Assessment of unit 8 comprehension questions

Cancellation of a project is usually brought by various factors including unrealistic deadlines and project failure. The closure of a project that has missed deadlines, has failed to produce the anticipated technological results, and generated various problems between the project team and the customer can be both good news and bad news. It is good news because the company can avoid further losses and risks in attempts to implement it. Moreover, such an initiative will give the firm time to redirect efforts and resources on initiatives that yield positive results. However, the cancellation is bad news if it is cancelled without proper evaluation of the reasons for its perceived failure and difficulties.

Question 2:

The decision on whether or not to kill a project requires constant evaluation of the environment for any indications that it may no longer be viable. The evaluation helps the project team to determine early signs of project failure or success in order to make effective decisions. Making a decision regarding killing a project is usually an issue that requires thorough analysis to ensure the project is not cancelled prematurely when it could yield positive results. Some of the major factors to consider during evaluation include costs, ability to meet strategic fit criteria, deadlines, and generating technological-results.

Question 3:

Project termination process entails learning and documenting important lessons that can be incorporated into future project plans and tools. As a project manager facilitating a lessons learned session in project termination process, I would use guidelines for project termination and documentation of important information. The guidelines would primarily be based on objective analysis of the task and the challenges that were encountered in the process. It would also involve looking at how the challenges were addressed and whether they could have been handled in better ways. The other considerations include evaluation of whether deadlines were met and whether delays occurred due to any unexpected circumstances. The documentation of this information will include elements of final report of projects i.e. project and administrative performance, organizational structure, team performance, project management techniques, and its benefits.

Question 4:

The Boston Tunnel, The Big Dig, the Channel Tube, The Channel, and London's Millenium Dome are among the major ambitious projects that have involved huge project costs. While these projects were characterized with poor cost performance, they were supported to their conclusion. One of the major reasons for poor cost performance of these high-visibility projects is that they ended up being money pits for their respective project teams and other stakeholders. Secondly, the projects had poor cost performance because they were complex and technologically challenging and required more costs than initially anticipated. Despite being poor cost performance projects, they were supported to their conclusion because of their revolutionary promises i.e. The benefits outweigh the costs.