Thursday, February 14, 2013




Scope creep can be defined as “the natural tendency of the client, as well as project team members, to try to improve the project’s output as the project progresses” (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, & Sutton, 2008, p. 346). This could be something as simple as doing a home improvement project in an old house. A specific project may be planned such as fixing a leaking toilet which expands to new flooring and painting the room. That has happened to me. Old houses always involve more work than one originally plans for.

However, I want to discuss a project I was assigned at work. I obtained my Associate in Applied Science in Computer Programming while working in the Intensive Care Unit. Although we had our facility web page, nursing service decided they wanted to have their own and I was chosen to create it. It started out as a simple FrontPage single site for mainly policies, procedures, and resources. However, once I got the page up and running, several other specialty areas started requesting pages that would link from it, and several people wanted other things added to the main page. I tried to evaluate them to make sure they were appropriate and used my own prioritizations. I eventually added pages for wound care, nursing education, ethics, home-based primary care, and pharmacy, and added several other things as requested.

If I had been the project manager I would have used a change control system, which is defined as setting “up a well-controlled, formal process whereby changes can be introduced and accomplished with as little distress as possible” (Portny, et al., 2008, p. 346). All of the changes would have been reviewed and determined how it would affect other tasks. I would have the chief nurses in authority approve the changes and help determine the benefits and disadvantages of additions being proposed as well as the priority of them. In fact, I did later make sure the chief nurses were aware and approved everything that was added.

References
Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B.E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources: Helpful Resources


Accurate planning is important in project management. Estimating costs and allocating resources poorly can cost a project manager the project, or even their job.


In this blog, I will look at a couple of websites that I think will be useful in estimating the costs, effort, and/or activity durations associated with ID projects. The first contains several articles and tools and is located at http://www.mindtools.com. One article called “Estimating time accurately” is located at http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_01.htm. This article discusses several steps for making more accurate time estimates and some methods in calculating them. It includes some things we have learned about in our class such as Work Breakdown Structures, top-down and bottom-up estimating, and Gantt charts. These tools, and others, “enable project managers to summarize and organize the various events, activities, and span times of project tasks” (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, & Sutton, 2008).

A second site is http://www.projectmanagementguru.com/estimating.html. This site has articles and tools that can be used in the different project management phases. Keeping a project on schedule and on budget takes much planning. And many times projects overrun either or both of these.

One other site that I came across was http://www.pmhut.com/common-tools-for-cost-estimating-in-project-management. This site also has several articles that can assist with project management by explaining different methods and tools that can be used.  

Sometimes project management can feel like these phases:
1.       Wild enthusiasm
2.       Disillusionment
3.       Confusion
4.       Panic
5.       Search for the guilty
6.       Punishment of the innocent
7.       Promotion of non-participants ( PM Hut,2013)

References

Adams, S. (2009). Dilbert by Scott Adams. Retrieved from http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Budget%20Estimate

Mind Tools. (2013). Estimating time accurately. Retrieved from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_01.htm

PM Hut. (2008). Common tools for cost estimating in project management. Retrieved from http://www.pmhut.com/common-tools-for-cost-estimating-in-project-management

PM Hut. (2013). Project management funnies—The final chapter. Retrieved from http://www.pmhut.com/project-management-funnies-the-final-chapter

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B.E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Sheen, R. (2012). Project management estimating tools and techniques. Retrieved from http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Budget%20Estimate