Maryland International College

School of Graduate Studies

Project Management (Code: MBA- 771)

Instructors: Dr. Fanta Tesgera (Asst. Prof) and

Dr. Gashaw T. (Asst. Prof)

August 06, 2021

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Name: Eleni Abreha Mekonnen ID NO SMBA/107/12

General Instruction

1. Write your Full name and ID number

2. Please read the questions carefully and attempt all the questions.

3. Total Mark: 50%

4. Use your own words to answer the questions. Don’t copy and paste.

5. Answers which are found to be identical will be automatically dis-qualified.

6. Brief, direct, and complete answers are required for full marks.

7. Use PDF or Word format or Good Handwriting (the Handwriting must be scanned and
submitted by the email) to submit your answer.

8. You are expected to work for 48 hours i.e., from Friday 6:00 PM (August 06/2021) -
Sunday 6:00 PM (August 08/2021).

9. Your answer should be submitted via micmbapm@[Link]

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 1. Why do you think project management as a discipline is growing fast in importance these
days? (5 points).

Because projects are often complex and involve numerous stakeholders, having a project manager
to lead the initiative and keep everyone on the same page is critical to project success. In fact, PMI
found that organizations using any type of project management methodology are better at meeting
budget, staying on schedule and meeting scope, quality standards and expected benefits. The
importance of project planning cannot be overstated. Too often, organizations overestimate how
quickly they can achieve deliverables, underestimate the costs, or both a recipe for failure.

1. Considers the big picture and sets realistic and achievable goals

A good project manager considers the big picture and sets realistic and achievable goals, budgets,
and timelines. Without careful management, a project can quickly get off track before it has even
begun. To set realistic goals, budgets, and timelines, the project manager communicates with
different stakeholders to understand the strategic priorities and business objectives of the initiative.
Based on their research, the project manager then outlines a project plan that balances those
priorities within the constraints of time and budget. This process involves cost estimation, resource
management, and risk assessment.

2. Clear focus and objectives

A lack of clear goals was the most common reason for project failure in. Project managers help
organizations hone in on their priorities and define their project objectives. When project
management is left to the team to handle, the scope and objectives can easily get muddled. Unclear
focus can lead to scope creep, missed deadlines, and overspending. Plus, without a project manager
to oversee the project plans and task breakdowns, many teams may not notice potential risk factors
as they arise. If they don’t address evolving project risks, the team could end up prioritizing the
wrong tasks. A good project manager keeps an eye on all these factors so that the team can focus
on the right tasks at the right time and adapt as needed.

3. Strategic alignment

One of the most important reasons to use project management is to align projects with business
strategy. Mark Langley, the president and CEO of PMI cautions, “If your organization is not good
at project management, you’re putting too much at risk in terms of ultimately delivering on
strategy. “In other words, project management is a driver of organizational strategy. So if you
aren’t applying it to your initiatives, you are missing a crucial opportunity to grow.

As project managers oversee the planning and execution of a project, they help ensure the project’s
overall goals and its subsequent tasks and milestones all align with the organization’s strategy.
Strategic alignment at every level of the project keeps each stakeholder on the same page and
ensures your initiatives drive the organization forward.

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4. Managed process

Project management is a proactive process that seeks to help the right people do the right tasks at
the right time. Without a set project management method, many teams tend to work reactively—
handling issues as they arise rather than proactively planning for known risks and setting project
goals and parameters from the beginning. Project managers help teams break down a project into
more manageable pieces. By breaking the project into a clear process of assigned tasks, milestones,
and deadlines, project managers can direct their teams more efficiently and react to issues with
greater agility.

5. Quality control

Quality control is an essential component of project management. Your project could meet all
parameters for time and budget, but if the quality standards aren’t met, the project will be deemed
a failure. Unfortunately, this is an all-too-easy trap to fall into. Teams are under a lot of pressure
to finish a project on time and on budget. And this can lead to rushed work and shoddy execution.
That’s where project managers come in. They not only manage deadlines and objectives, but they
also keep an eye on how well project tasks are executed. Project managers help outline deliverables
and define their quality standards so that everyone knows exactly what they’re aiming for.

6. Reduced costs

Project management reduces project costs by improving efficiency, mitigating risks, and
optimizing resources. Even with the added cost of investing in a project manager, organizations
stand to gain much more.

2. Discuss why project monitoring and evaluation is very important in today’s project
environment. How do you differentiate between project monitoring, project
evaluation and project control? Discuss (5 points).

Monitoring and evaluation are critical for building a strong, global evidence base around violence
against women and for assessing the wide, diverse range of interventions being implemented to
address it. At the global level, it is a tool for identifying and documenting successful programs and
approaches and tracking progress toward common indicators across related projects. Monitoring
and evaluation forms the basis of strengthening understanding around the many multi-layered
factors underlying violence against women, women’s experiences with such violence, and the
effectiveness of the response at the service provider, community, national and international level.

This is critically important because while the global evidence base on the proportion of women
having ever experienced various forms of abuse is strong, evidence on what kinds of strategies are
effective in preventing such violence and offering adequate support to victims and survivors is still
weak. This is especially relevant in resource poor areas, where difficult decisions need to be made
with respect to funding priorities. At the program level, the purpose of monitoring and evaluation
is to track implementation and outputs systematically, and measure the effectiveness of programs.
It helps determine exactly when a program is on track and when changes may be needed.

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Monitoring and evaluation can be used to demonstrate that program efforts have had a measurable
impact on expected outcomes and have been implemented effectively. It is essential in helping
managers, planners, implementers, policy makers and donors acquire the information and
understanding they need to make informed decisions about program operations. Monitoring and
evaluation helps with identifying the most valuable and efficient use of resources. It is critical for
developing objective conclusions regarding the extent to which program can be judged a
“success”. Monitoring and evaluation together provide the necessary data to guide strategic
planning, to design and implement program and projects, and to allocate, and re-allocate resources
in better ways. Monitoring and Evaluation are the two management tools that help in keeping a
control on the business activities as well as raising the level of performance. Monitoring refers to
an organized process of overseeing and checking the activities undertaken in a project, to ascertain
whether it is capable of achieving the planned results or not. Conversely, evaluation is a scientific
process that gauges the success of the project or program in meeting the objectives.

Project Monitoring

Monitoring and controlling is essentially required in any project simply because things don’t
always go according to plan no matter how much we prepare and to detect and react appropriately
to deviations and changes to the plan. Even Projects that are well designed, comprehensively
planned, fully resourced, and meticulously executed will face challenges. These challenges can
take place at any point in the life of the project and the project team must regularly monitor the
design, planning, and implementation of the project to confirm they are valid and to determine
whether corrective actions need to be taken when the project’s performance differs significantly
Even Projects that are well designed, comprehensively planned, fully resourced, and meticulously
executed will face challenges. These challenges can take place at any point in the life of the project
and the project team must regularly monitor the design, planning, and implementation of the
project to confirm they are valid and to determine whether corrective actions need to be taken
when the project’s performance differs significantly from its design and plan. Monitoring is
concerned with the gathering of information and connecting them with the project plans and
objectives.

Evaluation is interpretation & estimating the collected information. Control is the corrective action
that is undertaken if the desired result is not achieved. They are three separate actions but go hand
in hand as tools for assessing the status and success of a project. Project Monitoring refers to the
method of keeping track of all project-related metrics including team performance and task
duration, identifying possible problems, and taking remedial actions necessary to ensure that the
project is within scope, on budget, and meets the stipulated deadlines It answers questions like
“have input and resources been provided as planned?” “Have activities been completed as
planned?” “Have output been produced as anticipated?” “Is the work of the project progressing as
planned? “It indicates to the project manager where the project performance is in terms of
time, quantity, quality, risk, money, and other areas of project progress.

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What to Monitor?

At the most fundamental level, we need to track the difference between what was planned and
what is actually happening. This includes whether start and finish ate for activities are being met;
how cost estimates are working out in reality: weather planned resource requirements are being
created. Hence during this phase, we are to monitor all the parameters and assumption we had
considered while planning and scheduling the project, such as:

 Scope,
 Schedule,
 Cost,
 Quality,
 Safety,
 Risk,
 Contract Performance.

Project Evaluation

Evaluation is a systematic and objective assessment of an on-going or completed activity, project

program, strategy, Policy, and its design, implementation, and result. as an essential part of the
policy development process, evaluation provides a timely assessment of the relevance, efficiency,
effectiveness, impact, and sustainability of interventions.

Project Control

Control uses the monitored data and information to bring actual performance into an agreement
with the plan. It involves comparing actual performance with planned performance and taking
appropriate corrective action that will yield the desired outcome in the project when a significant
difference exists. Changes to the original project execution plan are inevitable. Changes will
always occur in the project. But we must be able to manage the changes as they [Link] is an
important job of the project manager to identify all changes from the original project scope & Plan
and manage them. Managing changes is one of the most challenging areas of construction
management and if left unchecked can result in the project run off the track.

3. Organizations introduce projects with high outcome expectations, especially to ensure

sustainable flow of benefits throughout their intended economic life. But many
projects somehow fall short of such expectations, and owing to various reasons, they
do not deliver the expected benefit flows to the target beneficiaries throughout their
economic life. The reason could be attributed to many factors. Discuss these factors
(10 points).

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1. Lack of project management practice in an organization

Some of you are already wondering if there are organizations that carry out projects without using
project management principles. Actually, there are more organizations that implement projects
without any project management techniques than these who do.

This might be good, since it means that there are still lots of job out there for us as project managers
It is not uncommon to find project-based organizations that have no standard project management
procedures. These organizations often use informal and inconsistent approaches, leading to mixed
results. This makes it difficult to link the cause of the success or failure of the project to a
procedure. Since the redundant process cannot be easily identified, it becomes difficult to improve
the organization’s overall efficiency, which might lead to project failure. Some organizations,
however, want good project management but are not committed to the project. They hire
employees without experience and do not take action in backing up their words. Proper
understanding and implementation of the project management plan is therefore necessary in order
to prevent project from failing.

2. Improper stakeholder management.

The importance of effective stakeholder management in a project cannot be overemphasized. A

stakeholder is seen as anyone who has an interest in a project or any entity that would be affected
by the outcome of the project. It is important to note that the consumer is always the most important
stakeholder and any argument during stakeholder management should always be resolved in favor
of the consumer.
It is, however, important to carry out a detailed stakeholder analysis before a project begins by
understanding how powerful a project stakeholder and the level of influence that stakeholder has
in a project. For example, a project stakeholder with a lot of influence can frustrate the success of
a project when not in support. For example, the decisions of the CEO of a company who does not
support a project can affect its success. Also, projects where the consumer was not taken into
consideration before embarking on the project might lead to the creation of products not suitable
for the consumer.

A detailed analysis on effective stakeholder management and the tools and technique required for
a successful stakeholder management has been treated in one of our previous posts, which can be
found here.

3. Late involvement of project manager.

We often get commissions as project managers for projects that are halfway through the
implementation phase. Sometimes, these projects never had a project managers and we cannot
comprehend why projects of such magnitude would even begin without the involvement of a
qualified project manager. Often, when we begin working on such a project, we spend more time
trying to understand the existing situation and correcting the root cause of the errors, which leads
to an extended schedule and cost.
Some organizations do not even understand the need for a project manager and thus they believe
the work of a project manager is overhyped. These types of projects often run into preventable
trouble. It is important for organizations, especially project-based organizations, to realize that the

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position of a project manager is not just another administrative function but to organize and
coordinate resources in order to achieve the project and organizational goal.

4. Scope creep

I am sure by now some of us are beginning to wonder why we have not yet discussed scope creep,
as this is probably the singular most important cause of project failure. When the senior
management is in support of a project, there is relevant project management procedure, an
experienced project manager has been commissioned, there are reasonable baselines and a clear
project charter, we think we have it all covered but sometimes our project fails; the most likely
reason is scope creep.
Scope creep is a result of uncontrolled or continuous changes in the project scope. These changes
often happen in a subtle way, where a project stakeholder asks for increased (most times little)
functionality in the project. While changes are inevitable parts of a project, undocumented changes
are the primary cause of scope creep. Scope creep generally leads to budget overrun, schedule
overrun, or the output of the project being different from the original plan.

5. Unrealistic project deadlines

This often comes in two forms. The most common one is dealing with deadlines that are
inadequate, such as management wanting us to complete a four-month project in three weeks. Most
times, when time becomes a big constrain, we begin to cut down on the project scope or quality to
meet the almost impossible deadline. It is our duty as project managers to give adequate estimate
of schedule when undertaking a project. In situations where projects are time-constrained, fast
tracking and crashing should be considered first before revising the project scope.
The other perspective, however, involves projects with extremely long deadlines. As we all know,
one of the characteristics of a project is “time-bound.” This means it has a defined time frame.
When a project time frame becomes extremely long, then it should be broken down into smaller
projects that are more manageable. This would make it easier to manage, giving the more realistic
deadlines and thus reducing the probability of project failure.

6. Lack of change control system

As mentioned earlier, changes are bound to occur in a project. These changes could come in
various forms, from the client, the management, consumers, the project manager, the government,
or even from a member of the project team. When a change request is initiated, it is important to
goes through a change control system before being implemented or rejected.
Since change is the only constant thing, the change control system helps to define the processes
required before a change is implemented. That is, who are the members of the change control
board, what factors are required to approve the request, what level of risk and uncertainty the
change brings to the project, and if it is in line with the risk threshold of the organization. Although
the project manager should always evaluate the impact of the change, the decision to implement
the change should be an output of an effective change control system.

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7. Poor definition of project objectives.

It is improper to start a project without a project charter; however, even when we have a project
charter, there is a probability of the project objectives being ambiguous. Project goals and
objectives should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and tangible (SMART). When goals
are not SMART, it becomes difficult to measure if the result of the project meets the project
objectives. Proper definition of project objectives helps in during quality assurance and audit
process thus preventing project failure.

4. Suppose that your organization is considering a portfolio of projects that can bring
significant strategic changes to its performance in terms of market share and
profitability in the longrun. So, your organization wants to select and concentrate on
those business imperative projects in order to achieve its grand strategic objectives
and goals during the years to come. Assuming that your specific job in the
organization is a Project Manager, how do you identify and recommend the portfolio
of projects that will yield the maximum value or return to your organization in the
long-run? (15 points)
Project portfolio management (PPM) is a process by which an organization’s projects are evaluated
and executed to ensure strategic alignment with company goals. PPM provides executives, project
managers, team members, and stakeholders an overarching view of their projects, including how
they fit into the organization’s directives and strategy, thereby lending insights into the potential
returns and risks involved.
Under PPM, projects are grouped into programs based on relevance and similarities. Those
programs and their respective projects should fall under a portfolio strategy undertaken by the
project management office (PMO) to meet overall company objectives. In this way, PPM does
more than just align projects with business strategy; it provides a means for aligning an
organization’s approach to project management, including all project policies and processes, to its
goals as a project manager I identify and recommend the portfolio of projects that will yield the
maximum value or return to my organization in the long-run Best practices can not only increase
the likelihood of Project portfolio management success but also provide companies with
assurances as to the value of each project when attempting to identify projects to undertake. Here
are some key best practices for doing PPM right.
 Identify and solicit participation from all potential stakeholders.
From the leadership team to front-line employees, full participation is vital to ensuring all angles
have been covered. Often, a few key stakeholders who were overlooked could have saved
companies time, frustration, and wasted resources.
 Slow things down. Planning for success takes time
Ensuring all bases are covered at the outset goes a long way in reducing stress, waste, and partial
or full failure down the road.

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  Identify the best methods, techniques, technologies, and resources.
Draw on experts inside and outside your organization to help develop the best methods,
techniques, technologies, and resources needed to increase your chances of success. Recognize
and acknowledge your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats by performing
a SWOT analysis.
 Document everything.
Careful, complete documentation saves misunderstandings and misinterpretation.
 Communicate everything on time
There is no benefit to having a plan or documenting everything if no one knows about it. Nor is
there any benefit in communicating information to the wrong people, or not on time. Make sure to
communicate the necessary information with the right stakeholders in a timely manner.
5. A project team has put together a plan for grand organizational transformation
project, and forwarded the same for the approval of the stakeholders. The
stakeholders, having reviewed the project plan, asked the project manager to clearly
demonstrate and present the project inputs, outputs, outcomes, and impacts in order
to expedite the approval process. Assuming that you are the Project Manager in
charge seeking the approval of the stakeholders.
A. Outline the possible inputs, outputs, outcomes, and impacts of the project (5 points).
Inputs: Resources committed to the program.
Money, time, staff, expertise, methods, and facilities the organization commits to bring about
the intended outputs, outcomes, and impact. Resources can be financial, but also the time of
staff or volunteers. Expertise, such as a consultant or a partner organization, can be considered
an input.
Outputs: What is counted
Numerical counts of a program’s actions or products that were created or delivered, the number
of people served, and the activities or services provided. For instance, a training program
provides graduates. A particular effort might yield information such as white papers or
studies. A homeless shelter creates filled beds. Outputs are measurable and readily determined.
It's tempting to stop with outputs because they are easy to produce. You just count. How many
people did you serve? How many meals did you dish out?
But, the organization should try to get to the next level of outcomes and impact.
Outcomes: What the program wishes to achieve.
Outcomes are meaningful changes for the population served, such as anticipated changes in
knowledge, skills, attitudes, behavior, condition, or status. Changes should be measured and

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monitored and link directly to the program. An outcome is an effect your program produces on
the people or issues you serve or address.
Impact: Effects took place because of the program
Impact consists of the results that are directly due to the outcomes of a program. Results are
determined by evaluations that factor out other explanations for these results. Impacts are
the long-term or indirect effects of your outcomes. Impacts are hard to measure since they may
or may not happen. They are what one hopes to accomplish.
B. Identify the key stakeholders and then draw a role map diagram showing the influence and
reporting relationship (5 points).
Stakeholders of the project are
 government
 contractors and sub-contractors
 external customer
 suppliers
First, the number of stakeholders that project managers must deal with ensures that they will
have a complex job guiding their project through the lifecycle. Problems with any of these
members can derail the project.
Second, the diagram shows that project managers have to deal with people external to the
organization as well as the internal environment, certainly more complex than what a manager
in an internal environment faces. For example, suppliers who are late in delivering crucial parts
may blow the project schedule. To compound the problem, project managers generally have
little or no direct control over any of these individuals.

Figure 5.1: Project stakeholders. In a project, there are both internal and external stakeholders.

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 Internal stakeholders may include top management, project team members, your manager,
peers, resource manager, and internal customers. External stakeholders may include
external customers, government, contractors and subcontractors, and suppliers.
C. What do you recommend in order to build stakeholder participation and commitment to the
project? (5 points).
Recommendation
Conducting a stakeholder analysis, project managers can gather enough information on which
to build strong relationships – regardless of the differences between them. For example, the
needs and wants of a director of marketing will be different from those of a chief information
officer. Therefore, the project manager’s engagement with each will need to be different as
well.
Stakeholders with financial concerns will need to know the potential return of the project’s
outcomes. Others will support projects if there is sound evidence of their value to improving
operations, boosting market share, increasing production, or meeting other company objectives
Achieving a project’s objectives takes a focused, well-organized project manager who can
engage with a committed team and gain the support of all stakeholders. Building strong,
trusting relationships with interested parties from the start can make the difference between
project success and failure.

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