WJ Final Project Plan Report

Posted: August 25th, 2021

WJ Final Project Plan Report

Name of Student

Institutional Affiliation

WJ Final Project Plan Report

Lessons Learnt

            A wise person once said that failing to plan is equivalent to planning to fail. Also, there is power is working as a team as compared to working as an individual (Sowden, 2016). These two sentiments have been the levers upon which we have successfully executed the design and implementation of the FrontFuture App. In the course of working on creating this car sharing application, I have learned skills that I find extremely gainful both at an individual and group levels. First, it is important to break large projects into smaller manageable tasks and steps. Each of these steps is then assigned to the individual team members. For example, in coming up with the FrontFuture App, the project was divided into smaller tasks that involved the seeking of initial funding from our sponsors, setting of the appropriate location, meeting up with the HR department, the development of the App itself, then testing of the App, followed by scheduling for marketing and advertisement of the app via relevant social media platforms, and finally, we did the required legal work to safeguard our project idea again. Through the splitting of a project into manageable steps, therefore, project timelines were seamlessly met and the overall implementation efficiency significantly improved.

            The second lesson we have learned is that in any project, people are usually more important than the project itself. Developing the FrontFuture App has provided my team members an opportune chance to be there for each other, to listen to each other’s contribution to the project’s idea, and thus, significantly improve our people skills. The team has held quite a number of meetings through we got to establish and meet our project’s scope, charter, heat map and milestones. For instance, our kickoff meeting entailed the group members’ introduction to each and to the project sponsors. Also, we amicably reviewed through the project’s overall objectives and proposed the management approach we were going to adopt in the course of implementing this project. This meeting was closely followed by the strategy meeting in which group members locked down the development timelines for each of the tasks assigned to individual members. We also, made use of emails and mobile phones to communicate with each other on a daily basis on issues touching on the progress update and solving of any arising challenges. Overall, open and regular communication plays an important role in ensuring the success of a group’s activity.

            According to Abbas, Din and Farooqui (2016), risks are as important as a project’s goals, and thus, it is important for group members to carefully analyze the risks they are likely to encounter from the design stage to implementation. In the numerous group meetings that we have held, we have gotten to analyze risks such as lateness in the completion of some of the duties assigned to members. Members’ sickness is also a major peril. As such, we managed to put in place relevant measures to forestall disastrous eventualities from coming by. Also, the meetings have given us an opportunity to dissect through the overall scope of the project, and thus, steer every member towards the timely completion of their assigned tasks. To avoid the risk of a member encountering financial constraints in the course of executing his or her assigned tasks, we, at relevant times sought audience with our group’s financial manager or with our sponsors depending on the need, and thus, ensuring that all the project tasks were executed within the initially planned timelines.

            In sum, working within a group is very important. In fact, psychologists postulate that group work is the most effective way to equip students with the soft skills required for the after school workplace. While working on developing the FrontFuture App, we have learned pertinent aspects of project budgeting, the importance of splitting the overall project into smaller manageable tasks, the value of maintaining open and regular communication channels. Overall, group work provided us with the chance of predicting and preparing adequately on how to mitigate our project’s risks.

Reference

Abbas, A., Din, Z. U., & Farooqui, R. (2016). Achieving greater project success & profitability through pre-construction planning: A case-based study. Procedia Engineering, 145, 804-811.

Sowden, R. (2016). A Practical Guide to Project Planning: A Step-by-step Approach. Stationery Office Limited.