Throughout this course you have taken a project scenario from a project charter, through the WBS and network diagram, to a fully resourced project schedule. Now is your opportunity to reflect on what you have learned in this course and consider how you could further apply project scheduling techniques and to advance your knowledge of this field.
In a 3-page APA formatted paper (not including title page, table of contents, or references), reflect on what you have learned and how you will apply and develop your knowledge. Focus specifically on answering the following questions in your paper:
What tools and techniques have you learned in this course?
How do you intend to apply these concepts in your workplace?
Of the tools and techniques you have learned, which did you consider to be most important? Why?
Consider a project you have seen executed in your work. Which, if any of the techniques that you have learned did you observe being carried out?
What lessons have you learned in this course?
reading
The project baseline
The project team does its work in a constant state of flux. Risks become issues. Problems arise and need to be addressed by re-planning and additional costs and resources. Clients decide that requirements have shifted and they request changes to the project schedule. This constant change requires that project managers stay vigilant when it comes clarifying what budget, scope, and schedule that the project has committed itself to. Without such good housekeeping, the additional scope of requirements changes and re-planning due to risk will result in bloated project costs and project delays. It is for this reason that a clear project baseline must be established. A baseline is an agreed upon commitment to deliver a tangible scope (performance), schedule, and budget combination. Should changes be encountered, then the project team must manage and control change so that stakeholders agree on the change and the impact to the schedule—and a new project baseline is set. Note that most project management software packages, including Project Libre, have the ability to set multiple baselines.
Monitoring and controlling a project is all about assessing progress to plan—with the plan being the baseline. Without a baseline, there is no clear way to measure progress. Setting a project baseline—and updating it in a controlled manner is therefore an essential activity of the project manager.
Agile methods
The traditional method of managing projects is often thought of as a “waterfall” approach. This is because deliverables are developed in sequence from initiation through closing—with deliverables being finalized and presented to the client at the very end of the effort. This methodology has its limitations. For starters, the total visibility of the progress of the project deliverables and the quality level is not easy to visualize until all systems and subsystems have been integrated. The final deliverable often results in a “big bang” of around the clock integration efforts and bug fixes. The Agile methodology was born out of the limitations of this approach. Instead of producing a monolithic final deliverable, the focus of Agile is to deliver small components of functionality a little at a time—and then to expand on it. This approach makes most sense in the world of software development—and this is where Agile got its start. Most projects today involve a significant software component, thereby making Agile a natural fit. It is for this reason that Agile has become widely adopted and is a significant component of the latest PMBOK standard, version 6.
