summary significance of their main output parameters. As a result, the customer receives the predicted basic parameters of the future investment project without developing a complex pre-design documentation.

EVALUATING THE CONTRACTORS’ QUALITY CONTROL PRACTICES ON CONSTRUCTION SITES IN MALAYSIA

Quality is a standard of something that measured against other similar thing of its kind, whereas quality control is a process that involve in a production stage of a product that will determine the product’s standard. Quality can also be defined as meeting the legal, aesthetic and functional requirements of a project. It also can be defined from the view point of function, by how closely the project conforms to its requirements (Arditi and Gunaydin, 1997). Quality control requires the site person and the site team to inspect the accomplished work to ensure its alignment with the project scope. In practice, projects typically have a dedicated quality control team which focuses on this area (Quality control, http://en.wikipedia.org). According to Oxforddictionaries.com, quality control is a system of maintaining standards in manufactured products by testing a sample of the output against the specification (Oxford dictionaries, 2013). Performing quality control involves monitoring specific project result to ensure that they comply with the relevant quality standard while identifying ways to improve overall quality. The main outputs of quality control include quality control measurements, validated changes, validated deliverables, organizational process asset updates, change requests, project management plan updates, and project document updates (Schwalbe, 2011). Thus, this study aimed at evaluating the contractor’s quality control practices on construction site in Malaysia and to determine the commonly used practices in construction site.

Why e-government projects fail? An analysis of the Healthcare.gov website

Electronic government or e-government project failure has been widely discussed in the literature. Some of the common reasons cited for project failure are design-reality gaps, ineffective project management and unrealistic planning. Research shows that more than half of e-government projects result in total or partial failures with regard to the initially grounded standards, scheduling or budgeting plans, while even more fail to meet end users' expectations. This paper focuses on the factors that lead to e-government project failures. It explores the context of project failure and investigates the launch of the U.S. Healthcare.gov website. This case is concerned with a highly public e-government project failure where gaps between political agendas and planning are identified through an examination of media sources and social media data analysis of Twitter discussions. The finding of the analysis indicates that e-government users react against failures, while e-government projects will impact and attract opinion makers' attention that influence audience behavior. This research provides classifications of e-government project failure reasons and sources. Moreover, another contribution is the beginnings of a typology for social media activity against e-government project failures.

Project configuration by means of network theory

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to determine an appropriate sequence to develop the components of a project management plan. Some newcomers to project management become overwhelmed due to the complex relations within these components. Network theory is a widely used tool in fields with complex relations within entities, but it has not yet been applied to configure a project management plan. Although our approach is compatible with any project management standard, the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is an excellent example to illustrate how to apply this methodology due to the complex interdependence among its processes.

Work breakdown structure (WBS) development for underground construction

Abstract A work breakdown structure (WBS) can prove to be pivotal to successful project management planning. There are few published studies about the methodologies or tools to develop the appropriate WBS for a project, and those that are available are limited to the specific areas of construction such as apartment-building construction and boiler manufacturing. This research has an emphasis on developing a methodology with higher generalizability, which has the capability to be customized to complex underground projects. To address this issue, a new methodology that employs hierarchical neural networks to develop the WBS of complex underground projects is presented. This methodology has been applied to several tunnel case studies and it has been shown that for a real project, the model is able to generate the WBS and its activities that are comparable to those generated by a project planner. Consequently, it is concluded that these modeling methods have the capacity to significantly improve the WBSs for complex underground projects and improve key project tasks, such as workload planning, cost estimating and scheduling.

대규모 IT 프로젝트를 위한 실용적 행태관리 방안

본 기술의 진화는 역사상 유래 없는 속도로 사회와 기업의 변화를 가속하고 있고 요구되는 대응을 위해 대형 IT 프로젝트가 긴박하게 추진되고 있다. 고도의 기술과 대규모 업무를 다루고, 막대한 인력과 비용이 투입되는 대규모 프로젝트는 인간 심리와 복잡계 이론에 기반한 전략적 갈등관리가 요구되나, 기존의 관리방법은 이에 부응하는 실용적 기제를 제시하지 못하는 실정으로 프로젝트 실패가 증가하고 있다. 본 연구는 적절한 해법을 찾기 위해 프로젝트 실패 현황과 성과 요인, 프로젝트 리더십에 대해 관련 연구하였고, 대형 IT 프로젝트의 복잡성과 갈등구조에 주목하여 기존의 프로젝트 관리방안에서는 간과하였던 심리학적, 행동경제학적 접근을 접목하였다. 논문에서 제시한 프로젝트 행태관리 방안은 대규모 IT 프로젝트의 주요 실패 행태들을 근원적이고 선제적으로 해소할 수 있는 프로젝트 단계별 행태관리 전략과 실천적 프랙티스를 제시한다. 해당 현장 전문가 및 실무자 그룹의 설문조사를 통해 제안된 행태관리 방안의 유효성에 대한 기대를 검증하였고, 본 방안을 대형 프로젝트 관리에 도입함으로써 보다 안정적인 프로젝트 성공 기반을 확보할 수 있다. Technology developments accelerate the change of the society and companies with unparalleled pace, so large scaled projects are in progress urgently. Large scaled projects deal with high technologies and massive tasks, and these need enormous labor force and costs, it is necessary to manage strategic conflicts based on human psychology and complex system theory. However, traditional management plan fails to suggest practical mechanism for successful projects. We study failure cases and key elements, leadership for projects, and suggest project management plan with psychological and behavioral economy approach by focusing on complexity and conflict structure on large scaled projects. Project behavior management plan, suggested in this study, is designed with phased strategy and practice to solve the failure of large scaled IT projects originally and preemptively. We verified the effectiveness of behavior management plan suggested by investigating experts and working groups, and stable projects are to be progressed with introducing this plan on large-scaled projects.

Project management, briefing and territorial planning. The case of military properties disposal

Il recente dibattito sulle politiche di dismissione dei beni pubblici in Italia ha interessato molti soggetti pubblici e privati. Particolare attenzione e posta su beni architettonici in grado di generare significative ricadute economiche e sulla fase preliminare dei progetti pubblici, facendo riferimento all’approccio anglosassone alla pianificazione dei progetti. A partire da alcuni limiti della legislazione italiana sui lavori pubblici e dall’importanza della fase di briefing, si propone un approccio metodologico basato sull’integrazione di tre strumenti (Swot Analysis, Cia e Ahp) e finalizzato alla strutturazione del brief di progetto. Il caso studio della caserma La Marmora di Torino e presentato per dimostrare come un supporto operativo durante la fase di briefing possa aiutare a definire linee guida strategiche per l’attuazione di progetti di valorizzazione di beni architettonici

Investigating the effect of variability in product development life cycle

Projects have evidently become the core activity in most companies and organisations where they are investing significant amount of resources in different types of projects such as building new services, process improvement, etc. This research focuses on service sector in an attempt to improving project management planning and control activities. The paper investigates the planning and control of software development projects by analysing existing software development models, identifying best practices from these models so as to develop a model for improving software development tasks. The research extends the existing planning and control approaches by considering uncertainty in customer requirements, resource flexibility and risks level variability. A novel approach introduced within this research through the integration of simulation modelling techniques with Taguchi analysis to investigate 'what if' project scenarios. This paper has adopted the concept of Quality Function Deployment in the development of the model, where optimisation routines have been adopted.

Project-based management technique for radiofrequency spectrum planning and allocation: Part Two: The project management plan

Project-based management technique for radiofrequency spectrum planning and allocation: Part Two: The project management plan

Project Management Plan's Research and Application under Resource Constraints

For the problems existing in the traditional RCS, a proved RL-RCS planning model is proposed, and the CPM calculation method of timing allowance which is in consideration of resource tensity, job complexity, risk level is feasible.

Responding to Human Biases in Project Control

Many tools and techniques exist to aid project managers in setting up a plausible project management plan. In the execution phase, however, project control mostly is reduced to monitoring time and cost parameters. This paper aims at creating awareness of the substantial influence of human biases on decision making during projects and also proposes the development of a bias evaluation system by which organizations might reduce negative influence of decision making biases in their future projects. Drawing on the literature on cognitive biases, this paper shows that human biases occur in the subconscious mind (system 1) and therefore decision makers are unaware of biases being in effect. System 1 is very fast and relies mostly on experience and intuition. Explicit reasoning (system 2) is much less susceptible to biases since reasoning is rather explicit and is guided by a sense of logic and methodology, but it is rather slow. Unfortunately, most problems in project control require swift response, hence provoke ideal conditions for activation of system 1 decision making, even if system 2 would be more appropriate. For support of system 2, this paper introduces a project management control cycle (PMCC) that systematically addresses nine relevant elements of a project. However, since humans do not always behave rationally, even the use of this comprehensive PMCC might not guarantee project success. Nevertheless, identifying and preventing dysfunctional human behavior can be considered a prerequisite for successful project management control. Explicit use of the PMCC will promote system 2 thinking during the project, but most biases, by nature, will go unnoticed during the process. Therefore this paper proposes to conduct research into the development of bias detection methods and based on that, research into the existence of human biases on decision making during projects. The research results might enhance the project management capabilities of organizations.

System Dynamics Understanding in Projects: Information Sharing, Psychological Safety, and Performance Effects

Systems thinking has proven useful in project management planning activities and has been suggested as a critical driver of a range of beneficial organizational behaviors. Yet, empirical evidence on the myriad of ways in which systems thinking can impact internal project dynamics and performance remains limited. This study focuses on one aspect of systems thinking in particular: the ability to recognize and understand the dynamics of systems and their features (e.g., feedback and delay). It makes use of a unique, large‐scale interview data set along with objective and structured survey data drawn from multiple sources associated with supply chain system implementation projects. Analysis suggests that an individual's understanding of system dynamics as well as the similarity of such understanding to that typical of their team is, in fact, a strong predictor of both perceptions of psychological safety and information sharing quality in project work. These outcomes appear to mediate the relationship between system dynamics understanding and performance.