Chapter 16: Project planning and control

Study guide
This is one of those topics which is so vast that whole courses can be devoted to it. In fact it is possible to take Masters degrees dedicated to project management in all its forms. Also more and more managers are now going by the title of Project Manager. This is a recognition that, in a time of change in many operations, many improvements to operations processes have to be managed as projects. Yet although project management has a life of its own independent from operations management, it is still a vital part of operations management. Operations managers are always managing projects. Sometimes this is as part of a project team planning and controlling a large effort such as building a whole new factory. Alternatively it may be a relatively small project such as making a small change to an internal process. In other words, project management is an important part of any operations managers life. Because of this project management skills and techniques are useful to operations managers. Certainly any operations manager needs to have a basic understanding of how projects can be planned and controlled.

Your learning objectives

This is what you should be able to do after reading Chapter 16 and working through this study guide. Describe a project as distinct from an ongoing operations process. Understand the stages in the project planning and control process. Describe the nature and use of network planning including critical path method (CPM) and the programme evaluation and review technique (PERT). Understand how resource constraints can be built into the network planning process.

What is a project?
The important point to remember about a project is that it only happens once. It has a defined start and a defined end and the resources gathered to manage it are usually organised on a temporary basis. A very similar project may happened again but it will not be absolutely identical because there will be something about the project which will have changed. Even if it is only the weather (which is in fact very important in

construction projects) something will be different. Thus, although project management expertise can be carried over from one project to another, project managers must, to some extent, treat each project as an individual and unique task. The typology of projects shown in Figure 16.2 gives an indication of the range of things which are classed as projects. Anything with a beginning and an end is a project. Writing an assignment is a project. Some have low levels of complexity and relatively little uncertainty. This is especially true if you are doing the assignment exclusively yourself and have a very good grasp of the topic. However, some assignments and projects are more complex and rely on the co-operation of other people and organisations. Furthermore, they may develop in an uncertain way. Especially if they include some investigative work, it is not possible to predict exactly how the results will turn out. For both these reasons this type of assignment would be more difficult to manage. Obviously projects in the top righthand corner of Figure 16.2 are more difficult to manage and carry more risk than the simple projects in the bottom left-hand corner.

The project planning and control process

Figure 16.3 illustrates five steps in planning and control. Step 4, the technical execution of the project, is not really the subject of this chapter and will be different for each individual project. However, the other stages are common to all projects. Often most effort goes into Stage 3 and 5 project planning and project control. However, it is important to remember that the first two stages, which involve understanding the project environment and defining the project itself, are also very important. As we made clear earlier, projects are unique events. Very often what makes them unique are changes in the project environment and project definition. What seem to be relatively small changes in geography, subcontractors, culture, etc. can, in practice, have a big effect on how a project needs to be managed.

Network planning
The chapter explains how networks can be used to plan projects. Critical path method (CPM) is the most straightforward technique of this types. Two versions of CPM are described in the chapter. One using activity on arrow (AoA) and the other using activity on node (AoN). The advantages of AoN are explained and indeed the vast majority of critical path usage involves AoN rather than AoA. Yet most people seem to find the activity on arrow approach easier to understand if they have no prior knowledge of this technique. But not everybody. If activity on node works for you, then fine, use it rather than activity on arrow. There are no hard and fast rules about which is the easier to learn. What is very important though is that you understand the importance of the concept of float or slack and can recognise it on a network diagram. This is easy on an activity on node network because float is explicitly stated in the box. In an activity on arrow diagram it is still relatively straightforward to calculate, being the difference between the time during which an activity could taken place and the time the activity should take to complete. So, for example, look at the network shown below.

The best way to think of float is to first of all imagine the time window within which the activity must be performed. So, in the case of activity (d) it cannot start earlier than day 2, nor finish later than day 10, an 8-day time window. Yet it is only a 6-day activity. Thus, there are 2 days float. Similarly, for activities (e) and (f). (e) cannot start before day 2 and must finish before day 8, a 6-day time window. Since (e) only takes 1 day, there are 5 days float. Activity (f) can start no earlier than day 3 and must finish by day 10. A 7-day time window. Since activity (f) is a 2-day activity it has 5 days float. Yet the float for activities (e) and (f) are not independent. If (e) is started at day 7, using up all its float, and finishes day 8 then that would deprive activity (f) of any float at all. In the case of activities (e) and (f), their float is dependent on each other.

Open-source projects
Not mentioned in the chapter but exciting some attention currently, is the idea of open-source projects. This is where many different individuals contribute independently to the completion of a project. The most obvious example is the Linux operating system. Although the basic structure of the operating system was influenced centrally, much of the detail was programmed by individuals who contributed their work over the internet. The problems of so many different contributors adds a new dimension of complexity to project management. Quality control over the individual contributions is a particular issue.