Project

Management

Ivar Hukkelberg,30th March 2020

Photo by Georgie Cobbs on Unsplash

Who am I?

• M.Sc. Industrial Economics at NTNU

• Two years as a consultant at Accenture

• PhD candidate - Machine learning in public

sector

• Spare time activity - impro theater and acting

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)

 Information
Infrastructure
Platform
ecosystem
Enterprise
Architecture

Project
Management Increasing
complexity

Today´s focus

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 Key take-aways should be…

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What is Project Waterfall Agile

Management? approach approach

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)

What is a project?

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)

Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels
Characteristics of what a project is

• Has a start and an end

• Has an organization and steering committee
• Has a clear mandate and goals for what to
produce
• Has a defined plan of activities, budget, and
schedule

“A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create

a unique product, service, or result.” – PMI Book

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)
Why organize activities as a project?

Solve complex tasks that the line

organization is not designed to do.

Examples of such tasks:

• Developing a new product or service
• Effecting a change in the structure, staffing,
or style of an organization
• Constructing a building or infrastructure
• Implementing a new business process or
procedure
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Project management?

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)

Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash
Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)
What is project management?

”The application of knowledge, skills

and techniques to execute projects
effectively and efficiently” - PMI Book

Managing a project typically includes:

• Identifying requirements
• Stakeholder management
• Balancing different project constraints, such as:
Scope, quality, schedule, budget, risk, etc.

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)

The standard (PMI) project management
approach

Global nonprofit
professional
organization for
project management

Standardized way on
how to do project
management

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 Project life cycle

PMI is process-oriented

Four phases:
Initiating
Planning
Executing
Closing

Source: PMI Book

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)
The standard project model is often called the
“Waterfall model”
Requirement
analysis Example of steps in a project
waterfall model
Design

Implementation

Project progression moves Verification

like a waterfall
Deployment
Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)
 Stakeholder management

Persons or organizations who

are actively involved in the
project, may be affected by the
performance or completion of
the project, or can exert
influence over the project.

Exercise
Use 2min to write down the
stakeholders in your group
project. How is the stakeholders
connected to the project?

Source: PMI Book

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)
One of the most important aspects in a project
is scope management
“Project Scope Management includes the processes required to ensure that the
project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete
the project successfully” – PMI Book

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Scope creep – changes, continuous or uncontrolled
growth in a project´s scope after the project has started

Different causes for scope creep

Poor requirements analysis

Not involving the users early
enough

Underestimating the complexity

Lack of change control
Gold plating, e.g. adding extra
features in the belief it is adding value

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)

GANTT Diagrams – Way to illustrate the project
activities in a timeline
Helps the project manager to quickly
see:
• What are the different activities
• Start and end date of activity
• If activities overlap with other
activities
• Start and end date for the whole
project
• If there are any activities with slack
• Critical path of the project
What is the critical path here?
Is there any activities with slack?
Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)
Project estimation

Costs are often underestimated

Benefits are often overestimated

Why is it difficult to estimate?

Complexity
Software is design
Estimates are often made early Estimates
Social and political pressure: “…few can never be
people enjoy estimating complex things an exact
that they will be held accountable for” science
(Berkun, 2005)
Shepperd, M. (2014). Cost prediction and software project management. In G.
Ruhe & C. Wohlin (Eds.), Software Project Management in a Changing World
(pp. 51-71): Springer.

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Exercise: estimate time finding literature for
your upcoming home exam

Group one: Group two:

Q1: Do you think you will spend more Q1: Do you think you will spend more or
or less than 4 hours? less than 16 hours?

Q2: What is your best estimate for the Q2: What is your best estimate for the
task? task?

Anchoring and adjustment

«...is a psychological heuristic that influences the way people intuitively
assess probabilities. According to this heuristic, people start with an
implicitly suggested reference point (the "anchor") and make adjustments to
it to reach their estimate...» (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring)

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Project Management´s time/cost/quality triangle

Time
“Project management is like juggling three balls
– time, cost and quality. Program management is
like a troupe of circus performers standing in a
circle, each juggling three balls and swapping
balls from time to time.” - G. Reiss

Cost Quality

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Example: If a project has spent too much time

Must choose between increasing Time

cost (e.g. hire more workers) or
reduce quality to deliver on time

Changing one aspect has

consequences for the others Cost Quality

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Work breakdown structure
Dividing the project in smaller parts – activities or work packages

Presented as a hierarchy of activities with increasing details

The Project

Planning Design Development

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 Summary: Traditional PM approach

• Focus on management control and planning

• Detailed plans carried out in a waterfall-like fashion
Requirement
• Hierarchical organizations often with a top-down analysis

approach to project governance

Design
• A lot of activities to control what project members are
doing
Implementation
• Little flexibility for bottom-up flexibility and initiatives
• IT-projects: requirements must be defined up-front and Verification
not change too much
• Can mix with other approaches? Spundak (2014) Deployment
Špundak, M. (2014). Mixed agile/traditional project management methodology–reality or
illusion?. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 119, 939-948.

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)

But is the PM model
suitable for todays IT
projects?

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20% of all IT
projects are
«Black Swans»

Budzier, A., & Flyvbjerg, B. (2012). Overspend? Late? Failure?

What the data say about IT project risk in the public sector.
Commonwealth Governance Handbook, 13, 145-157.
Ivar Hukkelberg (2020) Photo by Qurratul Ayin Sadia on Unsplash
Agile Project Management

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Agile project management approaches

Less emphasis on plans and strict control

Relies more on informal collaboration, coordination and learning.

About managing the impact of complexity and uncertainty

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Four principles of agile project management

Minimum critical Autonomous

specification teams

Redundancy Feedback and

learning

Source: Agile Project Management (Dybå, Dingsøyr and Moe, 2014)

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 Agile process: Scrum methodology

Daily scrum meeting (15min)

Iterative work
Implementation
using sprints
Sprint Review Meeting
Sprint backlog (often represented as a
Kanban board)
Sprint length Retrospective
Sprint Planning Meeting
2-3 weeks

https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum

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Agile process: Kanban

Backlog In Progress In Test Finished

Task Task Task Task Task Task

Task Task Task Task Task

Task

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Burn down chart

A chart that
showcase how
much work is left
to do vs time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_down_chart

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Waterfall Agile
Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)
Photo by Andri klopfenstein on Unsplash Photo by Deniel Fazekas on Unsplash
 Ok, time for an
exercise!
1. Based on what we
have just talked about -
write down a list of
characteristics for both
waterfall and agile
(3min)

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Waterfall vs Agile

Waterfall Agile

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Waterfall vs Agile

Waterfall Agile
• Highly structured / inflexible • Highly flexible
• Fixed plan • Adaptable plan
• Requirements must be clear from the • Feedback / retrospective
beginning • Fast MVP (minimum viable product)
• Easy to track progress • Requirements evolve during the project
• Easy to report status to management • Cross-disciplinary teams
/ business • Harder to keep track of overall progress
• Clearly defined roles and do reporting
• Good for hardware development • Good for innovation
• Process centric • User involvement
• People centric

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Waterfall
vs
Agile

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Mixed approaches: Water-Scrum-Fall

Schlauderer, S., Overhage, S., & Fehrenbach, B. (2015). Widely Used but also Highly Valued? Acceptance Factors and Their
Perceptions in Water-Scrum-Fall Projects.

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 To summarize

1 2 3

What is Project Waterfall Agile

Management? approach approach

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)

Thank you!

Ivar Hukkelberg (2020)