by: Prof. Jesus C. Cinco, Jr.
The School of Management holds the distinction of being the only college of UPC that submitted its penultimate Self-Assessment Report (SAR) for the Bachelor of Science in Management program to UPC’s Quality Assurance Committee before the December 2019 deadline.
While there were favorable factors (i.e., smaller number of faculty, low turnover of administrative staff during the period in review) that led to the early completion of the SAR compared to other programs of UPC, a key factor in the completion of its SAR is attributable to the use of a project management approach with the aid of MS Project scheduling software.
Why attribute its timely completion to the use of a project management approach?
First, a project management approach requires that the SAR team has a good idea of the many activities (295 to be exact) necessary to complete the project. The list of activities became a key input to the project schedule;
Second, a project management approach requires that estimates of the duration of each activity be made based on a good appreciation of the scope of the activity, the degree of cooperation anticipated from the SoM faculty and administrative staff given their academic load, and other resources at the disposable of the SAR team;
Third, a project management approach requires that the SAR team determine the sequence of these activities (i.e., predecessor relationships) given the limited available resources;
Fourth, a project management approach requires that the SAR team identifies the project ‘s critical path so that the appropriate decision to allocate limited project resources is made with due consideration for the trade-offs;
Fifth, close monitoring of the execution of the project activities during project implementation has allowed the SAR team to adjust the pace, re-allocate project resources and anticipate the adverse impact of other SoM activities that are unrelated to the timely completion of the project.
Sixth, the use of project management software facilitated the preceding steps and contributed to a significant degree to the timely completion of the project.
In effect, the adoption of a project management approach using project management software has contributed to a large degree to the timely completion of the SAR Project.
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