Project Management

Project Management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. A project is a finite endeavor (having specific start and completion dates) undertaken to create a unique product or service which brings about beneficial change or added value. This finite characteristic of projects stands in sharp contrast to processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent functional work to repetitively produce the same product or service.

The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while adhering to classic project constraints—usually scope, quality, time and budget. The secondary—and more ambitious—challenge is to optimize the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, motivation, etc.) to achieve the project goals and objectives.

A work breakdown structure or WBS is a fundamental tool commonly used in project management and systems engineering. It is a tree-like structure that permits summing of subordinate costs for tasks, materials, etc., into their successively higher level “parent” tasks, materials, etc. For each element of the work breakdown structure, a description of the task to be performed is generated. This technique (sometimes called a System Breakdown Structure  is used to define and organize the total scope of a project.

A well-designed WBS forms a product-oriented family tree composed of hardware, software, services, data, and facilities. This means that the WBS is organized around the primary products of the project (or planned outcomes) instead of the work needed to produce the products (planned actions). Since the planned outcomes are the desired ends of the project, they form a relatively stable set of categories in which the costs of the planned actions needed to achieve them can be collected. A well-designed WBS makes it easy to assign each project activity to one and only one terminal element of the WBS.

In addition to its function in cost accounting, the WBS also helps map requirements from one level of system specification to another, for example a requirements cross reference matrix mapping functional requirements to high level or low level design documents.

WBS includes 100% of the work defined by the project scope and captures all deliverables – internal, external, interim – in terms of the work to be completed, including project management. The 100% rule is one of the most important principles guiding the development, decomposition and evaluation of the WBS. The rule applies at all levels within the hierarchy: the sum of the work at the “child” level must equal 100% of the work represented by the “parent” and the WBS should not include any work that falls outside the actual scope of the project, that is, it cannot include more than 100% of the work. It is important to remember that the 100% rule also applies to the activity level. The work represented by the activities in each work package must add up to 100% of the work necessary to complete the work package.

Earned Value Management (EVM) is a project management technique for measuring project progress in an objective manner. EVM has the unique ability to combine measurements of scope, schedule, and cost in a single integrated system. When properly applied, EVM provides an early warning of performance problems. Additionally, EVM promises to improve the definition of project scope, prevent scope creep, communicate objective progress to stakeholders, and keep the project team focused on achieving progress.

Essential features of any EVM implementation include

1. A project plan that identifies work to be accomplished,
2. A valuation of planned work, called planned value (PV), and
3. Pre-defined “earning rules” (also called metrics) to quantify the accomplishment of work, called Earned Value (EV).

EVM implementations for large or complex projects include many more features, such as indicators and forecasts of cost performance (over/under budget) and schedule performance (behind/ahead of schedule). The most basic requirement of an EVM system, however, is that it quantifies progress using PV and EV.

In any Project the first person to be appointed must be the project manager and he creates the Project Team. Projects need to be performed and delivered under certain constraints. Traditionally, these constraints have been listed as "scope," "time," and "cost". These are also referred to as the "Project Management Triangle," where each side represents a constraint. One side of the triangle cannot be changed without affecting the others. A further refinement of the constraints separates product "quality" or "performance" from scope, and turns quality into a fourth constraint.

Project management is composed of several different types of activities such as:

1. Analysis and design of objectives and events
2. Planning the work according to the objectives
3. Assessing and controlling risk (or Risk Management)
4. Estimating resources
5. Allocation of resources
6. Organizing the work
7. Acquiring human and material resources
8. Assigning tasks
9. Directing activities
10. Controlling project execution
11. Tracking and reporting progress (Management information system)
12. Analyzing the results based on the facts achieved
13. Defining the products of the project
14. Forecasting future trends in the project
15. Quality Management
16. Issues management
17. Issue solving
18. Defect prevention
19. Identifying, managing & controlling changes
20. Project closure (and project debrief)
21. Communicating to stakeholders
22. Increasing / decreasing a company's workers

The following documents serve to clarify objectives and deliverables and to align sponsors, clients, and project team's expectations.

1. Project Charter
2. Preliminary Scope Statement / Statement of work
3. Business case / Feasibility Study
4. Scope Statement / Terms of reference
5. Project management plan / Project Initiation Document
6. Work Breakdown Structure
7. Change Control Plan
8. Risk Management Plan
9. Risk Breakdown Structure
10. Communications Plan
11. Governance Model
12. Risk Register
13. Issue Log
14. Action Item List
15. Resource Management Plan
16. Project Schedule
17. Project Status Report
18. Responsibility assignment matrix
19. Database of lessons learned
20. Stakeholder Analysis

Project Management tries to gain control over variables such as risk:

Risk
Potential points of failure: Most negative risks (or potential failures) can be overcome or resolved, given enough planning capabilities, time, and resources.

There are several approaches that can be taken to managing project activities including agile, interactive, incremental, and phased approaches.

Regardless of the approach employed, careful consideration needs to be given to clarify surrounding project objectives, goals, and importantly, the roles and responsibilities of all participants and stakeholders.

The traditional approach
Typical development phases of a project
Typical development phases of a project

A traditional phased approach identifies a sequence of steps to be completed. In the traditional approach, we can distinguish 5 components of a project (4 stages plus control) in the development of a project:

1. project initiation stage;
2. project planning or design stage;
3. project execution or production stage;
4. project monitoring and controlling systems;
5. project completion stage.

Not all the projects will visit every stage as projects can be terminated before they reach completion. Some projects probably don't have the planning and/or the monitoring. Some projects will go through steps 2, 3 and 4 multiple times.

Many industries utilize variations on these stages. For example, in bricks and mortar architectural design, projects typically progress through stages like Pre-Planning, Conceptual Design, Schematic Design, Design Development, Construction Drawings (or Contract Documents), and Construction Administration. In software development, this approach is often known as "waterfall development", i.e., one series of tasks after another in linear sequence. In software development many organizations have adapted the Rational Unified Process (RUP) to fit this methodology, although RUP does not require or explicitly recommend this practice. Waterfall development can work for small tightly defined projects, but for larger projects of undefined or unknowable scope, it is less suited. The Cone of Uncertainty explains some of this as the planning made on the initial phase of the project suffers from a high degree of uncertainty. This becomes specially true as software development is often the realization of a new or novel product, this method has been widely accepted as ineffective for software projects where requirements are largely unknowable up front and susceptible to change. While the names may differ from industry to industry, the actual stages typically follow common steps to problem solving — "defining the problem, weighing options, choosing a path, implementation and evaluation."
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