Projects are different from operations in that they end when their objectives have been reached or the project has been terminated. Examples of Projects Projects can be large or small and involve one person or thousands of people. Their Web site lists winners since , and videos summarize the award-winning projects since Was project management used on these projects? Were the concepts of project management even understood? Can we connect modern and ancient project management?
You can find this and other videos on the companion Web site for this text at www. Project Attributes As you can see, projects come in all shapes and sizes. Every project should have a well-defined objective. A project has a definite beginning and a definite end. For a home house, like each person, is unique. Projects are often their new home. For example, there are many decisions that must be made in planning and building a new house.
Resources include people, hardware, approve before more detailed plans are developed. Most projects have many interested are needed to build a home. Because every project is unique, it is sometimes difficult The project sponsor usually provides the direction and funding for the project.
External factors also cause uncertainty, such as a supplier going out of business or a project team member needing unplanned time off. Uncertainty is one of the main reasons project management is so challenging, because uncertainty invokes risk.
Unlike the characters in the comic in Figure , you cannot try to trick people into thinking you are psychic when it comes to managing projects. You can, however, develop skills to help manage uncertainty and other challenges you will face. Figure Psychic slightly modified cartoon from www. Project managers work with the project sponsors, the project team, and the other people involved in a project to define, communicate, and meet project goals.
Project Constraints Every project is constrained in different ways. Some project managers focus on scope, time, and cost constraints. These limitations are sometimes referred to in project management as the triple constraint. To create a successful project, project managers must consider scope, time, and cost and balance these three often-competing goals. What unique product, service, or result does the customer or sponsor expect from the project?
What resources are needed? Other people focus on the quadruple constraint, which adds quality as a fourth constraint. What do we need to do to satisfy the customer? Figure shows these six constraints. The triple constraint goals—scope, time, and cost—often have a specific target at the beginning of the project. They might need to increase the budget to meet scope and time goals or decrease the scope to meet time and budget goals.
The other three constraints—quality, risk, and resources—affect the ability to meet scope, time, and cost goals. Projects by definition involve uncertainty and resources, and the customer defines quality.
No one can predict with one hundred percent accuracy what risks might occur on a project. Resources people working on the house might produce different results, and material resources may vary as well. Customers cannot define their quality expectations in detail for a project on day one.
These three constraints often affect each other as well as the scope, time, and cost goals of a project. Typical project constraints For example, the couple may have picked out a certain type of flooring for most of their home early in the design process, but that supplier may have run out of stock, forcing them to choose a different flooring to meet the schedule goal.
This issue may affect the cost of the project. Projects rarely finish according to the discrete scope, time, and cost goals originally planned.
These goals allow for inevitable changes due to risk, resources, and quality considerations. Experienced project managers know that you must decide which constraints are most important on each particular project. You might have to accept more risk and lower quality expectations. If communications is most important, you must focus on that. If there are set procurement goals or constraints, that knowledge might be key to the project.
The project manager should be communicating with the sponsor throughout the project to make sure the project meets his or her expectations. Copyright Schwalbe Publishing Chapter 1 — Introduction 8 How can you avoid the problems that occur when you meet scope, time, and cost goals, but lose sight of customer satisfaction?
The answer is good project management, which includes more than meeting project constraints. Figure illustrates a framework to help you understand project management. Key elements of this framework include the project stakeholders, project management process groups, knowledge areas, tools and techniques, project success, and the contribution of a portfolio of projects to the success of the entire enterprise. Each of these elements of project management is discussed in more detail in the following sections.
Project management framework Project Stakeholders Stakeholders are the people involved in or affected by project activities and include the project sponsor, project team, support staff, customers, users, suppliers, and even opponents to the project. These stakeholders often have very different needs and expectations. For example, there are several stakeholders involved in a home construction project. They would be the people paying for the house and could be on a very tight budget, so they would expect the contractor to provide accurate estimates of the costs involved in building the house.
They would also need a realistic idea of when they could move in and what type of home they could afford given their budget constraints. The new homeowners would have to make important decisions to keep the costs of the house within their budget. Can they afford to finish the basement right away? These stakeholders would need to know exactly what work they must do and when they need to do it. They would need to know if the required materials and equipment will be at the construction site or if they are expected to provide the materials and equipment.
Their work would need to be coordinated since there are many interrelated factors involved. The employers of the homeowners might expect their employees to complete their work but allow some flexibility so they can visit the building site or take phone calls related to building the house.
The suppliers would provide the wood, the contractor, suppliers, and other stakeholders. They might suggest certain guidelines for the minimum value of the homes for providing adequate property taxes. The city may also have regulations to ensure the safety of the public in the area of the construction site.
In this example, there might be a concerned with ensuring that everything meets specific codes and regulations. She might interrupt the workers to voice her complaints or even file a formal complaint. Alternatively, the neighborhood might have association rules concerning new home design and construction. If the homeowners did not follow these rules, they might have to halt construction due to legal issues.
As you can see from this example, there are many different stakeholders on projects, and they all have different interests. Successful project managers develop good relationships with project stakeholders to understand and meet their needs and expectations. Copyright Schwalbe Publishing Chapter 1 — Introduction 10 Project Management Process Groups and Knowledge Areas The five project management process groups include initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing activities.
Chapter 3 provides more information on the process groups and how they relate to the ten project management knowledge areas. Project management knowledge areas describe the key competencies that project managers must develop. The center of Figure shows the ten knowledge areas of project management.
Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all. Project management tools and techniques assist project managers and their teams in carrying out work in all ten knowledge areas. For example, some popular time-management tools and techniques include Gantt charts, project network diagrams, and critical path analysis.
Figure on page 12 lists some commonly used tools and techniques by knowledge area. Copyright Schwalbe Publishing Chapter 1 — Introduction 11 You will learn more about these and other tools and techniques throughout this text.
A survey of project and program managers was conducted to rate several project management tools. Respondents were asked to rate tools on a scale of 1—5 low to high based on the extent of their use and the potential of the tools to help improve project success. These super tools included software for task scheduling such as project management software , scope statements, requirements analyses, and lessons-learned reports.
Tools that were already extensively used and have been found to improve project performance included progress reports, kick-off meetings, Gantt charts, and change requests. These super tools are bolded in Figure It is crucial for project managers and their team members to determine which tools will be most useful for their particular projects. It is easier to manage smaller projects, and researchers suggest that organizations strive to break large projects into a sequence of smaller ones in a process they call optimization.
The increase in success is a result of several factors, including looking at the entire project environment of processes, methods, skills, costs, tools, decisions, optimization, internal and external influences, and team chemistry. Advances in the understanding of the skills needed to be a good executive sponsor have proved to be very valuable for increasing success rates.
Increases in project management as a profession and trained project management professionals can be tied directly to increases in success rates. Some projects, such as those involving new technologies, have a higher degree of uncertainty, so it is more difficult to meet their scope, time, and cost goals. Project management is a very broad, often complex discipline.
What works on one project may not work on another, so it is essential for project managers to continue to develop their knowledge and skills in managing projects. It is also important to learn from the mistakes and successes of others. There are several ways to define project success. Even if the project met initial scope, used this definition of success. Perhaps the project manager never returned their calls and was rude to them or made important decisions without their approval.
Perhaps the quality of some of the construction or materials was not acceptable. If the customers were not happy about important aspects of the project, it would be deemed a failure based on this criterion. If the couple liked their new home and neighborhood after they lived there for a while, even if it cost more or took longer to build or the project manager was rude to them, it would be a successful project based on this criterion.
As another example, suppose the owners really wanted to keep the house for just a few years and then sell it for a good return. If that happened, the couple would deem the project a success, regardless of other factors involved. Note that for many projects done to meet ROI objectives, financial success cannot be determined until some time after the project is completed.
Project managers play a vital role in helping projects succeed. Project managers work with the project sponsors, the project team, and the other stakeholders involved in a project to meet project goals. They also work with the sponsor to define success for that particular project. The success criteria should help you to develop key performance indicators KPIs needed to track project progress.
It is important to document this information in enough detail to eliminate ambiguity. Projects make up a significant portion of work in most business organizations or enterprises, and successfully managing those projects is crucial to enterprise success. Two important concepts that help projects meet enterprise goals are the use of programs and project portfolio management.
Each home, apartment building, and office building is a separate project for a specific sponsor, but each type of building is part of a program. There would be several benefits to managing these projects under one program. Projects under discounts.
Example programs A program manager provides leadership and direction for the project managers heading the projects within the program. Program managers also coordinate the efforts of project teams, functional groups, suppliers, and operations staff supporting the projects to ensure that project products and processes are implemented to maximize benefits.
Program managers are responsible for more than the delivery of project results; they are change agents responsible for the success of products and processes produced by those projects.
Program managers often have review meetings with all their project managers to share important information and coordinate important aspects of each project. Effective program managers recognize that managing a program is much more complex than managing a single project. In addition to skills required for project managers, program managers must also possess strong business knowledge, leadership capability, and communication skills. Project Portfolio Management A portfolio is a collection of projects and programs that are grouped together to facilitate effective management to meet strategic business objectives.
Project managers support an emerging business strategy of project portfolio management also called just portfolio management , in which organizations group and manage projects and programs as a portfolio of investments. They create portfolios based on meeting specific organizational goals, such as maximizing the value of the portfolio or making effective use of limited resources.
Portfolio managers help their organizations make wise investment decisions by helping to select and analyze projects from a strategic perspective. Portfolio managers may or may not have previous experience as project or program managers. It is most important that they have strong financial and analytical skills and understand how projects and programs can contribute to meeting strategic goals.
The main distinction between project or program management and portfolio management is a focus on meeting tactical versus strategic goals. Tactical goals are generally more specific and short-term than strategic goals, which emphasize long-term goals for an organization.
Individual projects and programs often address tactical goals, whereas portfolio management addresses strategic goals. For example: large projects, decreasing costs on supplies, and improving skill levels of key workers. These might be the main categories for their portfolio of projects. Organizations group projects into portfolios to help them make better investment decisions, such as increasing, decreasing, discontinuing, or changing specific projects or programs based on their financial performance, risks, resource utilization, and similar factors that affect business value.
If a construction firm has much higher profit margins on apartment buildings than single-family homes, for example, it might choose to pursue more apartment building projects. The firm might also create a new project to investigate ways to increase profits for single-family home projects. On the other hand, if the company has too many projects focused on financial performance and not enough focused on improving its work force, the portfolio manager might suggest initiating more projects to support that strategic goal.
By grouping projects into portfolios, organizations can better tie their projects to meeting strategic goals. For example, if the construction firm needs more people with experience in building apartment buildings, they can make necessary adjustments by hiring or training current workers in the necessary skills.
Good program and portfolio managers often need additional skills and experience in managing projects and understanding organizational strategies.
This section describes some of the skills that help you manage projects, and you will learn many more throughout this text. If you are serious about considering a career in project management, you should consider becoming a certified Project Management Professional. You should also be familiar with some of the project management software products available on the market today.
An earlier section of this chapter introduced the ten project management knowledge areas, as well as some tools and techniques that project managers use. The application area refers to the application to which project management is applied.
For example, a project manager responsible for building houses or apartment buildings should understand the construction industry, including standards and regulations important to that industry and those types of construction projects. A project manager leading a large software development project must know a lot about that application area. A project manager in education, entertainment, the government, and other fields must understand those application areas. The project environment differs from organization to organization and project to project, but there are some skills that will help in most project environments.
These skills include understanding change, and understanding how organizations work within their social, political, and physical environments. Project managers must be comfortable leading and handling change, since most projects introduce changes in organizations and involve changes within the projects themselves.
Project managers need to understand the organizations they work in and how products are developed and services are provided.
For example, it takes different skills and behavior to manage a project for a Fortune company in the United States than it does to manage a government project for a new business in Poland or India. It also takes different skills and behaviors to manage a project in the construction industry from one in the entertainment or pharmaceutical industry. Project managers should also possess general business knowledge and skills.
They should understand important topics related to financial management, accounting, procurement, sales, marketing, contracts, manufacturing, distribution, logistics, the supply chain, strategic planning, tactical planning, operations management, organizational structures and behavior, personnel administration, compensation, benefits, career paths, and health and safety practices.
On some projects, it will be critical for project managers to have substantial experience in one or several of these general business areas. On other projects, project managers can delegate detailed responsibility for some of these areas to a team member, support staff, or even a supplier.
Even so, the project managers must be intelligent and experienced enough to know which of these areas are most important and who is qualified to do the work. Achieving high performance on projects requires human relations skills, also known as soft skills. Some of these soft skills include effective communication, influencing the organization to get things done, leadership, motivation, negotiation, conflict management, and problem solving. Project managers must lead their project teams by providing vision, delegating work, creating an energetic and positive environment, and setting an example of appropriate and effective behavior.
They need to be able to motivate different types of people and develop esprit de corps within the project team and with other project stakeholders. Each week, Trump fired one contestant and told everyone bluntly why they were fired. No matter how smart you are the first insight into improving project management skills, as follows: candidate fired had degrees in medicine and business , you must be professional in how you deal with people and display some leadership potential.
The second person and first project manager fired, Jason, decided not to take the time to meet with project sponsors, causing his team to fail. Restaurants often have the highest profit margins on certain items, like but his lack of trust in and respect for and from his teammates led to his downfall. When Trump fired Kristi over two other candidates, he explained his easily won the competition that week. Erika had a difficult time leading her team in in the boardroom when her team lost.
Troy led his team in trying to make the most money selling rickshaw rides using traditional methods. The other team brainstormed ideas and decided to sell advertising space on the rickshaws, which was a huge success.
Nick and Amy were teamed against Bill, Troy, and Kwame to rent out a party room for the highest price. They got lucky when one potential client came back at the last minute and agreed to a much higher than normal price. Copyright Schwalbe Publishing Chapter 1 — Introduction 19 The Apprentice show continues to run in with celebrities as contestants and money donated to charity.
An important lesson from that season was that the key stakeholder, Donald Trump, believed it was more important to focus on how much money the winner raised than what his teammates thought of him. Trump modified the criteria for winning the following year, when comedian Joan Rivers beat poker player Annie Duke.
Project managers must also earn respect from their teams and sponsors, as Joan did. Importance of Leadership Skills In a popular study, one hundred project managers listed the characteristics they believed were critical for effective project management and the characteristics that made project managers ineffective. Figure lists the results.
The study found that effective project managers provide leadership by example, are visionary, technically competent, decisive, good communicators, and good motivators. They also stand up to top management when necessary, support team members, and encourage new ideas. The study also found that respondents believed positive leadership contributes the most to project success.
The most important characteristics and behaviors of positive leaders include being a team builder and communicator, having high self- esteem, focusing on results, demonstrating trust and respect, and setting goals. Most significant characteristics of effective and ineffective project managers Leadership and management are terms often used interchangeably, although there are differences. Generally, a leader focuses on long-term goals and big-picture objectives, while inspiring people to reach those goals.
A manager often deals with the day-to-day details of meeting specific goals. Good project managers know that people make or break projects, so they must set a good example to lead their team to success.
They are aware of the greater needs of their stakeholders and organizations, so they are visionary in guiding their current projects and in suggesting future ones.
In another study, experts were asked to identify the ten most important skills and competencies for effective project managers. Figure shows the results. People skills 6. Verbal communication 2. Leadership 7. Strong at building teams 3. Listening 8. Integrity, ethical behavior, consistent 9.
Strong at building trust To be the most effective, project managers require a changing mix of skills and competencies depending on the project being delivered. As mentioned earlier, program managers need the same skills as project managers. They often rely on their past experience as project managers, strong business knowledge, leadership capability, and communication skills to handle the responsibility of overseeing the multiple projects that make up their programs.
It is most important that portfolio managers have strong financial and analytical skills and understand how projects and programs can contribute to meeting strategic goals.
Companies that excel in project, program, and portfolio management grow project leaders, emphasizing development of business and communication skills. Instead of thinking of leaders and managers as specific people, it is better to think of people as having leadership skills, such as being visionary and inspiring, and management skills, such as being organized and effective.
Therefore, the best project, program, and portfolio managers have leadership and management characteristics; they are visionary yet focused on the bottom line. Above all else, they focus on achieving positive results! Be able to demonstrate how each project you undertake fits your business strategy, and screen out unwanted projects as soon as possible.
Ignoring stakeholders often leads to project failure. Be sure to engage stakeholders at all stages of a project, and encourage teamwork and commitment at all times. Use leadership and open communications to make things happen. PMI provides certification as a Project Management Professional PMP —someone who has documented sufficient project experience, agreed to follow the PMI code of professional conduct, and demonstrated knowledge of the field of project management by passing a comprehensive examination.
The number of people earning PMP certification continues to increase. In , there were about 1, certified project management professionals. By the end of December, there were , active certified project management professionals. Figure shows the rapid growth in the number of people earning project management professional certification from through Although most PMPs are in the U. Project management certification is also enabling professionals throughout the world to share a common base of knowledge.
Sharing a common base of knowledge is important because it helps advance the theory and practice of project management. Many colleges, universities, and companies around the world now offer courses related to various aspects of project management. Internet Archive's 25th Anniversary Logo. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up Log in. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book.
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