PROJECT MANAGEMENT Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

PROJECT MANAGEMENT - Essay Example This report is based on a case related to National Program for IT that has decided to abandon the ?12.7 billion project after years of delays (Campbell, 2011). NHS project has been cancelled because of lack of planning as improper planning has been identified as the most important reason for the failure. There have been several problems throughout the project that will be discussed in the report. This report will highlight the importance of project management techniques, processes and planning in order to accomplish the goals of the projects and will apply the technique with respect to NHS project. Furthermore, this report will discuss about the differences in managing a small project and a large project. Also the report will critically evaluate how the management of NHS managed the project and how the project was planned and how it has been carried out. In addition to this, the report will also analyse the execution of the plans by the management and how risk management techniques a nd proper costing and staffing techniques would have appreciated the project value. The report will then critically evaluate things that went wrong and became the reason for the abandonment of the project and then suggestions and recommendations have been given that could have improved the process and increased the chances of successful completion of the project. PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROCESS AND PLANNING: There are different techniques that are used by project managers in order to successfully complete the project. Project life cycle is the most widely used concept in project management and it is defined as different phases that a project would undergo throughout its life. The project life cycle will also be applied on the NHS project and then it will be analysed whether the project went through its different phases properly or not. A typical project has five phases and these phases include (Bedford and Cooke, 2001): 1. Initiation 2. Planning and Design 3. Executing 4. Monitoring and Controlling 5. Closing (CostField) Initiation is the first phase of the five phases of the project lifecycle and during this phase of the project lifecycle, the strategies along with the targets and objectives of project are defined as to what the project is about and what the project manager would like to achieve from the project. There were flaws when it comes to the NHS project as the goals and objectives were not clearly defined and the strategies were also ambiguous thus the problems can be seen from the very first phase of the project life cycle. After defining the goals and objectives of the project, the project manager in the second phase plans and designs different tasks that he or she would like to accomplish in order to complete the whole project. Work break down structure is one of the most widely used techniques in order to define and break the whole project into different small tasks (Cleland and Gareis, 2006). Although the project was divided into different tasks but the management was not able to achieve the deadlines of these tasks and thus it lead to delay in the overall project duration. By dividing the whole project into different tasks, the project manager is also able to assign these tasks to different employees and manage the

Logistics Management in Ocean Shipping Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Logistics Management in Ocean Shipping - Essay Example The issues like climate change dominate the future and result in headlong rush of western economies to offshore manufacturing to lower cost countries in the east. Further financial cost of delivering goods across the world has always been a fundamental element of trading and decisions of logistician is largely influenced by high environmental costs (www.pmcontent.com)1. Magee et al (1985:1) mentioned that high quality and high efficiencies have become the characteristics of the production and physical distribution operations of many foreign competitors concerned the companies in United States challenging some of their basic tenets. According to Frazelle (2001:10) global logistics is the flow of material, information and money between countries connecting suppliers' supplier with customers' customer internationally. Global logistics flows have increased dramatically during the last several years due to globalization in the world economy expanding use o trading blocs and global access to Web sites for buying and selling merchandise. It is much more complex than domestic logistics due to multiplicity of handoffs, players, languages, documents, currencies, times zones and cultures that are inherent to international business. According to Singh et al (1998:1) logistics management is unique and represents and paradox as it is concerned with one of the oldest and newest activities of business and government. It is further stated that logistics system consists of facility location, forecasting and order management, transportation, inventory, warehousing and packaging which were all being practiced since the start of commercial and industrial activity. Brewer et al (2001:12) states that logistic systems utilize a wide range of resources and services within and external to individual companies which is likely to happen because of wide range of functions that logistics encompass in procurement and distribution. It is further stated that achieving high level of performance in logistics is important for the profitability of companies and for the efficiency of national economies as well as global economy. The interactive effects of the productivity of national and international logistics increase because international trade increases as a percentage of the national domestic activity. Logistics is that part of supply chain process that plans, implements and controls the effective forward and reverse flow and storage of goods, services related information between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet the customers' requirements. Logistics management is important in relation is issues like transportation costs, large distribution costs, deregulation, changing strategies, technology and globalization (Kritika and Madhu, 2008)2. Cavanagh et al (2002:163) mentions that there has been a massive increase in ocean shipping, highway transport, air cargo transport, rail with a tremendous corresponding increase in infrastructural develo pment with export production as a central feature of free trade. Ocean shipping has expanded more than tenfold since 1950s mainly because of increased commodity export activity from economic globalization which accounts for more than 90% of commodity trade shipments with the