An Introduction to Project Management

Many organizations do not employ full-time Project Managers and it is common to pull together
a project team to address a specific need. While most people do not have formal skills in a
project methodology, taking a role in a project team can be an excellent learning opportunity and
can improve a person's career profile.
Project management in the modern sense began in the early 1950s, although it has its roots much
further back in the latter years of the 19th century. The need for project management was driven
by businesses that realized the benefits of organizing work around projects and the critical need
to communicate and co-ordinate work across departments and professions. One of the first major
uses of project management as we know it today was to manage the US space program. The
government, military and corporate world have now adopted this practice.
Here is the main definition of what project management is:

Project management is no small task.

Project management has a definite beginning and end. It is not a continuous process.

Project management uses various tools to measure accomplishments and track project
tasks. These include Work Breakdown Structures, Gantt charts and PERT charts.

Projects frequently need resources on an ad-hoc basis as opposed to organizations that

have only dedicated full-time positions.

Project management reduces risk and increases the chance of success.

Project management is often summarized in a triangle (see Figure 1). The three most important
factors are time, cost and scope, commonly called the triple constraint. These form the vertices
with quality as a central theme.

Figure 1: The triple constraint

Projects must be delivered on time.

Projects must be within cost.

Projects must be within scope.

Projects must meet customer quality requirements.

More recently, this has given way to a project management diamond, with time, cost, scope and
quality the four vertices and customer expectations as a central theme (see Figure 2). No two
customer expectations are the same so you must ask what their expectations are.

Figure 2: The project management diamond

A project goes through six phases during its life:
1. Project Definition: Defining the goals, objectives and critical success factors for the
project.

2. Project Initiation: Everything that is needed to set-up the project before work can start.
3. Project Planning: Detailed plans of how the work will be carried out including time,
cost and resource estimates.
4. Project Execution: Doing the work to deliver the product, service or desired outcome.
5. Project Monitoring & Control: Ensuring that a project stays on track and taking
corrective action to ensure it does.
6. Project Closure: Formal acceptance of the deliverables and disbanding of all the
elements that were required to run the project.
The role of the project manager is one of great responsibility. It is the project manager's job to
direct, supervise and control the project from beginning to end. Project managers should not
carry out project work, managing the project is enough. Here are some of the activities that must
be undertaken:

The project manager must define the project, reduce it to a set of manageable tasks,
obtain appropriate resources and build a team to perform the work.

The project manager must set the final goal for the project and motivate his/her team to
complete the project on time.

The project manager must inform all stakeholders of progress on a regular basis.

The project manager must assess and monitor risks to the project and mitigate them.

No project ever goes exactly as planned, so project managers must learn to adapt to and
manage change.

A project manager must have a range of skills including:

Leadership;

People management (customers, suppliers, functional managers and project team);

Effective communication (verbal and written);

Influencing;

Negotiation;

Conflict management;

Planning;

Contract management;

Estimating;

Problem solving;

Creative thinking; and

Time management.

"Project managers bear ultimate responsibility for making things happen. Traditionally, they have
carried out this role as mere implementers. To do their jobs they needed to have basic
administrative and technical competencies. Today they play a far broader role. In addition to the
traditional skills, they need to have business skills, customer relations skills, and political skills.
Psychologically, they must be results-oriented self-starters with a high tolerance for ambiguity,
because little is clear-cut in today's tumultuous business environment. Shortcomings in any of
these areas can lead to project failure." - J. Davidson Frame

Many things can go wrong in project management. These things are often called barriers. Here
are some possible barriers:

Poor communication;

Disagreement;

Misunderstandings;

Bad weather;

Union strikes;

Personality conflicts;

Poor management; and

Poorly defined goals and objectives.

A good project management discipline will not eliminate all risks, issues and surprises, but will
provide standard processes and procedures to deal with them and help prevent the following:

Projects finishing late, exceeding budget or not meeting customer expectations.

Inconsistency between the processes and procedures used by projects managers, leading
to some being favored more than others.

Successful projects, despite a lack of planning, achieved through high stress levels,
goodwill and significant amounts of overtime.

Project management seen as not adding value and as a waste of time and money.

Unforeseen internal and/or external events impacting the project.

Project management is about creating an environment and conditions in which a defined goal or
objective can be achieved in a controlled manner by a team of people.
Duncan Haughey, PMP

What is Project Management?

Definition: Project Management is the dynamic process that utilizes the appropriate
resources of the organization in a controlled and structured manner, to achieve some clearly
defined objectives identified as strategic needs. It is always conducted within a defined set of
constraints. Learn more with this book, written in a question and answer style, containing 21
pieces of valuable advice for making your projects a complete success.

Project management in the modern sense began in the 1950s, although it has its roots much
further back in the latter years of the 19th century. The need for project management was driven
by businesses that realized the benefits of organizing work around projects and the critical need
to communicate and co-ordinate work across departments and professions. One of the forefathers
of project management is still a familiar name today, Henry Gantt (1861-1919) creator of the
Gantt chart. Still in use today, one hundred-years from their inception, Gantt Charts are one of
the project managers' most valuable tools. In the mid-20th century PERT charts emerged,
complex network diagrams that show the critical path of a project. These tools and techniques
spread quickly as businesses looked for new ways to manage large and complex activities,
evolving into project management, as we know it today.
It is now fifty years since the birth of project management and much of the early work has been
collected and put together into formal methodologies. Although many different methodologies
exist, they all work with the same basic principles and good practice developed over the past
fifty years. So now you may expect that we are expert when it comes to running projects, but
fifty years on and project failures are still with us and according to some observers rising in
number.
Siemens made headlines in the UK when Government systems for new passports were hit by
terrible delays. ICL also failed with its system to automate benefit payments; the project was
axed with 460m of taxpayers' money wasted. In 1992, the London Ambulance Service launched
a new computer system that slowed its response times to emergency calls. More recently the
21bn Euro fighter project has experienced problems caused by 'delays in bringing the detailed
design to full maturity in some areas', which prevented flight-tests from starting on time.
"Projects go wrong for the same reasons all the time. There are no new sins. We can look at a
project in its first two months and know if it will be a success or not. Many organizations are
failing to heed painful lessons learned from past projects." The biggest sin in project
management is not learning the lessons of past projects. When we learn to do this then we will
reduce the number of project failures.
What follows is a practical guide to managing projects, which will help steer you to a successful
outcome.
Trevor L. Young, How to be a Better Project Manager (London: Kogan Page Limited, 1998),
16.
Nick Dean, Managing Director of Professional Values.
A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product (a component of
another item or an end item in itself), capability to perform a service, or result such as a
document that develops knowledge in support of a business function. 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.

A project has an expected output, a start and end date, and limited resources.
The unique characteristic of output of the project does not mean that a project will not include
various repetitive tasks.

If you want to build a Formula 1 race car, the engineering will typically go from
prototype to finished product through a series of iterations. Obviously, you will carry out
certain activities again and again as you go through various design revisions

Projects are composed of processes. A process is a series of actions bringing about a resultan
output.
The processes encompassed by a project are performed by people and generally fall into one of
two major categories:
Project management processes support the effective conduct of the project throughout its life.
These processes serve to define, organize, execute. and assess the work of the project. They
encompass multiple tools and techniques. The project management processes that are applicable
to most projects, most of the time, are described in Chapters 4 through 12 of the PMBOK
Guide.
Product-oriented processes ensure the specification and creation of the product (output) of the
project. These processes vary by application area and are typically defined by the project life
cycle.
This course will focus on and address only
project management processes.

General Framework of the PMBOK Guide

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide)
Project Integration Management, Project Scope Management, Project Time Management, Project Cost
Management, Project Quality Management, Project Human Resources Management, and Project
Communications Management, Project Risk Management, and Project Procurement Management
procurement.

1. Integration and Scope

Project Integration Management, the processes and activities need, to
identify, define, combine, unify, and coordinate the various processes
and project management activities within the project management
process group. In the project management context, integration
includes characteristic of unification, consolidation, articulation and
integrative action that are crucial to project completion, successfully
meeting customer and other stakeholders requirements and managing
expectation.
2. Project Scope Management, the process required to ensure that the
project includes all the work required and only the work required to
complete the project successfully. Project scope management is
primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is and is not
included in the project.
3. Project time Management, the processes required to accomplished
timely completion of the project. The focus here is the definition and
the sequencing of activities, identifying the types and quantities of
resources, estimating the length of each activity, developing and
managing a schedule.
4. Project Cost Management, the processes involved in estimating,
budgeting and controlling cost, so the project can be completed within
the approved budget.
5. Project Quality Management, the processes and the activities the
organization conducting the projects that determine quality policies,
objectives and responsibilities so that the project will satisfy the needs
for which it was undertaken. In implement the quality management
system trough policy and procedures with continues process
improvement activities conducted through the project.
6. Human Resource Management, the processes that planned,
organized, managed, and led the project team. Additionally it involves
making the most effective use of the people involved with the project,
including all the project stakeholders, sponsors, customers, partners,
individuals, contributors and others.
7. Project Communication Management, the processes required to
ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection, distribution,
storage, retrieval and ultimate disposition of project information.
8. Project Risk Management, the processes need to identify, analyzed
and respond to the project risk with the objective to increase the
probability and impact of positive events and decrease the probability
and impact of negative events.
9. Project Procurement Management, the processes necessary to
purchase or acquire products, services or results needed from outside
the project team. Include the contract management and change
control process required to develop and administer contract or
purchase orders issued by authorizes project team members.

The project manager is the person assigned by the performing

organization to achieve the project objectives. The role of a project
manager is distinct from a functional manager or operations manager.
Typically the functional manager is focused on providing management
oversight for an administrative area, and operations managers are
responsible for a facet of the core business.
The project management team consists of those members of the
project team who are directly involved in project management
activities. On some smaller projects, the project management team may
include virtually all of the project team members.
A project team is comprised of the project manager, project
management team, and other team members who carry out the work
of the project, but who are not necessarily directly involved with the
management of the project. This team is comprised of individuals from
different groups with knowledge of a specific subject matter or with a specific
skill set who carry out the work of the project.
The project manager and the project management team must identify
both internal and external project stakeholders in order to determine the
project related requirements and expectations of all parties involved. It is the
responsibility of the project manager to manage stakeholder expectations.
Project stakeholders are persons and organizations who are actively
involved in the project or those whose interests may be positively or
negatively affected by the performance or completion of the project.
Various stakeholders may exert influence over the project objectives. As such,
the project manager must be aware of and, to the degree possible, manage
this influence to ensure that the project is a success.
A key project stakeholder is the project sponsor --- the person or group
that provides the financial resources, in cash or in kind, for the project.
Project stakeholders can include the following:

Customers/users

Sponsor

Portfolio managers/portfolio review board

Program managers

Project management office

Project manager

Project management team

Project team

Functional managers

Operations management

Sellers/business partners

Others (including general public, regulators, etc.)

It is not uncommon for the various project stakeholders to have contrasting or
conflicting interests. One of the challenges that a project manager faces is

to effectively address and where possible resolve in favor of the

customers/clients/end users the issues surrounding the competing interests
of the various stakeholders.

Planning the project involves the skilled application of those processes

necessary to answer the following questions:
What should the project create? How should it be created? How long will it take to
create it? Who will do the work? How will the correctness and acceptability of the
output be judged?

This involves identifying and understanding the following:

Project justification

Product of the project (output)

Objectives of the project (scope, schedule, and cost)

Stakeholders needs and expectations

Key component deliverables (work packages)

Activities required to produce or acquire the deliverables and their

interrelationships

Resources needed (individuals, equipment, materials, facilities, support

services)

Quality requirements and/or standards for the project and the product

Risk events (identification and analysis)

Procurement requirements

Configuration management and change control systems