What Is Project Management?
The Importance of Methodology
Project Phases and the Project Lifecycle
Project Stakeholders and Organizational Influences
Project Processes
Learning Objectives for This Chapter
Define the basic definition of project management and how project management fits into the environment in which projects typically occur
Describe the common attributes of a successful project
Describe the most common type of projects and the typical lifecycle methodologies that are employed to deliver project results
Understand the importance of the role of project stakeholders and how organizational influences impact the success or failure of projects
Describe the five (5) major process groups that comprise the overall project management process flow
2.1 What Is Project Management?
Project management is an organized set of people, processes, and procedures working together to provide on-time, on-budget delivery of stated objectives with high quality and satisfied sponsors. It achieves this while still taking into consideration that any successful team effort relies on treating people with respect.
Project management as we know it first appeared in World War II as a tool for construction and logistics. The need for enormous amounts of materiel for the invasion of Europe and the vast distances of the Pacific Ocean fostered the development of new ways of planning and scheduling military operations. These approaches were clearly successful, but required practitioners to manage enormous amounts of data—with no electronic help, no less.
After the success of these methods in the war, companies such as DuPont and Remington Arms (which was owned by DuPont) experimented with using them in the civilian sector. Since then, the tools and philosophy of project management have been widely used in both the public and private sectors of our global economy.
Internal and external competition
Pervasiveness of multi-discipline projects
Increasingly complex projects
Customer demands
Technological change
Basically, organizations see project management as a way to do things better, faster, and cheaper. It’s an incredibly powerful tool—when it’s used well. So how do you use it well?
The Project Management Institute (PMI) was founded in 1969 to promote professionalism in project management. They’ve collected and constantly updated project management best practices—what works and what doesn’t—over many thousands of projects into a record called the “Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge” (PMBOK Guide) . This guide has been accepted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as the US standard for project management.
Modern project management includes adapting the general principles in the PMBOK Guide to fit an organization’s specific situation. No single approach could possibly fit all industries and organizations on our diverse planet.
What Makes a Project a Project?
A project is goal-oriented, producing a unique deliverable or set of deliverables.
A project consists of connected, related activities.
A project has limited duration, which means projects are typified by a predefined schedule and usually tied to a specific end date.
A project has elements of uniqueness.
Projects are defined by three constraints which must be managed: time, cost, and scope (work content) of the project.
An emphasis on the organizational support needed for project management (both philosophical and systems support)
- The artistic and scientific aspects of management which project managers have to bring to the table
Art – Team management, reward/punishment, and management style
Science – Scope, risk, quality, cost, and time management systems
Both – Communication, resource, integration, and contract management
Specific knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques that are useful for managing projects
A focus on meeting the needs of the client/customer (internal and external)
What Defines a Successful Project?
On time
On budget
High quality
Fulfilled objectives
Satisfied customers
Achieved outcomes
To achieve these characteristics, project management must follow a process, be supported by a methodology, and have quality assurance to continue improving the process and the methodology.
The Project Management Process
The project management process
- Definition and Planning
Definition – Documents the overall project objectives, scope, approach, schedule, budget, resources, deliverables, and completion criteria
Planning and Organization – Provides the detailed roadmap that will be used to guide the project team when constructing the final deliverables
- Control
Tracking – Collects information from the team to assist the project manager in assessing actual progress
Analysis – Highlights any deviations from the original plan against current progress
Revision – Makes any necessary plan modifications to steer the project back on course
Scope Management – Provides an orderly means of modifying the original project definition
Status Reporting and Management Reviews – Ensures that all relevant project stakeholders are kept apprised of all key project information
- Conclusion
Providing Feedback/Continuous Improvement – Instills quality in the process of project management
Though we’ve focused on the technical aspects of project management up to this point, the last few processes emphasize another aspect crucial to being successful: the people.
Since the project manager is responsible for client satisfaction, clearly stating expectations and constantly managing those expectations is an important skill in avoiding disappointment and dissatisfaction, from both project team members and customers.
Effective project managers are often blessed with a broad range of competencies from intellectual to interpersonal to technical and judgmental. It is this unique package of skills that provides the effective project manager with an integrated, situational approach to successful management that cannot be readily documented and shared in a text on the topic.
The Four Principles of Effective Project Managers
Principle 1 – If you don’t know where you’re going, you probably won’t get there.
Application – Set an effective project objective, developed with the input of the client(s) and project team members.
Principle 2 – If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
Application – Learn and use the available planning techniques developed by previous project managers and thinkers about project management.
Principle 3 – If you catch problems early, they are easier to solve.
Application – Proactively look for trouble, with an eye toward managing problems, rather than being victimized by them.
Principle 4 – People and politics are the biggest variables in every project.
Application – Remember to make time to focus attention on people issues, both internal to the team and external.
Effective project managers are comfortable operating in the “gray area,” even if they have come from a technical environment where hard and fast answers may be considered the norm.
Project Management Tools
A computer will not make a good manager out of a bad manager. It makes a good manager better faster and a bad manager worse faster.
—Edward M. Esber
Former CEO, Ashton-Tate
Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Project Management Software Tools
One of the obvious advantages of project management tools is that computers make your project plan easy to update and the quality of the output is high, which can save you time. Computers are excellent for handling the extensive calculations required to keep a plan up to date. Their use may even be mandatory when project or resource scheduling information needs to be shared across the enterprise. You can also conveniently and dynamically select the information you want from a large amount of data.
Project management software, however, tends to be fairly complicated relative to other types of personal computer software. This reality makes for a longer learning curve for training and on-the-job experience. It is not uncommon for a project manager to need upward of a year to become comfortable with a new tool. These complications are compounded by the fact that project management terminology is not necessarily intuitive. Whereas the terminology required to use a word processing or spreadsheet application is generally acquired in grammar and high school, many project managers need training in the fundamentals of project management theory to begin to be productive with a tool.
Another consideration is the effort it takes to load all of the information into the tool. Once the project manager makes the commitment of time, it is important to reap the return on that investment by using the tool to run the project.
Conclusion
Based upon these advantages and disadvantages, the investment required to use a tool should only be made for larger projects with higher budgets. A two-month project with 2 or 3 people assigned will not require the same rigor as a two-year project with 25 people assigned who are geographically dispersed. As in any business decision, the benefits should outweigh the cost. Based on these concepts, sound judgment is required to decide how deep to go with using a tool.
2.2 The Importance of Methodology to Project Management
A methodology is an integrated, cohesive, and well-documented set of repeatable processes that provide for quality deliverables through the consistent execution of practices that have been proven to work.
Methodologies are usually developed in organizations that are tired of “reinventing the wheel,” opting instead to document successful processes and share them across the organization. Methodologies include document templates (such as sample design reports), procedures (such as detailed approaches for producing a data model), forms (such as requests for system enhancements), and work plans (such as Microsoft Project work plan templates).
Defines repeatable processes
Instills quality into service-based processes
Removes creativity from processes that should not be creative
Provides a floor—not a ceiling
Organizes the project tasks for the work plan
Forms the foundation for continuous improvement
Methodology is the project manager’s primary means of ensuring quality in a project. It supplies the project manager and the entire project team with a “cookbook” for performing the tasks in the project plan.
Project management is consistent from project to project, but methodologies tend to vary. The project manager needs to determine if the organization already has a methodology for the specific type of project they will manage.
A sample proccess for a software methodology
2.3 Project Phases and the Project Lifecycle
Although earlier we referred to “the project lifecycle,” there are a variety of approaches used to define a project from start to finish and to break it down into phases. In this section, we’ll look at some alternate approaches to project lifecycles. For more examples and detail on this subject, visit PMI.org and download a copy of the most recent PMBOK Guide.
Project Phase Deliverables
Each project phase is marked by completion of one or more deliverables . A deliverable is a product, such as a feasibility study, a design, or a prototype. The deliverables, like the phases, are part of a logical, usually chronological, approach designed to ensure proper completion of the project’s desired product.
The conclusion of a project phase generally includes a review of both the desired deliverables and the project performance, in order to detect and correct errors as early as possible and to decide if the project should continue into its next phase. These phase-end reviews are often called phase exits, stage gates, or kill points.
Characteristics of the Project Lifecycle
The project lifecycle defines a project from beginning to end. Of course, lifecycles vary from industry to industry and even from organization to organization. For example, when an organization identifies an opportunity that it would like to look into, it will often authorize a feasibility study to decide if it should undertake the project. The project lifecycle definition will determine whether the feasibility study is treated as the first project phase or as a separate, stand-alone project.
The project lifecycle definition will also determine which transitional actions at the end of the project are included and which are not. In this manner, the project lifecycle definition can be used to link the project to the ongoing operations of the performing organization.
The phase sequence defined by most project lifecycles generally involves some form of technology transfer or handoff, such as requirements to design, construction to operations, or design to manufacturing. Deliverables from the preceding phase are usually approved before work starts on the next phase. However, a subsequent phase is sometimes begun prior to approval of the previous phase deliverables when the risks involved are deemed acceptable. This practice of overlapping phases is often called fast tracking .
What technical work should be done in each phase (e.g., is the work of the architect part of the definition phase or part of the execution phase).
Who should be involved in each phase (e.g., concurrent engineering requires that the implementers be involved with requirements and design).
Project lifecycle descriptions may be very general or very detailed. Highly detailed descriptions may have numerous forms, charts, and checklists to provide structure and consistency. Such detailed approaches are the project management methodologies, as we discussed earlier.
Cost and staffing levels are low at the start, higher toward the end, and drop rapidly as the project draws to a conclusion.
The probability of successfully completing the project is lowest, and hence risk and uncertainty are highest, at the start of the project. The probability of successful completion generally increases as the project continues.
The ability of stakeholders to influence the final characteristics of the project product and the final cost of the project is highest at the start and gets progressively lower as the project continues. A major contributor to this phenomenon is that the cost of change and error correction generally increases as the project continues.
Care should be taken to distinguish the project lifecycle from the product lifecycle . For example, a project undertaken to bring a new desktop computer to market is just one phase or stage of the product lifecycle.
Although many project lifecycles have similar phase names with similar work resources required, few are identical. Most have four or five phases, but some have nine or more. Even within a single application area, there can be significant variations—one organization’s software development lifecycle may have a single design phase while another’s has separate phases for functional and detail design.
Subprojects within projects may also have distinct project lifecycles. For example, an architectural firm hired to design a new office building is first involved in the owner’s definition phase when doing the design and then in the owner’s implementation phase when supporting the construction effort. The architect’s design project, however, will have its own series of phases from conceptual development through definition and implementation to closure. The architect may even treat designing the facility and supporting the construction as separate projects with their own distinct phases.
Representative Project Lifecycles
The major project process areas
Portfolio management
Project management
Project lifecycle management
Ideally, projects are planned, selected, measured, and responded to through a portfolio management process in which the right projects are chosen against factors such as business objectives, budgets, and available resources.
Project management provides a set of business control processes that enable the project manager to deliver a project to completion on time and on budget. The project management process tends to be fairly similar in a broad variety of project types, regardless of the project lifecycle management methods that are used to deliver the project.
The deliverables of a project are conceived, designed, developed, and tested through project lifecycle management processes that typically vary widely across many different industries. These project lifecycles document the processes that ultimately become the project tasks that need to be performed to complete the project with high quality (i.e., on specification).
Sample project lifecycle methodologies
2.4 Project Stakeholders and Organizational Influences
Project stakeholders are individuals and organizations who are actively involved in the project or whose interests may be affected as a result of project execution or successful project completion. The project management team must identify the stakeholders, determine what their needs and expectations are, and then manage and influence those expectations to ensure a successful project. Stakeholder identification is often especially difficult. For example, is an assembly line worker—whose future employment depends on the outcome of a new product design project—a stakeholder?
Project manager – The individual responsible for managing the project
Customer – The individual or organization who will use the project product
There may be multiple layers of customers. For example, the customers for a new pharmaceutical product may include the doctors who prescribe it, the patients who take it, and the insurers who pay for it.
Performing organization – The enterprise whose employees are most directly involved in doing the work of the project
Sponsor – The individual or group within the performing organization who provides the financial resources for the project
There are many other ways to define project stakeholders: internal and external; owners and funders; suppliers and contractors; team members and their families; government agencies and media outlets; and finally individual citizens, temporary or permanent lobbying organizations, and society at large. The naming of stakeholders helps the project manager and team consider which individuals and organizations may require attention. Stakeholder roles and responsibilities may overlap, as when an engineering firm provides financing for a plant it is designing.
The manager of a department that has requested a new management information system may desire low cost, while the systems architect may emphasize technical excellence, and then the programming contractor may be most interested in maximizing its profit.
The Vice President of Research at an electronics firm may define new product success as state-of-the-art technology, while the Vice President of Manufacturing may define it as world-class practices, and then the Vice President of Marketing may be primarily concerned with the number of new features.
The owner of a real estate development project may be focused on timely performance, while the local governing body may desire to maximize tax revenue, an environmental group may want to minimize adverse environmental impacts, and nearby residents may hope to relocate the project.
In general, differences among stakeholders should be resolved in favor of the customer; however, this does not mean that the needs and expectations of other stakeholders can be disregarded. Finding appropriate resolutions to such differences can be one of the major challenges of project management.
Organizational Influences
Projects are typically part of a larger organization, such as a corporation or a government agency. The project will be influenced by the organization or organizations that set it up, especially by their structure.
Organizations that primarily perform projects for others; for example, architectural firms, engineering firms, consultants, construction contractors, government contractors
Organizations that use management by projects because of the nature of their business, primarily involving non-repetitive or time-limited activities
Project-based organizations usually have management systems in place to support project management, such as financial systems designed for accounting, tracking, and reporting on multiple simultaneous projects.
Non-project-based organizations seldom have management systems designed to support project work efficiently and effectively. This can make project management more difficult, so non-project-based organizations often have sub-units that operate as project-based organizations with systems to match.
The project management team should be acutely aware of how the organization’s systems affect the project. For example, if the organization rewards its functional managers for charging staff time to projects, the project management team should be careful that assigned staff members are being used effectively on the project.
2.5 Project Processes
Project management processes are concerned with describing and organizing the work of the project. The project management processes that are applicable to most projects, most of the time, are described in detail in the PMBOK Guide.
Product-oriented processes are concerned with specifying and creating the project product. Product-oriented processes are typically defined by the project lifecycle and vary by application area.
Project management processes and product-oriented processes overlap and interact throughout the project. The scope of the project cannot be defined in the absence of some basic understanding of how to create the product.
2.6 Process Groups
Initiating processes – Recognizing that a project or phase should begin and committing to do so
Planning processes – Devising and maintaining a workable scheme to accomplish the business need that the project was undertaken to address
Executing processes – Coordinating people and other resources to carry out the plan
Controlling processes – Ensuring that project objectives are met by monitoring and measuring progress and taking corrective action when necessary
Closing processes – Formalizing acceptance of the project or phase and bringing it to an orderly end
The process groups are linked by the results they produce; the result or outcome of one becomes an input to another. Among these process groups, the links are iterated; planning provides executing with a documented project plan early on and then provides documented updates to the plan as the project progresses. Also, these project management process groups are not one-time events, but instead are overlapping activities that occur throughout each phase of the project.
The process group interactions also cross phases; closing one phase provides an input to initiating the next. For example, closing a design phase requires customer acceptance of the design document. Simultaneously, the design document defines the product description for the ensuing implementation phase.
The PMBOK Guide focuses on these interactions and describes each individual process in terms of its
Inputs – Documents or documentable items that will be acted upon
Tools and techniques – Mechanisms applied to the inputs to create the output
Outputs – Documents or documentable items that are a result of the process
This process approach can be very useful to the project manager, and we encourage you to become familiar with the processes common to most projects in most areas as described in the PMBOK Guide. An understanding of these detailed processes will also be necessary if you decide to pursue the PMP certification sponsored by PMI.
End of Chapter Quiz Questions
1. Fill in the blanks: Project management consists of an organized set of _______, ________, and _________ working together.
2. True or False: A single approach to project management could fit all industries and organizations.
- 3. List at least three features of a project (what makes a project a project):
- 1.
________________________________________________
- 2.
________________________________________________
- 3.
________________________________________________
- 1.
- 4. What are the three constraints of a project that must be managed?
- 1.
________________________________________________
- 2.
________________________________________________
- 3.
________________________________________________
- 1.
5. Describe what is meant by the art and science of project management.
6. Fill in the blank: A project is deemed successful when the objectives of the ________ are met.
- 7. What are at least four (4) characteristics of a successful project?
- 1.
________________________________________________
- 2.
________________________________________________
- 3.
________________________________________________
- 4.
________________________________________________
- 1.
8. To achieve a successful project, project management must follow a _______, be supported by a _____________, and have ___________ _____________ to continue improving.
- 9. What are the three major stages in the project management process?
- 1.
________________________________________________
- 2.
________________________________________________
- 3.
________________________________________________
- 1.
- 10–17. Match the process listed in the left column of the following table to the correct description from the right column by entering the letter that the process corresponds to in the blank line.
10. Definition ____
A. Provides an orderly means of modifying the original project definition
11. Planning and Organization ____
B. Makes any necessary plan modifications to steer the project back on course
12. Tracking ____
C. Instills quality in the process of project management
13. Analysis ____
D. Ensures that all relevant project stakeholders are kept apprised of all key project information
14. Revision ____
E. Provides the detailed roadmap that will be used to guide the project team when constructing the final deliverables
15. Scope Management ____
F. Collects information from the team to assist the project manager in assessing actual progress
16. Status Reporting and Management Reviews ____
G. Documents the overall project objectives, scope, approach schedule, budget, resources, deliverables, and completion criteria
17. Providing Feedback/Continuous Improvement ____
H. Highlights any deviations from the original plan against current progress
- 18. What are the four (4) principles of effective project managers?
- 1.
________________________________________________
- 2.
________________________________________________
- 3.
________________________________________________
- 4.
________________________________________________
- 1.
- 19. Why is it important to catch problems early?
- 1.
________________________________________________________
- 2.
________________________________________________________
- 1.
20. Fill in the blank: __________ and __________ are the biggest variables in every project. Remember to make time to focus attention on __________ issues, both internal to the team and external.
- 21. What are at least four (4) advantages of using project management software tools?
- 1.
________________________________________________
- 2.
________________________________________________
- 3.
________________________________________________
- 4.
________________________________________________
- 1.
22. Provide an example to show when it is appropriate or cost-effective to use a project management tool vs. another example to show when it is not cost-effective to use one; describe why you gave those examples.
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
23. What are the properties of an effective methodology?
24. What is a deliverable?
- 25. What two things do project lifecycles generally define?
- 1.
________________________________________________
- 2.
________________________________________________
- 1.
26. What are the common characteristics that most project lifecycle descriptions share?
- 27. What are the three major process areas in which projects occur?
- 1.
________________________________________________
- 2.
________________________________________________
- 3.
________________________________________________
- 1.
28. Fill in the blank: ______________ are individuals and organizations who are actively involved in the project or whose interests may be affected as a result of project execution or successful project completion.
- 29. What are the five (5) project management process groups?
- 1.
________________________________________________
- 2.
________________________________________________
- 3.
________________________________________________
- 4.
________________________________________________
- 5.
________________________________________________
- 1.