Project Management Creating Innovative Products

Question: Discuss about theProject Managementfor Creating Innovative Products. Answer: Introduction Any project is usually designed to help achieve a certain pre-established outcome. For this purpose project objectives have to be clearly stated before its implementation so that the success or failure can be established using these objectives. Therefore for a project to be deemed successful, all the objectives stated must be achieved. On the contrary a project is deemed unsuccessful if its initially established objectives are not met. Projects usually have people with interests in them; these are often referred to as project stakeholders. For them, implementation or lack of implementation of a given project affects them either positively or negatively (Berkun Berkun,2008). In this essay, I will analyze the implementation of Non-motor Geocoding for fire and risk accumulation project for Australia. This was a project for UW Non-Motor of ABZ insurance designed to help in effective risk management for clients. The implementation of this project was necessitated by the fact that the process of checking fire blocks and risk accumulation which initially was done trough paper based map consumed a lot of time and resulted to errors (Emond Steins,2011) .There was therefore the need to establish an alternative method that would make the process more effective and efficient thus leading to reliable sets of data to be used in risk management. The application would also simplify the work of the underwriter by making it less time consuming and more efficient. The application had a number of objectives which included helping the underwriter in processing insurance for different disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and fire and wind storms among others. It was also designed to assess the potential risk of damage resulting from such disasters up to the residences of the clients. The design of the application was also meant to establish risk levels as well as sharing these levels. Its other objective was to assess the potential risk of damage as a result of occurrence of the identified risk. It was also meant to help establish the circumstances surrounding the occurrence of such risks and avail the same information to the underwriter. This was meant to be a deviation from the manual system which was initially used and which resulted to significant amount of errors and time wastage (Ferraro, 2012). The stakeholders for this project included the project sponsor, who was actually the vice president of the company, business project manager, and technical lead, the clients for the project included the It department, claims department, sales and manufacturing department and underwriting non-motor department. My discussion will therefore be based on this project. Basically the theory of project management should reveal how stakeholders actions lead to the success or failure of a project (Heldman,2011). For the achievement of project objectives, there is supposed to be a team work approach by the various project stakeholders this was clearly demonstrated in this given project. My experience with the team was amazing, we managed to work collectively by collaborating in given activities, sharing ideas, seeking clarifications and finally in taking early corrective actions to ensure that the success of the project was not affected. As discussed in class, the project was effectively designed to meet all the user needs, and then checks were put in place to ensure that there was no deviation from the intended course of action for the achievement of the overall project objectives. There was also continuous improvement of the systems so that the quality of the project was maintained throughout. This firsthand experience really brought a lot of insight in me regarding project management .I was able to acquire a wide range of skills regarding project management .Besides I was able to establish and build relationships with other players in the project. I was able to establish the important role of project planning, monitoring and evaluation in the achievement of project objectives. Successful implementation of this project was dependent on number of factors. As the project manager, I was aware of the responsibility bestowed upon me for the successful completion and implementation of the project. I therefore had to do everything in my capacity to ensure that the project was implemented as intended so that time and resources did not go into waste and also to ensure that the trust entrusted on me was not broken. I brought the team together, ensured that processes were adhered to and kept all the stages of the implementation in check to ensure that all errors were corrected before proceeding to the next phase. A project manager has been defined as a person who is responsible for planning execution and closing of a project. As the project manager, I played a significant role to the success of the project (Highsmith,2010).In particular, I estimated the cost for the project, planned and defined the scope of the project, I also established and planned for the resources to be used in the project and made clear the sequence and order of events, I effectively lead and managed the project management team, I also closely monitored every stage of implementation to ensure that everything was implemented according to the plan, I also established a time frame for implementation of the project and managed project risks among other responsibilities that can be attributed to the successful implementation of the project. By working hand in hand with other team members instead of bossing them around, and by keeping them motivated throughout the implementation process, I was able to ensure that everything wa s carried out as planned. By ensuring that the schedule for the project implementation was adhered to I was able to keep track of all the activities and ensure that no unnecessary activities were introduced which would lead to further delay in the implementation of the project. Apart from this also management of resources was an integral component of the success of the project. It is true that wastage of resources set aside for a given project can lead to delay in implementation of a project or make a project fail to achieve its intended objectives which makes the whole process futile (Kerzner,2013) From the whole process, I was able to draw a lot of insight on Project management. I learnt that there are there very critical components of a project namely scope, schedule and budget. Project scope pertains a list of deliverables that need to be considered for the success of the project. Given under project scope are project features. This refers to the special attributes of a given project or the things to be incorporated in a given project to make it able to achieve its objectives, Features such as the number of users that can use the software at a go could be disastrous if they were not considered. Included in the scope of the project also are the specific functions that will be carried out, for this project, a number of functions were identified before its implementation. Establishment of such was critical in ensuring that the success of the project was achieved. I also learnt of the important role played by deadlines in project management. Deadline refers to the period of time by which a project should be completed. Setting deadlines helps to keep the group focused towards meeting the projects standards within the stipulated deadline. Without deadlines people are likely to wander around and waste so much time that could have been used for the project (Stackpole,2013). The schedule of a project refers to the listing of project activities and deliverables in a sequential manner for the start to the finish date. All activities are arranged in the order I which they follow one another from the first activity to the final activity scheduling of events in reducing confusion among the project and also enable monitoring of project activities. I was able to know the fact that scheduling of events is important in ensuring that a project is implemented successfully because it helps in identification of errors and rectifying them before proceeding on to the next stage. If errors are not identified early enough, the overall quality of a project might be affected The final component is the budget .A budget is defined as the amount of money that intends to be spent in a given undertaking. I was able to identify that every step of a project is dependent on the budget. This signifies the important role that budgets play in project management. Lack of adequate funding has been responsible for stalling of many projects. Buying of materials to be used in a project is dependent on the budget, paying of salaries also is dependent on the project budget. It is sufficient budget also that allows research to establish the needs of a given project (Schmidt, 2009). I will make sure that in the next project an adequate budget will be set aside so that the project can continue without challenges. Conclusion Based on the above exposition, we can conclude that project management is not all about having a group of people implementing a project. Instead, a number of deliverables have to be put in place so that the project can meet its objectives. Without this, the efforts of project team would be in futility. References: Berkun, S., Berkun, S. (2008). Making things happen: mastering project management. Beijing, O'Reilly. Emond, J., Steins, C. (2011). Pro web project management. [Berkeley, Calif.], Apress. Ferraro, J. (2012). Project management for non-project managers. New York, NY, AMACOM. https://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=881959. Heldman, K. (2011). Project management jumpstart. Hoboken, NJ, Wile Highsmith, J. A. (2010). Agile project management: creating innovative products. Upper Saddle River, NJ, Addison-Wesley. Kerzner, H. (2013). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. https://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1113482. Knight, J., Thomas, R., Angus, B., CASE, J. (2012). Project management for profit: a failsafe guide to keeping projects on track and on budget. https://www.books24x7.com/marc.asp?bookid=47514 Kogon, K., Blakemore, S., Wood, J. (2015). Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager: A FranklinCovey Title. Dallas, Texas, BenBella Books, Inc. https://public.eblib.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=1922361. Schmidt, T. (2009). Strategic project management made simple: practical tools for leaders and teams. Hoboken, N.J., John Wiley Sons. Stackpole, C. (2013). A project manager's book of forms: a companion to the PMBOK guide. Hoboken, N.J., Wiley. Young, T. L. (2013). Successful project management.