INFS2040

Project Management
Foundations

Dr. Sharon Coyle

Business Information Systems
The University of Sydney Business School

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Teaching Team
Sharon Coyle (Unit of Study Coordinator)
– H70 (Abercrombie Building) Room 4070
– Consultation time: Mondays, 4-5pm, Room 4120
– N.B. Due to student volumes please email me if you wish to
schedule a consultation slot.
– sharon.coyle@sydney.edu.au

Jane Strachan (Teaching Assistant)

Our focus is on helping you to learn fundamental project

management (PM) concepts and to introduce you to different PM
approaches.

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Announcement

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Make a strong start for Semester 2!
Library  support  for  Business  students

Research skills classes during weeks 1-4

– Find journal articles
– Find company and industry information
– Find business news via Factiva
– Reference using APA 6th
Register via: tinyurl.com/buslib2017

Drop-in sessions
Ask for research advice to complete your assignments
When: Wednesday (1-3 pm) - starting from week 2
Where: Careers Lounge (ABS - Basement level)
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 About you: Group Exercise 1

– In groups of about 5 people

– Introduce yourselves to each other.
– Find out:
– How many in the group are full-time/part-time/working
– The specialisations that your group is enrolled in
– The languages that the group speaks

– What does Project Management mean to you right now?

• Write down three things that you associate with Project Management
– Have you ever lead a team (or managed a team)? How would you describe
the experience?
– Why do you want to study Project Management?

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Course Administration

– Mid Semester Exam (20%)

– Group assignment (30%)
– Final Exam (50%)

– Notes and readings will be made available on Blackboard

– http://blackboard.econ.usyd.edu.au/

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 Introducing Project Management
– Understand the growing need for better project management,
especially for Information Systems projects
– Explain what a project is, provide examples of IS projects, list
various attributes of projects, and introduce the triple constraint
of project management
– Describe project management and discuss key elements of the
project management framework, including project stakeholders,
the project management knowledge areas, common tools and
techniques, and project success

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 Why do we need project management?

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Blackboard Reading: Why do projects fail? Page 8
 Project Management is Challenging!

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 Introducing Project Management

– Many organisations today have a new or renewed interest in

project management
– Computer hardware, software, networks, and the use of
interdisciplinary and global work teams have radically
changed the work environment
– The world as a whole spends nearly $10 trillion of its $40.7
trillion gross product on projects of all kinds
– More than 16 million people regard project management as
their profession

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 Some Project Management Statistics
– The overall information and communications technology market
grew by 6 percent to almost $3 trillion in 2010
– In the U.S. the size of the IT/IS workforce topped 4 million
workers in 2008, and the unemployment rate for IS/IT
professionals is half the rate for the overall labor market
– In 2011 the total compensation for the average senior project
manager in U.S. dollars was $105,000 per year in the United
States and $160,409 in the Switzerland.
– The number of people earning their Project Management
Professional (PMP) certification continues to increase. 44
percent of employers listed project management as a skill they
looked for in new college grads, behind only communication
and technical skills

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 Why is all this important?

– IS/IT Projects have a terrible track record!

– A 1995 Standish Group study (CHAOS) found that only 16.2%

of IS projects were successful in meeting scope, time, and cost
goals; over 31% of IS projects were cancelled before
completion
– A PricewaterhouseCoopers study found that overall, half of all
projects fail and only 2.5% of corporations consistently meet
their targets for scope, time, and cost goals for all types of
project.

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 Advantages of using formal PM

– Better control of financial, physical, and human resources

– Improved customer relations
– Shorter development times
– Lower costs
– Higher quality and increased reliability
– Higher profit margins
– Improved productivity
– Better internal coordination
– Higher worker morale

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 What is a Project?

– A project is “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a

unique product, service, or result” (PMBOK® Guide, Fifth
Edition, 2012)
– Operations is work done to sustain the business
– Projects end when their objectives have been reached or the
project has been terminated
– Projects can be large or small and take a short or long time to
complete

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 Project Attributes

– A project
– has a unique purpose
– is temporary
– is developed using progressive elaboration
– requires resources, often from various areas
– should have a primary customer or sponsor
• The project sponsor usually provides the direction and funding
for the project
– involves uncertainty

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 Examples of IS/IT Projects
– A team of students creates a smartphone application and sells
it online
– A company develops a driverless car
– A small software development team adds a new feature to an
internal software application for the finance department
– A college upgrades its technology infrastructure to provide
wireless Internet access across the whole campus

Top Strategic Technologies for 2012

Media Tablets and beyond
Mobile-centric applications and interfaces
Contextual and social user experience
Internet of things
Cloud computing
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 Project and Programme Managers

– Project managers work with project sponsors, project team,

and other people involved in a project to meet project goals
– Programme: group of related projects managed in a
coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available
from managing them individually (PMBOK® Guide, Fifth
Edition, 2012)
– Program managers oversee programs; often act as bosses for
project managers

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 The Triple Constraint of Project Management

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 What is Project Management?
– Project management is “the application of knowledge, skills, tools and
techniques to project activities to meet project requirements” (PMBOK®
Guide, Fourth Edition, 2012)
– Project managers strive to meet the triple constraint (project scope, time,
and cost goals) and also facilitate the entire process to meet the needs and
expectations of project stakeholders

– Stakeholders are the people involved in or affected by project activities

– Stakeholders include:
– customers -­ the project sponsor
– users -­ the project manager
– suppliers -­ the project team
– opponents to the project -­ Support staff

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 IS/IT Project Success Rates
– The Standish Group’s CHAOS studies show improvements in IS/IT
projects over the past decade:
} The number of successful projects has more than doubled, from 16
percent in 1994 to 37 percent in 2010
} The number of failed projects decreased from 31 percent in 1994
to 21 percent in 2010
} Success rates were the highest ever in the most recent CHAOS study

"The reasons for the increase in successful projects vary. First, the
average cost of a project has been more than cut in half. Better tools
have been created to monitor and control progress and better skilled
project managers with better management processes are being used. The
fact that there are processes is significant in itself.”*

*Standish Group, "CHAOS 2001: A Recipe for Success" (2001).

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 Project Success

– There are several ways to define project success:

– The project met scope, time, and cost goals
– The project satisfied the customer/sponsor
– The results of the project met its main objective, such as
making or saving a certain amount of money, providing a
good return on investment, or simply making the sponsors
happy!

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 What Helps Projects to Succeed?
– What helps projects succeed?
– User Involvement
– Exec Support
– Clear business objectives
– Emotional maturity
– Optimising scope
– Agile process
– Project management expertise
– Skilled resources
– Execution
– Tools and Infrastructure

The Standish Group, “CHAOS Activity News” (Aug. 2011)

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 Best Practice
– A best practice is “an optimal way recognized by industry to
achieve a stated goal or objective”*
– Robert Butrick suggests that organisations need to follow basic
principles of project management, including:
– Make sure your projects are driven by your strategy. Be able to
demonstrate how each project you undertake fits your business
strategy, and screen out unwanted projects as soon as possible
– Engage your stakeholders. 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

*Project Management Institute, Organizational Project Management Maturity

Model
(OPM3) Knowledge Foundation (2003), p. 13.

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 History of Project Management
– Some people argue that building the Egyptian pyramids was a
project, as was building the Great Wall of China

– However, most people consider the Manhattan Project to be the

first project to use “modern” project management

– This three-year, $2 billion (in 1946 dollars) project had a

separate project manager and a technical manager

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 Project Management Institute
– The Project Management Institute (PMI) is an international
professional society for project managers founded in 1969
– PMI has continued to attract and retain members, reporting more than
380,000 members worldwide by 2012
– There are communities of practices in many areas, like information
systems, financial services, and health care
– Project management research and certification programs continue to
grow
– PMI provides certification as a Project Management Professional
(PMP)
– A PMP has documented sufficient project experience, agreed to
follow a code of ethics, and passed the PMP exam
– The number of people earning PMP certification is increasing quickly

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 Project Management Software
– There are hundreds of different products to assist in performing
project management

– Three main categories of tools:

– Low-end tools: Handle single or smaller projects well, cost under
$200 per user
– Midrange tools: Handle multiple projects and users, cost $200-
$1,000 per user, Project 2010 most popular
– High-end tools: Also called enterprise project management
software, often licensed on a per-user basis, like Microsoft
Enterprise Project Management solution

– For this unit you will use an online project management platform
to help create, organise and coordinate your group assignment.
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 Teaching and Learning Approach

Blended design
• Cooperative and collaborative teaching
• Contribute to your own learning and that of your peers! Engage, talk,
discuss.
• Focus on the learning process as well as the product/outcome

Combination of instructional methods

• In class face-to-face
• Inquiry based and conversational learning: ask questions of each
other as well as the teaching team! Promote discussion.
• Literature based learning: the need to read. Understand concepts.
• Team-based group learning in class: the power of ‘doing’ things!

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An Action Learning Group

Characteristics of effective action learning groups:

• A shared commitment to understand and solve the problem
• Clear, common purpose
• Willingness to work with others to develop strategies and ideas
• Courage to question others
• Clear and accepted norms
• Respect and support for others
• Willingness to learn and to help others learn
• Cohesiveness and trust

Source: Marquardt, M.J. 2004. Optimising the power of action learning, Davies-Black Publishing, Palo Alto,
California.

Think about this when establishing groups for your assignment: Could this list be
your agreed-upon group ‘norms’?
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 Common Causes of Project Failure:
Group Exercise 2
- In groups of about 5 people:
– Go to BB and view the file: ‘Documented Causes
of Project Failure’

- This paper lists the following headings:

Goal and Vision; Leadership and Governance; Stakeholder Engagement issues; Team issues;
Requirements issues; Estimation; Planning; Risk Management; Architecture and design;
Configuration and Information Management; Quality; Project Tracking and Management; Decision
Making Problems

- Choose any one of these headings and decide as a group what you consider to
be two of the most critical items that contribute to project failure under that
heading.
- On a single A4 page, elect one member of your group to document:
- Your chosen items, their meaning and why your group considers them to be critical
in contributing to PM failure. You may conduct online research to help you.
- After 15-20 minutes, swap this A4 page with another group and read their
findings. Discuss.
- The teaching team will circulate the room and ask groups to show their findings
and discuss what they have learned from this exercise.
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 To Do:
If you haven’t already done so:
– Read Chapter 1 of your assigned text
– Additional readings are on Blackboard

– Form groups for your project. It is expected that you will work on
this project throughout the semester.
– Groups must have a minimum of 4 members, maximum 6. You
will need to register your group and topic by the end of week 4.
Instructions and details are provided under the ‘Assessment’ tab
on Blackboard. Please read instructions carefully and action as
soon as possible.

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