Question No 1 What Are the Some
Content
Question no 1 What are the some of the crucial elements of successful project plan execution? Describe a well-executed project you are familiar with describe a disaster, what were are same of the main difference between these projects?
Question no 2 Discuss the top management commitment and the developed of standards for successful projects management. Give example of projects that fail due to lack of top management commitment and lack of organizational standard.
Question no 1 What are the some of the crucial elements of successful project plan execution? Describe a well-executed project
1
you are familiar with describe a disaster, what were are same of the main difference between these projects?
• • • Success: A project that gets the bouquets and champagne sprays – for it
is completed on time, within budget, and has met all original specs.
Challenged: A project that finally made to the deadline. Yet, there were
cost/time overruns, and perhaps not all of original specs were met. A project was Management Failure.
Failure:
abandoned
or
cancelled
due
to
Project
Common elements of successful project management
Simply stated, execution is the gap between promises and results. While we don't live in a perfect world, there are some common elements that ensure success. These include:
•
Active Sponsorship: Making sure that somebody up top will not put a kibosh on a project because it wasn't his or her idea. Make sure somebody high up believes in and champions the project. Competent Project Personnel: Having not just subject matter experts, but people who know the art and science of working with others to achieve results is critical. Sufficient Resources and Funding: Assigning and funding resources is always a challenge, so keep the expectations realistic. Clear Roles and Responsibilities: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Even well-meaning people can trip on each other if their roles are not clear. It should be especially clear who is driving the bus and who is riding it. Proactive Risk Management: Identify the potential risks ahead of time and be prepared to deal with them. As they say, it is better to fix the roof before it starts raining. Change Management: Projects by definition change the status quo. Any time there is a change to the status quo, it creates disruption. Make a plan to manage the change consciously rather than burying your head in the sand. Realistic Project Plan: Miracles do happen, so hope for the best, but prepare for the worst! Vigilant Tracking: Identify what can be measured during the progression of the project and track it methodically. What gets measured gets done.
2
•
•
•
•
•
• •
•
Timely Issue Resolution: Issues will arise, so deal with them before they grow out of control. Remember the old saying: a stitch in time saves nine.
There are three simple steps you should follow:
1. Agreement: Make sure that there is a consensus among all key
stakeholders. This can be thought of as a contracting stage in a project. Confirm and clarify assumptions and expectations regarding project scope, constraints, deliverables, dependencies, impacts, timing, and funding. If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else. 2. Planning: A goal without a plan is just a wish. Without a detailed project plan, it is impossible to see how all the pieces will fit together. He who fails to plan, plans to fail. A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned project takes only twice as long! 3. Execution: This is where the rubber meets the road: Tracking progress, reporting status, controlling change, managing issues. If the project appears to be going well, something is about to go wrong! As Shakespeare said, "The will is infinite and the execution confined."
The Burj Al Arab, A successful project
The Burj Al Arab (Arabic: ",برج العربTower of the Arabs", also known as ب "Arab Sail") is a luxury hotel located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. At 321 m (1,050 ft), it is the third tallest building in the world used exclusively as a hotel.[2] The Burj Al Arab stands on an artificial island 280 m (920 ft) out from Jumeirah beach, and is connected to the mainland by a private curving bridge. It is an iconic structure, designed to symbolize Dubai's urban transformation and to mimic the sail of a boat. The hotel is managed by the Jumeirah Group. Despite its size, the Burj Al Arab holds only 28 double-storey floors which accommodate 202 bedroom suites. The smallest suite occupies an area of 169 m2 (1,820 sq ft), the largest covers 780 m2 (8,400 sq ft). It is one of the most expensive hotels in the world. The cost of staying in a suite begins at US$2,000 per night; the Royal Suite is the most expensive, starting at US$28,000 per night. Construction of Burj Al Arab began in 1994. It was built to resemble the sail of a dhow, a type of Arabian vessel. Two "wings" spread in a V to form a vast "mast", while the space between them is enclosed in a massive atrium. The architect Tom Wright[8] said "The client wanted a building that would become an iconic or symbolic statement for Dubai; this is very similar to Sydney with its Opera House, or Paris with the Eiffel Tower. It
3
needed to be a building that would become synonymous with the name of the country."[9] Several features of the hotel required complex engineering feats to achieve. The hotel rests on an artificial island constructed 280 m (920 ft) offshore. To secure a foundation, the builders drove 230 forty-metre (130 ft) long concrete piles into the sand.[11]
As recently as late 2008 Dubai was still announcing gigantic schemes like the $US95 billion ($A105 billion) Jumeirah Gardens new town and a one-kilometrehigh structure,
Terms Sindh education project a failure
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has described the $97 million ‘decentralised elementary education project’ of the Sindh government as a failure. The scheme had to be closed one year before the stipulated date because of poor financial performance and lack of progress on the ground, ADB said in its project completion report. The main objective of the project was to improve access to good quality elementary education in the province. For this, it was to be implemented in all 16 districts of Sindh from July 2003 to October 2008 at a cost of $97 million. Of the total cost, $18.8 million was in foreign exchange. Under the project only 208 primary schools were upgraded to the elementary school level against a target of 1,200 schools, and only 104 pre-primary classes were started in elementary schools against a target of 1,000 classes. According to the report, 204 English-medium schools were to be established but not a single one could be set up. The ADB report said the project failed to achieve targets largely because of its complex and ambitious design which made productive interaction between the bank and Sindh education department difficult. The overall rating for the project was “unsuccessful”. The province of Sindh accounts for about 25 per cent of the total number of Pakistani children of elementary school-going ages. Put differently, the province has a quarter of the country’s population of children who could be enrolled in classes 1 to 8.
4
Primary school enrolment in the province mirrored that of the entire country in 2000, with 67 per cent of the eligible students attending classes 1 to 5. However, only 38 per cent of the 12 to 14 year olds progressed to classes 6 to 8. Although the project was consistent with priorities of both the provincial government and ADB, its scope was too ambitious, with the Sindh education department tasked with implementing as well as monitoring it.The department lacked the capacity to simultaneously run and oversee the project, said the report. As a result, the public elementary education system could not be established, and issues of access, quality, efficiency and equity remained unaddressed.
Why projects fail: different perspectives
Standish group’s line of rationale, trying to explain the trillion-dollar question of why Project Management Failure occurs so often, makes insightful reading. According to them, projects that “succeed” do so due to the following reasons: • • The end users were apparently involved right through the development of the project. The project manager had full backing of the executive management. Whatever hurdles came up during the project were promptly looked into by the latter. Specifications were clear-cut. This was also possible due to close-level of interaction between the end-users and the project team. Expectations from the project were realistic. There was nothing overly optimistic about what could be achieved within the project’s constraints. Various interest groups Yet another take on the reasons why some projects succeed and a lot others fail attributes three variables whose impact on project performance is the maximum:
•
• • •
Good Planning: The more forward, future-oriented and in-detail planning, the higher the chances of success. Each and every activity that is expected down the line gets due attention. Not only is this preplanning well-documented, but also even after the project has taken off, if things don’t exactly pan out as planned, the project manager does not hesitate to re-plan, avoiding Project Management Failure, and readily incorporates the changed circumstances in their new version, so that future events are controlled.
5
•
Clear responsibility and accountability: All team members have a clear understanding of their roles and duties. There is clear awareness of what exactly is expected from them. Schedule control: Project managers are constantly on their toes, recording time elapsed, milestones reached, change in people/task allotments, and the like. This helps in fine-tuning the schedule on a realtime basis.
•
Question no 2 Discuss the top management commitment and the developed of standards for successful projects management. Give example of projects that fail due to lack of top management commitment and lack of organizational standard.
The bottom line is that effective execution is difficult. There are formidable roadblocks, hurtles, and changing dynamics that get in the way and can injure the implementation of a good strategy. But well run companies do this all the time! Although there is no singular process to manage the execution of a business plan, there are basic processes and fundamentals to be followed. The organization must be evaluated. Do you have the right people with the right skills in the right jobs? Should human resources be reallocated? Do you have the right number of employees in the appropriate departments? Identify the key initiatives and broad actions that must be accomplished to achieve the strategy. Identify the transitional issues, or the “gaps”, between
6
where you are today and where you plan to be. Push the initiatives throughout the organization. They must be consistently understood in all functional departments. Every employee needs to understand their individual role in accomplishing some aspect of the plan. Develop a budget to support the plan. This may be an iterative process until the right combination of strategy, tactics, and financial prudence is achieved. Communicate, communicate, communicate! Get the message out to the entire organization. Develop compensation and reward systems to support the future Vision of the organization. Create decision filters that help guide the organization through a thought process for those times when the organization wrestles with a concept that may stray from its strategy. Establish a review process. As the markets, customers, competitors, government regulations, economy, etc. evolve, some priorities, and possibly some goals, may change. Go back to the beginning, review each step, and determine if further changes are necessary.
Example of projects that fail due to lack of top management commitment and lack of organizational standard.
The most viable solution to solving Karachi's transport problems is the construction of a mass transit system using both Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines and metro railway lines by upgrading Karachi's existing 90km of disused and underused railways. The Karachi Mass Transit Programme, which is the only viable option to rid the city of ever increasing gridlock, has not been implemented over the last two decades despite the huge amount spent on foreign tours of officials studying mass transit programmes. Nazim Karachi Syed Mustafa Kamal has said that the long term solution to traffic problems in Karachi lies in the Mass Transit System without which the city would have worst condition in terms of traffic after 8 to 10 years.
7
Over a decade on, these problems have increased. The traffic snarls that grip the city are more frequent than ever. Commuters struggle each day to get to work or to schools and colleges. Those dependent on limited public transport suffer most.. The successes of these projects need to be studied so an attempt can be made to replicate them. The increase we are seeing in the number of vehicles on the road is simply unsustainable. Its impact on air quality and the life is disastrous. We need action. The approval for the new railway in Karachi is therefore welcome. But the challenges will lie in how well the project can be implemented and how far it serves the requirements of people. The location and quality of stations set up along the route, the punctuality of trains and the cost of the service will all determine this. We must hope it works so we can move towards a new age of commutation. Regarding Karachi Circular Railway, he said he was told that it would be completed with Japan’s cooperation with an investment of Rs 1.7 billion while KRTS project will be accomplished with an investment of Rs 450 million dollars with the cooperation of Asian Development Bank. The Mass Transit System would be on build, operate and transfer (BOT) basis. It implies that a foreign agency would build the mass transit system and operate it for a period of years. Once the foreign agency has recovered its investment it will hand it over to the local government or agency. But un fortunately provisional and federal government does not any interest in mass transit system in Karachi. They said at the time lack of funds and other political problem and issues for mass transit system in Karachi. Insiders say the KMTP failed to make any headway mainly for want of political will on part of the government and the authorities, who failed to make their case whenever it was taken up with the federal government. The project, if implemented, would have provided substantial savings in fuel and relieved traffic congestion, as well as providing clean and efficient transport service.
8
Question no 2 Discuss the top management commitment and the developed of standards for successful projects management. Give example of projects that fail due to lack of top management commitment and lack of organizational standard.
Question no 1 What are the some of the crucial elements of successful project plan execution? Describe a well-executed project
1
you are familiar with describe a disaster, what were are same of the main difference between these projects?
• • • Success: A project that gets the bouquets and champagne sprays – for it
is completed on time, within budget, and has met all original specs.
Challenged: A project that finally made to the deadline. Yet, there were
cost/time overruns, and perhaps not all of original specs were met. A project was Management Failure.
Failure:
abandoned
or
cancelled
due
to
Project
Common elements of successful project management
Simply stated, execution is the gap between promises and results. While we don't live in a perfect world, there are some common elements that ensure success. These include:
•
Active Sponsorship: Making sure that somebody up top will not put a kibosh on a project because it wasn't his or her idea. Make sure somebody high up believes in and champions the project. Competent Project Personnel: Having not just subject matter experts, but people who know the art and science of working with others to achieve results is critical. Sufficient Resources and Funding: Assigning and funding resources is always a challenge, so keep the expectations realistic. Clear Roles and Responsibilities: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Even well-meaning people can trip on each other if their roles are not clear. It should be especially clear who is driving the bus and who is riding it. Proactive Risk Management: Identify the potential risks ahead of time and be prepared to deal with them. As they say, it is better to fix the roof before it starts raining. Change Management: Projects by definition change the status quo. Any time there is a change to the status quo, it creates disruption. Make a plan to manage the change consciously rather than burying your head in the sand. Realistic Project Plan: Miracles do happen, so hope for the best, but prepare for the worst! Vigilant Tracking: Identify what can be measured during the progression of the project and track it methodically. What gets measured gets done.
2
•
•
•
•
•
• •
•
Timely Issue Resolution: Issues will arise, so deal with them before they grow out of control. Remember the old saying: a stitch in time saves nine.
There are three simple steps you should follow:
1. Agreement: Make sure that there is a consensus among all key
stakeholders. This can be thought of as a contracting stage in a project. Confirm and clarify assumptions and expectations regarding project scope, constraints, deliverables, dependencies, impacts, timing, and funding. If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else. 2. Planning: A goal without a plan is just a wish. Without a detailed project plan, it is impossible to see how all the pieces will fit together. He who fails to plan, plans to fail. A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned project takes only twice as long! 3. Execution: This is where the rubber meets the road: Tracking progress, reporting status, controlling change, managing issues. If the project appears to be going well, something is about to go wrong! As Shakespeare said, "The will is infinite and the execution confined."
The Burj Al Arab, A successful project
The Burj Al Arab (Arabic: ",برج العربTower of the Arabs", also known as ب "Arab Sail") is a luxury hotel located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. At 321 m (1,050 ft), it is the third tallest building in the world used exclusively as a hotel.[2] The Burj Al Arab stands on an artificial island 280 m (920 ft) out from Jumeirah beach, and is connected to the mainland by a private curving bridge. It is an iconic structure, designed to symbolize Dubai's urban transformation and to mimic the sail of a boat. The hotel is managed by the Jumeirah Group. Despite its size, the Burj Al Arab holds only 28 double-storey floors which accommodate 202 bedroom suites. The smallest suite occupies an area of 169 m2 (1,820 sq ft), the largest covers 780 m2 (8,400 sq ft). It is one of the most expensive hotels in the world. The cost of staying in a suite begins at US$2,000 per night; the Royal Suite is the most expensive, starting at US$28,000 per night. Construction of Burj Al Arab began in 1994. It was built to resemble the sail of a dhow, a type of Arabian vessel. Two "wings" spread in a V to form a vast "mast", while the space between them is enclosed in a massive atrium. The architect Tom Wright[8] said "The client wanted a building that would become an iconic or symbolic statement for Dubai; this is very similar to Sydney with its Opera House, or Paris with the Eiffel Tower. It
3
needed to be a building that would become synonymous with the name of the country."[9] Several features of the hotel required complex engineering feats to achieve. The hotel rests on an artificial island constructed 280 m (920 ft) offshore. To secure a foundation, the builders drove 230 forty-metre (130 ft) long concrete piles into the sand.[11]
As recently as late 2008 Dubai was still announcing gigantic schemes like the $US95 billion ($A105 billion) Jumeirah Gardens new town and a one-kilometrehigh structure,
Terms Sindh education project a failure
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has described the $97 million ‘decentralised elementary education project’ of the Sindh government as a failure. The scheme had to be closed one year before the stipulated date because of poor financial performance and lack of progress on the ground, ADB said in its project completion report. The main objective of the project was to improve access to good quality elementary education in the province. For this, it was to be implemented in all 16 districts of Sindh from July 2003 to October 2008 at a cost of $97 million. Of the total cost, $18.8 million was in foreign exchange. Under the project only 208 primary schools were upgraded to the elementary school level against a target of 1,200 schools, and only 104 pre-primary classes were started in elementary schools against a target of 1,000 classes. According to the report, 204 English-medium schools were to be established but not a single one could be set up. The ADB report said the project failed to achieve targets largely because of its complex and ambitious design which made productive interaction between the bank and Sindh education department difficult. The overall rating for the project was “unsuccessful”. The province of Sindh accounts for about 25 per cent of the total number of Pakistani children of elementary school-going ages. Put differently, the province has a quarter of the country’s population of children who could be enrolled in classes 1 to 8.
4
Primary school enrolment in the province mirrored that of the entire country in 2000, with 67 per cent of the eligible students attending classes 1 to 5. However, only 38 per cent of the 12 to 14 year olds progressed to classes 6 to 8. Although the project was consistent with priorities of both the provincial government and ADB, its scope was too ambitious, with the Sindh education department tasked with implementing as well as monitoring it.The department lacked the capacity to simultaneously run and oversee the project, said the report. As a result, the public elementary education system could not be established, and issues of access, quality, efficiency and equity remained unaddressed.
Why projects fail: different perspectives
Standish group’s line of rationale, trying to explain the trillion-dollar question of why Project Management Failure occurs so often, makes insightful reading. According to them, projects that “succeed” do so due to the following reasons: • • The end users were apparently involved right through the development of the project. The project manager had full backing of the executive management. Whatever hurdles came up during the project were promptly looked into by the latter. Specifications were clear-cut. This was also possible due to close-level of interaction between the end-users and the project team. Expectations from the project were realistic. There was nothing overly optimistic about what could be achieved within the project’s constraints. Various interest groups Yet another take on the reasons why some projects succeed and a lot others fail attributes three variables whose impact on project performance is the maximum:
•
• • •
Good Planning: The more forward, future-oriented and in-detail planning, the higher the chances of success. Each and every activity that is expected down the line gets due attention. Not only is this preplanning well-documented, but also even after the project has taken off, if things don’t exactly pan out as planned, the project manager does not hesitate to re-plan, avoiding Project Management Failure, and readily incorporates the changed circumstances in their new version, so that future events are controlled.
5
•
Clear responsibility and accountability: All team members have a clear understanding of their roles and duties. There is clear awareness of what exactly is expected from them. Schedule control: Project managers are constantly on their toes, recording time elapsed, milestones reached, change in people/task allotments, and the like. This helps in fine-tuning the schedule on a realtime basis.
•
Question no 2 Discuss the top management commitment and the developed of standards for successful projects management. Give example of projects that fail due to lack of top management commitment and lack of organizational standard.
The bottom line is that effective execution is difficult. There are formidable roadblocks, hurtles, and changing dynamics that get in the way and can injure the implementation of a good strategy. But well run companies do this all the time! Although there is no singular process to manage the execution of a business plan, there are basic processes and fundamentals to be followed. The organization must be evaluated. Do you have the right people with the right skills in the right jobs? Should human resources be reallocated? Do you have the right number of employees in the appropriate departments? Identify the key initiatives and broad actions that must be accomplished to achieve the strategy. Identify the transitional issues, or the “gaps”, between
6
where you are today and where you plan to be. Push the initiatives throughout the organization. They must be consistently understood in all functional departments. Every employee needs to understand their individual role in accomplishing some aspect of the plan. Develop a budget to support the plan. This may be an iterative process until the right combination of strategy, tactics, and financial prudence is achieved. Communicate, communicate, communicate! Get the message out to the entire organization. Develop compensation and reward systems to support the future Vision of the organization. Create decision filters that help guide the organization through a thought process for those times when the organization wrestles with a concept that may stray from its strategy. Establish a review process. As the markets, customers, competitors, government regulations, economy, etc. evolve, some priorities, and possibly some goals, may change. Go back to the beginning, review each step, and determine if further changes are necessary.
Example of projects that fail due to lack of top management commitment and lack of organizational standard.
The most viable solution to solving Karachi's transport problems is the construction of a mass transit system using both Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines and metro railway lines by upgrading Karachi's existing 90km of disused and underused railways. The Karachi Mass Transit Programme, which is the only viable option to rid the city of ever increasing gridlock, has not been implemented over the last two decades despite the huge amount spent on foreign tours of officials studying mass transit programmes. Nazim Karachi Syed Mustafa Kamal has said that the long term solution to traffic problems in Karachi lies in the Mass Transit System without which the city would have worst condition in terms of traffic after 8 to 10 years.
7
Over a decade on, these problems have increased. The traffic snarls that grip the city are more frequent than ever. Commuters struggle each day to get to work or to schools and colleges. Those dependent on limited public transport suffer most.. The successes of these projects need to be studied so an attempt can be made to replicate them. The increase we are seeing in the number of vehicles on the road is simply unsustainable. Its impact on air quality and the life is disastrous. We need action. The approval for the new railway in Karachi is therefore welcome. But the challenges will lie in how well the project can be implemented and how far it serves the requirements of people. The location and quality of stations set up along the route, the punctuality of trains and the cost of the service will all determine this. We must hope it works so we can move towards a new age of commutation. Regarding Karachi Circular Railway, he said he was told that it would be completed with Japan’s cooperation with an investment of Rs 1.7 billion while KRTS project will be accomplished with an investment of Rs 450 million dollars with the cooperation of Asian Development Bank. The Mass Transit System would be on build, operate and transfer (BOT) basis. It implies that a foreign agency would build the mass transit system and operate it for a period of years. Once the foreign agency has recovered its investment it will hand it over to the local government or agency. But un fortunately provisional and federal government does not any interest in mass transit system in Karachi. They said at the time lack of funds and other political problem and issues for mass transit system in Karachi. Insiders say the KMTP failed to make any headway mainly for want of political will on part of the government and the authorities, who failed to make their case whenever it was taken up with the federal government. The project, if implemented, would have provided substantial savings in fuel and relieved traffic congestion, as well as providing clean and efficient transport service.
8
