Give 50-word comment on this article review For my first article review, I chose

Question

Give 50-word comment on this article review

For my first article review, I chose “The importance of the planning phase to project success”. This article relates to part one, chapter 3 of our text book (Project Management). This article attempts to answer three key questions which are: How important is project planning for project success? What impact does the planning phase have on project success? How much effort is expended on the planning phase to achieve project success?

            Before answering these three questions, the author first defined what project success looks like. He did this by stating four levels of project success which are: Project efficiency, impact on the customer, business success, and preparing for the future. The first question of the article is, how important is project planning for project success? The answer given for this question is that while it is very important to have a solid plan and it is common that there is more pressure form the project environment to reduce the time spent planning rather than increase it and achieve a better plan. The reasoning behind this answer is that spending too much time on the details of a project plan limits creativity and slows down progress by trying to plan for every unforeseen problem or planning for activities that depend on outcomes of earlier activities.

            The answer to our second question, what impact does the planning phase have on project success, the article came to the conclusion that planning completeness is positively and directly related to project success. The author uses the PDRI scale to rate how complete a project plan is with 1000 being no plan and 200 or less means having a good plan. PDRI is method used in the building industry to measure scope definition for completeness. Using this scale, the author showed that having a lower PDRI score directly correlates to having a higher chance of completing a project on time and on budget.

            Lastly, our last question was, how much effort is expended on the planning phase to achieve project success? The answer to this question according to the article is that “planning is associated with project success; both project efficiency and overall project success” (Serrador, 2012). This answer was determined by looking at project planning in the IT industry where software development has a large failure rate and on average, only 6% of cost/effort are attributed to planning. Also via project management literature, there is a common consensus that even the best team can’t overcome failure once started down the wrong path.

            I enjoyed reading and learning from this article because I too believe that planning is a very important step in project planning. Reading this article gave me a better understanding of why it is so important and gave me more tools to defend my own beliefs about the subject. The interesting thing I did not expect was the answer to the first question where most companies emphasize on completing the planning phase as quick as possible. I personally do enjoy winging it when it comes doing minor thing/projects but don’t believe in that when it comes to something serious. I personally would recommend this article to anyone who has doubts about having a solid project plan.

Works Cited

Serrador, P. (2012). The importance of the planning phase to project success. Paper presented at

PMI® Global Congress 2012—North America, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.

Explanation / Answer

Explanation:

Planning is an essential function for project success and most important factors also. Planning does create a path of success for the project and make contingency reduction before it arises. Planning make sure that failure of project could be reduces and project run efficiently overall during the project life cycle.

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