Individual Assignment Unit 4

Individual Assignment Unit 4 (Suburban Homes Construction Project Case Study)
Submitted by: Saurabh Puthran
June 1st, 2021

Question 1 (from Unit 1) – What advice would you offer to Adam Smith on improving the
performance of project management and increasing project success rate?
The perfect advice for Mr. Adam Smith would be to create a project charter to improve the
performance of the project and increase the project success rate.
It is very important to have a project charter in the project management life cycle in order to
increase the project success rate, the charter would give him a nice vision about the project
success rate.
Some of the various elements from the charter are:
1) Scope
2) Milestone
3) Planning
4) Risk
5) Design and development
6) Project Closing
(CPM 4th edition, 2017, p. 6)
Scope: The scope of the project will lead to improve the quality of the whole project
period.
Milestone: It is very significant for Adam to set a milestone for the project, as it will help
him to keep a track of major events in the timeline and all pending decisions.
Planning: This step is an essential to plan about the requirements based on the scope,
milestone, budget, team and stakeholder requirements.
Risk: Risk in projects can be both positive and negative. Some of the negative risk to
keep in mind in this case for Adam can be shortage of resources, pricing analysis, project
timeline and lastly tools and techniques.
Design and development: This is a critical phase where Adam needs to focus the most.
He needs to take care of the implementation and has to make sure that the resources
are well trained and equipped to complete the project. He needs to keep a track of the
development maybe on an everyday/weekly basis.
Project Closing: Adam has to make sure that the project was completed well within the
time frame and the performance of the project management was satisfactory.
(CPM 4th edition, 2017, p. 6)
Question 2 (from Unit 4) - Describe the organizational structure that might best suit Suburban
Homes. Ensure that your discussion includes all possible structures and why each is ruled
out?
Suburban homes are a mid-sized company with a range of 50 – 100 employees. There
are 3 major types of organizational in project management:
1) Functional organization structure
2) Projectized organization structure
3) Matrix organization structure
Functional structure: “An organizational structure in which staff is grouped by areas of
specialization and the project manager has limited authority to assign work and apply
resources.” (Kloppenborg, 2014)
The functional formation of a company will definitely slow down communications within when
there will be requirement for multiple inputs.
Projectized organization structure: “The exact opposite form of functional organization is the
projectized organization, which is defined as group employees, collocated or not, by activities
on a particular project.” (Kloppenborg, 2014)
People from different functions will report to the same project manager, traditional
department barriers will be reduced.
Since the project manager is responsible for communications, response times and decision
making tend to be swift. All workers understand clearly what they need to do
because only one boss the project manager is giving them instructions.
Matrix organization structure: “Any organization in which the project manager or project team
leader actually shares responsibility for the project with a number of individual functional
managers.” (Kloppenborg, 2014)
Responding to multiple responsibilities and higher authority of people can be demotivating for
some people.
Therefore, I feel projectized organization structure is the best choice for Suburban Homes. As
Suburban homes will a have a single lead and then there will be individuals who will be
responsible for their work and they will report to that single lead. In this case, Adam Smith,
project manager of the company will be responsible for a successful project delivery. Project
members in his team will be responsible to complete their assigned work and report back only
to Adam and not to any other functional manager to avoid those unnecessary back and forth
between mangers and team members.
Question 3 (from Unit 4) - Describe the type of lifecycle best suited for their emphasis on
high-quality construction. Ensure that your discussion includes at least 3 possible lifecycles
and why two of them are ruled out?
The types of project life cycle are :

Construction Project Life Cycle Model
Agile Project Life Cycle Model
Define Measure Analyze Improve Control Model
(CPM 4e, 2017, p.111-116)
Construction Project Life Cycle Model: This model is known to be very big in size. They are a
bit compound due to their heavy phases included in their cycle. Phases in this cycle are
learning, planning, building, using, maintaining, repairing and improvement. This can be easily
defined and implemented as the simplest project life cycle in the construction industry. But the
only con in this cycle is that you cannot modify anything in the future as it gets difficult to
change things in this cycle as compared to DMAIC cycle.
Agile Project Life Cycle Model: This cycle is know to be iterative and this cycle focuses on
adaptability of the process and customer satisfaction by quick delivery of an ongoing software
product. This cycle is most often used to build any software in an agile manner. So in my
opinion, this cycle will not suit the Suburban home or any other type of construction company.
Define Measure Analyze Improve Control Model- DMAIC is a fundamental piece of a Six Sigma
drive, yet overall it can be carried out as an independent quality improvement process or as a
feature of other interaction improvement drives like lean.
Its five phases are Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control.
Define: Defining the issue, improvement movement, opportunity for development, the task
objectives, and client (internal and external) necessities.
Measure: Measuring the performance of the project.
Analyze: Analyzing the root cause performance of the issue or the reasons for bad
performance.
Improve: Improves the performance of the process overall by finding the root cause of the
issue and eliminating it out.
Control: Controlling the future performance by monitoring it closely.
These above-mentioned phases are considered very helpful to any construction company as it
delivers the final project with quality control and are better cycles compared to the other two
project life cycles. Success rate also stays high which makes this life cycle model more suitable
to Suburban Homes.
References:
Project Management Institute. (2017). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
(PMBOK guide) Sixth Edition.
Kloppenborg, T. J., Anantatmula, V., Wells, K. N. (2019). Contemporary Project Management
Fourth edition (CPM 4th edition) Cengage.

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Individual Assignment Unit 4 (Suburban Homes Construction Project Case Study)

Submitted by: Saurabh Puthran

June 1st, 2021

and why two of them are ruled out?

The types of project life cycle are :

(PMBOK guide) Sixth Edition.

Kloppenborg, T. J., Anantatmula, V., Wells, K. N. (2019). Contemporary Project Management

Fourth edition (CPM 4th edition) Cengage.

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