BSB51415-Manage project governance Report Writing – Management Assignment Help

Assignment Task

Task 

TOPIC 1 – Identify project management structure

This topic covers the following:

1.1 Determine organisational governance policies, procedures and expectations of project stakeholders
1.2 Negotiate clear and discrete project governance roles and responsibilities with relevant authorities
1.3 Establish delegated authorities for project decision-making
1.4 Identify and record differences between the organisation’s functional authorities and project authorities
1.5 Adopt, document and communicate unambiguous governance plan to relevant stakeholders

Adopt, document & communicate unambiguous governance plan to relevant stakeholders

The primary objective of the documented governance plan is to specify and approve actionable procedures as needed to manage and administer the project. An effective governance plan is prepared using both procedural and documentation templates, providing consistent steps and tools for production and processing. The project governance plan supports the project by promoting consistency, productivity and shared stakeholder expectations. The governance plan supports producing quality deliverables using pre-defined practices, empowering stakeholders with flexible practices as required by established baselines, including procedural reviews and governance performance evaluations. Source: https://www.ittoolkit.com/articles/project-governance-plans

According to PMI®, there are key components for the project governance plan, which include:

1.Governance models: defines mechanisms and interaction points to govern the project. An effective governance model enables the board or steering committee or sponsor to organise mechanisms and points of interaction across the organisation’s functions, legal entities and jurisdictions. The governance model has (4) main components:

2.Accountability and responsibilities: defining accountability and responsibilities is central to the PM’s job role. While defining both the factors, the project manager not only needs to define who is accountable, but also who is responsible, consulted, and informed for each of the project’s deliverables. The RACI Matrix can provide a useful tool for this.

3.Stakeholder engagement and communication: understanding the project ecosystem by identifying stakeholders such as sponsors, suppliers, vendors, the project team and external representatives such as government agencies. Procedures needed for understanding stakeholder interests and expectations. Once stakeholder interests and expectations are identified, PM develops a communication plan. A well-devised communication plan delivers stakeholder communication expectations in terms of media and frequency.

4.Meeting and reporting: implementing the communication plan requires PM to balance meetings with reporting. It is essential to define meetings scheduled with stakeholders, the purpose and frequency of meetings. In addition, defining the reporting stakeholders expect, content of these reports and frequency of reporting.

5.Escalation and issues management: PM’s response to issues, including the escalation process is as important as the issue itself. PM needs to document the model for escalation and issues management. The management of change requires procedures to initiate, record, assess, approve and resolve project changes.

Project changes are when it is necessary to change the scope, time or cost of previously approved project deliverables. Key change management documents include the change request form and the change log. Key steps for change management include identifying and submitting change requests, reviewing change requests for impact and feasibility, approval or rejection of change requests, implementing approved changes and closing change requests. 

6.Assurance: provides confidence to the sponsor or steering committee or project board that the project is on track to deliver the intended benefits. Assurance is independent, objective and proportionate to the project work.
 
7.Project management control process: this can be difficult for the PM, the monitoring and controlling to control tasks and metrics related to the project and measures. PM needs to outline how to measure project performance regularly with opportunities to take action.

TOPIC 2 – Apply project governance policies & procedures

This topic covers the following areas:
2.1 Distribute and present information on governance planning to project team and other relevant stakeholders and ensure common understanding
2.2 Include delegated authorities within role and project position descriptions
2.3 Moderate conflicts regarding roles, responsibilities and authorities to support achievement of project objectives
2.4 Regularly report to the organisation and project authorities on performance and issues arising from governance arrangements Let’s start work on Topic 2 Applying project governance policies and procedures.

Distribute & present information on governance planning to project team & other relevant stakeholders & ensure common understanding
Governance requires that project stakeholders, including project board or steering committee or sponsor are provided with timely, accurate and relevant information. Distribution of project information is a key ingredient of project management. PM ensures that key stakeholders internal and external to the project are kept informed of project progress and updates throughout the project lifecycle.
Distributing and presenting information on governance requires planning to meet stakeholder communication needs. Project managers invest a large 

proportion of their time communicating using a range of communication methods:

• face-to-face meetings 
• virtual team meetings
• phone calls
• emails
• online reporting via shared drives

Moderate conflicts regarding roles, responsibilities & authorities to support achievement of project objectives
Within the project setting, PM is required to solve problems, set goals, compromise, settle personality differences, and resolve conflict. Training for project managers in this area is necessary for their success, as they are typically responsible for handling conflict during the project.
Escalation and issues management models
Escalation is about increasing magnitude or intensity by bypassing the immediate person. Escalation in the project context is generally a formal process to highlight the issue at hand to a higher authority as per the escalation mechanism defined for the project. Risks or issues related to 

Project objectives that may require escalation can include:

• resource conflict
• inter-group conflict
• ambiguous roles and responsibilities
• scope disagreements
• third party dependencies

These types of issues require higher level intervention because many times the authority, decision making, resources or effort required to resolve them are beyond a project manager’s level of authority. At times, PM may want to involve higher authorities for information-only escalations to keep these authorities updated concerning potential issues in the project.
It is critical PM is able to differentiate between minor issues where a project team member may have interpersonal differences with another team member. This type of issue may be annoying and may distract the team member from achieving their best work. Alternately, PM needs to be focussed where issues may go beyond distraction to the point of preventing the project team from delivering the project.
Escalation should be treated as a professional act and should be done in an effective way. PM should escalate timely if something is blocking the project and is beyond project manager’s control. A proactive escalation and issues management approach is far better than surprises requiring additional time and cost.

PM needs to effectively use the project escalation mechanism:

• During the initial stages of the project, have a properly defined, agreed upon escalation matrix with escalation contact points, escalation paths for different escalation areas and levels. Explicitly document this escalation matrix for the project.
• Ensure that the project stakeholders are well aware of the escalation process, in terms of which issues should be raised to whom, and within which time frame.
• Create a project culture where project team members genuinely believe it is appropriate to escalate the issues timely to the next level of management without any fear of aggravating the issue.
• While escalating, analyse the situation with data points and make sure PM has done their part of the job well before escalating.
• Wait for the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) before responding. For example, if the SLA includes a response time of 3 days, it is not right to escalate the issue before 3 days.
• From the project outset, it is important for PM to define a clear escalation path and mechanism. For instance, establish an escalation committee, project sponsor or senior management board and agree on escalating major issues when necessary and bypassing certain hierarchy levels in order to escalate faster. It is important for PM to not escalate every encountered issue—only escalate major issues that have considerable impacts. Key questions that PM needs to consider in terms of escalation include:
• Is it serious enough to escalate?
• Is there anything else you can do to avoid an escalation? 
• Is it the right time to escalate?

Regularly report to the organisation & project authorities on performance & issues arising from governance arrangements

The issue log is a key document to identify and monitor resolution of project issues. The issues log is where the issue is clearly stated and assessed in terms of its urgency and potential impact. The issue is clarified and stated to allow for issue resolution. An owner is assigned the responsibility of resolving the issue with a target date for its resolution. Unresolved issues can be sources of project conflict and or project delays.
The change log is the document that identifies changes to be managed for the project. This document identifies the change and the impact of the change. Impact of change is generally analysed in terms of impact on project cost, project time and project quality. Organisational assets that support this type of reporting include issue management procedures and change control procedures.
Management require timely reporting on the project to enable corrective actions to be take. For PM to ensure regular reporting to the organisation, there is a need for a timetable to be prepared for the reporting system. This timetable needs to outline the reports to be prepared at specific intervals and who requires these reports. Reporting in line with this type of timetable is important for corrective measures to be taken, where required.

At times, reports that are provided to senior management may need to be independently verified by a third party not involved in the preparation of the required report. 
Exception reports include information for senior managers, identifying the areas of the project that require immediate action. Often, the exception report is referred to as a performance report. This type of reporting shows the variance between planned performance and actual performance.
In cases determined by corporation legislation, the project may need to provide mandatory reporting. Examples of this type of reporting may include requirements in the Corporations Act 2001, Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Accounting Standards. This may require the project to provide financial reports including a statement of the financial position or a profit and loss statement or a statement of cash flow or changes in equity.

From an internal perspective, PM may be required to provided reporting on the progress of the project to sponsor, senior management or committee or board and may include:

•     Expense reports
•     Wage and salary reports
•     Project status report

TOPIC 3 – Monitor & review project governance
This topic covers the following areas:

3.1 Analyse and review project governance impact on achieving project objectives
3.2 Document lessons learned and recommendations to assist future projects
Let’s start work on Topic 3 Monitoring and reviewing project governance.

Analyse & review project governance impact on achieving project objectives

Analysis and review of project governance requires PM to assess effectiveness of the following key areas as input to project governance:

Project review meetings
This is where PM needs to assess effectiveness of project meetings in terms of the frequency of the meetings and whether stakeholders felt meetings provided project information in a timely manner. In addition, PM needs to assess whether project meetings provided the level of detail needed, enough detail though presented in a concise manner, to support effective decision making for ket project stakeholders.

Project reporting
Review of project reporting is often completed hand-in-hand with project review meetings. The PM needs to achieve a balance between information presented during project review meetings and project reports distributed via other media. This review needs to ascertain whether project reports provided concise, efficient and timely information to key stakeholders. Again, PM needs to assess the frequency of project reports in terms of providing information in a timely manner. In addition, whether the project reports provided the level of detail required to support decision making by key project stakeholders throughout the project.

Risk and issue management
It would be a rare project that is not challenged or delayed with risks and issues. PM needs to review the effectiveness of the project’s risk and issue management. Specifically, how well were risks and issues identified? How well were risks and issues classified? How well were risks and issues prioritised? This evaluation needs to consider the effectiveness of the project team’s response to risk and issues throughout the project lifecycle.

Project management control processes
The assessment of project management control processes requires PM’s review of how well the team was able to measure impact of possible changes against project baselines in terms of scope baseline, cost baseline and time baseline. From the assessment of measuring impact of change, PM needs to evaluate how well the project team was able to take timely action on any deviations.

Project management information system (PMIS)
Analysing and reviewing the project management information system (PMIS) is about gauging how well the system supported effective decision making throughout the project. Specifically, PM needs to evaluate effectiveness of project files and whether files were easily accessible on the intranet to support stakeholders in the decision-making process? In addition, PM needs to understand the effectiveness of networking to support stakeholders in making decisions. In particular, how well did the project network using forums, blogs, APPS and social media for stakeholder discussions as input to project decision making.