Friday, July 16, 2010

Chapter 5&6 ideas

Chaper 5

Everything that has not been happened contains risk. How do we prevent the risk from happening?

First step is to identify the risks.
There are several ways to get information, ask stakeholders or learn from the past. It is true that the project may be varied by different stakeholders involved, however, the past project is certainly able to give some ideas for present not to repeat the same mistake.

Second step is to analyze and prioritize the risks.
Once the risk is defined, we need to figure out the consequence of the risks in terms of cost, schedule and possible damage to the project.
Ex. If the possibility of raining tomorrow is 50%, it might be traffic due to the rain, and I might be stuck on the traffic and might be late for work.

The third step is to develop response plans. If we know the risk might happen, and we know the consequence of the risk, we now have to do the response plan.
Ex. If it is raining tomorrow, it will be traffic. In order not to stuck in the traffic and late for work, I will leave from home earlier, or go another way that might be less traffic.

Chapter 6

Work breakdown structure. (WBS) It is a technique to break down a project into small pieces for better executing and managing. Before the WBS, we need to identify all the tasks in a project. Once the WBS made, every participants will know his or her role and focus on it. So, how to make a good WBS is really important.

Getting started on a work breakdown structure is always the hardest part. Sometimes the beginning doesn't plan well may effect the following steps.

There is a key concept I see it is really important: planning for quality.
A famous example that just happened lately is Toyota vehicle recall. Either short-term impact on stock prices or long term impact on fixing customer opinions and damage to brand equity, it is uncountable for the quality mistake.