Project Management and Risk- Assessment Guidance (not exhaustive)

QUESTION

A health authority is undergoing rapid change and wants to introduce care pathways that enable practitioners to provide better health care and better patient outcomes at a lower cost. The sum of

£175.000 has been allocated by the health authority towards the project. The problem is that there is no overall project management approach for this project and additionally, only a few people in the organisation have project management experience. Taking the role of a project manager, it is required that, you work with the senior managers to develop a specific project management course which will be delivered to the internal staff. You will also deliver a range of project management workshops to train a total of 50 staff members including the Chief Executive and team, senior management groups and medical leads to introduce the care pathways. Your training budget should be carefully managed to stay on track considering the overall amount allocated for the project with an estimated training cost of £2000 per staff member. At the end of this project, the health authority will develop a resource bank together with a specific approach for managing and delivering projects. The templates will be added in the health authority’s intranet for easy access by other staff members. With this in place, care pathways will be delivered more efficiently and there will be a reduced duplication of efforts within the authority i.e., projects with similar objectives being implemented. You have been asked to prepare a project plan which considers the following:

I advise you to follow a structure for your project plan, so it is presented professionally. This is a suggestion below:

Task 1 Critically discuss the project scope and drivers, project life cycle and project methodologies that are suitable to introduce the care pathway. In your discussion, provide an evaluation of the suitability of each project methodology chosen for this project and include a budget breakdown and timeline for the training programme. 

You can split this answer into several subheadings to ensure you are approaching this logically:

Project scope and drivers

A project scope statement outlines the entire project. It includes a description of the scope, deliverables and their features, justification of why the sponsors initiated the project. Scope defines the project boundaries. Discuss work-based structure here as it clearly demonstrates the relationship between the project deliverables (i.e., products, services or results) and the scope (i.e., work to be executed).

Project drivers are what causes a project to be initiated.

Potential project methodologies

Discuss a couple of methodologies that would be suitable for the care pathways project, and their advantages and disadvantages. Include images too.

Project lifecycle

The project life cycle is a 4-step framework designed to help project managers guide their projects successfully from start to finish. Discuss these phases.

Budget breakdown

This can be a simple chart

Timeline

A project timeline allows you to schedule tasks so that you can see what needs to be done when and keep an eye on the overall timeline of a project. You could use a Gannt chart here

Task 2 Identify a number of themes and issues involved in this project and organise a project management workshop for key stakeholders. The workshop should identify a number of priorities for staff to action. Critically evaluate the risks and risk management strategies including both legal and non-legal solutions to minimise any risk involved. (Consider using the Mendelow Matrix, in identifying the key stakeholders and their relative power/interest in the project).

Themes and issues to be discussed in workshop

Identify the themes and issues involved in this project that you could include in your workshops (bullet point these)

Priorities for staff to action

write out some actions for staff such as staff to share their experience in applying the concepts in a follow up session. I am sure you will think of more actions. (Bullet point these).

Risk management legal and non-legal solutions

Create a chart to identify risk and their solutions

Your project may run into anticipated challenges or unexpected setbacks. Challenges might include staff being off sick, unexpected obstacles, mechanical or technical failure of the equipment, or other delays. Describe both legal and non-legal solutions should be included to explain what is needed to remedy the project risks.

Some non-legal solutions you may wish to think about are right work culture and behaviours in the project. Empower staff to manage the risks they own, promote transparency, and holistic thinking. In addition to a risk process, you could also consider how you need to embed risk in decision-making and bring data into the risk discussion to help make better decisions. as the project goes further, the stakeholders must be informed about each and everything regarding it like progress, any losses, any changes, requirements, resources used, etc. Clear communication guidelines should be issued to ensure timely and accurate transmission of new, information and project updates.

Legal solutions are embedded in policy and legislation directives; Health and safety Executive; contracts; data privacy, GDPR. Partnership arrangements are sufficiently developed and supported to ensure that working is optimised. Regulatory frameworks. Insurance. Ethical guidelines. NICE guidelines

Key stakeholders

Use a template of the Mendelow Matrix to identify stakeholders and their relative power/interest in the project. Include supporting commentary.

Task 3 After an initial discussion with senior managers of the health authority, consider as to who should be included in the project team and how the team needs to be structured and managed to ensure the project is implemented successfully. Explain how you will minimise conflicts between some of the key stakeholders identified in task two.

You will need to discuss how you would structure the team and who will be included. This video considers some of the factors that you may wish to consider when structuring the team for the project.

How to Structure a Team - Project Management Training - Bing video

Conflict resolution strategies -Look up the theory of Thomas and Kilmann