Homework #1

Roberto Eduardo Valencia Escalante

Monday June 5 of 2017
Chapter 3 of the Book "Project Management in Practice"

a) Do the review questions of page 108 (of the book, not of the Pdf file)

1. What are some of the benefits of setting up a project plan for routine, frequent
projects?

For both projects a project plan for routine have the benefits:

Establish and maintain adequate communication and commitment to stakeholders

Select the appropriate processes required to achieve the project objectives
Get a detailed description of the project s scope
Use a defined approach that can be adapted to the needs
Describe the technological and managerial approaches of the work.
Meet the requirements to meet the needs and expectations of stakeholders
To balance the constraints of scope, schedules, budget, quality, resources and risks

2. Discuss the reason for inviting the functional managers to a Project launch meeting
rather than their subordinates who may actually be doing the work

The reason for inviting the managers to the project launch meeting is to provide information on
the duration, budget or maximum recommended activities of projects. Also provide
information on project cost, project organizational structure, deliverables depending on
customer requirements, contractual documents, periodic evaluation documents of the
progress of the work and costs to be compared with the estimate, etc.

The purpose of senior managements presence is to ensure that the group understands the
firms commitment to the project. It is particularly important for the functional managers to
understand that management is making a real commitment, not merely paying lip service.

3. Discuss the pros and cons of identifying and including the project team at the project
launch meeting

If the project's launch meeting includes the project team, the following benefits are provided:

All are kept fully informed for any changes that will have an effect on the schedule, cost
or process.
Encourage the compression of the project team as a whole.

Cons:

Some launch meetings are limited to brainstorming a problem

4. Why do so many self-directed teams perform poorly? What can be done to improve
their performance?
5. Why is participatory management beneficial to project planning? How does the process
of participatory management actually work in planning?
The participatory management is beneficial to project planning because the project scope is
understood and temporarily fixes, the various functional managers understand their
responsibilities and have committed to develop an initial task and resource plan, also the
project plan will become more and more detailed and firmer.

6. What is the difference between the resource column on the WBS (that would include
personnel needed by the project) and the Assigned to column?

The difference between these two methodologies is that, the resource column on the WBS can
generate a list of activities, and each activity can have different levels of importance, the other
methodology can generate a tree of activities called "Gozinto chart".

7. Under what circumstances is it sensible to do without a project launch meeting?

Once senior management has decided to fund a major project, or a highly important small
project, a project launch meeting should be called.

8. What limitation associated with traditional project management techniques like grant
charts and precedence diagrams does the design matrix structure overcome?

Project management processes

Product-oriented processes