There are two discussions here that need to be responded to thoroughly. Responses must be on APA format 150+words 1-2 legitimate verifiable sources per response.

CIS554 discussion 1 post responses.
Respond to the colleagues posts regarding:
“Project Planning”Please respond to the following:
• A project requires ample coordination of schedule, costs, and scope. Describe a project that you have worked on from beginning to end. Determine the various processes that were required during the planning phase of the project.
• Describe the challenges that were present throughout the execution of the project identified in Part 1 of this discussion. Suggest improvements that could have been performed during the planning phase to minimize the number of challenges experienced in the latter phases of the project.

DT’s post states the following:
• A project requires ample coordination of schedule, costs, and scope. Describe a project that you have worked on from beginning to end. Determine the various processes that were required during the planning phase of the project.

I worked on a project testing communications systems for DoD networks.Some processes that were required during the planning phase were determining the system or systems for testing, what where the requirements, how long it was going to take, how many people were needed, and how much it was going to cost.Knowing all of these things up front usually made things run smoothly but that were times when changes had to made to the schedule or budget.

• Describe the challenges that were present throughout the execution of the project identified in Part 1 of this discussion. Suggest improvements that could have been performed during the planning phase to minimize the number of challenges experienced in the latter phases of the project.

Like I mentioned earlier, sometimes changes had to be made to the schedule or budget. Schedule changes most of the times were due to vendor availability or if the equipment failed a portion of testing and had to be retested.Budget changes stemmed from schedule changes that prolonged the project’s length.Planning slack into the schedule during the planning phase can help tremendously if calculated right.Lessons learned from prior testing projects usually made this easy. Budget changes were always pretty simple to make.

CIS554 discussion 2 post responses.
Respond to the colleagues posts regarding:
“Organization Structure and Planning” Please respond to the following:

• The structure of an organization has a direct relationship with the planning and management efforts of a project. Describe how a project manager’s authority and management style are influenced by the organization’s structure.
• Evaluate how the attributes of an organization’s structure influence the planning efforts and success factors of a project. Include at least two examples to support your response.

AJ’s post states the following:

Evening Class,

• The structure of an organization has a direct relationship with the planning and management efforts of a project. Describe how a project manager’s authority and management style are influenced by the organization’s structure.

The structure or an organization has a direct impact on a project managers authority because, the organization may be structured as either functional, matrix or projectized. In each structure the project manager has a different level of authority. In the functional structure the project manager has little to no authority to make decisions that may impact a project. Within the matrix structure there are three levels: weak, balanced and strong. Weak meaning the project manager has little influence and strong being essential in decisions as well as have a higher authority over the project team. As for the projectized structure, the project manager runs the project as they see fit for success. Keep in mind that whichever organization structure that is chosen to manage project life cycles will change the management style for the project manager. The structures that are low in authority for the project manager really does not allow for them to have a management style. Whereas structures with a high authority for project managers, management styles will need to be decided and understood by the organization and project managers current team(s).

• Evaluate how the attributes of an organization’s structure influence the planning efforts and success factors of a project. Include at least two examples to support your response.

Before we can evaluate how an organizations characteristics influence planning efforts and success factors of any project, we must know that characteristics. For example, a characteristic that needs to be considered is span of control. Span of control is the number of direct reports a manager can have depending on the size and needs of the department. The span of control influences planning efforts for any project because it supports the understanding if resources from a team can allocate 100% of their time versus partial time to a project. This can directly influence he success of the project because it provides the functional manager the capability to assess his/her teams capacity to support daily activities and any additional project that may be managed by a project manager.