Project Life Cycle Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Project Life Cycle - Essay Example The Project Manager requires various general management skills[4] during the different phases of the project. Initiation and Scope Definition, comprises determination and negotiation of requirements, feasibility analysis, and process for the review and revision of requirements. Planning follows and includes process planning, determining deliverables, effort, schedule and cost estimation, resource allocation, risk management, quality management, and plan management. The project manager's role is to verify the requirements, bring in the experts and revalidate requirements and technical feasibility. He needs to baseline the requirements, cost, schedule, and quality of delivery to the smallest detail, thus setting up a solid framework to start work on the project. This phase is critical because unless requirements are set and baselines are defined, the project cannot take off. The project manager needs negotiating skills, estimation and scheduling skills as well as, team building capabilities that help set the base for delivering a project of required quality at a realistic budget. In the Development phase, implementation of plans, supplier contract management, implementation of measurement process, monitor process, control process, and reporting and the various tasks in an IT project. It should be noted that although project objectives have been defined, there may surface problems when the actual developments are taking place. This will require the project manager and stakeholder to negotiate change requests that will continue the development of the project smoothly. About sixty percent of the project life cycle is done during the development phase and internal testing phase where the development team tests the application internally. This phase needs to be on schedule in order that the project deadline is met. The project manager needs good controlling skills to keep the work going and good negotiation skills to handle change requests as well as risk management skills in order that risk are mitigated. Also he needs to be able to keep the energy flowing and the team unified and happy to enable milestones to be met. The Implementation phase The project now moves into the Implementation phase where the IT tasks are Review and Evaluation, which includes the topics of determining satisfaction of requirements and reviewing and evaluating performance. The developed IT application is now deployed or implemented in the client's environment and tested using their parameters. The application is User accepted and then deployed either as a pilot mode or as a full launch. The project manager needs good negotiating skills in case some major fixes or "bugs" as per IT jargon arises during the transition since he needs to go back to client when budgets are almost over. Often the teams are all tired and are anxious to get the project over with and move on. Keeping up the morale to see the project to completion becomes imperative, and if the project manager is a good team player that really helps. The Closeout phase In the closeout phase, the tasks include determining closure and closure activities. The application is running smoothly and the production-support team has taken over. The development team is released. The project manager now documents the project for future reference as well as writes up a lessons-learnt document. In summary, a good project manager is

Is succession planning a neccessity every small to medium family Essay

Is succession planning a neccessity every small to medium family business should face - Essay Example In pursue well be the limitation of the research and a summary with recommendations. Berenbein (1990) asserts that it is necessary for each organization to anitcipate its succession plan, and be able to acknowledge its reality. SMEs have ben particularly interested in this area of research, focusing on the ‘heir’ who shall take on the leadership of the enterprise in the next generation. The current results show that there are no significant, drastic changes behind the past and current leadership of Company XY. The same issues that confront old leadership have remained the same issues for the new leadership. While such a smooth transition has been possible, there were certain issues that surfaced from the qualitative data. Davis (1983) has effective succession is a tricky issue, in lieu of the fact that it requires something more profound than change in structure; instead, it requies change in the norms and values of the organization – on other words, it requires cultural change. One manager of Company XY even commented, â€Å"The initial difficulty of senior management to adjust to the new president’s leadership lies in the culture itself. They have gotten used to the norms of the old president; however, there have been so many changes that speak of new ways of doing things. The new president advocates a new set of norms. That took some time to get used to, especially among us old guards.† Kuratko & Hodgetts (in Kuratko, 1993) has provided a critique of the tactics used to undertake succession planning. Those that were determined encompassed comprehending â€Å"the contextual as ­pects such as time, type of venture, managerial capabilities, and environ ­ment; identifying succession qualities such as technical skills, business knowl ­edge, perseverance, etc., and carrying out the succession plans which includes the grooming and preparation of a suc ­cessor.† (p. 23). Because the