Re-address steps 1 4 above to express lessons learned from that failed effort to develop the Panama Canal under French leadership. Then Submit a 6 to 7 page paper addressing the final 7 steps below, plus a cover page and references. APA format required, as well as font 12, Times New Roman, double-spaced. Grammar, spelling, thesis statement and transition sentences are required. Critical thinking, challenging ideals, is considered advantageous.

Step 1: Assess how the previous failures resulted in lessons learned applied to the new project effort. Comment on the corrections, as lessons learned, from the previous French-leadership failures addressed in steps 1 4 in the first paper. Then continue to develop the plan, including the risks and requirements, of the updated plan under new leadership. For example, was the strategic project tie-in modified, was the business problem updated, did the objectives, benefits or milestones change, was the scope modified, how did stakeholders change and whats the analysis of that change, etc.

Step 2: Develop scope baseline. Once the deliverables are confirmed in the Scope Statement, they need to be developed into a work breakdown structure (WBS), which is a decomposition of all the deliverables in the project. This deliverable WBS forms the scope baseline and has these elements:

Identifies all the deliverables produced on the project, and therefore, identifies all the work to be done.

Takes large deliverables and breaks them into a hierarchy of smaller deliverables. That is, each deliverable starts at a high level and is broken into subsequently lower and lower levels of detail.

The lowest level is called a "work package" and can be numbered to correspond to activities and tasks.

The WBS is often thought of as a task breakdown, but activities and tasks are a separate breakdown, identified in the next step.

Step 3: Develop the schedule and baselines. Here are the steps involved in developing the schedule and cost baselines.

1. Identify activities and tasks needed to produce each of the work packages, creating a WBS of tasks. Use the excel spreadsheet provided to lists the key Panama Canal tasks and (estimate) the dates for such deliverables.

2. Estimate how long it will take to complete each task.

3. Estimate cost of each task, using an average hourly rate for each resource.

4. Consider resource constraints, or how much time each resource can realistically devoted to this project.

5. Develop schedule, which is a calendarization of all the tasks and estimates. It shows by chosen time period (week, month, quarter, or year) which resource is doing which tasks, how much time they are expected to spend on each task, and when each task is scheduled to begin and end.

This process is not a one-time effort. Throughout the project you will most likely be adding to repeating some or all of these steps.

Step 4: Create baseline management plans. Once the scope, schedule, and cost baselines have been established, you can create the steps the team will take to manage variances to these plans. All these management plans usually include a review and approval process for modifying the baselines. Different approval levels are usually needed for different types of changes. In addition, not all new requests will result in changes to the scope, schedule, or budget, but a process is needed to study all new requests to determine their impact to the project.

Step 5: Develop the staffing plan. The staffing plan is a chart that shows the time periods, usually month, quarter, year, that each resource will come onto and leave the project. It is similar to other project management charts, like a Gantt chart, but does not show tasks, estimates, begin and end dates, or the critical path. It shows only the time period and resource and the length of time that resource is expected to remain on the project.

Step 6: Analyze project risks. Project Risks: A risk is an event that may or may not happen, but could have a significant effect on the outcome of a project, if it were to occur. For example, there may be a 50% chance of a significant change in sponsorship in the next few months. Analyzing risks includes making a determination of both the probability that a specific event may occur and if it does, assessing its impact. Risk management includes not just assessing the risk, but developing risk management plans to understand and communicate how the team will respond to the high-risk events.

Step 7: Communicate! One important aspect of the project plan is the Communications Plan. This document states such things as:

Who on the project wants which reports, how often, in what format, and using what media.

How issues will be escalated and when.

Where project information will be stored and who can access it.

Once the project plan is complete, it is important not just to communicate the importance of the project plan to the sponsor, but also to communicate its contents once it's created. This communication should include such things as:

Review and approval of the project plan.

Process for changing the contents of the plan.

Next stepsexecuting and controlling the project plan and key stakeholder roles/responsibilities in the upcoming phases.