Project management
Project management is the process of supervising the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time and budget. The secondary challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet predefined objectives.
The objective of project management is to produce a complete project which complies with the client's objectives. In many cases, the objective of project management is also to shape or reform the client's brief to feasibly address the client's objectives. Once the client's objectives are established, they should influence all decisions made by other people involved in the project– for example, project managers, designers, contractors and subcontractors. Ill-defined or too tightly prescribed project management objectives are detrimental to the decision-making process.
A project is a temporary and unique endeavor designed to produce a product, service or result with a defined beginning and end undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value. The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast with business as usual, which are repetitive, permanent or semi-permanent functional activities to produce products or services. In practice, the management of such distinct production approaches requires the development of distinct technical skills and management strategies.
History
Prior to the year 1900, civil engineering projects were generally managed by creative architects, engineers, and master builders themselves, for example, Vitruvius, Christopher Wren, Thomas Telford, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In the 1950s, organizations started to apply project-management tools and techniques more systematically to complex engineering projects.As a discipline, project management developed from several fields of application including civil construction, engineering, and heavy defense activity. Two forefathers of project management are Henry Gantt, called the father of planning and control techniques, who is famous for his use of the Gantt chart as a project management tool ; and Henri Fayol for his creation of the five management functions that form the foundation of the body of knowledge associated with project and program management. Both Gantt and Fayol were students of Frederick Winslow Taylor's theories of scientific management. His work is the forerunner to modern project management tools including work breakdown structure and resource allocation.
The 1950s marked the beginning of the modern project management era, where core engineering fields came together to work as one. Project management became recognized as a distinct discipline arising from the management discipline with the engineering model. In the United States, prior to the 1950s, projects were managed on an ad-hoc basis, using mostly Gantt charts and informal techniques and tools. At that time, two mathematical project-scheduling models were developed. The critical path method was developed as a joint venture between DuPont Corporation and Remington Rand Corporation for managing plant maintenance projects. The program evaluation and review technique, was developed by the U.S. Navy Special Projects Office in conjunction with the Lockheed Corporation and Booz Allen Hamilton as part of the Polaris missile submarine program.
PERT and CPM are very similar in their approach but still present some differences. CPM is used for projects that assume deterministic activity times; the times at which each activity will be carried out are known. PERT, on the other hand, allows for stochastic activity times; the times at which each activity will be carried out are uncertain or varied. Because of this core difference, CPM and PERT are used in different contexts. These mathematical techniques quickly spread into many private enterprises.
At the same time, as project-scheduling models were being developed, technology for project cost estimating, cost management and engineering economics was evolving, with pioneering work by Hans Lang and others. In 1956, the American Association of Cost Engineers was formed by early practitioners of project management and the associated specialties of planning and scheduling, cost estimating, and project control. AACE continued its pioneering work and in 2006, released the first integrated process for portfolio, program, and project management.
In 1969, the Project Management Institute was formed in the USA. PMI publishes the original version of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge in 1996 with William Duncan as its primary author, which describes project management practices that are common to "most projects, most of the time."
Types
Project management methods can be applied to any project. It is often tailored to a specific type of project based on project size, nature, industry or sector. For example, the construction industry, which focuses on the delivery of things like buildings, roads, and bridges, has developed its own specialized form of project management that it refers to as construction project management and in which project managers can become trained and certified. The information technology industry has also evolved to develop its own form of project management that is referred to as IT project management and which specializes in the delivery of technical assets and services that are required to pass through various lifecycle phases such as planning, design, development, testing, and deployment. Biotechnology project management focuses on the intricacies of biotechnology research and development. Localization project management includes application of many standard project management practices to translation works even though many consider this type of management to be a very different discipline. For example, project managers have a key role in improving the translation even when they do not speak the language of the translation, because they know the study objectives well to make informed decisions. Similarly, research study management can also apply a project manage approach. There is public project management that covers all public works by the government, which can be carried out by the government agencies or contracted out to contractors. Another classification of project management is based on the hard or soft type.Common among all the project management types is that they focus on three important goals: time, quality, and cost. Successful projects are completed on schedule, within budget, and according to previously agreed quality standards i.e. meeting the Iron Triangle or Triple Constraint in order for projects to be considered a success or failure.
For each type of project management, project managers develop and utilize repeatable templates that are specific to the industry they're dealing with. This allows project plans to become very thorough and highly repeatable, with the specific intent to increase quality, lower delivery costs, and lower time to deliver project results.
Approaches
A 2017 study suggested that the success of any project depends on how well four key aspects are aligned with the contextual dynamics affecting the project, these are referred to as the four P's:- Plan: The planning and forecasting activities.
- Process: The overall approach to all activities and project governance.
- People: Including dynamics of how they collaborate and communicate.
- Power: Lines of authority, decision-makers, organograms, policies for implementation and the like.
Regardless of the methodology employed, careful consideration must be given to the overall project objectives, timeline, and cost, as well as the roles and responsibilities of all participants and stakeholders.
Benefits realization management
Benefits realization management enhances normal project management techniques through a focus on outcomes of a project rather than products or outputs and then measuring the degree to which that is happening to keep a project on track. This can help to reduce the risk of a completed project being a failure by delivering agreed upon requirements i.e. project success but failing to deliver the benefits of those requirements i.e. product success. Note that good requirements management will ensure these benefits are captured as requirements of the project and their achievement monitored throughout the project.In addition, BRM practices aim to ensure the strategic alignment between project outcomes and business strategies. The effectiveness of these practices is supported by recent research evidencing BRM practices influencing project success from a strategic perspective across different countries and industries. These wider effects are called the strategic impact.
An example of delivering a project to requirements might be agreeing to deliver a computer system that will process staff data and manage payroll, holiday, and staff personnel records in shorter times with reduced errors. Under BRM, the agreement might be to achieve a specified reduction in staff hours and errors required to process and maintain staff data after the system installation when compared without the system.