Introduction to Project

Management
Definition of a project
Project as a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product,
service, or result. The temporary nature of projects indicates a definite
beginning and end. The end is reached when the projects objectives have
been achieved or when the project is terminated because its objectives
will not or cannot be met, or when the need for the project no longer
exists.

Characteristics:

Projects are unique.

Projects are temporary in nature and have a definite beginning and
ending date.
Projects are completed when the project goals are achieved or its
determined the project is no longer viable.

On any project, you will have a number of project constraints that are
competing for your attention. They are cost, scope, quality, risk,
resources, and time.

Cost is the budget approved for the project including all necessary

expenses needed to deliver the project. Within organizations, project

managers have to balance between not running out of money and not
underspending because many projects receive funds or grants that
have contract clauses with a use it or lose it approach to project
funds.
Scope is what the project is trying to achieve. It entails all the work

involved in delivering the project outcomes and the processes used to

produce them. It is the reason and the purpose of the project.
Quality is a combination of the standards and criteria to which the
projects products must be delivered for them to perform effectively.
The product must perform to provide the functionality expected, solve
the identified problem, and deliver the benefit and value expected.

Risk is defined by potential external events that will have a

negative impact on your project if they occur. Risk refers to the

combination of the probability the event will occur and the impact on
the project if the event occurs.
Resources are required to carry out the project tasks. They can be

people, equipment, facilities, funding, or anything else capable of

definition (usually other than labor) required for the completion of a
project activity.
Time is defined as the time to complete the project. Time is often
the most frequent project oversight in developing projects. Proper
control of the schedule requires the careful identification of tasks to be
performed and accurate estimations of their durations, the sequence
in which they are going to be done, and how people and other
resources are to be allocated. Any schedule should take into account
vacations and holidays.

Project Management
Project Management attempts to organize and systemize the tasks in a
project to minimize the number of surprises that one may encounter.
Project management and project managers concern themselves with the
following key areas:
Scheduling
Budgeting
Managing resources
Tracking and reporting progress

Network Analysis - CPM/PERT

Introduction
Network analysis is the general name given to certain specific techniques which
can be used for the planning, management and control of projects.
In CPM activities are shown as a network of precedence relationships using
activity-on-node network construction

Single estimate of activity time

Deterministic activity times

In PERT activities are shown as a network of precedence relationships using

activity-on-arrow network construction

Multiple time estimates

Probabilistic activity times

Project scheduling using the PERT/CPM method involves the three basic phases :
Planning

Breaking down the project into distinctive activities.

Determining time estimates for these activities.
Constructing a network diagram with each arc representing the activity.

Scheduling

Constructing a time chart showing the start and finish times for each
activity as well its relationship to other activities in the project.
Pinpointing the critical activities that require special attention if the project
is to be completed on time.
Show the amount of slack/float times on non-critical activities.

Controlling

Using the network diagram and the time chart to make periodic progress
reports.
Updating the network.

CPM Calculations
A critical activity is an activity that has no leeway in determining its start and
finish times. If a critical activity runs late, then the entire project will run late. A
noncritical activity is an activity that allows some scheduling slack, meaning it
can be advanced or delayed without affecting the completion time of the project.
An event is defined as a point in time when activities are completed and another
activity is started. In terms of a network, an event corresponds to a node.
Ej = Earliest occurrence time of event j
Lj = Latest occurrence time of event j
Dij = Duration of activity
The critical path calculations involve two passes:
The forward pass determines the earliest occurrence times of the events and
the backward pass calculates their latest occurrence time.
Forward Pass (Earliest Occurrence Times):
The computation starts at node 1 and advance recursively to end node n.

Step 1:

Set E1=0 (indicates the project starts at node 1 and time 0). The first
node of the network will never have any nodes going into it, so that is why it will
always be zero.

General step j:

Given that nodes p, q... and v are linked directly to node j by

incoming activities (p,j), (q,j),..., and (v,j) and that the earliest occurrence times
of events (nodes) p, q,..., and v have already been computed, then the earliest
occurrence time of event j is computed as
Ej = max {EP + DPJ, Eq + Dqj,...,Ev + Dvj}

Step 3: Calculate Ej for every node until you reach the final node, n.
Backward Pass (Latest Occurrence Times Lj)
Once you have computed the forward pass, the backward pass computations
start at the final node n and end at node 1.

Step 1: Set Ln= En (indicates that the earliest and latest occurrence of the last
node of the project are the same.

General step j:

Given that nodes p, q... and v are linked directly to node j by

outgoing activities (j,p) , (j,q) ,..., (j,v) and that the latest occurrence times of
events (nodes) p, q,..., and v have already been computed, then the latest
occurrence time of event j is computed as

Lj = min {Lp + Djp, Lq + Djq,...,Lv + Djv}

Step 3: Calculate Ej for every node until you reach the final node, n.

Based on the preceding calculations, an activity (i,j) will be critical if it satisfies

three conditions:
1) Li = Ei
2) Lj = Ej
3) Lj Li = Ej Ei = Dij
The three conditions state that the earliest and latest occurrence times of end
nodes i and j are equal and the duration Dij fits tightly in the specified time
span. An Activity that does not satisfy all three conditions is thus noncritical. By
definition, the critical activities of a network must constitute an uninterrupted
path that spans the entire network from start to finish.
Determination of the Slacks (Sij):
Slack times give you the amount of time an activity can run late without delaying
your project. Consequently a slack time of zero identifies a critical activity.
Sij = Lj Ei Dij

PERT CALCULATIONS

Pert differs from CPM in that it bases the duration of an activity on three
estimates:

Optimistic time, a, which occurs when execution goes extremely well.

Most likely time, m, which occurs when execution is done under normal
conditions.
Pessimistic time, b, which occurs when execution goes extremely poorly.

The PERT method was motivated by the assumption that the activity time was a
random variable with a beta distribution. Unlike the normal distribution, which
has an infinite range and is symmetrical, the beta distribution has a minimal and
maximum value, and is capable of assuming a wide variety of shapes. A typical
beta distribution can be seen in the Fig. 1

Fig. 1
The purpose of PERT is to analyze the probability that a critical path will be
finished by any given time. The analysis proceeds as followed:

Let T equal the total time that will be taken by the activities on a critical
path.
Find the probability that the value of T will turn out to be less than or equal
to any specified value of interest.
o The activity times are independent random variables. This is a valid
assumption for most PERT networks.
o The random variable T has an approximately normal distribution.
This assumption relies on the central limit theorem, which in broad
terms states that the sum of independent random variables is
approximately normally distributed.

We will want to convert T to a standard normal random variable and use a Z

table. The first step is to find the standard deviation of T (standard deviation of
the path). To do this we need the variance of T (variance of the path).

To find the variance of a path, we add all the variance for a path we wish to take.
For example if we have a path consisting of activities starting at activity A and
finishing at activity D, such that, A BCD, and we wish to find the probability
that we can complete activity D within 5 days, we will need to know the standard
deviation of the path, but to do that we must know the variance of the path. The
variance of the path is just calculated by adding the variance of each activity.

Var T= (var for activity A) + (var for activity B) + (var for

activity C) + (var for activity D)
We can now calculate the standard deviation of the path, which is simply:

Var T
Finally, we now need to convert T to a standard normal random variable, Z, in
the usually way:

Z=

T-

Recall that is mean (the expected completion time). We know use the Z score
to calculate the probability.

MS Project

MS Project is a project management software which is designed to help a

project manager in developing a plan, assigning resources to tasks,
tracking progress, managing the budget and analyzing workloads.

Project Life Cycles

Initiation Phase: During the initiation phase, the project objective or need
is identified. A feasibility study is conducted to investigate whether each
option addresses the project objective and a final recommended solution is
determined. Once the recommended solution is approved, a project is
initiated to deliver the approved solution and a project manager is
appointed. The major deliverables and the participating work groups are
identified, and the project team begins to take shape. Approval is then
sought by the project manager to move onto the detailed planning phase.
Planning Phase: The project solution is further developed in as much
detail as possible and the steps necessary to meet the projects objective
are planned. In this step, the team identifies all of the work to be done.
The projects tasks and resource requirements are identified, along with
the strategy for producing them. Once the project team has identified the
work, prepared the schedule, and estimated the costs, the three
fundamental components of the planning process are complete.
Implementation Phase: The project plan is put into motion and the work
of the project is performed. It is important to maintain control and
communicate as needed during implementation. Progress is continuously
monitored and appropriate adjustments are made and recorded as
variances from the original plan. In any project, a project manager spends
most of the time in this step. During project implementation, people are
carrying out the tasks, and progress information is being reported through
regular team meetings. The project manager uses this information to
maintain control over the direction of the project by comparing the
progress reports with the project plan to measure the performance of the
project activities and take corrective action as needed.
Closing Phase: The emphasis is on releasing the final deliverables to the
customer, handing over project documentation to the business,
terminating supplier contracts, releasing project resources, and
communicating the closure of the project to all stakeholders. The last
remaining step is to conduct lessons-learned studies to examine what
went well and what didnt.

Project Scheduling

1. Defining Activities/Tasks
It documents the specific activities needed to fulfill the deliverables.

2. Task List
The project activity list is a list of everything that needs to be done to
complete your project, including all the activities that must be
accomplished to deliver each work package.

Establishing relationships between tasks

Finish to Start (FS): In the finish to start relationship, the successor

task cant start unless the predecessor task is completed.
Start to Finish (SF): In the start to finish relationship, the successor
task cant finish until the predecessor task starts.
Start to Start (SS): In the start to start relationship, the successor
cant start until the predecessor starts.
Finish to Finish (FF): In the finish to finish relationship, the successor
task cant finish until the predecessor task finishes.

3. Milestones
All of the important checkpoints of your project are tracked as milestones.

4. Creating a Gantt Chart

A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates the project schedule.
They are used to display project schedule. Other views present in MS
Project for this purpose are:

Bar Rollup
Calendar
Network Diagram
Detail Gantt
Gantt Chart
Levelling Gantt
Relationship Diagram
Resource Allocation
Resource Graph
Resource Sheet
Tracking Gantt

5. Critical Path
The critical path describes the sequence of tasks that would enable the
project to be completed in the shortest possible time. It is based on the
idea that some tasks must be completed before others can begin. A
critical path diagram is a useful tool for scheduling dependencies and
controlling a project.

Resource Planning
Resources are the people, supplies and equipment that enables you to complete
the tasks in the project. In MS Project

One can keep track of the tasks that are being performed by resources.
One can identify potential resource shortages that may lead to missing of
scheduled deadlines thus leading to the extension of the project.
One can identify underutilized resources.
One can identify the cost of each task and that of the project as a whole.