A project plan in the layman’s point of view is a formal document that has been approved and mainly used to give guidance to the control and execution of any project. Therefore, from the above view, the Gauchito Project Plan is an approved document which had been written so as to give the guidance in the control and execution of the 7/8 Scale Ansari X Gauchito Rocket project. This project kicked off on the 22nd of May 2006 and ended on 26th July the same year. The project’s approximate cost was $63,000.00 as per the budget that had been earlier prepared.
The Gauchito Project Plan has answered some of the basic questions about the 7/8 Scale Ansari X Gauchito Rocket project. It has explained why the 7/8 Scale Ansari X Gauchito Rocket project is being sponsored and why the problem that is there is to be addressed by the 7/8 Scale Ansari X Gauchito Rocket project. The project plan has also effectively given an explanation of the type of work that is going to be done on the project.
This plan of the project has also clearly stipulated the key stakeholders in this project and their key responsibilities until the completion of the project. The project plan has given a rough estimate of the total time that the whole project together with its milestones was to take to be fully completed. According to the standards of the industry, PMBOK, the project plan has clearly given a description of how the execution of the project, its full management and its control were to be done. This has made the Gauchito Project Plan to qualify as a totally complete project (Heldman, 2009).
The main purpose of the Gauchito Project Plan to make sure that the building of the rocket was done according to the specifications that had been provided by the customer. The satisfaction of the customer concerning the costs, the workmanship and the delivery of the product which was the rocket were very important in making sure that the goals that the project had were achieved.
The customer chose the material that he wanted used in the construction work in the project. The only thing that was done on the materials was the damage inspection which could have occurred during the shipping process. The process of constructing the rocket was also written by the customer, and therefore, the project quality involved the ensuring that every process that was to be followed during construction had been adhered to, to the later.
The project mainly considered the way the Gauchito Rocket was to be designed. The design, the results of the test and the launch were all checked by the use of the scale of 7/8 of the rocket that is full size, an approach which measured the success of the rocket validly with no expenses and time that could be used on a rocket that was full-sized. This greatly assisted in identifying, mitigating and risk avoidance to the development program of space (Heldman, 2007).
Risk events to this project
Like any other project, the 7/8 Scale Ansari X Gauchito Rocket project had some risks that were taken for the achievement to be realized. It is usually not easy to take risks but many times, they can never be avoided no matter how one may try to avoid them. Risk taking usually bears positive results in the project. The risk events that were experienced by the Gauchito project were: unavailability of the personnel that was very key, delayed delivery of equipment and material, the weather, shortage of material, the damage of the original parts that had been provided in the kit, mechanical breakdown to the key machines that were to be used, theft in construction site, quitting of key team players, disappointment from the contractors and epidemics. The probability and impact matrix is provided below.
Probability and Impact Matrix
As reflected on the probability and impact matrix, the risks are categorized into three groups: High level, moderate and minimal risks. The high level risks need to be immediately resolved while the moderate risk needs to only be tracked through the project’s entire life. On the other hand, the minimal risk needs to be only known but tracking is not any necessary. Among the risks that were identified, there were no high level risks and therefore there was no course of alarm since none of the risks needed to be immediately resolved. This meant that the other risks could only be known or tracked as the project was being implemented, as the course of action. This outcome from the probability and impact matrix implied that there would be no great impact of the risks on the expected monetary value of the project.
The occurrence of the unavailability of the personnel, delayed delivery of equipment and material, and that of disappointment from the contractors would greatly affect the schedule that had been laid down as per the plan of the project. These risks will nullify the assumptions that had been made when the schedule was being put in place. The schedule plan had assumed that the materials and equipment would all be available one week before the actual date of the start of the project. It had also assumed that all the necessary personnel that were needed in the project implementations would be available at the time the project was starting.
The project had also assumed that the contracts would actually be followed as it had been agreed without any delays. The nullification of these assumptions would therefore, mean that there will be a distortion on the already laid down schedule. This will call for another schedule to be made, which will greatly delay the implementation of the rocket project since making another schedule will consume a lot of time that would otherwise have been used in the actual implementation of the project plan. The making of another schedule will also raise the initial approximated budget hence calling for extra funding, which may be actually tricky (Stackpole, 2008).
The risks will also compromise on the quality of the final product of the project. For instance, shortage of material, the damage of the original provided in the kit, mechanical breakdown to the key machines, theft in the construction site, quitting of key team players and epidemics would greatly compromise the quality that was expected on the rocket. This is because there is a high probability of not building the rocket to the specifications that were desired by the customer.
Therefore, the customer may not be satisfied by the final product of the rocket. If some of the materials delivered for construction are stolen or damaged before construction begins, there will definitely be a low quality of the final product. The quitting of the key personnel will also make the project implementation to delay or be more expensive as other personnel are searched for. Therefore, in as much as the risks that are likely to happen may be handled, they need to be monitored with a lot of seriousness so as to avoid or limit their actual occurrence and hence prevent the resultant effects.
References
Heldman, K. (2007). Microsoft Office Excel 2007 for Project Management. New York: Wiley Publishing.
Heldman, K. (2009). Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide. New York: Wiley Publishing.
Stackpole, C. (2008). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide). London: Project Management Institute.