Week_1_Blog_Why_Projects_Fail_James_Montgomery

Week 4 - How and why is the WBS constructed and how can it be used to identify risk. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) WBS or Work Breakdown Structure is a key project deliverable that organised work into manageable sections, helps prevent risks and also clearly set out tasks to be completed. Why use WBS? Accuracy - WBS allows businesses to be more accurate with plans and specifically defines and organises the scope of the project. Through the use of hierarchical structures businesses can break down objectives into smaller measurable chunks. Control - WBS gives the business more control over the project as it assigns responsibilities, resource allocation and motorization. It allows processes to be more precise and concrete as everyone knows exactly whats been accomplished. Double Check - WBS allows businesses to double check what stakeholders actually want and that nothing is missed out or overlapped. How to Construct WBS? In order to construct a WBS the business ...

Definition Phase By James Montgomery – X00120274 The Project definition phase provides the groundwork for project planning. Describe the key activities and outputs from this phase and explain the risks that this activity minimises. Below is a diagram of the 5 Phase Project Life Cycle: 1. Conceptual Phase – carefully examine the idea to see if it will benefit the business and if so in what way. This is were a lot of the decision making is made and looks at whether the project is actually feasible or not are we being realistic and can it be done? 2. Definition Phase – this is the planning stage and sets out the charter or scope of the project in writing showing where the business is going and how to actually get there. This section also looks at the budgets, schedules and resources so that the project process runs smoothly from conceptual to divestment. 3. Production Phase – in this section the tasks are distributed so that everyone knows what to do and what part they pla...

Week 1 - Blog - Why IT Projects Fail? From my reading of Lars Mieritz's article based on why projects fail, I have deduced that large projects are more likely to fail compared to that of smaller IT Projects as size really does matter. Large projects require more effort and a vast amount of time being put into them while smaller projects are easier to manage. Larger IT Projects require bigger budgets which increases the level of risk of projects failing. Gartner's Survey of 150 participants saw that Large IT Projects budgets exceeded $1 million and had a 72% success rate compared to a 28% failure rate. Medium IT Projects had budgets between $350,000 - $1 million with a 75% success rate compared to 25% failure rate. Finally Smaller IT Projects had budgets less than $350,000 and had a higher success rate of 80% compared to 20% failure rate. From the failure rates it is clearly more risky to pursue a Large IT project 28% compared to a Smaller IT project at 20%. There are ...