Length: 1500 words
The main objective of this assignment is to reinforce the importance of project definition and needs identification in the initial phase of the project life cycle. Success of a project is affected by the way a project's objective(s) is defined, planned and managed. Unfortunately, successful project managers do fail; the key difference in strategic project management is that they learn from their mistakes. Projectmanagersalso learn from their success and are constantly searching for new strategies to further improve. In highly successful projects you are likely to find an excellent and valuable project team, a motivated project manager and a very efficient project structure.
This assignment is designed to lead you through a systematic evaluation of a project. Your role is to critically analyse one real project* - not summarise a project. I want to see that you have thought about the project and offered critical comments and insights based on your understanding of project management.
*The project: Search for a real project. You can choose a project that was completed successfully or one that was not completed successfully. Please note that we strongly encourage the selection of Indigenous projects and projects related to your field of study (i.e Health, Art, IT, Management,etc). However, please DO NOT choose any of the following projects:
Port Adelaide Flower Farm
HindmarshSoccer Stadium Renovation
AdelaideTramline
National Wine Centre
Blackwell Underpass
Sydney Opera House
Beijing Bird Nest Stadium
Hong Kong Disney
Gallipoli Underpass
Beijing Olympic
Instructions:
You are encouraged to search the Web for these projects and to collect any type of information about the situation, making sure to cover different viewpoints. This could include newspapers, project management magazine and journals. As this project is a real case you can expand the information presented in the references (i.e. source).
Write a report that critically analyses how the project was planned and performed. The report should include:
1. Brief introduction to the project.
Please give an overview of your project. This should explain what the project was and the context in which the project occurred.
Clear identification of the objective(s) and scope of the project.
2. A project stakeholder analysis.
3. A brief description of how the project was managed (eg. strategy, key events, tools usedetc).
Describe the implementation phase of the project. In particular, explain whether the project ran to plan - in which case explain the benefits of careful planning to the project manager. Alternatively, if the project deviated from plan, why did this occur and what was the impact of thesedeviationsfor the project?
4. A critical analysis of the project outcome (i.e. the critical factors that made this project a success or a failure).
Conclude reflecting on the project, what did you learn? What good practices will you, as a manager, take from this to future projects, and what activities would you not do in the future and why?
5. Appendix.