Chapter 5: Scope Management

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the importance of scope management for project success.
2. Understand how conceptual development serves as a critical first stage in scope management.
3. Identify the steps in developing the scope statement.
4. Identify the elements in the work authorization phase of scope development.
5. Identify the various types of information available for scope reporting.
6. Demonstrate how control systems and configuration management relate to scope development.
7. Discuss why effective scope management includes a project closeout stage.
8. Understand how project practices can support the critical goal of sustainability.

Chapter 6: Project Team Building, Conflict, and Negotiation 

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the steps involved in project team building.
2. Know the characteristics of effective project teams and why teams fail.
3. Know the reasons why project teams often fail.
4. Know the stages in the development of groups.
5. Describe how to achieve cross-functional cooperation in teams.
6. See the advantages and challenges of virtual project teams.
7. Understand the nature of conflict and evaluate response methods.
8. Understand the importance of negotiation skills in project management.

Reflection and Discussion Forum Week 3

Reflect on the assigned readings for the week. Identify what you thought was the most important concept(s), method(s), term(s), and/or any other thing that you felt was worthy of your understanding.

Also, provide a graduate-level response to each of the following questions:

1. What is the chief purpose of configuration management?  In your opinion, why has it become increasingly popular in recent years as a part of the project management process?
2. Sustainable project development has many features and can mean many things when beginning a project.  If you were to identify three critical messages that explain what sustainable project management really means, what would they be?
3. Identify the five major methods for resolving conflict.  Give an example of how each might be applied in a hypothetical project team conflict episode.

 Respond to the post of at least two peers, using 100 words minimum each.

[Your initial post should be based upon the assigned reading for the week, so the textbook should be a source listed in your reference section and cited within the body of the text. Other sources are not required but feel free to use them if they aid in your discussion].

 [Your initial post should be at least 450+ words and in APA format (including Times New Roman with font size 12 and double spaced). Post the actual body of your paper in the discussion thread then attach a Word version of the paper for APA review]

Activity 3

Case Study 5.2: California’s High-Speed Rail Project

A goal of the Obama administration has been to promote high-speed rail across the most populous and geographically-dispersed states in the United States. The idea is to adopt more energy-saving initiatives while also helping to improve state’s infrastructure.  It is with this in mind that the Federal Government made billions available to various states in the 2008–2010 budget cycles.  After the Fall, 2010 elections, several states that had elected Republican governors refused the grants, suspicious that this seed money would not be sufficient to pay for what they viewed as unnecessary construction based on over-optimistic expectations of the need for and use of high-speed rail.  One of the states that accepted the money and has moved forward strongly into high-speed rail has been California, which has already begun work on a 65-mile section in the middle of the state, earning the derisive nickname, the “train to nowhere.”  This case details the state’s projections regarding the need for high-speed rail, against the views of infrastructure experts and critics who charge that for a state that is already in a severe budget crisis, this is just the sort of project that makes no sense economically or demographically.

Questions

1. Assess the benefits and drawbacks of the high-speed rail project. In your opinion, do benefits outweigh drawbacks, or vice versa? Why? Justify your answer.
2. What are the implications of starting a project based on tenuous projections that may or may not come true 10 years from now?
3. Could you justify the California high-speed rail project from the perspective of a massive public works initiative? In other words, what other factors enter into the decision of whether to pursue a high-speed rail project? Why are they important?

Case Study 6.1: Columbus Instruments

This case is based on a true story of a once-successful organization that had allowed its project management practices to degenerate to the point where assignment to a project team was often a mark of disfavor and a sign of pending termination.  The case involves issues of motivation, structural effects on projects, and project team staffing.  It offers students an opportunity to see how, if left unchecked, certain behaviors by department heads and others in the organization can work counter to the desires to use project teams to improve organizational profitability and instead make them a dumping ground for malcontents and poor performers.

Questions

1. What are the implications of CIC’s approach to staffing project teams?  Is the company using project teams as training grounds for talented fast-trackers, or as dumping grounds for poor performers?
2. How would you advise the CEO to correct the problem?  Where would you start?
3. Discuss how issues of organizational structure and power played a role in the manner in which project management declined in effectiveness at CIC.