select three project status reports. You can use the following keywords: status
ID: 449095 • Letter: S
Question
select three project status reports. You can use the following keywords: status report, project status, and project status report. Analyze the reports and identify the similarities and differences between them. In addition, recommend no less than three changes to enhance the quality of the selected reports. Submission Requirements: Submit your responses in a Microsoft Word document of the following specifications: Font: Arial, Size: 12 point Line Spacing: Double Length: 2–3 pages APA format for citing sources
Explanation / Answer
Small projects have unique challenges over larger ones. Because they're small, it's tempting to skip the planning process and start executing the work. This phenomenon is especially true if projects perform tasks similar to previous work, which in turn leads to a natural tendency to skip planning and to start doing the work. Then, essential steps are sometimes omitted, done out of order, or done later than desired. Likewise, costly mistakes can occur when risks are missed by executing too soon. A small project that isn't planned enough can also ignore critical stakeholders, causing both resentment and rework.
The major challenges we've seen in managing small projects are:
Recognizing Small Projects
With the rush of day-to-day business in any sized company, it's often difficult to separate project work from daily operations or regular, ongoing work. But projects or potential projects exist in all areas of a small or large business, and project work will suffer unless it's identified and prioritized. Several issues surround the need for recognizing small projects:
An example of not recognizing an endeavor for a project was our company's need to obtain a new Internet Service Provider (ISP). Our previous one had gone bankrupt, and informed us that they would be terminating service in a month. This was not welcome news, of course, and sent our operations manager into "react mode," quickly thinking of what to do and then doing it. She is the type of person who thrives on chaos, and this was just another chaotic event. As her boss, I urged her to act quickly to get us another ISP. I had visions of our web access disappearing along with all our emails. We had to act quickly!
What's wrong with this approach? Several things, actually. We did not recognize this effort was a project. The tight, externally-imposed deadline put us into a reactive mode, short-circuiting our planning. The reduced planning caused us several surprises along the way, such as being without email for a weekend, and one of our domain names didn't accept emails for a week. It turned out that the old ISP shut down earlier than promised, a risk we had not addressed because of our haste. Plus, it was stressful on the whole company, and costly due to overtime by our network technician and potential loss of business. I'm sure every organization has had "projects" like this.
An example of successfully recognizing work as a project involved transferring our company's bank accounts to a new bank and setting up a new deposit service. It helped that we were able to set an internal deadline, which gave us adequate took the time to plan properly. The planning we did allowed us to analyze risks and to anticipate problems with transferring the bank accounts. We set up risk mitigation plans which we fortunately never had to use, and the project ended smoothly and quietly, with no disruptions in service.
Lessons Learned
What did we learn from these two projects?
Lack of surprises and executing the plan made it seem "easy"
Not Recognizing a Project Recognizing a Project No identified PM or sponsor meant unclear roles and responsibilities, leading to crucial steps skipped Had a formal PM and a project plan, which led to complete planning of tasks Time "saved" by not planning actually led to greater work and costly delays in service Time spent planning was not burdensome and uncovered requirements and tasks Risks were missed that were costly Identified major risks and planned for them, adding steps that ensured success Being surprised and doing rework was stressful and felt "hard"Lack of surprises and executing the plan made it seem "easy"
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