9 OCTOBER 2017

ASSIGNMENT TO PGD STUDENTS – TIPM 2017

MODULE: FPM REQ 1

GROUP # 3
1. Emmanuel Mirimbo
2. Reiner
3. Ibrahim Pangani Mgao
INTRODUCTION
A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.
The temporary nature of projects indicates that a project has a definite beginning and end.

The PMBOK Guide, referred herein, contains the standard for managing most projects most
of the time across many types of industries. The standard, describes the project management
processes used to manage a project toward a more successful outcome [1]

Module 1 for Project Management covers two processes i.e. Project Scope Management and
Project time management.

Therefore, the Assignment to PGD Students-TIPM 2017 module 1: FPM REQ 1 contains
questions from these two process i.e. QN 1 and 2 covers practical challenges faced by Project
Managers during Project Scope Management process while QN 3, 4 and 5 are practical
challenges faced by Project Managers during Project time management process.

Below are the responses for the questions.

1. Collecting Requirements

1.0 Introduction
Collecting requirements Is a process that determines as well as documents and manages the
needs and requirements of the stakeholders to meet the objectives of the project management
tasks. Stakeholders are people who have some form of interest in change, either they are
target of the change, managers or other interested parties.
The process of collecting requirements consists of several inputs required, tools and
techniques and output generated to be completed,
The document for collecting requirements contains details about the requirements that are
needed to satisfy not only the stakeholders but also the project itself. The success of the
project is heavily influenced by the stakeholder’s involvement, the requirement may include
conditions and skills that should qualify the needs of the project.
The following are challenges that are facing project managers in collecting requirement,
1.1 Unclear Objectives

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when the project goals are not well defined the stakeholders may not know what exactly they
want. It is normal for stakeholders to know that they have a problem or opportunity to
explore but with unwell defined objectives they may fail to link the project with their
problems. Therefore, it is important for the project objectives to be clear to the managers as
well as stakeholders by starting with the project sections that the stakeholders are clearer
about and the manager should understand better their current situation.
1.2 Poor Participation of Stakeholders,
project manager should actively seek to engage and listen to those affected by its operations
and the stakeholder engagement should be frank, open and honest dialogue, that requires
establishment of trust and rapport. In some cases people might be afraid of being pinned
down for expressing their ideas. Active participation and communication with stakeholder is
the key for the success of this requirement. Therefore, it important to listen carefully and
learning to speak stakeholder’s language. Sometimes in project with some political values,
each stakeholder may see the need of their individual opinions to be taken into consideration.
1.3 Stakeholders Have Conflicting Priorities
when a new product, result or services is created by project managers it must adhere to the
needs of different groups of stakeholders such as end users and senior management. These
groups might have different needs and priorities. In this situation it is best approach is to
design the authority in the organization who is in charge of negotiating the conflicting matters
and make the final decision.
1.4 Stakeholders Having Limited Knowledge,
This may arise when the knowledge of the stakeholders is limited in certain technical areas,
or have the experience with the technology that worked well in the past project. In this
situation they may not be able to clearly understand what needs to be done.
1.5 Stakeholders May Change Their Mind,
changes happen, this can happen when the requirements were not clearly understood or
communicated initially or they evolved over the course of the project, when they realize they
didn’t understand their actual need Stakeholder may say one thing one day and different the
next, so it is important to understand the fuller range of stakeholders. Also, the requirement
may change due to, missed requirement, identified defects, political issues, changes in market
place.

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 2. Control scope

2.0 introduction
Control scope is a process of monitoring the status of the project scope including the product
scope, and manage changes to the scope baseline. This process allows the scope baseline to
be maintained throughout the project.
The process of collecting requirements consists of several inputs required, tools and
techniques and output generated to be completed

The following are challenges that are facing project managers in collecting requirement,
2.1 Poorly detailed Project Scope Statement
this is the document that describes external and internal restrictions. It is a useful tool that
outlines the deliverables and identify the constraints, assumptions and key success factors.
Therefore, if the project scope is not accurately detailed it is difficult to say what is in and out
scope for the project to deliver.
2.2 Poorly controlled project by the project manager
This can be due to following reasons, lack of skills, insufficient team work, lack of
accountability, poorly defined goals, lack of communication with the team and the
stakeholders. These factors may shift the project goals beyond the project scope. Strong,
accountable and experienced project manager will have enough skills to control well the
project scope and avoid the scope creep.
2.3 Indecisive stakeholders
This can make the project scope to be difficult to control. The stakeholders can be indecisive
due to, under or over expressing their views, limited knowledge or conflicting priorities. This
indecisiveness usually translates itself into requirements and scope changing. Also,
conflicting priorities will always lead to arguments regarding on what to be delivered and
when.
2.4 Poor project management requirements
well documented requirements make it easier to detect any deviation in the scope agreed for
the project or product. Therefore, if not clearly documented it will be both ambiguous or open
to interpretation.

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 3. Challenges faced by Project Managers when Estimating Activity Resources

3.0 INTRODUCTION
Estimate Activity Resources is the process of estimating the type and quantities of material,
human resources, equipment, or supplies required to perform each activity. The key benefit of
this process is that it identifies the type, quantity, and characteristics of resources required to
complete the activity which allows more accurate cost and duration estimates [1]
This process could pose challenges to Project Managers and some practical challenges are as
briefly discussed below:
3.1 Poor design of the Schedule management plan [1,3]
 Low level of accuracy – if the acceptable range and realistic activity duration
estimates or amount of contingencies is not specified, hence negative effects on
resource estimation.
 Improper organizational procedures links (Not splitting the tasks enough) hence
subjective guess
 Unspecified reporting formats frequency for the various schedule reports may pose
challenge in estimating resources for reporting activity.
 Issue of critical path
3.2 Risk register - this is the document that contains the record of the results of risk analysis
and risk response planning [1]
 Incomplete list of identified risks (inability to identify risks involved) in the
activity could cause the Project manager to underestimate or over-estimate resources
for the given activity in the project
 Improper list of potential responses to given risks in the activity could cause
improper allocation or alignment of estimated resources
3.3 Resource calendars [1]
 Unspecified duration of availability of given resource (human, equipment or
material) for a given activity may be a challenge in determining proper estimation of
activity resource and sometimes a given resource could be allocated for a given
activity during the time of its unavailability
 Unspecified resource attribute could cause uncertainty of its ability to perform the
activity that the resource is allocated for

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  Unknown geographical location of the resources could lead to allocation of the
resources which could be far from the activity leaving the resource which would
have been closer hence tougher mobilization/deployment and higher costs
3.4 Organizational Process Assets (Organizational structure influence)
 Lack of knowledge of policies regarding staffing
 Lack of knowledge on Policies and procedures relating to rental and purchase of
supplies and equipment (especially, the informal procedures)
 Incomplete or faulted/wrong historical information regarding types of resources used
for similar work on previous projects could cause the project manager to estimate
resources for given activity wrongly.
3.5 Enterprise Environmental factors [1,3,4]
 Ignoring team capacity, this requires a project manager reading into the individual
team members’ difference in performing the same task then iterating the estimated
resources
 Company work authorization systems - The dilemma of resource estimation in
Organizational matrix [4] where the project managers are not aware of the
resources’ availability hence conflict with the team leaders who don’t know their
team members’ utilization
3.5 Activity list and Activity attributes [1,2]
 Not factoring the dependencies right due to coordination neglect
 Incomplete list of activities may make the process incomplete
3.6 Expert judgment [1,3]
 The risk of analogous estimation due to numerous variables in the project and the
unique elements and dependencies, the human resource involved and their skillsets,
diverse tools and technologies adopted and the infrastructure and the resources in
place
 Absence of the expert with specialized knowledge of resource planning and
estimation, hence guess work by Project manage
3.7 Alternative analysis [1,2]
 Lack of analysis of alternatives could cause inappropriate estimation of resources
3.8 Published estimating data [1,2]
 Lack of/ low knowledge on the published estimating data due to low research
could affect precision of the resource estimation process

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 3.9 Bottom up estimating [1,2,3]
 Improper allocation of dependencies of activities, could pose challenge in
resource estimation e.g. connecting the two activities which are independent during
WBS decomposition could cause faulty estimation of resource for the overall project
 Top-to-bottom scheduling instead of bottom-up estimation, where the
management would come up with unrealistic duration of activity/project therefore
the tasks are retro-fixed inside the fixed duration of project already decided before
WBS is done
3.10 Project management software [1,2]
 Use of improper software (e.g. excel instead of Microsoft project management
software) or inadequate knowledge in use of the given software can make the
process of estimation of resources difficult and unorganized resources pool hence
wrong estimation or inefficient utilization of resources

4. Estimating activity duration

4.0 Introduction
According to PMBOOK (2013), estimate activity duration is the process of estimating the
number of work periods needed to complete individual activities with estimated resource.
4.1 False analogies
Activity duration estimates which based on historical data can be fine and good as long as
one uses data from historical projects that are identical to the one at hand. Even if project
managers can easily select a project that is superficially similar to the one at hand, but
actually differs in critical ways. one rarely knows what is relevant and what isn’t but there is
a point when a project manager estimating activity duration from the project which he trusts
to me similar but actually not.
4.2 Estimation by decree:
It should be obvious that estimation must be done by those who will do the work.
Unfortunately, activity estimation is done by those who have little or no idea of the actual
effort involved in doing the work. In any activity, people’s effort to accomplish the activity
are always different.
4.3 Subjectivity (cognitive biases)

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According to Bless, H and Fiedler,1 A cognitive bias is a human tendency to base a
judgement or decision on a flawed perception or understanding of data or events and
subjectivity is judgment based on individual personal impressions and feelings and opinions
rather than external facts. Estimating activity duration needs facts, it needs the full
understanding of the activities.
4.4 Coordination neglect between activities.
Projects consist of diverse tasks that need to be coordinated and integrated carefully.
Unfortunately, the time and effort needed for coordination and integration is often
underestimated (or even totally overlooked) by project decision makers. This is referred to as
coordination neglect. Coordination neglect is a problem in projects of all sizes, but is
generally more significant for projects involving large teams (see this paper for an empirical
study of the effect of team size on coordination neglect). As one might imagine, coordination
neglect also becomes a significant

problem in projects that consist of a large number of dependent tasks or have a large number
of external dependencies.

5Estimating project scheduling

5.1 Resource availability

According to McConnell et al (2011)2 A resource is a source or supply from which benefit is
produced. The resource availability is the biggest challenge because the less resources
allocated to the project, the lengthier the project schedule is. If there is strong availability of
the resources to the project, project managers can easily control the project duration.
Example; the extension of time to the government project which known as Rural Energy
Agency (REA). The project extended due lack of resources such as electric wire which can be
used to connect electricity.
5.2 Project complexity
If the project has complex and never undertaken tasks, then surely the project manager must
accommodate that fact in his project schedule. According to PMBOOK (2013) a project
manager needs organization process assets as his input when controlling duration. The
1
Bless, H.; Fiedler, K. & Strack, F. (2004). Social cognition: How individuals construct social reality. New York:
Psychology Press
2
McConnell, C.R., S.L. Brue, and S.M. Flynn. 2011. Economics: principles, problems, and policies, 19th ed.
McGraw-Hill/Irwin, New York
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organization existing procedure can either fail to accommodate the needs of the project hence
failure to control duration. Example, an organization that deals with helping village areas,
want to undertake a project of building a house. Their existing procedure was different with
that kind of project.
5.3 Task dependencies
According to3 McIlree, R in his article “How ‘Percent-Complete’ Is That Task Again” he
explain a task as an activity that needs to be accomplished within a defined period of time or
by a deadline to work towards work-related goals. There are many tasks that cannot be
started before others are finished, there are also some tasks that have to start together. Tasks
dependencies will dictate the sequence of tasks and will also dictate the project's need for
resources at any one point. example

5.4 Team experience

According to Wikipedia online encyclopedia, team effectiveness is the capacity a team has to
accomplish the goals or objectives administered by some authorized personnel or the
organization. If the project team is weak or has no experience on similar projects the it can be
very difficult for project managers to control duration. A successful project which can run
according to the schedule planed is that which has a correct people to the assigned task.
5.5 Deadline
Quite often, the stakeholders impose a specific deadline (for example, we need the project to
be finished on November to be able to Launch on Christmas or New Year). A "hard" deadline
will great affect the project schedule, as the project manager will probably over-allocate
resources and will also probably make them work on weekends and holidays in order to meet
the deadline.
5.6 Project priority
If the project has low priority in the company, then the project manager will not be able to
claim the resources he really needs to finish the project in a condensed timeframe, he will
only get a fraction of his needs, as most resources will be assigned to high priority projects.

3
McIlree, Robert How ‘Percent-Complete’ Is That Task Again?
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REFERANCE:
1. PMBOK Guide “A Guide to The Project Management Body of Knowledge”, PMI,
fifth edition
2. https://opentextbc.ca/projectmanagement/chapter/chapter-11-resource-planning-
project-management/
3. www.edupristine.com/blog/project-estimation-challenges/amp
4. www.theprojectgroup.com/blog/en/resource-planning-in-project-management
5. McIlree, Robert How ‘Percent-Complete’ Is That Task Again?
6. Bless, H.; Fiedler, K. & Strack, F. (2004). Social cognition: How individuals
construct social reality. New York: Psychology Press
7. McConnell, C.R., S.L. Brue, and S.M. Flynn. 2011. Economics: principles, problems,
and policies, 19th ed. McGraw-Hill/Irwin, New York

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