Project Management Documents

Discuss about the Project Life Cycle for Project Quality.

The project life cycle is an important aspect in project quality management that consists four major phases. The four major steps are initiation phase, planning phase, execution phase and closing phase (Fuller et al. 2017). The project management considers various aspects such as project management plan” href=”https://#”>project management plan, project quality management plan, risk management, procurement and others to facilitate the project. This report discusses the above given project management documents and project activities that are considered in project life cycle. The report majorly discusses on project management and its impact on managing global teams while working on a project (Binder 2016). The purpose of this report is to focus on project quality management plan for managing global teams and related legal issues and ethnic cultural differences in global teams. The report also focuses on key threats to improve IS project quality and project closure activities along with its impact on IS projects.

The structure of the report is as follows. The first section is project quality management plan for managing global teams. The second section is key threats related in improving IS projects quality. The third section is value and impact of legal issues and ethnic cultural in global teams working. The fourth section is project closing processes and outputs and their use in IS project.

The project quality management helps to manage global teams in a project. There are various people coming from different backgrounds are involved in a project and they are considered as global team. The various ways through which project quality management plan helps to manage global teams (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). The first one is navigating time zones where each member are allowed to navigate through their own time. This helps to evaluate the times of each member and they are comfortable to coordinate and cooperate with the team members. The time zone poses challenge for project quality management to manage global teams. The second one is leadership execution where leadership helps to manage the global team efficiently. The leadership execution helps to manage the team by regular updates and coordination of global teams (Kerzner 2018). The global team is managed by new ideas and concepts of different people from different backgrounds. The leadership execution is managed to bind the team together for team goals rather than an individual teams.

The third one is having clear goals of the team and they should be encouraged to participate and engage in the team activities to make the project successful. In this way they can achieve success and global teams consist of different members, where each member can contribute to the success of project through their new ideas and concepts (Schwalbe 2015). The fourth one is respect towards each other where team members should respect each other and their perspective. This helps to cooperate and make strong bonds among the team members to contribute towards project success. The respect is given to each member and their ideas which they present. This ensures better management of project and its success. The fifth one is planning and coordination where planning is done to manage the global team to manage the project (Nguyen-Duc, Cruzes and Conradi 2015). This ensures better communication among the team members so that they can comfortably discuss the project management. The planning and coordination is provided to better facilitate the global team contribution towards project success.

Project Quality Management Plan for Managing Global Teams

The key threats related to improving quality in IS projects are scope risk, scheduling risk, resource risk, technology risk, time management risk and budgeting risk. The scope risk is related to risks of changes in goals and objectives of the project due to certain factors (Colomo-Palacios et al. 2014). These factors are scope creep where the project gets complicated due to addition from customers end during the project development. The other factors are integration issues, defects in software and hardware and changes occurring in dependencies. The scheduling risk is related to the project not proceeding the way it was scheduled to proceed (Geppert, Matten and Williams 2016). This risk occurs due to several factors such as unexpected delays related to external vendor, estimation errors, natural factors and acquisition delays in some part of the project schedule. This also delays the assessment of the project deliverables and causes complexity in the project completion and success. The resource risk arises due to outsourcing issues and issues related to personnel. The project at global level requires a large team and hence, their management is a challenge (Todorovi? et al. 2015). The contribution from different people from different backgrounds in a global team where adding of new staff contributes complexity to the project management in further stages. This is because the new staff cannot be able to understand the project in a limited time.

The technology risk is related to delays arising because of defects in hardware and software or failure of any system. This treat is a major threat as failure of system and defects in hardware and software results in overall delay of project or may be the project comes to halt. The technology risk such as cloud service provider that the project is using does not suit the project for further processes in the project life cycle (Aga, Noorderhaven and Vallejo 2016). The time management risk is related to balancing of time management for project at all stages. This poses challenges as time management plays an important role in project management and if time is not manage properly during the project life cycle then it will pose threat to the project. There are many instances where time management becomes a challenge in project and they are resources committed to the sub tasks of the project. The other instances are systems not working properly and thus delay in time. The budget risk is another threat related to improving quality of IS project. The budget risk is where any project is new and added to that, of the team is a global team (Darkow 2015). The global team has different members having different requirements thus the budget becomes a constraint. The budget if planned in the project however, it is not adjusted with the project in the later phases. Then this poses a challenge especially for large projects at global levels.

Key Threats Related to Improving IS Project Quality

The impact of cultural awareness and legal issues related with the project quality management plan to manage global teams are as follows. They are communication, cultural values, global business environment, legal and political issues, integration management, project organizational structure, global procurement management, leadership and establishing trust and difference in time zone (Aga, Noorderhaven and Vallejo 2016). The impact of communication while working in a global team is that it is seen as obstacle in a global team. However, with increasing use of World Wide Web, the communication has got better while working in a global team where team members can effectively communicate. The impact of cultural values in a project has major role in a global team which has people from different backgrounds and they have different religions, ethics, language, value, holidays and beliefs. The cultural values of team members contradict sometimes that results in workplace conflicts.

The impact of global business environment on IS project while working in a global team is that there are different perspective of team members in a global team. The global business environment are different in terms of international market, economics and currency (Todorovi? et al. 2015). This affects the perspectives of global team. The legal and political issues are related to country-specific laws, political issues, environmental regulations and standards that impact a global project team. This has impact on global team due to legal issues of different countries are different and they can result in conflicts. The impact of integration management for a global project team working whether external to the project or within the project, are critical and it can be difficult across various regions and countries. This can impact global team working as they will be affected by the integration. The global procurement management impacts the working of a global team as geographical boundaries sometimes benefits in the project success and sometimes not (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). The lack of knowledge of geographical places related to the project can hinder the success of the project. The leadership and establishing trust has major impact on working of global team as development of project and its management to achieve success. The trust ensures better coordination and cooperation among the team members to deliver a successful project. The difference in time zone can hinder communication virtually however, it can impact in a positive way were global team can work for 24 hours as per their conveniences.

Impact of Cultural Awareness and Legal Issues on Project Quality Management Plan

The project closure is the formal completion in project management. The project closure processes are all deliverables meeting the exit criteria, transferring of deliverables to the support functions and customer and lessons learnt (Cagliano, Grimaldi and Rafele 2015). The outputs of project closing processes are final outcome product, service transition and organizational process. The output of project closure involves project management plan, stakeholder register and risk register. The key activity related to project closure is lessons learnt during the project. This will help the future projects to use these learnt lessons and prevent any failure in the project (Pratt 2018). The projects should be closed properly and honestly as it will be the foundation for mitigating risks in future projects through lessons learnt. The lessons should be appreciated after the project closure as it will help to identify the weak areas and help team members to work upon the weak areas in future projects (Chen and Li 2016). The closed procurement process in project closure involves reviewing the project contract and a formal intimation letter is provided to the respected seller. The update of organizational process assets helps to lessons learnt. The lessons learnt helps to mitigate the future risks in the future projects. The activities that are performed in close procurement are reviewing terms and conditions of project closing phase, updating organization activities and receiving of formal notice about the completion of contract (Chronéer and Backlund 2015). Project closing processes are presented through close project meeting including Gantt chart, invitation to key stakeholders for meeting, encouraging openness to share the learnt lessons with members of the project, evaluation of project against goals and objective so the project and risks managed during the project.

The use of project closure in IS project is that it helps to close the project effectively where it will not only help to close the project but also helps to make the future projects successful. The project closure processes uses in IS projects are as follows. The first one is confirmation that goals and objectives are met at the end of project (Martinelli and Milosevic 2016). The second one is that sense of closure for the project as it will give satisfaction of closing the project effectively for project team and customers. The third one is future projects will be improved through the lessons learnt from the project. The fourth one is capturing of knowledge through the lessons learned in the project which will help in future projects. The fifth one is managing the tasks related to the project closure such as final status report, final payment and time sheets approval. The sixth one is rewarding the team and team members for working on the project successfully to produce a successful project.

Project Closing Processes and Outputs

Conclusion

Therefore, from above discussions it can be concluded that there are areas which needs to be improved in IS project. The adequate standards and controls provided by the project quality management plan to improve global team are given in this project to understand the project quality management. There are key threat involved in improving the project quality that affects the project development and management and they should be taken into account to mitigate the threats. There are ethnic culture and legal issues related with global team management however, these are seen as either in a positive way or in a negative way. The project closure processes suggests that this is an important part in project which helps to mitigate future risks in project. Hence, the project management is an important part and it should be properly handled and managed.

References

Aga, D.A., Noorderhaven, N. and Vallejo, B., 2016. Transformational leadership and project success: The mediating role of team-building. International Journal of Project Management, 34(5), pp.806-818.

Binder, J., 2016. Global project management: communication, collaboration and management across borders. Routledge.

Cagliano, A.C., Grimaldi, S. and Rafele, C., 2015. Choosing project risk management techniques. A theoretical framework. Journal of Risk Research, 18(2), pp.232-248.

Chen, Y. and Li, A., 2016. Hardware Formal Verification Coverage Closure and BugHunt Project Report Phase III Final Report.

Chronéer, D. and Backlund, F., 2015. A Holistic View on Learning in Project?Based Organizations. Project Management Journal, 46(3), pp.61-74.

Colomo-Palacios, R., Casado-Lumbreras, C., Soto-Acosta, P., García-Peñalvo, F.J. and Tovar, E., 2014. Project managers in global software development teams: a study of the effects on productivity and performance. Software Quality Journal, 22(1), pp.3-19.

Darkow, I.L., 2015. The involvement of middle management in strategy development—Development and implementation of a foresight-based approach. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 101, pp.10-24.

Fuller, M.A., Valacich, J.S., George, J.F. and Schneider, C., 2017. Information Systems Project Management: A Process and Team Approach, Edition 1.1. Prospect Press.

Geppert, M., Matten, D. and Williams, K. eds., 2016. Challenges for European management in a global context: Experiences from Britain and Germany. Springer.

Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Kerzner, H., 2018. Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. John Wiley & Sons.

Martinelli, R.J. and Milosevic, D.Z., 2016. Project management toolbox: tools and techniques for the practicing project manager. John Wiley & Sons.

Nguyen-Duc, A., Cruzes, D.S. and Conradi, R., 2015. The impact of global dispersion on coordination, team performance and software quality–A systematic literature review. Information and Software Technology, 57, pp.277-294.

Pratt, M., 2018. Project Closure Document.

Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.

Todorovi?, M.L., Petrovi?, D.?., Mihi?, M.M., Obradovi?, V.L. and Bushuyev, S.D., 2015. Project success analysis framework: A knowledge-based approach in project management. International Journal of Project Management, 33(4), pp.772-783.