Project Management

Definition of Project Management

Nowadays, with more and more projects being developed and projectized management becoming a trend in daily operations of most organizations, project management has been becoming an increasingly important discussion topic because all organizations continually get involved in implementing a new business process, product, service, or other initiative.When we examine how organizations pursue changes, it invariably includes organizing a team of people with chosen skills to do the job.Management of the activities to complete this class of task is what project management is about.

Project management is designed to take advantage of existing resources by getting work to flow horizontally and vertically within the company.This approach does not really break down the vertical, bureaucratic flow of work but simply requires that line organizations communicate with one another horizontally so that work will be fulfilled much more smoothly throughout the organization.

Defining project management is not always an easy undertaking because if you ask ten people, you may get ten very different answers.Here two definitions are provided.According to Wikipedia, project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives.In the PMBOK Guide 2008, project management is defined as the applications of knowledge, skills, tools, techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.

Five Essential Groups of Project Management

Project management involves five steps necessary for the successful completion of any project: initiate, plan, execute, monitor and control.The following is an explanation of the five process groups, adapted from PMBOK Guide.

Initiating Process Group

This process group is involved with the activities required to define and authorize a project or a project phase.One of the most important aspects of the initiation process is the evaluation of the project vision from a business goal perspective.How does the vision support organizational goals and objectives? This should be considered in the process of authorizing a project in competition with other such proposals based on factors like resource constraints, risks, capabilities, and so on.After consideration of these factors by management, formal approval to move the project into a more detailed and formal planning phase is signaled by the issuance of a formal charter.This step outlines the basic approval of the project and the constraints under which it is to be governed, and a project manager is formally designated at this point to move the effort forward.The project charter represents the formal authorization step and it formally communicates that management is behind the project.

Planning Process Group

This process group relates to the activities required to produce a formal project plan containing specified deliverable objectives, budget, schedule, and other relevant information to guide the subsequent ongoing effort.The planning phase aims mainly to produce an accurate, measurable and applicable project plan that has allowed for the impact of all knowledge areas.Consuming the second largest amount of resources throughout the life cycle, this group focuses on laying out a path for execution that can be reasonably achieved.The key output from this phase is a formal project plan outlining not only the scope, schedule and budget for the project but also how the project will deal with integrating the other areas of quality, human resources, communications, risks, and procurement.The multi-dimensional nature of project management creats repeated feedback loops for additional analysis.With the project going on, more project information or characteristics are gathered and understood, thus additional planning may be required.

Execution Process Group

Using the project plan as a guiding reference to integrate all work activities into production of the project objectives, this process group consists of those processes performed to complete the work defined in the project management plan to satisfy the project specifications.It is in the execution phase that the actual project deliverables are produced.During this process, the project manager has responsibilities including coordination of resources, team development, quality assurance, and project plan oversight.Given that a project plan seldom, if ever, evolves exactly according to the original vision, it is necessary to deal with resource usage and task status variances along with new work created by change requests that are approved by the project board.To communicate project status to various stakeholders outlining the current state and expectations for the project is another important activity.The ultimate goal then is to deliver the desired result within the planned time and budget.

Monitoring and Controlling Process Group

This process group measures and monitors project progress to identify plan variances and take appropriate corrective action.Monitoring and controlling runs through all the project life cycle and has the goal of proactively guiding the project towards successful completion.The key benefit of this process group is that project performance is observed and measured regularly and consistently to identify variances from the project management plan.As unplanned changes occur, the project manager will have to determine how to respond to the observed variance and move the effort back to an appropriate strategy.Much of this activity is driven by performance reporting, issues, and the formal change management process.In addition, one of the most crucial aspects of this phase is the risk management process which involves monitoring various aspects of project risks including technical, quality, performance, management, organizational, and external events.

Closing Process Group

This process group consists of those processes performed to finalize all activities across all the process groups to formally complete the project, phase, or contractual obligations.Formal project closing involves a series of activities required to formally close down the project and document acceptance of the result.Also, this step completes the capture of lessons learned for use in future initiatives.As is known to all, the closing phase gets the least attention practically; however, the guide model requires that all projects formally close out the activity, including both administrative and third party relationship elements.The basic role of this phase is to leave the project administratively “clean” and to capture important lessons learned from the effort that can be shared with other projects.

Project Manager

Role of a Project Manager

Project management is quite often the province and responsibility of an individual project manager.Although this individual seldom participates directly in the activities that produce the end result, it is his duty that he strives to maintain the progress and effective mutual interaction of various parties in such a way that overall risk of failure is reduced, and ensures the success of the project.From this perspective, organizations need to build a better understanding of the role of a project manager and understand that this role is not the same as that of a technical manager.The project manager’s role is one of integrator, communicator and facilitator, which is of equal or more importance than the role of a technical manager.

Being responsible for the project, the project manager needs to make key decisions regarding the management of the resources available to a project, and to do that the organization’s senior management needs to appoint the project manager, and give him the sole responsibility and authority for project direction and control.

The project manager is also accountable to the program manager or organization director, depending on the size of the organization; and is accountable to be the beneficiary for delivering the project as planned.The project manager has the delegated authority to commit the organization on matters regarding performance that are within the scope of the project and the contract with the donor.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities of a Project Manager

Much has been said about the knowledge, skills, and abilities of the project manager.Some authors have once listed the fundamentals according to many formal sources around the world:

First of all, technical skill seems to be taken for granted.Secondly, the role seems to succeed or fail based on what are variously termed “organization and people competencies”(Association for Project Management, U.K.), “personal competencies”(PMI), or “high performance work practices” (Academy of Management Journal, 1995).PMI’s list of project manager roles (from A Framework for Project Management, 1999) reads like a soft-skills wish list: decision-maker, coach, communication channel, encourager, facilitator, behavior model.

It is a safe bet that a successful project manager will need all of them: organization competencies, people competencies, personal competencies, high-performance work practices, and soft skills.However, the expectations placed on the project manager for personal performance and effective project delivery vary by type of project and the industry sector sponsoring the project.While the project manger may adjust his or her style to some degree, a good match in the recruiting process is fundamental to his or her successful integration into an organization.The project management professional, as well as the organization’s recruiting manager, needs to assess the fit of individual leadership strengths to each project management position to reduce the risks of a mismatch in leadership style.

Basic Elements of Project Management

Here, let’s briefly talk about basic elements of project management.The knowledge about these elements has passed through four periods of “three elements”, “four elements”, “five elements”, and “six elements”, which can represent the evolution process as shown in Fig 1-4.

Source: 李跃宇.项目时间管理及在项目管理软件中的应用.北京：机械工业出版社，2008.

In the model of “six elements”, customer satisfaction is the core and focus of project management, and the other five elements are interrelated, interacted and inter-constrained.Among which, time,cost and quality constitute the core three of project management.Also called the triple constraint, each of the core three must be completed in order to accomplish the project on time and on budget and to meet all of the customer’s expectation.