Please provide insightful information about each part, I will leave great reviews

Part 1

How did they address: a) cost estimation & budgeting; b) scope management, and c) schedule planning?

In Part 2:

What high-level workstreams made up the project scope? How was Quality Management addressed? How was communication developed and executed?

In Part 3

How did they address project risk? What were some of the POSITIVE risks encountered? What occurred within procurement management? What were the main lessons learned?

How would you have managed this project yourself -- differently or similar to the author's approach? Why or why not?

Choosing our new house was a prerequisite project and one for which an adaptive approach made sense. While we had a general vision of what we wanted, we were unwilling to lock down all requirements at the onset as we were constrained by what was available on the housing market. Cost was our primary constraint, then scope and finally time. Our understanding of what we wanted evolved over the life of the project and we received frequent feedback based on our visits to different properties. Once our house was purchased, the move project has followed a predictive approach. Full planning up front does not make sense given the high likelihood of changes so a rolling wave approach was chosen. I have been acting as the project manager, while my wife and I have shared the role of sponsor. Cosponsorship is rarely a good idea with most projects, but exceptions are made for every rule, and in this case, key stakeholder satisfaction trumped single point of accountability! Given the scale and scope of the project, most decision-making has been made by the two sponsors with the exception of those which require external review or approval such as securing a bridge loan. While we did not produce a formal charter, my wife and I did take the time upfront to discuss the who, what, where and why of the project to a sufficient level that there wouldn't be any misunderstandings later on. An integrated project management plan was unnecessary, but once our new house was purchased I created an MS Excel workbook which has been used for planning, tracking and communication purposes. Changes have been frequent and have been reviewed with appropriate stakeholders and approved by both sponsors. Work streams which have been performed by us are managed using a pullbased approach from a very simple work board. For scope management, a simple work breakdown structure was created to identify the major work streams which were later decomposed down to individual work items. Given that a progressive elaboration approach has been utilized, certain work streams were fully defined early on whereas others have been decomposed over time. Cost estimation and budgeting has followed a typical top-down/bottom-up approach. For example, an analogous estimate was determined for renovations and upgrades based on our past experience with our previous two houses. However, once scope decomposition of that work stream had progressed to a sufficient level, cost estimates were derived for work packages and those estimates rolled up to an overall amount. Budgeting and tracking has been done within the same MS Excel workbook as is used for scope planning. Given the limited number of dependencies between work items, a network diagram and Gantt chart would be overkill so schedule planning has been done with a task list containing planned start/finish dates, staffing and progress information. In most cases, activities are short duration and so a 0/100 progress reporting approach has been utilized. With a fixed closing date, certain work streams have been time constrained and hence having activities start as soon as possible has been a good strategy to In the first two articles in this series, I covered the context and planning work which has gone into our move. This article is being written three days after we movec into the new home. Nearly all boxes are unpacked and we've even managed to put some of our home decorations up but there's still a lot left to do to achieve our desired outcome. Given the uncertainties involved in relocating to a new city and the fact that this is our first move in over a decade, more effort had to be spent on risk management than on some of the other knowledge areas. There were multiple milestones leading up to the move and significant delays or cost overruns in achieving any of them would have been serious. Whether it was getting the demand loan funding on time, ensuring utilities were transitioned over in a timely manner or having the movers show up on time, multiple risks had to be managed. While the move itself tended to involve a number of negative risks, the post-move stages have also introduced some positive ones. For example, certain renovations which we felt would be required weren't. Thankfully, we had a prioritized list of renos so freed up funding could be quickly reallocated! Nearly every threat risk response with the exception of avoidance was utilized. While a formal risk register wasn't produced, we did have a common understanding of the top three risks on any given day and used expected monetary value to plan how much contingency reserves and schedule buffer we needed to address the impacts of any realized risks. For the most part, the risk management process has been effective so far as none of the identified risks were realized. Unfortunately, we did incur the impacts of an unidentified risk related to cancellation of the scheduled payment of our property taxes but thankfully those financial impacts were minor. Needless to say, procurement management was heavily exercised in this project. Both products and services were procured using a combination of firm fixed price and time and materials contracts. No RFIs, RFPs, RFQs, or IFBs were issued but we contacted multiple vendors where there was likely to be significant variation in price or quality and went with highly rated ones in cases where the service or product being provided was a commodity. The bulk of procurement activities are still remaining as we have shifted into the high priority renos and upgrades stage of our execution phase, but to date no issues have emerged. Stakeholder management has been one of the least formally performed knowledge areas although thorough identification had to be done of every stakeholder who needed to be aware of our move. Aside from the sellers of our new home and the purchasers of our old home, there were no other opportunities for misalignment in the overall direction of the project. With those two stakeholders, regular engagement and explicit, clear (and sometimes formal) communication was used to ensure we remained on the same page. So even though the project isn't done, there are some lessons I've learned which might help if we ever have to move again (not if I can help it!). There are also some opportunities which could be exploited by someone with more entrepreneurial spirit than mine. For example, notifying all service providers of a change of address is an extremely time consuming, manual process. Thankfully most can be addressed online, but some require phone calls and if someone was to offer a service to handle it for you, that might be worth funding! Looking back at my life cycle choice for this project and the tailoring I performed across the PMBOK knowledge areas, I'm comfortable that the planning and execution effort has met the Goldilocks test and has been "just right"! In my last article, I had written about our current personal project of moving from our current home to a new house in a different city. After it was published, I received some feedback (thanks Luis!) that it would be helpful to provide more context about the project itself. This initiative was the follow up to an initial project which covered the purchase of the new property and the sale of our existing home. As such, a number of constraints were set before this project got underway, including the moving day milestone, the ceiling budget on home renovations, and available floor space to accommodate our furniture and any renovations we were planning. The scope of the current project includes the following high-level workstreams: - De-cluttering, packing \& unpacking - this included donating, discarding \& giving away stuff that we didn't need in our new home, procuring packing materials, packing \& labelling activities and the corresponding unpacking and arranging of home contents as well as the disposal of the used packing materials - "The move" - this included selecting the moving company, negotiating the contract with them, the move itself, and closing the contract - Account transition - this included cancelling, updating or setting up accounts for utilities, subscriptions and other services - Financial and Legal - this included selecting the law firm to represent us, providing them with all required documents, securing our bridge loan from the bank and completing the closing process for both properties - Renos and upgrades - this work stream includes identifying all desired renovations and upgrades, soliciting bids for the work, negotiating and signing contracts, procuring materials, monitoring the execution against those contracts and closing the contracts A house move is a good example of a project which could never end as renos and upgrades are an ongoing interest. For simplicity we decided to set an arbitrary project completion deadline of a month and a half after the moving date with all subsequent renos and upgrades being handled as operations or follow-on mini projects. This deadline provides sufficient sense of urgency to get the high priority renos and upgrades completed in a timely manner. The execution phase of the project has been split into four sequential stages: - Pre-move planning and preparations - Moving day - The first two weeks after moving day including high priority renos and upgrades - The subsequent month covering the lower priority renos and upgrades As you'd expect, resource management varies based on the resources and work packages involved. For the work being done by my family, planning and tracking have been informal with the primary objective being to ensure that the "right" person is responsible and accountable for each work item. As our family is a long standing team, the Develop Team process is less relevant than the Manage Team one and significant effort has been spent to ensure that team members are engaged, motivated and focused! For the work being done by contractors or for materials and equipment, estimating resource requirements and acquiring resources has been done more formally. Quality management has focused more on quality control than on quality assurance. The duration of the work being performed by each contractor is short enough that by providing clear requirements upfront, ensuring that there is a common understanding of those requirements including acceptance criteria, and then using those acceptance criteria as the basis for the Validate Scope process is sufficient. For the work done by our family, checklists and peer reviews are the standard tools we've been using to control quality. While a project communications plan was not produced, with major stakeholders such as the bank, our lawyer, the moving company and key service providers, written, formal communications have been used. There have been frequent instances of the basic communication model failing which has necessitated follow up with recipients to request acknowledgement or feedback. Needless to say, an issue log has been a valuable artifact at managing such concerns! Within our family and with secondary stakeholders, a combination of verbal and written informal communications have been effective. In the final article in this trilogy I will cover the remaining three PMBOK knowledge areas. By then, we will have moved to our new home, so I will also be able to assess the effectiveness of our planning