Project Initiation Document and Measuring Project Success

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Project justification
The project scope
Work Breakdown structure
Project schedule with a Gantt chart and milestones
Challenges and constraints in the project completion
Risk management
Opportunities in the project implementation
References

Introduction

In project management, the project initiation document (PID) is crucial as it outlines the project’s scope, power, and criteria to measure the project’s success. PID is also essential to the project management team as it defines the foundation of the tasks at hand. The document describes the projects and provides the basis for management and evaluation. A project is implemented to achieve a particular goal. This concept makes it necessary to develop a plan to determine if the goals for implementing the project are met. As a project management document, PID also aids in the process of measuring success.

Project justification

In the modern economy, technology is taking over the ancient ways of doing a thing. The need for efficiency within limited resources has also triggered the need to find new, efficient ways to conduct production. Establishing a state-of-the-art intelligent laboratory in London will help achieve the economic need for efficiency. In London, the growing population of scientists in schools, colleges, universities, and other sectors creates demand for a smart laboratory that is up to date to test new ideas efficiently. The desire for new technologies is also a motivation for the establishment of the laboratory. The main objective of constructing this lab is to encourage innovations in the various disciplines of science. Some ideas might have been essential to the economy go untested, and their potentials go untapped.

The project scope

An amount of £750,000 has been set aside to turn an old building into a new laboratory. The money will be used to purchase all the necessities and pay the employees. Rehashed equipment in the old building will also be collected for reuse. The main deliverable in this project is a state-of-the-art intelligent laboratory. The building will be turned into a facility with equipment for testing new ideas and developing them into realities.

The features installed in the lab include; computer-controlled equipment, a mini-lab with computers to enhance the use of the internet in developing ideas into reality, and a computer security system. Besides, the intelligent lab will be segmented to facilitate idea development in various disciplines of science. An online course for session booking is also part of the project (Shah, 2020). The current need to reduce environmental pollution triggers the need to develop pollution control systems. The fume hoods of the lab will be fitted with pollution reduction kits. Physical, chemical, and biological materials used in experiments will also have a system to avoid water or soil pollution.

In implementing the project, the fundamental inclusions will be training all the stakeholders during and after the project completion to gain confidence and digital fabrication skills to carry out daily lab activities. The project, however, excludes renovations of the laboratory from damages that may occur after the project delivery. If the implementing team has to do the innovations, they must be enforced before the deadline.

In the process of renovating the old building into an intelligent laboratory, assumptions are made. The significant premise created by the project management team includes the following; the time allocated for the completion of the project implementation is fixed, and the implementing team will request no time extensions (Horstman, 2016). The project management team also assumes that the money allocated, £750000, will be enough to complete the process (Hartono et al., 2018). Another assumption made by the team is that the contracted company to finish the required work is a competent company with the required capabilities to complete the project.

Work Breakdown structure

In the first month of the project, the activity will remove all the buildings’ unwanted structures. In the second and third months, the implementation team will replace the materials removed with modern technologies. Repairs of old systems desired for reuse will commence after the discarding process and take place for a month. The next step required is furnishing the laboratory, which will include creating a design and assigning everything to their places and will take a month to accomplish. The next activity that will also take a month is the testing of the lab’s operations. The last action before handing over the project will be the training of the stakeholders, and it will also take a month.

Project schedule with a Gantt chart and milestones

Stakeholder assessment

The stakeholders in this project’s implementation include the community around, the financers, the project management team, proposed users of the intelligent lab, places of affiliation of the scholars who will use the laboratory (universities, schools, laboratories), legal agencies, suppliers of materials needed, and even the hired workers during the renovations and operation of the project is complete (Kernzner, 2017). The stakeholders’ assessment is necessary to make each one aware of the role they have to play to facilitate project success.

As it has been stated earlier, all projects are undertaken to achieve a particular goal. A project is said to be successful if the aim for its completion has been met. Stakeholders must determine if a project that was undertaken is successful in justifying their reason for its completion. There are various criteria for measuring every project’s success or far failure. One such standard of project evaluation is the measurement basing arguments on the project’s project time, cost, and quality (Ziegelmeir, 2019). Some sources argue that this evaluation criterion is outdated, and this is acceptable, basing my argument on the research article, ‘Digging beneath the Iron Triangle’ and other sources.

Challenges and constraints in the project completion

In any economic process of product or service creation, challenges have to exist. Obstacles in implementing the project of turning the single-story building into an innovative library are a common occurrence. Some of them in the presented scenario include inadequate public support. A survey conducted in the neighborhoods’ identified that some people proposed the renovation into a Library or a social hall. Secondly, corruption or misuse of the funds provided was also foreseen as an example of a challenge. Thirdly, it is likewise a problem to identify and hire highly qualified staff to complete the project as competent employees are not easy to find, and the ones available are expensive to pay (Coleman, 2020). Another issue can be the lack of communication among the people involved since communication is a key to any project’s success.

Moreover, scheduling can be also one of the biggest problems while constructing, since incorrect or insensitive scheduling can result in workers’ dissatisfaction, which can lead to other dire consequences. Concerning the project, it is also essential to maintain the same regulations, since the constant shifts and changes can lead to uncertainty. The construction never goes as planned completely, therefore, when difficulties occur, it is vital not to blame everyone, but instead, find the correct solution that satisfies each party.

Additionally, document management might appear to be a crucial challenge. The amount of paper used while constructing and escape of the red tape would require a creative solution. The seventh possible challenge lies in the fact that the newly constructed laboratory will not correspond to the requirements of the proposed users and will lack some equipment. Finally, one of the most essential problems that will severely hinder the completion of the project is the lack of budget. The additional and unforeseen expenses might turn into the fact that the real budget exceeds the allocated £750000.

Risk management

In every project management concept, risk management is an aspect that does not escape the minds of project managers. Risk management involves the process of identifying some of the threats that may be encountered and the methods that could be used to mitigate the hazards identified (Hartono et al., 2018). Such issues as scheduling, misuse of the funds, hiring of qualified staff, and lack of communication among the people involved can be fixed via smart and responsible management. Management can create a great schedule, talk about workers’ problems, work with funds, hire staff, create stable regulations, and go paperless. Therefore, the universal key to fixing all the issues mentioned is to establish a great management system, which can promptly and flexibly solve diverse issues.

Even though thoughtful planning is a valuable tool that would help to avoid most of the previously listed possible constraints, some other ways to avoid these challenges should be suggested. For instance, to be sure that the budget would not exceed £750000, it is necessary in advance to allocate some amount of money that could be spent in urgent and unexpected cases.

The problem of correspondence of the new laboratory with the expectations of the scientists could be easily fixed through communication with them and conduction of a profound analysis of which items it should have. The issue with paperwork could be solved using specialized software that would allow the users to store the documents and access them at any moment. To reduce the risk of inadequate public support of the project, it is recommended to conduct a PR campaign that would explain the advantages of the construction of the state-of-the-art intelligent laboratory. The campaign should show that ordinary people would also benefit from the realization of this project.

Opportunities in the project implementation

Some of the opportunities that may exist while implementing the project may include but are not limited to creating job opportunities. The process is a complex integrated process that requires people to handle. There may be a need to hire technicians to guide the lab users once it is completed. The population in London will also find opportunities to participate in innovation activities since the lab will be easily accessible.

In the research article, ‘Digging beneath the Iron Triangle,’ it is highlighted that the project of digging a channel from London to Paris was branded a failure barely six months after its initiation. The project’s biases were because of the long time taken to complete the task, the cost overruns experienced during its implementation, and the low demand for the project’s services (Pollack et al., 2018). Some people even suggested that the project would not have been implemented.

The project was often used as a case study for project failure; currently, the reality is different. People’s perception of the project has changed, which is partially due to the belief that the major benefits were ripped from the presented work. When the project is evaluated out of time, cost and quality, the project is a success and an agent of change in the European nations (Zwikael et al., 2018). The project is responsible for modernizing the European transport infrastructure.

The project has provided choices for individuals and companies wanting to travel and transport their goods and services from Paris, London, Brussels, and beyond. Moreover, the presented work had an influence on the reduction of transportation costs. Therefore, the iron triangle system of the task’s evaluation cannot be applied to the project, since it is outdated (Runeson, 2020). Furthermore, if the Euro-tunnel was graded using the iron triangle criteria, it would have been disastrous (Ryan et al., 2019). However, the current beliefs mark the system as a successful one for the project of the bestowed scale.

In the iron triangle of time, scope, and cost, a change in the triangle’s dimension impacts the remaining two sizes. If the project scope is enlarged, the cost and time increase, and if the period for the project completion is increased, cost and capacity are expected to increase. Similarly, when the price is inflated, time and scope increase. This argument, however, proves to be a rather vague estimation of the process. It has been realized that it is possible to interfere with one aspect without impacting the other dimensions (Mullai & Surya, 2019). For example, project time may be extended for various reasons, such as delayed procurement processes and delayed weather. This does not mean that the scope and the cost of the projected increase. The extra time may be during an inactivity period.

A project’s implementation costs may also increase during its implementation. The extra costs may result from challenge mitigation activities of compliance with legal policies relating to project implementation activities. The fees will not necessarily mean that the project’s time and scope will increase, in fact, they may remain the same (Goman & Pecerska, 2020). In the construction of the euro channel, the project’s time and cost increased tremendously, but the scope remained identical (Anbari, 2018). This argument confirms a need to develop new ways of measuring project success rather than using time, price, and scope.

The criteria such as the iron triangle do not consider the future impacts of a project. The method of evaluation is more practical in smaller projects with minor amounts of capital and time investments, which is not very objective in large projects (Demirkesen & Ozorhon, 2017). The standard is obsolete as it is not flexible. It is to deny that the main components of project evaluation are cost, scope, and time; these components, however, should not be the only techniques to evaluate projects.

This is the basic technique of project evaluation. It calculates the time to completely recover the project’s initial invested capital using the project’s subsequent cash flows. Another method that could be adopted to measure this is the return-on-investment approach (ROI). ROI as an approach can be described as the yearly return on the percentages of initial capital investment. ROI is calculated by dividing the annual return by the initial investment.

Another contemporary that could be used in measuring the viability of a project is the Present Net Value, which is said to be the value of the sum of the rebates of the project in different implementation years. The sum of the discounted returns gives the project’s current value. The net present worth is the difference between the two variables. Projects with higher NPVs are considered better. The project profitability index can also be used to measure its success chances. PI creates a reflection of the project’s printability chances. It is calculated as a ratio of the total current value of the returns to the capital investment’s actual net worth, where the higher rates are preferred. Therefore, projects with high profitability indexes are most likely successful.

In summary, the project application process requires the construction of a project initiation document to increase the chance of the project’s success. The paper guides the stakeholders during the implementation stages as it is the document to refer to during discharge. However, the success of projects should be measured objectively. The above means that the method of the iron triangle should not be used as it is outdated. Modern techniques such as Profitability Index, Net Present Value, Payback Period, and Return on Investment should be used.

References

Anbari, F. T. (2018). The Chunnel project. Project Management Institute.

Demirkesen, S., & Ozorhon, B. (2017). Impact of integration management on construction project management performance. International Journal of Project Management, 35(8), 1639-1654.

Goman, M., & Pecerska, J. (2020). Merge Event Bias in Project Evaluation Techniques – Problems and Directions. 2020 61st International Scientific Conference on Information Technology and Management Science of Riga Technical University (ITMS). Web.

Hartono, S., Kosala, R. R., Supangkat, S. H., & Ranti, B. (2018). Impact of Intention to Use to a Document Management System (Case Study Approach). 2018 International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech). Web.

Horstman, M. (2016). The effective manager. Wiley.

Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management. John Wiley & Sons.

Pollack, J., Helm, J., & Adler, D. (2018). What is the Iron Triangle, and how has it changed?International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 11(2), 527-547. Web.

Runeson, G. (2020). A ‘triple bottom line’ approach to advanced project evaluation. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Ryan, T., French, S., & Kennedy, G. (2019). Beyond the Iron Triangle: Improving the quality of teaching and learning at scale. Studies in Higher Education, 1-12. Web.

Shah, A. (2020). Policy, Program and Project Evaluation a Toolkit for Economic Analysis in a Changing World. Springer International Publishing.

Zwikael, O., Chih, Y. Y., & Meredith, J. R. (2018). Project benefit management: Setting effective target benefits. International Journal of Project Management, 36(4), 650-658.

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