This is a historically challenging project management responsibility, hence, in designing it I must keep in mind significant aspects related to the time and the reason for building this ark. In the “Book of Genesis” an episode is dedicated to Noah’s Ark. God was disappointed by the grieve and the artfulness of his own creation, the humankind, that he decided to throw upon them the Great Flood. He also decided to let one man and his family alive, because they were dedicated to Him, considering in the same time to preserve the mankind species. God also intended to keep alive the animals of the world, so he instructed Noah to build a boat in order to carry his family and all the animals with him, far away from the Great Flood.
Development Process
Hence, in designing the Ark I will have to consider this very important aspect: it needs to fit the animals of the world, Noah and his family. This is the first stage of the development process: the brief. For this project, the development process that I recommend is the iterative or the spiral process.
I consider this the most suitable development process because it implies the division of the process into small evolutionary stages, which allow an efficient clear identification of the emergent risks and in the same time allows an effective intervention for managing the identified risks. In addition, the spiral model also determines a great visibility of the relationship between the activities and different project stages.
Hence, in the iterative, or the spiral process, in defining the management environment, the business processes will be separated, but connected among each others: initial planning, then the actual planning, identifying the requirements, determining the analysis and design, followed by the implementation phase, the testing and the deployment stage. The process continues with the evaluation of the entire process.
Knowing the relationship between business processes and identifying risks in time is very important in designing and building the Ark for Noah, because giving the fact that the Great Flood is imminent, I am on a deadline and this development process helps me prioritizing activities, while observing their stage by stage deployment.
Work Breakdown Structure
Once the brief was received, there should be considered the following stages in the development process. The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) will help me to separate the activities needed for building the Ark. I first need to design a timeline of the activities, specifying the starting date and the ending date for each task. These activities will be further structured into milestones and detail activities, and based on the deadline flexibility criteria (flexible, semi-flexible, and inflexible).
The timeline activities will be created under a Gannt chart, in order to have a clear visibility upon the stages of the process, their unfolding in time and their importance. After this, there will be determined the resources needed for implementing the designed plan. Namely, in the following stage there will be stated the materials and human resources, plus other logistics needed for creating the Ark.
A very important stage is establishing the budget for the creating the budget. However, considering this specific case (Noah has received instructions from God Himself to build the Ark), I will assume that all the costs for building are already covered. Nevertheless, costs must be defalcated on categories, in order to determine how much will be spent on different activities, materials, resources, etc. This cost defalcation is also very important in the process of negotiating with the suppliers.
The relationship with the suppliers is a very important component, which must be carefully considered in the process of the value management process. This implies that I will be very attentive at targeting the best costs for the most valuable services and products, in order to ensure added value for my project.
This discussion now moves into a new sector, which must be treated in parallel with the unfolding of the project: risk management. From the beginning of the planning there must be identified the risks that might occur during the implementation process and must be created back – up plans to avoid, minimize or totally eliminate them and their outcomes. Moreover, at each stage of the process implementation, there should be re-designed a new risk management plan.
Next, there will be assigned responsibilities and tasks for the human resources involved in the project. They will be separated on different stages in the development process, or in multiple stages, depending on their qualifications. This also implies creating a project management team that will support me in implementing, verifying, and evaluating each step of the development process.
Next, I will design the actual plan, architecturally, for building the Ark, creating a blueprint of how the Ark will look like and how will the elements will combine among each other. Likewise, the sketch will outline the order in which the Ark will be built, stage by stage, and element by element.
I need to make sure that all the resources used for this project are viable and efficient. For the human resources component I need to address them regularly and develop training procedures in order to determine people to properly understand their attributions and to learn to develop their skills, while assuring improved, qualitative contribution for the development of the project.
The human component is stringent for this project and considering that the only humans that will help me are Noah and his family (as they will be the only humans traveling the Ark), there should be a permanent direct and proactive communication between us. Moreover, together we will create strategies for permanently improving the estimated time (deadlines) for the activities, the estimated costs and the negotiation with suppliers.
