Posted: January 24th, 2017

Explain how your insights into these aspects of project management will impact your ability to successfully manage of health care information technology projects.

Scope, Budget, Risk Management, and Team Building

Individual Project Part 2: Scope, Budget, Risk Management, and Team Building

Part 2 of the Individual Project focuses on the scope of a project, budgeting issues, risk management, and team building. If conducting an interview, the interviewee may be from the same organization as your last interview and should have managed a project for the organization. Alternatively, you may examine a minimum of three organizations that have published descriptions about a health care information technology project’s scope, budget, risk management, and team building activities.

Interview

To prepare:

Review the Individual Project Overview document, located in this week’s Learning Resources. Pay particular attention to the questions you might ask in your interview.

Locate a professional who manages or works on special projects in health care and is willing to speak about his or her experience regarding scope of a project, budget, risk management, and team building.

If such a person is not readily available to you, find someone in your community who has managed a project for an organization and can speak to those topics. The organization can be a volunteer service group, a faith-based group, a business, or another that meets your needs. The goal is to find an individual who has been in charge of a project important to the organization.

Review the topics and questions in the Individual Project Overview document that should be addressed in your interview.

Think about other related questions you might have for the interviewee and solidify your goals for speaking to and learning from this person.

Topics and Questions:

Remember that you will need to adapt your questions to the individual, setting, and

projects. You are not required to ask these specific questions, but you are required to

address the topics listed below (Note: If the interviewee cannot address a topic, conduct

a literature search to find scholarly information or research on that topic).

Scope

 How does a project manager limit the scope of a project?

 How do you deal with stress, pressure, and unreasonable demands?

Budget

 How are costs managed during a project?

 If all resources are not available to a project when needed, how do you handle

resource problems?

Risk Management

 How are potential risks to the project determined?

 How are these risks mitigated?

 Think of a major crisis you’ve faced in project management. How did you handle

it?

 What is one example of a tough decision you had to make in a project

management role?

Team Building

 How do you obtain the members of a project team? How do you “sell” the project

to a team?

 Explain how you operate within this organization to facilitate project success.

 Can you give me an example of your project management leadership activities

regarding a project team problem?

 If you have a team member who is not meeting agreed-to commitments, what do

you do? How do you handle unproductive team members? How do you motivate

team members who are burned out or bored?

Additional questions and insights are encouraged.

To complete:

In a 3- to 4-page paper, reflect on your experience and address the following:

Describe the context of your interview—where and how the interview took place, why you selected this individual, and how you believe this individual meets the requirements for this Assignment.

Describe the role and functions of the individual within the context of the individual’s organizational structure and for project management.

Synthesize insights on how project scope, budget, risk management, and team building are addressed in the interviewee’s organization.

Compare the insights you synthesized from your interview with information from project management literature about project scope, budget, risk management, and team building. Be sure that the comparisons you make are clear to the reader.

Explain how your insights into these aspects of project management will impact your ability to successfully manage health care information technology projects. Include any tips the individual described for managing a successful project.

OR

Scholarly Paper

To prepare:

Examine a minimum of three organizations that have published descriptions

about a health care information technology project.

 Analyze the reports of these organization’s experiences with HIT project

management in order to draw out insights on real-world project management.

You may need to examine trade publications in addition to scholarly journals.

 Consider the following questions as you analyze the articles:

Scope

o How was the scope of the project limited?

o How did the project manager address any unreasonable demands?

Budget

o How were costs managed during the project?

o How were resource allocation problems addressed?

Risk Management

o How were potential risks to the project determined?

o How were these risks mitigated?

o Explain any major crisis faced in the management of a project

implementation and explain how it was handled.

Team Building

o How were members of the project team selected? How did the project

manager “sell” the project to a team?

o How did the team operate within the organization to facilitate project

success?

o What project management leadership activities were utilized to mitigate

project team problems?

o What strategies did project management leaders use if a team member

was not meeting agreed-to commitments, was unproductive, or was unmotivated?

To complete:

In a 3- to 4-page paper, address the following:

Synthesize insights on how project scope, budget, risk management, and team building are addressed in the projects implemented in your selected health care organizations.

Compare your insights from the articles with information from project management literature about project scope, budget, risk management, and team building. Be sure that the comparisons you make are clear to the reader.

Explain how your insights into these aspects of project management will impact your ability to successfully manage of health care information technology projects.

Required Readings

Coplan, S., & Masuda, D. (2011). Project management for healthcare information technology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Chapter 3, “Project Management”

“Risk Management” (pp. 100–104)

This section of Chapter 3 provides an overview of the basics of risk management in the context of project management. In particular, the text details how to prepare risk management plans, identify risks, perform quantitative and qualitative risk analyses, plan risk response, and monitor and control risk.

Project Management Institute. (2013). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (5th ed.). Newtown Square, PA: Author.

Chapter 11, “Project Risk Management” (pp. 309–354)

This chapter provides an overview of project risk management processes. These processes include plan risk management, risk identification, qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, planning risk responses, and monitoring and controlling risk.

Dearstyne, B. W. (2012). Smoothing the turbulence: Project management strategies for the changing workplace. Information Management Journal, 46(2), 28–33.

Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

The author of this article examines numerous successful project management strategies. The article goes into detail about essential elements of successful project management.

de Bakker, K., Boonstra, A., & Wortmann, H. (2012). Risk managements’ communicative effects influencing IT project success. International Journal of Project Management, 30(4), 444–457.

Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

In this article, the authors explore how risk management contributes to the success of information technology projects. The article also differentiates the instrumental and communicative effects of risk management.

Engle, P. (2011). Crunch time. Industrial Engineer, 43(6), 20.

Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

This article examines the causes of information technology projects failing to achieve their objectives on time. The article focuses in particular on estimating scope, fluctuating project requirements, and a variety of distractions.

Kendrick, T. (2009). Identifying & managing project risk: Essential tools for failure-proofing your project(2nd ed., Ebrary version). New York, NY: AMACOM.

Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

Chapter 4, “Identifying Project Schedule Risk.” (pp. 70–99)

In this chapter, Tom Kendrick explores the causes of project failure. Kendrick emphasizes schedule delays and problems with estimates and dependencies.

Langley, M., & Hoffman, E. (2012, June 6). How risk reduction is (and isn’t) rocket science [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/06/when_risk_reduction_is_rocket.html

In this article, the authors provide examples of how NASA reduces risk in its project management process. The article focuses on the importance of strategic vision, executive sponsors, and talent development.

Required Media

Laureate Education (Producer). (2013g). Project risk [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Note: The approximate length of this media piece is 5 minutes.

In this video, Dr. Judy Murphy speaks in depth about minimizing project risks through the use of a SWOT analysis. She also offers methods to minimize psychological risks in order to ensure everyone is on board with a new project from the beginning.