Project Schedule and Risk Management Are Some

Project schedule and risk management are some of the most important components of project management. These components play a crucial role in project planning, which is a process used to organize various areas of a project such as workloads and management of the project team. Project schedule basically refers to a listing of the activities or tasks, milestones, and deliverables of a project that includes the expected start and finish dates ("Project Scheduling," n.d.). Risk management is a process through which a project manager and team predicts risks, estimates impacts of these risks on the project, and describe reactions to these issues. This process usually involves the preparation of a risk management plan or outline in order to accomplish these goals.

Definition of What Needs to be Done:

One of the most important aspects to consider when developing a project schedule is all the work that needs to be completed. The need to identify the tasks to be completed before developing the project schedule is because the schedule should reflect all these tasks and their expected delivery time. In addition, a project schedule is an important document because the project unable is relatively unable to communicate the complete effort based on cost and resources for the project without a complete and full schedule. The significance of a project schedule is also attributed to the fact that it transforms the project from a vision to a time-based plan of operation ("Project Schedule Development," n.d.). This project is for the development of new toys for children between 5 and 9 years old in order to meet the needs of customers and increase the company's revenue by 10%.

Tasks to be Completed:

The tasks that need to be completed include market research, product design, product development, production planning, and marketing. The market research task will include focus groups, survey, analysis of research, and presentation of market findings. Product design will focus on design through research evaluation and design document, concept models, and design selection while product development will include bill of materials, initial prototype, prototype testing, and product development sign-off. Production planning includes production design, production testing, production QA design, and production plan sign-off. Marketing incorporates the development of marketing strategy, marketing plan, and marketing collateral such as brochures, commercials, and advertising ("Project Schedule," n.d.).

Order in which Each Task will be Completed:

The project's tasks are designed based on Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), which is a hierarchical reflection of all the project's tasks based on deliverables and timeframe to accomplish them. The development process of this project will be carried out from market research, product design, product development, production planning, and marketing respectively.

Timeframe for Completing Each Task:

Marketing research will be conducted within the first three months of project management, followed by two-month period of product design and two months of product development. These tasks will be followed by production planning for a month and marketing that will also be carried out for a month.

Risk Management:

As previously mentioned, risk management is a process of forecasting risks, determining their potential impact, and developing measures for reacting to them. As an individual assigned to a project risk team of five members, one of the most important tasks to carry out is develop a risk management plan and process that can be used on all future projects. Similar to other members in the project risk team, my responsibility is to develop an outline for handling project risks because this is the first time the organization has formally designed a risk team. When developing the risk management plan, some of the major things to consider include how to avoid risk, control or mitigate them, accept risk, and transfer risk. The other considerations include the team's objectives, process for handling risk situations, team activities, and team outputs.

Team Objectives:

The objectives of the project risk team include ensuring that the organization is protected in the most suitable cost-effective way during the development and implementation of the project (Harris, n.d.). Secondly, the team will be responsible for developing a plan that helps in identifying risks, their potential impacts on the project, and how they can be handled. Third, the team will be mandated with the task of conducting periodic reviews on the risk management plans to ensure it does not become ineffective and reflects the actual probable project risks.

Process for Handling Risk Events:

The process for handling risk incidents will be centered on various strategies including avoiding risk, controlling or mitigating risk, accepting risk, or transferring risk. Accepting risk will involve changing plans to evade the risk event while controlling or mitigating risk includes lessening its probability or impact through instant measures. While acceptance of risk is taking chance of negative effect through budgeting the cost and transferring risk is sharing risk to third-parties who can manage its outcome.

Team Activities:

Some of the activities to be used in this process include documenting risk assessment and control procedures, developing necessary contingency plans, examining legal and regulatory requirements, developing metrics and performance indicators, conducting security-awareness training, and integrating the risk management plan and the organization's change control procedures.