Table of Contents
Introduction
Project management is the process of directing a team’s work to achieve goals and meet the success criteria at a given point in time. The greatest challenge of project management is to achieve all project goals within the given limits. This information generally described in the project documentation created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are size, time, quality, and budget. The secondary challenge is to optimize allocating the required inputs and applying them to achieve the predefined goals.
Project management aims to create a complete project that meets the client’s goals. In many cases, project management seeks to design or redesign the customer order to achieve the customer’s goals. Once the client’s goals are clearly defined, they should influence others involved in the project, such as Project managers, designers, contractors, and subcontractors. Poorly defined or overly strict project management goals have an unfavorable effect on decision-making.
A project is a temporary work to produce a unique product, service, or result with a defined beginning and end undertaken to attain goals, usually to achieve change or add value. The temporary nature of projects contrasts with regular companies, repetitive, permanent, or semi-permanent functional activities to produce products or services.
In practice, managing such diverse production approaches requires developing different technical skills and management strategies.
The Objectives of Project Management are:
- Manage the start and development of a project.
- Controlling and responding to problems that arise during a project;
- Facilitating project completion and approval.
The projects are independent of day-to-day business activities. Therefore, a series of meetings need to organized to determine the specific objectives of the project. So efficient teamwork is essential to the success of the project. How the project manager manages the work depends on several factors, including scalability, importance, and complexity.
The primary aim of project management is to achieve set goals to provide the organization with a benefit. The objectives expressed in terms of results such as the creation of a new headquarters; consequences (e.g., relocation of employees to a new office); Benefits (reducing food inspection costs, maintaining machinery or equipment) or strategic goals (e.g., doubling business performance in three years).
There are many limitations to developing a project. However, the three most common are time, cost, and scope. These restrictions are part of all tasks and together form the project management triangle. The content is essential in defining all steps of project development. On the other hand, time is an invaluable resource. While we can control processes, we cannot control time. Therefore, it is a real challenge to use time efficiently to keep the project on schedule and achieve the desired goals. However, the cost made up of a budget established in the initial phase of the project. It then compared to the initially proposed number. The three constraints are related and highly interdependent. Once the time allotted to the project reduced, the cost increases. Besides, the project’s scope determines the pace and resources required to complete and complete the project successfully.
Why is Project Management Important?
Project management is essential because it brings leadership and direction to projects. Also, it provides leadership and vision, motivation, removing obstacles, training, and inspiration for the team to do their best work. Project managers serve the unit but also ensure clear areas of responsibility.
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Types of Project Management
Project management methods can applied to any project. It often tailored for a specific type of project based on the size, type, industry, or sector of the project. For example, the information technology industry has also evolved to develop its form of project management, known as IT project management, which specializes in providing assets and technical services required for different life cycle stages, such as Planning, design, and development, test, and deploy.
Biotechnology project management focuses on the complexities of research and development in the field of biotechnology. Localization project management involves applying many standard project management practices to translation work, although localization management is viewed by many as an entirely different discipline. There is public project management covering all government public works that government agencies can carry out or contracted out—another classification of project management based on the physical or non-physical type.
All project management types have in common that they focus on three essential goals: time, quality, and budget. Besides successful projects completed on time, within budget, and under previously agreed quality standards, that is, adhering to the Iron Triangle or the triple limit for projects considered success or failure.
Project managers develop and use repeatable templates specific to the industry they are dealing with for any project management. Moreover, this allows project plans to be very detailed and highly repeatable to improve quality and reduce the time to deliver the project results.
The 5 Phases of Project Management
1. Project feasibility study (feasibility study)
It is the first phase of a project and based on analyzing whether it will continue. This step done because the company’s benefits from implementing the project are often more significant than the investment. To examine the project’s possibilities, factors such as time, resources, and costs need to consider. The feasibility study of the project should include:
- Creation of a project tracking log in the company software.
- Previous analysis of the project’s scope (suggests what scope the project should be, what methodology to implement, which departments should involve, etc.).
- Analysis of the project implementation risk.
- Analysis of the expected benefits and costs, the agreed deadlines’ feasibility, and the desired quality.
- If the feasibility study balance is positive, you can move on to the second phase.
2. Detailed Planning of the Work to Carried Out
This phase aims to present in detail all the tasks to be performed and the required resources. If this is not clearly defined, it can have a (very) negative impact on the business. To pinpoint these tasks and help with the utmost precision, you must:
- Review the project scope analysis.
- Make estimates of effort, costs, and resources.
- Define the project plan.
- If the project continues, all this information must written in terms of the agreement.
3. Project Implementation
In this phase, companies apply all of their know-how. Know what the techniques, methods of managing resources, and managing processes are like. Some project management programs allow you to generate a report automatically. Problems often arise at this stage. The actions taken in this phase are:
- Set up a work environment (groups and work processes).
- Assign scheduled tasks to available resources.
- Perform scheduled tasks.
- Manage change requests.
4. Supervision and Control of Work
This phase, along with the previous one, is one of the most important for the project. In this phase, it checked whether all plans met and whether all quality expectations exceeded. So, as a result, you can react quickly and effectively to problems that arise. With a project management module, you can keep your processes, including progress, times, and costs, up to date. Four types of activities carried out at this stage:
- Monitoring of tasks and planned milestones.
- Results management (including quality control).
- Management of incidents that have occurred and may occur during the process (e.g., a workflow is not well connected or connected).
- Preparation of follow-up reports (reports for project managers or managers informing whether the project is going according to plan).
5. Project Completion
This final phase consists of evaluating and verifying that everything should be before completing the project. If you are looking for a tool to help you track progress over time. Future project failure analyzes will surely make the most realistic decisions. A checklist usually used to conduct this assessment. The tasks of this phase are:
- Formal completion of the project by all stakeholders.
- Realization of the backup copy of the project.
- Analyzing the results of the initial estimates.
- Update of the knowledge database with everything learned.
6.Mobile Project Management
Mobile Project management apps allow you to organize project-related work and schedule tasks easily. This will allow you to assign roles and responsibilities and keep track of project-related activities to stay on track.
Approaches to Project Management
A 2017 study found that the success of a project depends on how well four key aspects affecting the project, known as the four Ps:
- Planning: planning, and forecasting activities.
- Process: The overall focus of all activities and control of the project.
- People: Including the dynamics of their collaboration and communication.
- Power: lines of authority, decision-makers, organizational charts, implementation guidelines, and the like.
There are several approaches to organizing and completing project activities, including gradual, lean, iterative, and incremental. There are also various extensions for project planning, for example, results-based (product-based) or activity-based (process-based).
Regardless of the methodology used, the overall project objectives, schedule and cost, and the roles and responsibilities of all participants and stakeholders must carefully considered.
Profit Realization Management
Benefits Realization Management (BRM) enhances standard project management techniques by focusing on the results of a project rather than products or outcomes and measuring the extent to which this is happening to keep an ongoing project going. This can help reduce the risk of a completed project failing by delivering the agreed requirements results, i.e., the project’s success, but not the benefits of those requirements, i.e., the product’s success.
Additionally, BRM’s practices aim to ensure strategic alignment between project outcomes and business strategies. Recent research supports these practices’ effectiveness, showing that BRM practices influence project success from a strategic perspective in different countries and industries. These broader impacts are known as strategic impacts.
An example of meeting the needs of a project could be agreeing to the delivery of a computer system that processes personal data and manages payroll, vacations, and personnel files in less time and with fewer errors. The aim of BRM could be to reduce the working hours and the mistakes that are required for the processing and maintenance of personal data after the system installed compared to without a network.
Critical Chain Project Management
It is an application of Theory of Constraints (TOC) to project planning and management and designed to remove the uncertainties associated with project management while considering the availability of limited resources (physical and human skills) as management and support capacity) required to carry out projects.
The aim is to increase the project flow in an organization. Applying the first three of the five TOC approaches, the system limits for all projects and the resources are determined. Finally, projects planned and managed to ensure that resources are ready when necessary chain tasks need to begin and that all other essential resources of the chain subordinated.
EVM (Earned Value Management)
EVM covers project management with techniques to improve project tracking. It shows the progress of the project towards completion in terms of labor and value (cost). Earned Schedule is an extension of EVM theory and practice.
Iterative and Incremental Project Management
Critical project management studies have found that incremental approaches are inappropriate for large and multi-company projects with vague, ambiguous, or rapidly changing requirements or projects with high risk, dependency, and rapidity on developing technologies. The uncertainty explains some of these as the planning carried out in the initial phase of the project suffers from a high uncertainty level. This is particularly true because a new or innovative product often implemented in software development.
This complexity best tackled with a more exploratory or iterative and incremental approach. Several iterative and incremental project management models have been developed, including agile project management, dynamic system development, extreme project management, and Innovation Engineering.
Lean Project Management
Lean Project Management uses Lean Manufacturing principles to deliver value with less waste and time.
What are the Commonly Used Methods in Project Management?
Six different categories can defined within the various methods of carrying out a project. These categories are the traditional sequential methodology PMI / PMBOK; Agile; Change management; based on the process; and other methods.
1. The Traditional Sequential Methodology
Traditional methods based on successive phases in which one step must complete before moving on to the next. This leads to documents that can use to verify the correct development and completion of each stage. This type of action has the advantage that all managers and their superiors can control each step. However, this makes the projects very “static.” So if you need to change something within the project, you have to go back to the beginning and almost start over. This category’s best-known methods are Waterfall, Critical Path Method (CPM), and Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM).
2. PMI / PMBOK
This category made up of the methodology established by the Project Management Institute. However, many project managers deny that it is a methodology but rather a set of guidelines and conventions for project management.
3. Agile
The Agile category is so named because it is composed of the same name’s methodology, and other methods have emerged from it: Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), and Adaptive Project Framework (APF). In the Agile Manifesto, some elements placed above others:
- Workers and interactions with processes and tools.
- Functional software for general documentation.
- A collaboration with the customer in negotiating a contract.
- The ability to respond to the ability to follow a set plan.
4. Change Management
Some methods deal with project management but focus on managing change, particularly risk planning and controlling changes as they occur. The best-known methods are chain-of-events methodology, the basic idea of which is that there are potential risks that are often beyond the scope of the project; and Extreme Project Management, the opposite of Waterfall, as it allows you to manage massive changes and get closer to project completion.
5. Process-Based Methods
In this category, the methods geared towards business process management (BPM) in which each technique focuses the work as a series of processes. The procedures in this category are Lean Manufacturing (with an emphasis on simplifying and reducing waste); Six Sigma (based on statistics to improve the quality of a process by measuring the errors or errors present and reducing them to a value close to zero); Lean Six Sigma (combines the minimalist approach of Lean – “no waste” and quality improvement Six Sigma “zero defects”); y Process-based project management o Process-based project management (aligns all project goals with the mission and corporate values of a company).
6. Other Methods
This category contains methods that are important but do not fit into the previous classes. These methods are PRINCE2 and PRISM. The first, PRINCE2 (Projects in Controlled Environments or Projects in Controlled Environments), manages projects and has a product-by-product approach to planning. The PRISM methodology (Projects Integrating Sustainable Methods or Projects Integrating Sustainable Methods in Spanish) aims to address change by incorporating environmental sustainability into their processes.
Project Management and Project Management Systems
Project control, known as cost engineering, should set up as a separate function in project management. Implements the review and power process while working on a project to strengthen the defined performance and formal goals.
The tasks of project management are also:
- The creation of an infrastructure for the provision of adequate information and its updating.
- Establishing a way of communicating differences in project parameters.
- Develop an intranet-based project information technology or definition of a KPI system (Key Performance Indicator).
- Analysis of deviations and preparation of proposals for possible project regulations.
- Definition of methods to achieve an appropriate project structure, organization of the project workflow, control, and project management.
- Creation of transparency between project parameters.
The fulfillment and implementation of these tasks can achieved by applying specific methods and instruments of project control.
The following project control methods can use:
- Investment analysis
- Cost-benefit analysis
- Value-benefit analysis
- Expert surveys
- Simulation calculations
- Risk profile analysis
- Surcharge calculations
- Milestone trend analysis
- Cost trend analysis
- Comparison of target
Project control is the component of a project that allows you to keep trail, time, and budget. Project governance starts early in the project with planning and ends at the end of the project with post-implementation review, with full participation in every step of the process. Projects can reviewed while the project is running.
Formal assessments, generally based on risk or compliance and management, will determine the review objectives. An audit can include a comparison of the approved project management processes with the project’s actual management. Each project needs to assessed to determine the level of control required: too much power takes too long, too little control is too risky. If project control incorrectly implemented, the company’s costs in terms of errors and corrections must clarify.
Risk, quality, cost, communication, time, change, procurement, and personnel control systems are required. Besides, auditors should consider how important the projects are to financial statements, how dependent the stakeholders are on controls, and how many rules are in place. Also, auditors need to review the progress process and procedures to see how they implemented. The development process and the quality of the end product can also assessed if required or requested. A company may want the accounting firm to be involved throughout the process to identify problems earlier to more easily resolved. An auditor can act as a control advisor within the development team or as an independent auditor during an audit.
Companies sometimes use formal systems development processes. These help ensure that strategies developed successfully. A formal process is most effective at creating robust controls.
An excellent standard system development plan describes:
- A strategy to align development with the overall goals of the organization.
- Standards for new systems.
- Project management guidelines for times and budgets.
- Procedures that describe the process.
- Assess the quality of change.
Project Management Complexity
Complexity and nature play an essential role in the field of project management. Despite multiple debates on the subject, studies suggest a lack of definition and an adequate understanding of complexity in managing complex projects. Since project complexity and performance closely related, defining and measuring project complexity for effective project management is crucial.
By applying the discovery to measuring the complexity of the work described in Requirements Organization and Layered Systems Theory, Dr. Elliott Jaques projects and project work based on criteria such as the period of discretion and the complexity of the project result.
- Level 1 project: Improve the direct result of an activity (quantity, quality, time) within a business process with an expected completion time of up to 3 months.
- Tier 2 Project – Develop and improve compliance with a business process with an expected completion time of 3 months to 1 year.
- Level 3 project: Develop, change, and improve a business process with an expected completion time of 1 to 2 years.
- And Level 4 Project – develop, modify, and improve a working system with an expected completion time of 2-5 years.
- Level 5 Project – develop, modify, and expand a group of operational systems/business functions with an expected completion time of 5-10 years.
- Level 6 project: Develop, change, and improve a company’s unique value chain with an expected completion time of 10 to 20 years.
- And Level 7 project: Development, change, and improvement of a company’s value chains with an expected completion time of 20 to 50 years.
The benefit of measuring the complexity of the project is to improve the viability of project staff by:
- Adjust the level of complexity of a project to the sufficient target completion time of a project.
- Also, adjust the complexity of a project to the project manager’s level of knowledge.
- Adjust the level of complexity of the project task to the respective skills of the project members.
Project Manager
A project manager is a specialist in the field of project management. So project managers are responsible for the staff on a project. People are essential to any successful project. Also, a project cannot be useful without the correct people in the right place and at the right time. Hence, project managers can be responsible for planning, executing, controlling, and completing projects typically related to the construction, engineering, architecture, computing, and telecommunications industries. Many other areas in manufacturing engineering, construction engineering, and heavy industry have project managers.
A project manager needs to know the order of the project’s execution to plan it correctly and the time it takes to complete every task within the project. Besides, a project manager is a person who is responsible for achieving the defined project goals on behalf of the customer. Furthermore, project managers usually have several years of experience in their field.
A project manager needs to know the project inside out while overseeing the staff along with the project. Typically, on most construction, engineering, architectural and industrial projects, a project manager has another manager by his side who is generally responsible for the task’s day-to-day execution.
A complete project manager, a term Dr. Robert J. Graham first shaped in his simulation and later extended by Randall L. Englund and Alfonso Bucero, a full project manager as a person who holds multiple disciplines such as leadership, influence, negotiation, politics, change and conflict management, and humor. These are the soft skills that project managers can use to work more effectively and achieve consistent and optimized results.
Project Management System Costs
The project management system usually located as a module within the ERP or even a specialized independent module. So a separate project management system can be integrated into the ERP software and automatically compares the project estimate with the ERP data.
The costs depend on several factors: the licenses, the hosting, the number of functions, the provider, and they are even distributed differently depending on whether they are bought or “rented” (with the software as a service model, SaaS). Also, another factor that affects the price of software is the size of the company and its specific characteristics. Moreover, while negotiating with the provider, it is essential to draw up a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to determine the terms, prices, and duration set and what provider services need to pay separately.
The company also needs to consider the number of licenses and the number of full and limited users it will have, and how to achieve each user’s authorization.
An important decision for the company is whether the solution will be hosted locally, in the cloud, or hybrid. So some companies have sensitive data and feel more secure if they store their data locally. However, this means a higher initial effort than the SaaS type. The cloud also offers security. But, some companies have doubts due to the uncertainty caused by losing control of their data or, for example, need to ensure that their provider complies with all legal aspects.
The functions also take up a good portion of the implantation cost of this system. So to keep costs down, you need to consider what features you need. For example, a company may need a quality management tool, but the system does not need to be available in multiple languages or currencies.
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