15.

Project Management
Why Do We Need Project Management?*
• Exponential expansion of human knowledge
• Global demand for goods and services
• Global competition
• Above requires the use of teams versus individuals

Project and Statement of Work (SOW)

n A project is “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique

product or service.”
n A SOW is a narrative description of products or services to be
supplied under contract.
Project Management
“The application of knowledge, skills, tools and
techniques
to project activities in order to meet or exceed
stakeholder needs
and expectations from a project.”

• A project is an activity that:

- is temporary having a start and end date
- is unique
- brings about change
- has unknown elements, which therefore create risk.
Contrast Projects and Operations

Projects Operations
• Create own charter, • Semi-permanent charter,
organization, and goals organization, and goals
• Catalyst for change • Maintains status quo
• Unique product or service • Standard product or service
• Heterogeneous teams • Homogeneous teams
• Start and end date • Ongoing
Potential Benefits of PM for the Organization
• Improved control
• Improved project support opportunities
• Improved performance
• Recognition of PM as a profession
• Future source of company leaders
• High visibility of project results
• Growth opportunities
• Build your reputation and network
• Portable skills and experience
Projects and strategic plans
A strategic plan is typically for a five year time-horizon and for whole organisations.
To implement that as a single task is impossible and it must be broken down into a
series of smaller tasks. Each task is a project and each will have a planned:
• Start date
• Duration
• Finish date
• A relationship to other projects: after some, before others, etc.
• A cost
• A person responsible
• A closely defined set of outcomes
• Stages of a project
Stages of a Projects
The stages of a project can be described
in a number of ways. For example:
• Initiation/initial screening
• Risk assessment. (TARA)
• Business case
• Project plan
• Executing
• Monitoring and controlling/project
milestones
• Closing: delivery/review
Project initiation document (PID) and project plan
The project initiation document addresses :
Who? Why? When? How? What?
It is an immensely important document and
accomplishes the following:
• Defines the project, its scope and its
deliverables.
• Justifies the project: cost/benefit analysis;
risk analysis.
• Secures funding for the project, if necessary.
• Defines the roles and responsibilities of
project participants: sponsor, manager team.
• Gives people the information they need to be
productive and effective right from the start:
assignments, schedule, human resources,
project control, quality control.
Project Charter
The project Stakeholders
The project manager
This is the person in charge of the running of the project – tracking resources,
controlling, leading, inspiring, negotiating, reviewing, resolving disputes. It is an
immensely challenging job and requires personal qualities such as:
§ Leadership abilities, including the ability to motivate
§ Technical ability in running projects and in the subject matter
§ Negotiation ability to negotiate with project sponsors (those who are
paying), project team members and suppliers.
§ Reporting on progress and difficulties
§ The ability to stay calm in a crisis
§ Excellent communication
§ Ability to delegate to team members.
The project Sponsor
The project sponsor is the person or department who
wants the project to be undertaken and who will often pay
for the project. Any problems with, or changes to the
project have to be communicated to the sponsor, who will
have to make decisions about what should be done.
For example:
๏ Project: a new computerised accounting system.
๏ Sponsor: finance director.
๏ Manager: probably an IT/accounting specialist (possibly
hired just for this project and who has day management
responsibility.
Project Risk
It’s important to be aware of project risk because high risk projects should be more carefully
monitored for cost, time, quality, and scope. There are three obvious variables affecting project risk.
• How well defined is the project? [Well-defined or hazy) If you were to embark on a project which
was defined as something like “we want to improve the inventory system”, really we have to ask
what on earth that means. What does the word ‘Improve’ mean? Does it mean going all the way to
just-in-time inventory, does it mean automatic reordering, does it mean having fewer stockouts,
does it mean lowering the average inventory value? A project defined as “improved inventory” is
very hazy, and hazy projects are full of risks.
• The size of the project. (Small or large) You can easily see that if a project were simply something
to do with the receivables ledger that is relatively small. If it goes wrong, it’s only the receivables
ledger which is affected. If it’s however to do with the whole of the accounting system and it goes
wrong then all of the accounting system is going to be affected with large-scale disruption.
• Complexity. (low or high) If the technical complexity is low, it’s a fairly well-understood problem,
there are well-understood solutions to those problems, and we are on pretty safe ground. If
however the project is cutting-edge and rather experimental, no one has really much experience of
it before, and involves many different stakeholders, you can see that the project risk is much higher.
The Business Case
A business case should be prepared for any project. This will show how
profits can be increased (in a profit-seeking organisation), or how service
levels could be improved in a not-for-profit organisation.
Possible techniques include:
• Cost / benefit analysis
• Net present value/payback/ROCE
• Sensitivity analysis and risk analysis
• Forecasting techniques
• Expected values
• Decision trees
The Project Management
The Project Management: the variables
Project Planning

Include the following in the project-management

plan:
§ An overview of the reasons for your project
§ A detailed description of intended results
§ A list of all constraints the project must address
§ A list of all assumptions related to the project
§ A list of all required work
§ A breakdown of the roles you and your team
members will play
§ A detailed project schedule
§ Needs for personnel, funds, and non-personnel
resources (such as equipment, facilities, and
information)
§ A description of how you plan to manage any
significant risks and uncertainties
§ Plans for project communications
§ Plans for ensuring project quality
PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS
§ Work Breakdown Structure
§ The Project Budget
§ Gant Charts
§ Networks Analysis and Critical Path Analysis WBS……
§ Resource Histogram § The 100% Rule
§ The WBS defines 100% of the work of the project
§ Anything that isn’t defined in the WBS is outside the scope of
Work Breakdown Structure the project.
§ The work content on any item is the sum of what is included
§ “A deliverable oriented grouping of under that work item
project elements which organizes § Upper Levels are Planned outcomes (deliverables),
and defines the total scope of the not planned actions
project.
§ Ends of WBS include the activities needed to create
§ Each descending level represents
an increasingly detailed definition the project deliverables
of a project component. § Mutually-exclusive elements
§ Project components may be § Work should only appear in one place in the WBS
products or services.” § WBS must be consistent with the way the project
will be performed and controlled
§ Must be easy to update
Work Breakdown Structure: Example

Aircraft
System

Project Air Support Test and

Training Data Facilities
Management Vehicle Equipment Evaluation

Systems Technical Organizational

Engineering Equipment Construction Mock-ups
Orders Level
Management

Supporting Engineering Intermediate Operational

PM Activities Facilities Data Level Maintenance Test

Management Depot Developmental

Services Data Level Test

Test

Airframe Engine Communication Navigation Fire Control

This WBS is illustrative only. It is not intended to represent the full project scope of any specific
project, nor to imply that this is the only way to organize a WBS on this type of project.
Project Budget
Gantt Charts
Network Analysis and Critical Path Analysis
The numbers represent the time that each activity takes (let’s say in days). The project cannot proceed
further until both content and layout have been decided. These are consecutive steps, one taking eight
days and the next five days, so this small part of the project cannot be accomplished in less than 13
days. It does not matter that it takes only nine days to choose the ISP: everything has to wait for the
content and design activities to be completed.
These are critical activities, and if either were to take another day, completion of the whole project
would be delayed by a day.
Therefore, the project manager has to monitor critical activities very carefully. Choosing the ISP is a non- critical
activity and it could be delayed by up to four days before impacting on project completion.
Once project slippage is likely, the project manager has a number of choices, all of which should be
discussed and perhaps negotiated with the project sponsor:
§ live with the slippage
§ reduce project scope
§ reduce project quality
§ bring in more resources, such as hiring sub-contractors to help out (which will, of course,
increase costs)
§ move resources from non-critical to critical activities if skills are interchangeable.
A Resource Histogram
Project Execution and Control
Project Execution and Control
Project execution and control
After the project-management plan has been developed, it’s time to get to work and start executing
the plan.
This is often the phase when management gets more engaged and excited to see things being
produced.
Preparing
Preparing to begin the project work involves the following tasks
§ Assigning people to all project roles:
§ Introducing team members to each other and to the project:
§ Help them appreciate the overall purpose of the project and how the different parts will interact
and support each other.
§ Giving and explaining tasks to all team members:
§ Defining how the team will perform its essential functions:
§ Setting up necessary tracking systems: Decide which system(s) and accounts you’ll use to
track schedules, work effort, and expenditures, and set them up.
§ Announcing the project to the organization: Let the project audiences know that your project
exists, what it will produce, and when it will begin and end.
Project Execution and Control
Performing
Finally, project work begin! The performing subgroup of the executing processes includes the following tasks
§ Doing the tasks: Perform the work that’s in your plan.
§ Assuring quality: Continually confirm that work and results conform to requirements and applicable
standards and guidelines.
§ Managing the team: Assign tasks, review results, and resolve problems.
§ Developing the team: Provide needed training and mentoring to improve team members’ skills.
§ Sharing information: Distribute information to appropriate project audiences.

The monitoring and controlling processes

§ As the project progresses, it needs to be ensured that plans are being followed and desired results are being
achieved. The monitoring and controlling processes include the following tasks:
§ Comparing performance with plans: Collect information on outcomes, schedule achievements, and
resource expenditures; identify deviations from your plan; and develop corrective actions.
§ Fixing problems that arise: Change tasks, schedules, or resources to bring project performance back on
track with the existing plan, or negotiate agreed-upon changes to the plan itself.
§ Keeping everyone informed: Tell project audiences about the team’s achievements, project problems, and
necessary revisions to the established plan.
Project Deliverables
A deliverable is a tangible or intangible good or service produced as a result of a project that is
intended to be delivered to a customer. A deliverable could be a report, a document, a
software product, a server upgrade or any other building block of an overall project.
A project deliverable is any output created as the result of work done during a project.
Defining, tracking, and managing project deliverables is one of the most important
responsibilities of a project manager.
You might use the term “deliverable” casually at work every day.
In project management, however, it means something more definite: a specific output created
as the result of work performed during the course of a project.
For any output to be classified as a “deliverable” within a project, it has to meet a few criteria:
§ It must be within the scope of the project
§ Stakeholders - external or internal - must agree to it
§ It must be the result of deliberate work
§ It must have a definite role in accomplishing the project’s objective
Completion
The completion report
Completion involves formally accepting the project and bringing it to a close. A completion report
shows the outcome of the project and is used to:
§ Check that everything promised by the project has been delivered i.e. that the project objectives
have been achieved.
§ Check on any changes which had to be made to reach acceptance, and that there are no
outstanding project issues.
§ Deliver the final budget report.
§ Arrange for post-project and post-implementation reviews.

Post project reviews and post implementation review

There are two types of review that should be carried out after the project is completed:
๏ A post-project review. This is about the project. This examines the project looking for areas that
did not go smoothly and for those that did. For example, the project might have been late and that
needs to be examined to see if it could have been prevented and to learn lessons for future
projects. It can also look at the performance of the project team members.
๏ A post-implementation review. This is about what the project achieved. This examines what the
project achieved. Before the project was started there should have been hopes and ambitions for
it. These would have been set out in the business case and the project initiation document.
Thank You