Project Planning and Scheduling Management

Project managers are in charge of various projects and they are required to complete them by ensuring that they meet the highest standards in terms of quality, time, budget and managing the team (Young, 2006). The critical role of team management is ensuring that there are successful teams that are able to demonstrate a high level of competency through good communication with the team and ensuring that there is a balance between the team morale and the goals of the project (Young, 2006). Project simulation ensures that there is proper planning of the project before its execution and there programs ensures adhering to the project quality requirements (Morales & Anderson, 2013). Simulation process ensures that all constraints are sorted out and that priorities are made on the important requirements of the project (Morales & Anderson, 2013). Project managers must make decisions on projects tasks, expected changes, overtime hours and outsourcing tasks.

The Simulation Experience

By carrying out the exercise one is able to learn that project management is a difficult process that requires taking risks and mitigation of problems that may come about especially in managing the team. The risks identified during simulation process also need to be addressed since they have an effect on not only personnel but also on the budget and the project scope. Another lesson from the simulation process is that one is able to learn where the mistakes are and to achieve better results on every attempt. Simulations enable project managers to make proper management of resources and ensure that the job is well done. Additionally, every time one makes a trial, it is easy to identify the major risks and come up with mitigation strategies. The findings from each trial enable one to improve his or her skills in project management and show better performance in every trial. Lastly, in every trial, one is able to decrease or increase the inputs required in the project in order to ensure better results.

There are a number of areas that went well during the simulation process. For instance, it is easy to navigate the process and indentify results that are conflicting with one another. For example, when the project has fewer employees, they work for more hours in a week and they feel overworked and frustrated, on the other hand, adding more employees makes them bored since they have lesser tasks to complete. Through the simulation game, it was also easy to outline the budget and the expectations of the project. Lastly, the simulator is able to record the costs associated with the project and monitor the changes effectively.

In order to attain the desired results, I played the simulator four times and on each trial the results got better.

Based on the experience from the simulation process, the next time I play the tool I would come up with a risk plan, make adjustments to project budget, employ a satisfactory number of employees and ensure that I come up with a schedule that satisfies the requirements of all stakeholders. I would also ensure that there is a trade-off between the goals of the project especially when unexpected risks occur.

In order to improve team morale, the parameters that I made changes to were the number of employees, working hours, additional employees and I also included overtime.  This is because; employees are capable of increasing or decreasing the company incentives depending on their level of motivation.  I made changes on the scope of the projects in order to ensure that employees are not overworked.

References

Morales, P. & Anderson, D. (2013). Process simulation and parametric modeling for strategic project management. New York, NY: Springer.

Young, T. (2006). Successful project management. London Philadelphia: Kogan Page Ltd.