Fundamentals of Project Management by James P. Lewis AMACOM Books ISBN: 0814478352 Pub Date: 01/01/95 Search this book: Search Tips Advanced Search Preface: Successful Project Management Chapter 1—An Overview of Project Management Chapter 2—A General Approach to Project Planning Chapter 3—Developing the Project Mission, Goals, and Objectives Chapter 4—Using the Work Breakdown Structure to Plan a Project Chapter 5—Scheduling Project Work Chapter 6—Scheduling Computations Chapter 7—Project Control and Evaluation Chapter 8—Project Control Using Earned Value Analysis Chapter 9—Managing the Project Team Chapter 10—How to Make Project Management Work in Your Company References Appendix A Products | Contact Us | About Us | Privacy | Ad Info | Home Use of this site is subject to certain Terms & Conditions, Copyright © 1996-2000 EarthWeb Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of EarthWeb is prohibited. Read EarthWeb's privacy statement. Fundamentals of Project Management by James P. Lewis AMACOM Books ISBN: 0814478352 Pub Date: 01/01/95 Search this book: Search Tips Advanced Search Table of Contents Preface: Successful Project Management Although managing projects has been going on for thousands of years, the practice has only recently been recognized as a discipline in its own right. Suddenly master’s-level degree programs are springing up at schools throughout the world, and certificate programs are being offered as well. Not only that, but some organizations have begun to ask their contractors to provide only project managers who have been certified as professionals by the Project Management Institute, the professional society for practitioners. In today’s fast-paced world, organizations that practice sound project management methods have a competitive advantage over those who fly by the seat of the pants. Why? Because competition is rapidly becoming time-based as well as cost-based. That is, if you can get a product or service to market faster than anyone else, you have an edge on your competition. Further, if you can control the costs of your work better than others, you can sell your products or services at lower margins; “sloppy” management requires that goods be sold at higher margins in order to make sure the business is profitable. What if you aren’t dealing in products or services? The same principle applies. If you are nonprofit or a government agency, you face competition from others who might be able to do your work more efficiently (and at lower cost). In short, we must all learn to work smarter, not harder, in order to survive into the twenty-first century. Managing projects better is one way to achieve that result. This book gives you a fast-track approach to managing your own projects. You will learn the essential steps in setting up project plans, scheduling your work, and monitoring progress/exercising control to achieve desired project results. The approach outlined in this book is based on what is considered best practice by experts in the field. If you follow the methods presented here, you will increase the probability that you can meet critical performance, cost, and schedule targets. Admittedly, there is a lot more to project management than can be presented in this short book, but if you learn the essence of the tools, you can go on from there to increase your skill. Table of Contents Products | Contact Us | About Us | Privacy | Ad Info | Home Use of this site is subject to certain Terms & Conditions, Copyright © 1996-2000 EarthWeb Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of EarthWeb is prohibited. Read EarthWeb's privacy statement. Fundamentals of Project Management by James P. Lewis AMACOM Books ISBN: 0814478352 Pub Date: 01/01/95 Search this book: Search Tips Advanced Search Previous Table of Contents Next Chapter 1 An Overview of Project Management A project is a job that is done once. WHAT IS A PROJECT? What is the difference between project management and managing in general? Aren’t they really the same? The answer, of course, is no. A project is done only once, whereas most jobs are ongoing or repetitive, and managing one-time jobs is different from managing ongoing ones. For one thing, the people who work on a project may be reassigned to other jobs once the project is completed, so the team is temporary. Often the team members do not report to the project manager on a regular basis, meaning that the project manager has no direct authority over them, a situation that presents its own set of problems. Quality expert Dr. J. M. Juran defines a project as a problem scheduled for solution. This definition forces us to recognize that projects are aimed at solving problems and that failure to define the problem properly is what sometimes gets us into trouble. Interestingly, when you tell project team members that you want to begin planning a project by writing a problem statement, they tend to say, “We don’t need to do that. We all know what the problem is.” In my younger days, I was sometimes intimidated by that response. Not any more. My rejoinder is, “If that is true, it will only take five minutes, so let’s do it.” I have never yet gotten a group to write a problem statement in five minutes, because seldom do people really understand or agree on what the problem is. This failure to achieve a consensus definition of the problem leads to developing the right solution to the wrong problem or to a paralyzing bickering about goals. “A project is a problem scheduled for solution.” —J. M. JURAN To help a team at this point, I offer a definition of a problem. A desired objective is not a problem by itself. The key to a problem is that there is an obstacle that prevents you from closing the gap (achieving your objective) easily. Problem solving consists of finding ways of overcoming or getting around obstacles. A problem is a gap between where you are and where you want to be, with an obstacle that prevents easy movement to close the gap. To help flesh out the definition, answer the following questions: • What is the desired end state or outcome? • What prevents or makes achieving it difficult? • How will you know when you have achieved the desired result? WHAT IS PROJECT MANAGEMENT? Project management is the planning, scheduling, and controlling of project activities to meet project objectives. The major objectives that must be met include performance, cost, and time goals, while at the same time you control or maintain the scope of the project at the correct level. Ideally, the scope of a project should remain constant throughout the life of the job. Naturally, this seldom happens. In most cases the magnitude (scope) of the work increases as a result of overlooked details, unforeseen problems, or an inadequately defined problem. The most common reason for scope changes is that something is forgotten. project management: The planning, scheduling, and controlling of project activities to meet project objectives. Scope generally increases. In fact, about the only time project scope decreases is when the budget is cut and some of the originally planned work is put on hold. The problem with scope changes is that they tend to be small and incremental; if a number of them occur, the project budget or schedule may suffer. This is a fairly common cause of project failures. A project manager should advise stakeholders (especially customers) of the impact on the project of a change in scope so that decisions can be made about how to handle such changes. If a customer is told that a requested change will result in a 20% increase in project costs, the customer may opt to defer the change. If the impact is not made clear, the customer may ask for the change, thinking the costs will not increase significantly, and be very dismayed at the end of the job to learn of the true impact. A project manager has a responsibility to keep stakeholders informed about the impact of scope changes on the project, protecting them from surprises at the end of the job and protecting the project manager from being evaluated on original targets rather than on revised ones. performance: The quality of the work being done. cost: The cost of project work, directly related to the human and physical resources applied. time: The schedule that must be met. scope: The magnitude of the work to be performed. The four project objectives are related to each other by the following equation: What the equation says is that cost is a function ( f ) of performance (P), time (T), and scope (S). As P and S increase, cost generally increases. The relationship between time and cost, however, is not linear. As a rule, cost increases as the time to do the project decreases below a certain optimum time. That is, there exists a project duration that results in the best performance of all resources. If the duration is shortened, it is often necessary to pay premium labor rates as a consequence. Further, worker errors often increase, resulting in costs for corrections, and productivity often declines. Studies have shown that if a knowledge worker spends twelve hours of overtime on a job, the actual increase in output is equivalent to that normally obtained in two hours of regular work. In addition, if project work extends beyond an optimum time, costs increase because people are not working efficiently. This relationship is shown in Figure 1-1. Some senior managers believe that if enough people are thrown at a project, it can be completed in whatever time is desired. This is simply not true, but the idea is the cause of many project fiascos. Figure 1-1 Cost time curve. THE HUMAN SIDE OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT Many factors affect the success of a project. How well was it planned? Was the problem well defined? Was the deadline realistic? Experts agree that there are about ten principal causes of project failure. But what about factors leading to success? One of the key ingredients is having the right people on the job and managing them appropriately. Note the two elements: having the right people and managing them appropriately. Both conditions are frequently violated. Previous Table of Contents Next Products | Contact Us | About Us | Privacy | Ad Info | Home Use of this site is subject to certain Terms & Conditions, Copyright © 1996-2000 EarthWeb Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of EarthWeb is prohibited. Read EarthWeb's privacy statement. Fundamentals of Project Management by James P. Lewis AMACOM Books ISBN: 0814478352 Pub Date: 01/01/95 Search this book: Search Tips Advanced Search Previous Table of Contents Next The Right People In many organizations, people are assigned to projects because they are available, not because they are necessarily the right choice for the project. Any personnel manager can tell you that staffing should always be done by first analyzing the requirements of the job, then recruiting the individual who best meets those requirements. However, projects usually operate in a shared-resource environment. That is, the same employees are used on all projects; when it comes time to start a job, whoever is available is assigned. In fact, pulling a person off one project and assigning her to a new one because she is right for the new job will disrupt the first project—which certainly is not desirable. Nevertheless, assigning the wrong person to a project just because she is available makes even less sense. For one thing, it creates the illusion that the project is properly staffed simply because a “body” is in the position. Resource allocation is probably the single most important concern of project managers. It is also the aspect that I believe is usually handled worst. Organizations operate today from a lean-and-mean perspective; yet they try to do as much work as they did before they downsized, rightsized, or whatever euphemism is applied to signify that they are now woefully understaffed to do the necessary work. To address this issue fully would take a book twice the size of this one. Until the problem is recognized and addressed, however, projects will continue to go over budget, miss deadlines, and suffer from poor quality (performance). Furthermore, the scheduling software that is available today to do resource leveling does not address the question of whether the right person is assigned to the job. This is the project manager’s responsibility. The Right Type of Management The second component of successful project management is managing people appropriately. Unfortunately, individuals often are chosen to become project managers because they are good at their technical discipline but then are given no training in management. It seems to be a prevalent paradigm in the United States that anyone who is good at a technical job can manage. It makes me wonder why we have MBA programs at all. I personally believe that this failure to train managers is one of the principle causes of business failures in the United States. The problem is especially common in project management. In fact, there seems to be an inverse correlation between technical performance and management performance. I find that technical people often make terrible managers, although this is by no means always true. Technical people are (usually) predominantly thing-oriented rather than people-oriented. They tend to be introverted, meaning that they are oriented toward their internal world of concepts and ideas, rather than toward the external world. So they often deal with people the same way they would deal with things, lamenting that people are not logical, rational, and subject to mathematical analysis. Some managers still subscribe to an authoritarian view that can be summarized as the KITA principle: If people don’t perform, you Kick them In The Anatomy (you know which part). Their view of people accords with the traditional Theory X outlook described by Douglas McGregor, which sees people as unmotivated (or motivated only by money), untrustworthy, and incapable of thinking and contributing independently; people are seen as members of a herd, requiring a lead cow to guide them. Such views tend to be self-confirming. The manager behaves as if people were no-goodniks, then finds that they seem to be exactly that. She never realizes that her management style itself has evoked the expected response in her employees. And because she believes that the employees will let her down, she never takes the risk of trusting them, which would have allowed her to find that they actually will perform quite well if given a chance. Because so much has been written about selecting a management style that is appropriate for a specific follower, I refer the interested reader to those sources and concentrate in this book on the tools of project management, injecting comments, as appropriate, about how people should be dealt with in certain specific situations. One valuable reference is Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard, The Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources. Previous Table of Contents Next Products | Contact Us | About Us | Privacy | Ad Info | Home Use of this site is subject to certain Terms & Conditions, Copyright © 1996-2000 EarthWeb Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of EarthWeb is prohibited. Read EarthWeb's privacy statement. Fundamentals of Project Management by James P. Lewis AMACOM Books ISBN: 0814478352 Pub Date: 01/01/95 Search this book: Search Tips Advanced Search Previous Table of Contents Next STEPS IN MANAGING A PROJECT The actual steps in managing a project are straightforward. Accomplishing them may not be. The model in Figure 1-2 illustrates the steps. Subsequent chapters of this book elaborate on how each step is accomplished. For now, here is a brief description of the actions involved. 1. Define the problem. Identify the problem to be solved by the project. It helps to visualize the desired end result. What will be different? What will you see, hear, taste, touch, or smell? (Use sensory evidence if things can’t be quantified.) What client need is being satisfied by the project? Figure 1-2 The steps in managing a project. 2. Develop solution options. How many different ways might you go about solving the problem? Brainstorm solution alternatives (you can do this alone or as a group). Of the available alternatives, which do you think will best solve the problem? Is it more or less costly than other suitable choices?