Introduction of Advance Project and Risk Management Assignment

Introduction of Advance Project and Risk Management Assignment

Introduction of Advance Project and Risk Management Assignment

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The following project revolves around the context of Wilmont’s founded in Milton Keynes which is a hypothetical top-ranking U.K. retail pharmacy corporation with more than 1,000 locations nationally and over 4,000 employees in total. After experimenting with various novel business models, the corporation is now covertly contemplating launching an even more radical one: drone-delivered medicines and retail merchandise. When a tiny company called DroneTech launched the strategy in March and is aiming to create a partnership with pharmacies countrywide, it was not a completely novel idea. Based on this prospect a comprehensive project flow is formulated in the following report, contextualising project schedule and critical path along with key budgeting and evaluation metrics for the project prospects.

Section 1: Project Schedule and Critical Path

According to the theoretical prospect of project management, it is the Nodes and the connections between them comprise a network diagram. In social network analysis, a network diagram is a visual representation of the relationships among the nodes and nodes of a system (Jamnuch and Vatanawood, 2019). Considering this in the following the activity nodes and a comprehensive network diagram is formalised.

Activity Workout

Network Diagram

Based on the team chart of PID 1, the team members shall designate the research in different flows. The project will initiate from the aspects of market research regarding the proposition drone delivery system, which will involve extensive competitor analysis that will go forth following the stages of hardware design, procurement of design and resources which will then be used for designing drone prototype, flight testing. Seamlessly, the software division of the team will work on designing the software for the hardware which will include 3D mapping, Live Tracking, Voice Recognition and Heat sensing features and make extensive evaluation on possible defects as well (Grzesch, 2021). After this stage final flight test for the drone will be formalised. This will also involve drone tower designing and manufacture, drone tower test, drone swam capability and lastly defect reporting on these aspects. Apart from these the team will also be working on talent acquisition, employee training, and simulations.

Gantt Chart and Critical Path

The critical path method is a method for identifying activities required to complete a project. In project management, the critical path is the longest series of operations that must be completed on time to complete the project (Kusumadarma et al., 2020). Apart from the above activities, the entire project is formalised in a systematic schedule as per the Gantt chart designed in the following:

Based on this timeline, the first 7 weeks of the project will involve developing scope, plan and resources, within this time stakeholder engagement and project contract development will be take into consideration as well. By the fifth week the project contract will be submitted and project sponsors for the contract will be reviewed, signed and approved. All these activities will come into the context of initiation activities of the project.

Next to this stage, planning phase will be carried out within which the drone system plan will be formalised under the critical path. This will include design planning, information technology planning, cybersecurity planning, schedule development, cost estimation and project plan approvals.

From the 18^th week activities of drone engineering will take into place and continue till 24^th week. Following from this timeframe, customisation of the drone will continue till week 39 along with installation delivery system, inferencing the flight operations, communication and evaluation of information security developments all of which that will come under the critical path (Holzmann, Weisz and Zitter, 2018).

In the fourth stage, the testing of the developed product will be carried out, in this context, from the week 40 to week 42 drone flight delivery testing, IT and security testing and user testing will be evaluated. After attaining green signal from these tests, the project will go live for its operations.

All of these activities will thoroughly be evaluated through comprehensive monitoring, this will include Bi-weekly project status meetings, quarterly stakeholder meetings will start from the 6^th week and continue till week 48. In this context, a small-scale risk management will also be taken into consideration. At the end of the project timeframe, approval and closing of open point listings will also be taken into consideration.

Lastly, the closeout of the project will include auditing the key purchases and procurement for the projects, documentation of key learnings, updating records and filings and lastly archiving files and documents.

Section 2: Project outflow analysis using time-phased budget

In-depth analysis of the budget

Within the context of the budget, a total of 15k will be allocated to project initiation processes which will range from week 1 to week 3 of the project. In following, market researching will be carried out by the budget of similar 15k which will be done throughout week 3 to week 6, on each of these weeks 5k will be allocated for operations. Since, competitor analysis will be done through online research, no funding will be required. Yet hardware designing will be required 25k fundings which will also be sub-divided into five weeks allocating 5k for each week activities. Lastly, in between week 9 to 11, prototype making will be instigate with total budget of 10k, hence, allocating 5k between week 10 and 11.

Nevertheless, in aspect of monitoring and control, it will be maintained that no particular activities exceed the given budget. In this regard, week wise subdivision of the funding by means of 5k for each week activity will come into play which will used as a key metric for controlling. Moreover, any instance of remaining budget for one activity will be added for the next week activity which will act as an additional reserve in case of any given budget failures. Thereby, 5k limit of each activity will be defined as the key metric for controlling the project activities.

Section 3: Monitoring and evaluating metrics

Using a theory of change may aid in the construction of a monitoring and evaluation system. Data from the intervention or earlier research and evaluation may be used to map existing data onto the theory of change and indicate priority areas of drone manufacturing for gathering further data (Tengan, Aigbavboa and Thwala, 2018). Considering this a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation is formulated for regulating the project.

Section 4: Project Closure Checklist

Conclusion and Summarisation of Key Findings

In conclusion, through extensive learning I can imply that the following project will formulate a comprehensive pathway for executing the project. In this aspect the hardware designing, software designing and prototype implementation will be the key prospects of the project upon which the service delivery will be substantiated and the service will be made operational in the market. In summarisation of the findings, it can be implied that the project takes a consistent path on developing prototype drones, testing it and finalise the product. Upon the completion of this process the product is then instigated for marketing. Nevertheless, considering this there can be some potential risks be associated with the critical path and network diagram of the project has taken, in the following these possible risks are tabulated.

Recommendation

Based on the risks identified above, some potential contingency plans could be implicated in the budget for the critical path factors.

References

Gallego, J.S., Ortiz-Marcos, I. and Ruiz, J.R., 2021. Main challenges during project planning when working with virtual teams. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 162, p.120353.

Grzesch, S., 2021. A New Method for Improving Decision-Making in the Supply Chain Risk Management Process. Supporting the Learning Project Management Organisation by Applying Advanced Business Modelling Simulation Techniques. University of Northumbria at Newcastle (United Kingdom).

Holzmann, V., Weisz, H. and Zitter, D., 2018, October. Simulating Advanced Project Management Decision Making Processes With PMZONE Board Game. In ECGBL 2018 12th European Conference on Game-Based Learning (p. 240). Academic Conferences and publishing limited.

Jamnuch, R. and Vatanawood, W., 2019, July. Transforming Activity Network Diagram with Timed Petri Nets. In 2019 12th International Conference on Information & Communication Technology and System (ICTS) (pp. 125-129). IEEE.

Kusumadarma, I.A., Pratami, D., Yasa, I.P. and Tripiawan, W., 2020. Developing project schedule in telecommunication projects using critical path method (CPM). International Journal of Integrated Engineering, 12(3), pp.60-67.

Tegeltija, M., 2018. Assessing the capabilities of advanced risk quantification methods for engineering systems management.

Tengan, C., Aigbavboa, C. and Thwala, D., 2018, July. Conceptual description of the key determinants of effective monitoring and evaluation system. In International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (pp. 117-124). Springer, Cham.

YOUSSEF, A.B.G. and NARASIMHAN, V., 2020. ADVANCED ANALYTICS FOR RISK MANAGEMENT.