MNG00785 Project Management - Beachside Cottage - Project Report Assignment Help

• Discussion on relevant theories

The aim of this project is to renovate a beachside cottage, according to which the scope of the project can be defined. The scope of this project involves a broad range of activities; accordingly, the WBS or Work Breakdown Structure is defined. After the definition of the project scope is complete, the project manager of a project defines and illustrates the milestones of the project with high-level understanding.

 The WBS corresponding to a project is a logical and consistent method to divide the project into small integral parts for better management and monitoring of the project (Kloppenborg 2014, p.220). WBS basically is a project management tool that reflects a hierarchical decomposition that can transform a project into deliverable work elements. In general, breaking the entire project into several parts speeds up the entire project management process. In addition to this, the WBS helps in optimization of project schedule and cost of the project.     

Responsibility Assignment Matrix or RAM refers to a matrix, which reflects all the work packages and its corresponding resources. The RACI chart is a modified form of RAM consisting of the role of stakeholders in the entire project management. The roles of stakeholders can be divided into four parts namely Responsible, Accountable, Consult and Informing (Kloppenborg 2014, p.297). RACI matrix is done according to the WBS structure. RACI matrix is useful for subject matter experts as well as the project manager to assign activities. In a RACI matrix, individual activity is assigned to an individual person.

Once, the responsible person behind each activity is decided, making the project schedule is easy. A Gantt chart is a diagrammatic representation of a work breakdown structure and provides a pictorial representation of the project schedule (Kloppenborg 2014, p.297). In Gantt chart representation, tasks and its associated subtasks can be presented in a tree structure providing an advantage to the project manager to complete the project according to the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

AoN or Activity on Node is terminology in project management, which uses a different number of boxes to identify scheduled activities. The boxes are connected logically with each other according to the schedule of the subtasks of the project.  Generally, an AoN diagram consists of activities in a project starting from start to finish. The logic of AoN diagram is similar to the Gantt chart, however, the representation of AoN diagram is different- it uses blocks instead of a scheduled representation of Gantt chart. AoN diagram shows the logical path of activities. Instead of a tabular representation as represented in the Gantt chart, AoN used logical network representation and a critical path to optimize scheduled activities.  

After a project manager evaluates the activities involved in the projects, the respective project manager can evaluate the overloaded activities and accordingly every person involved in the project are allocated activities. Project overloads can happen when a subtask is running behind the allocated schedule. In order to manage project overloads, certain activities are allocated to certain workers. Sometimes an individual activity can be divided into different activities, where the first portion of the activities is performed in scheduled time whereas the last portion is delayed. The resource overload strategy is not, however, effective if one single lengthy task is to be completed as allocation cannot be distributed. 

However, the strategy will become effective if an individual task can be divided into various parts. If resource overload happens at any time, the leveling of resource needs to be done as done in the game of Tetris (Kloppenborg 2014, p.302). 

Budget allocation is another requirement that needs to be started a few months earlier before the project begins. Budget allocation helps to estimate the cost of a project and accordingly a cost management plan can be devised.  Cost of a project can be divided into two types- fixed cost and variable cost (Kloppenborg 2014, p.331). Calculation of fixed cost is easy as its value is constant, whereas, in the case of variable cost, a definite value cannot be obtained.  A fixed budget has to be allocated beforehand the project starts to make a definitive estimation of before entering into a detailed planning stage. Depending upon the complexity of the project, some project manager makes definitive estimates, while others make variable estimates. Estimation can be done by a different procedure. In the current repairment project, Bottom-up estimating seems to be more suitable as it discusses the cost in every point of the project according to the WBS (Kloppenborg 2014, p.337).