Introduction to Project Management

Project management is an efficient tool that improves an organization’s ability to plan, implement, monitor and control its activities and more productive use of people and resources.

The essential benefit of implementing project management techniques is to meet customer’s satisfactions. Accomplishing the project scope in a quality manner, on time, and within budget provides a great satisfaction.

Many researchers and organizations have described the project in different ways. The most comprehensive definition is provided by Project Management Institute as follows: “A project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result”. As stated in the definition, a project can be a product, service or result.

Nintendo runs the Next Generation Game Console Project.

Warner Brothers runs the Filming of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 and Part 2 projects.

Oakland A’s announced their plans for a new ballpark in Freemont, CA in 2006. For their cause of building this new ballpark, they sold the name rights to an American Company, Cisco Systems for a very good price of $4 million/year over 30 years. Oakland A’s plan for the new ballpark gathers up old-school American ballparks with World-class standards of stadium technologies. Their plans encountered a very large opposition from residents of the stadium area and a few major retail companies, which leads to stray away. Its visible that A’s are going to make a new plan for building the ballpark near the stadium in Oakland or maybe San Jose, CA. The A’s wants this stadium for prevent lack of audience and making them compete with other major league clubs.

Lupus, known as a chronic autoimmune disease which causes the body attacks its own healthy cells. Its symptoms include fatigue, joint pain, light sensitivity and rashes. After years, the new drug Benlysta has potential for treatment of Lupus in its testing phase. Drug targets the protein that causes the body to attack its own healthy cells. It’s completely a new hope for patients worldwide who suffer from this disease.

Chevrolet Volt is a hybrid electric car planning to go on sale in 2011. Volt’s difference from other hybrid cars available today, its main power source is a fully electrical motor, rather than its competitors, it uses combustion engine for a charging alternative. Because of the bankruptcy danger, this car is connected with the company’s future. Tom Stephens, the lead manager of product development says, “We cannot afford to have anything but a hit, every launch has to be a home-run.”

Smartphones with Google Android

The fundamental attributes of a project are given as follows:

1. A project states certain specific objectives that can be defined in terms of schedule and cost. For example, the objective of a project might be to plan a wedding in six months and within a budget of $8,000. It is expected that the wedding will meet the performance predefined by the bride and groom.
2. As stated in the definition of project, projects are temporary activities. They have a definite beginning and ending point, and they can last minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years. For example, a raw food workshop might be organized between January 25 and February 3. However, a bridge project for Bosphorus can take four years.
3. A project may be unique or may have some unique elements. Especially, megaprojects like Panama Canal are unique since they have never been done before. Other projects like building a shopping mall or an apartment building include established set of routines. On the other hand, these projects are also unique because of the customization.
4. A project uses various resources to conduct project activities. Such resources can involve people, equipment, material, machines and facilities. For example, a bridge project may include resources such as machines, concrete, labor and so on.

The program is alternatively used with project due to their similarities. The objective of them is to accomplish within budget in quality manner and customer’s satisfaction at a given time. However, the main distinction lies in life span and objective. A program covers a longer time period and includes several parallel or sequential projects that share common goals and resources.

As an example, Climate Change Program may include several projects such as recycling of paper, plastic, newspaper, glass and aluminum cans, minimization of carbon emission, increasing planting density, and so on. The other examples can be Mars exploration program or U.S space program.

As can be seen from the figure, project life cycle consists of four distinct phases: initiation, planning, performing and closure.

Initiation Phase: This first phase of project life cycle involves identification and specification of the project. Project objectives and requirements are determined. The project team members are formed and their tasks are assigned.

Planning Phase: In this phase, the level of effort rises. More formal set of plans are established to determine when the project will be scheduled, what the budget will be and what quality level should be maintained. Then, individual tasks and requirements of the project are defined.

Performing Phase: A major part of the project occurs in this stage. The performing phase includes the stages of design, production and implementation. It can be referred as progression through which a system moves from being an idea to an end item. This phase results in the accomplishment of project objective in a quality manner within budget and on time.

Closure Phase: This phase can be referred as the “termination” phase. It includes certain close-out activities to be carried out such as completing all payments, releasing project equipment/materials, and transferring all related documents. In addition to these activities, this phase involves customer training and obtaining feedback from customers about whether their expectations are satisfied.

Compression of the Product Life Cycle, Global Competition, Knowledge Explosion, Corporate Downsizing, Increased Customer Focus, Rapid Development of Third World and Closed Economies.

Three main attributes of project management distinguish it from traditional forms of management: project manager, project team, and project methodology.

• Developing Project Management Plan • Requirement of stakeholders • Definition of scope of the reasons for your project • Creating Work Breakdown Structure • A list of all activities and their sequence • A detailed project schedule • Estimation of cost and determination of budget • A description of how you plan to manage any significant risks and uncertainties • Plans for project communications • Plans for ensuring project quality

• Direct and manage project execution: Performing the activities in the project management plan, • Perform quality assurance: Controlling the quality requirements to guarantee appropriate quality standards, • Acquire project team: Confirming human resource availability, • Develop project team: Improving the team interaction to increase the project performance, • Manage project team: Tracking team member performance and providing feedback, • Distribute information: Ensuring relevant information to project stakeholders, • Manage stakeholders’ expectations: working with stakeholders to meet their expectations, • Conduct procurements: obtaining seller responses, selecting a seller and so on.

• Monitor and control project work • Perform integrated change control • Verify scope • Control scope • Control schedule • Control costs • Perform quality control • Report performance • Monitor and control risks • Administer procurement