Introduction
Planning is a crucial process for every project before it commences. The success of a project highly depends on the plan (Munns & Bjeirmi, 2012). Therefore, it is easy to identify that planning phase is the important among and the primary determinant in a project. Project management is done almost all our daily undertakings. It can be applied to different activities, programs, development of a new device or in service provision (PMI Standards Committee, and PMI Standards Committee., 2001). The paper aims at coming up with a plan of a project used by a Microsoft companies when coming up with a new mobile phone.
In the production of this new device, the first process was to come up with an idea about the new device at a stage called idea conception. The production of the phone must be a success, and there are many factors which lead to the success of the new device produce (Baker, Murphy, & Fisher, 2008). The contributions are mainly the elements of a successful project which include design, the structure, effective communication channels, assigned role, leadership, group teams, and control measure among others.
The first critical contribution to success was good design and construction of the project. The workers associated with the execution of the project did it is steps which include, conduction of analysis, and evaluations. The principal evaluation carried which can be attributed to the success is sustainability access (Lockyer, 2011; Maylor, 2001). It showed that the project was sustainable. Communication channels are the other element that is found in every process of a project. It is mostly used during the assignation of duties and project reporting. Since the project is done step by step, effective communication is required to facilitate the transition between these stages.
Assigned roles and effective leadership are the other success contributing factors in the device making process. Effective leadership allows for the assignment of duties (Kerzner, 2013). The supervisor or any manager in any of the three management levels assigned rules to the junior employee (Larson & Gray, 2011). For instance, the technical manager can give the role to the junior employee to make a correction on the particular assembling of different parts of a phone, or else he can order him or her to do research on certain area concerning the device (Farquhar, 2010).
The other positive contribution to the success of the project is group teams and control measures. Working together toward the achievement of a project is advantageous to project. The success in production in a new device can be attributed to group work (Larson & Gray, 2011). Working as a group was important because the employees can share the tool, share valuable information and many more advantages. Sharing of the information is important because it encourages learning. Besides learning, it also encourages invention and innovation (Chapman & Ward, 2005). Some features in this device made were not initially in the plan, but hey developed as they employees were working together as a group. Control measures are also since they enable the employees to do duties adhering to the standards given regarding quality, scope, time a budget. Despite these success contributing factors, the application of different project management techniques was instrumental in our project.
Among the concepts learned were process and projects. The whole invention was broken into small projects that were sequential (Burke, 2013). The first sub-project was concept development and prototyping followed different parts and software, and finally the hardware manufacturing and fabrication. The above stages were happening in form process form to make the project complete.
Flowcharting and Gantt charts are the other techniques that were used to make the project a success. The charts were drawn to show the progression from stage to stage. The sequence of the events was shown from the first activity to the last activity. A definite start time and end time will be shown in the charts (Pinto, 2007; Turner, 2014). The stages were labeled such that it was easy to use follow. The use of Gantt charts was critical to the manager presiding because he could determine the duration of each and every process thus allowing better planning. The flow chart diagram was also used with another technique called critical path analysis. Critical path method is a diagram that shows the latest finish time and the earliest time for a project (Clark, 2007; Lewis, 2005). They are essential planning tools since they help the project manager to plan efficiently for the available resources and how they will be used with the said time (Cleland & Ireland, 2006). A critical path is an important scheduling tool which gives the time spent on the process.
The good can attributed to high-quality management and quality control. The project manager was responsible for setting the quality which should be achieved (Stevenson & Sum, 2009). The quality manager ensures the products produced meet the planned standard. The people involved in the assembling of the product are aware of the required quality (Chanas, 2009; Chapman & Ward, 2008). Before the final product leaves the production process, it is tested whether it meets the standards or there is a need for some improvements.
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