Project Management

1. Key Steps for Project Management

2. Project Management Constraints

a) Managing Time and Schedule

b) Manage Resources
c) Managing Costs, Money, and Profits

3.Project Planning Steps

4.Project Monitoring & Controlling Steps

Key Steps for Project Management:

 A project is a defined work effort with start and end dates.
The key project management processes provide a framework for a
project manager to successfully complete a project on time and
within budget, while meeting or exceeding stakeholder
expectations.

Planning:

1. Develop the project plan.

2. Define the scope, requirements for expected results, human
resources and materials.
3. Develop time and cost estimates, and identify risk and quality
measures.
4. Create team building, communications, change and risk
management plans.

Organizing

5. Select, purchase or contract resources identified in the project

plan, including human and material resources, outside vendors
and contractors with specific expertise.

Implementing

6. Implement activities to produce expected results.

7. Test to ensure results meet stakeholder expectations.
8. Use quality controls to identify variances and risk management
to identify new risk.

Controlling
 9. Track, monitor and control progress using project management
tools and techniques.
10.Compare projected versus actual results. Update project plan.
Repeat Implementing.

Closeout

11. Closeout all contracts and finalize administrative activities

and documents.
12.Conduct a lesson learned session with the project team. Share
results with the project team and stakeholder.

Project Management Constraints:

A successful Project Manager must simultaneously manage the four

basic elements of a project:

1) Resources
2) Time
3) Money and most importantly
4) Scope.

All these elements are interrelated. Each must be managed effectively.

All must be managed together if the project, and the project manager, is
to be a success.

1) Resources
People, equipment, material
2) Time
Task durations, dependencies, critical path
3) Money
Costs, contingencies, profit
4) Scope
Project size, goals, requirements

In project management, need to manage and balance three elements:

people, time, and money.

However, the fourth element is the most important and it is the first and
last task for a successful project manager.

 First and foremost is to manage the project scope:

“The project scope is the definition of what the project is supposed

to accomplish and the budget (of time and money) that has been
created to achieve these objectives”.
 o It is absolutely imperative that any change to the scope of the
project have a matching change in budget, either time or
resources.
o Once the project scope clearly identified and associated to the
timeline and budget, we can begin to manage the project
resources. These include the people, equipment, and material
needed to complete the project.

 Managing Time and Schedule

Time management is a critically important skill for any successful

project manager. The most common cause of blown project budgets
is lack of schedule management.

• Tasks
Duration, resources, dependencies
• Schedule
Tasks, predecessors, successors
• CriticalPath
Changeable, often multiple, float

o Task Management:

Any project can be broken down into a number of tasks that have to
be performed. To prepare the project schedule, the project manager
has to figure out

1) What the tasks are

2) How long they will take
3) What resources they require, and
4) In what order they should be done.

Each of these elements has a direct bearing on the schedule.

Build the project schedule by

1) Listing, in order, all the tasks that need to be completed.

2) Assign duration to each task.
3) Allocate the required resources.
4) Determine predecessors (what tasks must be completed
before) and successors (tasks that can't start until after) each
task.
5) When all tasks have been listed, resourced, and sequenced,
the some tasks have a little flexibility in their required start
and finish date. This is called “float”.
6) Other tasks have no flexibility, zero float.
7) A line through all the tasks with zero float is called the
 “critical path”.
8) All tasks on this path, and there can be multiple, parallel
paths, must be completed on time if the project is to be
completed on time.
9) The Project Manager's key time management task is to
manage the critical path.
10) Be aware, that items can be added to or removed from the
critical path as circumstances change during the execution of
the project.
11) Regardless of how well you manage the schedule and the
resources, there is one more critical element - managing the
budget.

 Manage Resources:

A successful Project Manager must effectively manage the resources

assigned to the project. This includes the labor hours of the
designers, the builders, the testers and the inspectors on the project
team. It also includes managing any labor subcontracts.

However, managing project resources frequently involves more than

people management.

The project manager must also manage the equipment used for the
project and the material needed by the people and equipment
assigned to the project.

o People
Project employees, vendor staff, subcontract labor etc.
o Equipment
Cranes, trucks, backhoes, other heavy equipment or
Development, test, and staging servers, CD burners or
Recording studio, tape decks, mixers, microphones and speakers
etc.
o Material
Concrete, pipe, rebar, CD blanks, computers, jewel cases,
instruction manuals etc.

“Managing the people resources means having the right

people, with the right skills and the proper tools, in the
right quantity at the right time”.

It also means ensuring that they know what needs to be done,

when, and how. And it means motivating them to take ownership in
the project too.

The equipment you have to manage as part of your project depends

on the nature of the project.
 Most projects involve the purchase of material.

Time management is critical in successful project management.

 Managing Costs, Money, and Profits

Often a Project Manager is evaluated on his or her ability to

complete a project within budget.

If you have effectively managed the project resources and project

schedule, this should not be a problem. It is, however, a task that
requires the project manager's careful attention. You can only manage
effectively a limited number of cost items, so focus on the critical ones

• Costs
Estimated, actual, variability
• Contingencies
Weather, suppliers, design allowance
• Profit
Cost, contingencies, remainder

o Each project task will have a cost, whether it is the cost of the
labor hours of a computer programmer or the purchase price of a
cubic yard of concrete.
o In preparing the project budget, each of these costs is estimated
and then totaled. Some of these estimates will be more accurate
than others.
o When the estimated cost of an item is uncertain, the project
budget often includes a design allowance.
o This is money that is set aside in the budget "just in case" the
actual cost of the item is wildly different than the estimate.
o Unusual weather or problems with suppliers are always a
possibility on large projects.
o Companies usually include a contingency amount in the project
budget to cover these kinds of things.
o So a project budget is composed of the estimated cost, plus the
contingency and design allowance, plus any profit.
o The project manager's job is to keep the actual cost at or below
the estimated cost, to use as little of the design allowance and
contingency as possible, and to maximize the profit the company
earns on the project.
o To maximize your chances of meeting your project budget, meet
your project schedule.
o The most common cause of blown budgets is blown schedules.
Meeting the project schedule won't guarantee you will meet the
project budget, but it significantly increases your chances.
o And above all, manage the project scope. Don't allow the project
scope to "creep" upward without getting budget and/or schedule
adjustments to match.
 Project Planning Steps
Project planning is part of project management, which relates to the use of
schedules such as Gantt charts to plan and subsequently report progress
within the project environment.
1) Define the project scope
A goal, target, to be achieved by a certain time, i.e. The Boundary of the
project

2) Define the Deliverables

Define what will be delivered by the project.

3) The appropriate methods for completing the project are

determined.

4) Scheduling the project:

“Scheduling is the process of deciding how to commit resources between
varieties of possible tasks. “
Determining when an activity should start or end, depending on its
(1) duration
(2) predecessor activity (or activities)
(3) predecessor relationships
(4) resource availability and
(5) target completion date of the project
 Steps for Scheduling:

 Work Breakdown Structure[W.B.S]:

The durations for the various tasks necessary to complete the work
are listed and grouped into a work breakdown structure [W.B.S] i.e.
Structure the work into small elements that are:
1) Manageable
2) Independent,
3) Identifiable.
4) Measurable.

WBS Levels:
L1 Project
L2 Sub – Project
L3 Task
L4 Activity / Work Package
L5 Element / Level of effort.
The summations of all elements in one level must be the sum of
all work in the next lower level.

Through WBS we can achieve:

1) Cost & Budgets can be established.
2) Time, Cost, Performance can be tracked objectives can be linked
to recourses
3) Networks can be initiated.
4) Responsibility can be established.
5) Every work element can be accounted.

o Determine Dependencies:
The logical dependencies between tasks are defined using an
activity network diagram that enables identification of the
critical path.

o Determine Available Resources:

People, equipment, and money which are available to achieve the project
objectives

o For each activity resource ,time and cost can be allocated

o Check the Timeline

When does the project have to be completed?

5) Assemble Project Team Get the people on team together and start
a dialog

6) Identify the risks may occur in projects and make a note on how to
overcome the these risks
o Technology risks.
 o People risks.
o Organisational risks.
o Requirements risks.
o Estimation risks.
7) Make Gantt Chart For scheduling tasks
A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule
 Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal
elements and summary elements of a project.
 Terminal elements and summary elements comprise the work
breakdown structure of the project.
 Some Gantt charts also show the dependency (i.e., precedence
network) relationships between activities.

8) Make a PERT Chart or Network Diagram

An activity network diagram provides a notation for documenting

A network of tasks needed to complete a project,

Their interdependencies
The times required for each task.
9) By Prepare the estimates of the resource needs, times and Cost
which gives the total project cost. (Planned expenditures to
achieve objectives.)

10) At this stage, the project plan may be optimized to achieve the
appropriate balance between resource usage and project duration
to comply with the project objectives.

11) Create Your Baseline Plan Get feedback on your preliminary plan
from your team and from any other stakeholders. Adjust your
timelines and work schedules to fit the project into the available
time.

12)Make any necessary adjustments to the preliminary plan to

produce a baseline plan.

13) If one intersection is blocked by an accident, you change your plan

and go a different way. Do the same with your project plans.
Change them as needed, but always keep the scope and resources
in mind.

14)Progress will be measured against the baseline throughout the life

of the project.

15) Analyzing progress compared to the baseline is known as earned

value management.
16)Establishing the baseline is the formal end of the planning phase
and the beginning of project execution and control.
 Project Monitoring & Controlling
PLANNING IS A FORWARD ACTION
||
CONTROL IS A BACK WARD ACTION BASED ON FEEDBACK

“Controlling the project baseline is absolutely essential to

project success.”

 Tracking Project Progress:

 Once project is underway must monitor and compare the actual

progress with the planned progress based on project constraints

1.Time
2.Resources
3.Cost
4.Performance Criteria.

Tracking the Project Schedule:

•Tracking can be done by:

• Conducting periodic project status meetings
• Evaluating the results of all reviews
• Determining whether milestones were reached by the scheduled date
• Compare actual start date to planned start date
• Meeting informally with professionals to get their subjective opinion
• Using earned value analysis
Earned Value Analysis:
o Earned value is a quantitative measure of percent of project
completed so far.
o The total hours to complete the entire project are estimated and
each task is given an earned value based on its estimated
percentage contribution to the total.
• Need progress reports from project team members.
• Record variations between the actual and planned cost, schedule and
 scope.
• Phases of Management Control:
 1st – Phase:
To prevent deviations in the quality and quantity of resources
used.

 2nd - Phase:
To monitor actual ongoing operations to ensure that
objectives, short-term and long –term are met.
 3rd - Phase:
To improve activities.

 Should report variations to manager and key stakeholders and take

corrective actions if variations get too large.
 Checklist for Inspection & Testing.
 Project wise Periodical / monthly Analytical Report.
 Note on Critical Observations
 Cash inflow, cash out flow project cost
 Quantitative, function wise status-
 How much work should have been done and how much actually
done.

“Must update plan as the project progresses, and measure

progress against the plan which will gives a successful Project
completion”.