Assignment 2

Nithin Ravi
Project Management, Conestoga College
MGMT8400-24S-Sec11 -Advanced Project Planning and Control
July 14, 2024

Virginia works as the director of the Project Management Office at Vandalay

Enterprises. Virginia aims to decrease the project's cost by $5 million in the eight
months after the merging acquisition with the Numan Inc. This plan describes how
Virginia can achieve this by improving Project Management. The improvements can be
made by using the resources more effectively, identifying and managing the risks
correctly, and enhancing the overall project.
Project Management:
An effective Project Management structure is needed to achieve overall cost savings.
This management involves in defining the various roles in the project, its significance
and responsibilities and good decision making. The following steps can be taken,
 Combining Project Management Offices:
Virginia should combine the project management offices of both Vandalay and
Numan. By doing this, Virginia can identify the required roles and responsibilities
and remove similar overlapping roles that are present in both offices. This
collaboration helps in maintain a good communication channel within the office
as it can eliminate a lot of miscommunications. By collaborating, expertise from
both sides will be shared, which will lead to improvement and knowledge sharing
among the employees.
 Creating new Structure and methodologies:
A unified structure should be created with common standards and guidelines. A
clear process for monitoring and controlling of the process should be
implemented for an efficient and smoother workflow. Creating an implementation
plan is very much necessary to determine the tasks and the duration and needed
resources associated to it. This can be achieved by the support of the key
stakeholders of both offices. This new structure can be enhanced by collecting
feedbacks from making improvements based on it.
 Creating a tracking system:
It is significant to develop a system that tracks the important aspects of the work
such as the performance of the project, the duration required and the actual time
taken to complete the tasks. Quality is the main component that needs to be
tracked regularly. This can be done by using monitoring tools and software.
Effective optimization of Resources:
  Merging Resources:
This involves merging together the resources such as the employees, materials,
equipment, and even office spaces into a centralized unit. By doing this, Virginia
can get a detailed and clear picture of the wide variety of available resources and
develop ideas for optimal utilization. By implementing this strategy, it can be
ensured that all the available resources are used more flexibly as required by the
process demand.
 Skill Exchange:
This process involves in sharing and acquiring knowledge from both sides. This
can be achieved by training the employees on the project that is irrelevant to their
company's origin. Conducting these kind of training sessions increases
communications and builds new relationships within the companies.
Brainstorming sessions can also be conducted, which is a great tool for mapping
innovative ideas among the employees.
Allocation of resources:
An efficient resource allocation is required for effective cost reduction. This can be
achieved by using various resource allocation software that helps optimize and
distribute resources such as humans, equipment, and materials throughout the project.
This kind of software is very useful in finding the shortages and also identifying if there's
a surplus. The sharing of resources across multiple teams can be promoted in order to
increase the utilization of ideal resources and maximize the overall effective usage of
the resources.
Continuous Improvements:
Making continuous improvements to the project is significant for running the project
smoothly and reducing the cost-effectively. In order to improve Virginia can use various
techniques like Lean and Six Sigma. By implementing lean can help Virginia in
eliminating waste and focus on activities that helps in impovining the project workflow.
On the other hand Six Sigma helps in finding the cause of any inefficiencies and fix
them using a step by step process. Additionally, Virginia can adopt agile methodologies
to make the project more flexible. This method focus on breaking the work into smaller
parts and making improvements based on the feedbacks gathered simultaneously.
Risk Management:
An effective risk management plays a vital role in controlling the project cost. The risk
management process consists of three steps,
 Risk Identification:
The initial process of Risk management is to identify the potential risks. This can
be done by conducting a thorough assessment and identifying its impact on the
cost. This assessment can be conducted using various techniques which are
qualitative and quantitative.
  Risk Mitigation Planning:
The next process to be done after identifying the risk is to develop strategies to
overcome the risk and its impact on the project. Strategies like risk transfer and
contingency planning can be used in this process.
 Risk Monitoring:
Finally all the identified should be continuously monitored and tracked to find the
effectiveness of the mitigation strategies implemented. This can be done by
regularly updating and maintaining the risk register.
Continuous Monitoring and Controlling:
 Creating Visual Reports:
This process involves in creating visual reports and updating them regularly.
These reports are created to understand the project's performance in terms of
costs , resources and duration. These visual reports give a detailed view of
progress of the project using data metrics. This helps the stakeholders to
understand the trends and status of the project. By integrating all the projects
data and presenting them in a visual form Virginia can enhance the overall
communication and effectiveness of the project.
 Performing Regular Audits:
Virginia can facilitate regular audits in order to ensure the project is on the right
track and use the audit results to improve the project performance.
 Reviewing Milestones:
Conducting milestones review is very significant in a project as it helps in making
important decisions and to ensure that the project is in line with the cost
reduction goals. By conducting this review, Virginia will be able to identify
problems early and make flexible plans for cost reduction throughout the project.
Conclusion:
By following the abovementioned strategies, Virginia can reduce the project costs by $5
million within eight months. These strategies will not only help Virginia in reducing costs
but also enhance the overall effectiveness of the merged organization.
References:
Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling,
and Controlling. John Wiley & Sons.