Dissertation Proposal on Project Management

Introduction

Project management is considered as an effective way of initiating change and encouraging development within organizations. Organizations are faced with many challenges in starting projects. These problems could be initiated either through lack of funds among other resources and the application of inappropriate methods and techniques for managing the projects. Time, human capital, and funds comprise of the key requirements in ensuring that a project is successful. This paper is based on a dissertation proposal on the management of an organizational or business project (Nokes, 2007).

Research Question

The research questions useful in starting the project are:

What is the organization’s mission and its relationship with the project?

What business problems would be solved by the project?

Research Objectives

The study will be done to:

To establish how the project relate to the mission and vision of the organization

To identify the key problem being solved by the project

Literature Review

In this section, the key purpose is to point out what other researchers have found about the problem that the project intents to solve. This section points out the way these various researchers were able to address the issue, how they came into solutions, and the way their solutions differed. The problem being addressed would be found to have existed in different studies whose findings were completely different. The previous studies would provide a clue on the challenges likely to encounter the project completion process. They would also provide the ways in which the project managers in the previous studies were able to overcome the problems until their projects were successful (Nokes, 2007). This would be critical for the project manger of the aspired project to structure the best ways of overcoming any perceived challenges as established from the conducted research.

Based on the available and earlier studies, the researcher would be able to establish how the problem was tackled especially through the application of the existing project life cycle methods. For the project life cycle, it is considered that a continuous process is hardly a project. A project has a lifespan, after which a continuous maintenance or management process may be initiated. A project is completed successfully when all project expectations and projections are met especially in cost and time (Nokes, 2007).

Methodology

This section would important is structuring the research design, the data collection methods, and the analysis tools useful in establishing the necessary information required to initiate the actual project (Nokes, 2007). The dissertation will use both secondary and primary data. Secondary data would be used due to its availability and possibility of enabling wider research coverage. Primary data shall be obtained through sample surveys, which would use both interviews and questionnaires in obtaining various views about the proposed project from the respondents (Nokes, 2007). Both quantitative and qualitative research shall be conducted. Quantitative research used quantifiable data while qualitative research used nominal data, that is, uncountable data.

Data analysis shall be done to extract the real meaning of the qualitative and quantitative data and its application in the proposed project. The various project life cycles or stages shall be analyzed to figure out the project feasibility given the available resources (Nokes, 2007). These stages include the following processes:

Project Preparation stage

The start-up

The feasibility study

Definition and planning

Implementation process

Close down

Conclusion

Managing the project would involve consideration of the time required to complete the project, application of the project life cycle technique, availability of financial resource, and the availability of appropriate human skills. Starting the project would require identification of the organization’s problem and the time available to complete each of the project activities. The research would be necessary to collect the required data and information, which would guide the completion of the project (Nokes, 2007). A good project planning could lead to the project sponsorship, which would also bring down the organizational cost to the project.

References

Nokes, S. (2007). The Definitive Guide to Project Management, 2nd Ed.n. . London: Financial Times / Prentice Hall.