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 PROJECT MANAGEMENT ABSTRACT
The following
circumstances provide optimal scenarios for leveraging CANTONIA
consulting services:
 Challenges of Project Management
Project management is the discipline of organizing
and managing resources (e.g. people) in a way that the project is
completed within defined scope, quality, time and cost constraints. A
project is a temporary and one-time endeavor undertaken to create a
unique product or service, which brings about beneficial change or
added value. The management of these two systems is often very
different and requires varying technical skills and philosophy, hence
requiring the development of project managements.
The first challenge of project management is to make sure that a
project is delivered within defined constraints. The second, more
ambitious challenge is the optimized allocation and integration of
inputs needed to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully
defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials,
energy, space, provisions, communication, etc.) to meet the pre-defined
objectives.
Traditional Triad of Constraints
Like any human undertaking, projects need to be
performed and delivered under certain constraints. Traditionally, these
constraints have been listed as scope, time,
and cost.
These are also referred to as the Project Management Triangle, where
each side represents a constraint. One side of the triangle cannot be
changed without impacting the others. A further refinement of the
constraints separates product 'quality' or 'performance' from scope,
and turns quality into a fourth constraint.
The discipline of project management is about providing the tools and
techniques that enable the project team (not just the project manager)
to organize their work to meet these constraints.
Time (Schedule
Management)
For analytical purposes, the time required to produce a deliverable is
estimated using several techniques. One method is to identify tasks
needed to produce the deliverables documented in a work breakdown
structure or WBS. The work effort for each task is estimated and those
estimates are rolled up into the final deliverable estimate.
The tasks are also prioritized, dependencies between tasks are
identified, and this information is documented in a project schedule.
The dependencies between the tasks can affect the length of the overall
project (dependency constrained), as can the availability of resources
(resource constrained). Project Managers will often make a call to
double down to prevent a project from breaking deadlines in the final
stages of the implementation phase. Time is not considered a cost nor a
resource since the project manager cannot control the rate at which it
is expended. This makes it different from all other resources and cost
categories. It should be remembered that no effort expended will have
any higher quality than that of the effort- expenders.
Cost (Financial Management)
Cost to develop a project depends on several variables including
(chiefly): resource quantities, labor rates, material rates, risk
management (i.e.cost contingency), Earned value management, plant
(buildings, machines, etc.), equipment, cost escalation, indirect
costs, and profit.
Scope
Requirements specified for the end result. The overall definition of
what the project is supposed to accomplish, and a specific description
of what the end result should be or accomplish. A major component of
scope is the quality of the final product. The amount of time put into
individual tasks determines the overall quality of the project. Some
tasks may require a given amount of time to complete adequately, but
given more time could be completed exceptionally. Over the course of a
large project, quality can have a significant impact on time and cost
(or vice versa).
Risk Management
Project
Management tries to gain control over variables such as risk:
Risk
"Potential points of failure: Most negative risks (or potential
failures) can be overcome or resolved, given enough planning
capabilities, time, and resources. According to some definitions
(including PMBOK Third Edition) risk can also be categorized as
"positive--" meaning that there is a potential opportunity, e.g.,
complete the project faster than expected.
Customers (either internal or external project sponsors) and external
organizations (such as government agencies and regulators) can dictate
the extent of three variables: time, cost, and scope. The remaining
variable (risk) is managed by the project team, ideally based on solid
estimation and response planning techniques. Through a negotiation
process among project stakeholders, an agreement defines the final
objectives, in terms of time, cost, scope, and risk, usually in the
form of a charter or contract.
To properly control these variables a good project manager has a depth
of knowledge and experience in these four areas (time, cost, scope, and
risk), and in six other areas as well: integration, communication,
human resources, quality assurance, schedule development, and
procurement.
Project Management Artifacts
Most successful projects have one thing that is very
evident - they were adequately documented, with clear objectives and
deliverables.[citation needed] These documents are a mechanism to align
sponsors, clients, and project team's expectations.
1. Project Charter
2. Preliminary Scope Statement / Statement of work
3. Business case/Feasibility Study
4. Scope Statement / Terms of reference
5. Project management plan / Project Initiation Document
6. Work Breakdown Structure
7. Change Control Plan
8. Risk Management Plan
9. Risk Breakdown Structure
10. Communications Plan
11. Governance Model
12. Risk Register
13. Issue Log
14. Action Item List
15. Resource Management Plan
16. Project Schedule
17. Status Report
18. Responsibility assignment matrix
19. Database of lessons learned
20. Stakeholder Analysis
These documents are normally hosted on a shared resource (i.e.,
intranet web page) and are available for review by the project's
stakeholders (except for the Stakeholder Analysis, since this document
comprises personal information regarding certain stakeholders. Only the
Project Manager has access to this analysis). Changes or updates to
these documents are explicitly outlined in the project's configuration
management (or change control plan).
Contact us today
to find out how we can help your IT organization take control of the IT
Project Portfolio and individual projection execution.
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Methodologies &
Approaches
There are
several approaches that can be taken to managing project activities
including agile, interactive, incremental, and phased approaches.
Agile Project Management
Agile project management approaches (e.g. SCRUM) based on the principles of human
interaction management are founded on a process view of human
collaboration. In the
agile software development or flexible product development approach,
the project is seen as a series of relatively small tasks conceived and
executed as the situation demands in an adaptive manner, rather than as
a completely pre-planned process.
The Traditional Approach
A traditional phased approach identifies a sequence of steps to be
completed. In the traditional approach, we can distinguish 5 components
of a project (4 stages plus control) in the development of a project:
1. project initiation stage
2. project planning or design stage
3. project execution or production stage
4. project monitoring and control
5. project completion stage.
Not all the projects will visit every stage as projects can be
terminated before they reach completion. Some projects probably don't
have the planning and/or the monitoring. Some projects will go through
steps 2, 3 and 4 multiple times.
Rational Unified Process
1. Inception - Identify the initial scope of the project, a potential
architecture for the system, and obtain initial project funding and
stakeholder acceptance.
2. Elaboration - Prove the architecture of the system.
3. Construction - Build working software on a regular, incremental
basis which meets the highest-priority needs of project stakeholders.
4. Transition - Validate and deploy the system into the production
environment
Temporary organization sequencing concepts
1. Action-based entrepreneurship
2. Fragmentation for commitment-building
3. Planned isolation
4. Institutionalized termination
Critical Chain
Critical chain is the application of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to
projects. The goal is to increase the rate of throughput (or completion
rates) of projects in an organization. Applying the first three of the
five focusing steps of TOC, the system constraint for all projects is
identified as resources. To exploit the constraint, tasks on the
critical chain are given priority over all other activities. Finally,
projects are planned and managed to ensure that the critical chain
tasks are ready to start as soon as the needed resources are available,
subordinating all other resources to the critical chain.
Extreme Project Management
In critical studies of project management, it has been noted that
several of these fundamentally PERT-based models are not well suited
for the multi-project company environment of today. Most of them are
aimed at very large-scale, one-time, non-routine projects, and nowadays
all kinds of management are expressed in terms of projects. Using
complex models for "projects" (or rather "tasks") spanning a few weeks
has been proven to cause unnecessary costs and low maneuverability in
several cases. Instead, project management experts try to identify
different "lightweight" models, such as Extreme Programming for
software development and Scrum techniques. The generalization of
Extreme Programming to other kinds of projects is extreme project
management, which may be used in combination with the process modeling
and management principles of human interaction management.
Event Chain Methodology
Event chain methodology is the next advance beyond critical path method
and critical chain project management.
Event chain methodology is an uncertainty modeling and schedule network
analysis technique that is focused on identifying and managing events
and event chains that affect project schedules. Event chain methodology
helps to mitigate the negative impact of psychological heuristics and
biases, as well as to allow for easy modeling of uncertainties in the
project schedules. Event chain methodology is based on the following
major principles.
Probabilistic
moment of risk: An activity (task) in most real life processes
is not a continuous uniform process. Tasks are affected by external
events, which can occur at some point in the middle of the task.
Event chains:
Events can cause other events, which will create event chains. These
event chains can significantly affect the course of the project.
Quantitative analysis is used to determine a cumulative effect of these
event chains on the project schedule.
Critical events
or event chains: The single events or the event chains that
have the most potential to affect the projects are the “critical
events” or “critical chains of events.” They can be determined by the
analysis.
Project tracking
with events: If a project is partially completed and data about
the project duration, cost, and events occurred is available, it is
possible to refine information about future potential events and helps
to forecast future project performance.
Event chain
visualization: Events and event chains can be visualized using
event chain diagrams on a Gantt chart.
Process-based management
Also furthering the concept of project control is the incorporation of
process-based management. This area has been driven by the use of
Maturity models such as the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model
Integration) and ISO/IEC15504 (SPICE - Software Process Improvement and
Capability Determination), which have been far more successful.
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