BA2007 - PROJECT MANAGEMENT - INTRODUCTION

Lecturer: Martin Topple

LMBS, North Campus, EG406, x3890, m.topple@londonmet.ac.uk

1.1 What is Project Management?

A Project is (usually) a one off set of interrelated activities or tasks which ends with a
specific goal or target being reached. Common characteristics include:

• A set of non routine tasks to be performed in a certain sequence.

• It is goal orientated with measurable achievements in mind.

• There will be various constraints to work within. These may be financial, resource,
legal, ethical, environmental, quality and/or time based. For example, there will be a
limited set of resources with which to perform the tasks. Some of these resources
may be shared with other concurrent projects.

• It will involve people: their management, motivation, knowledge and expertise.

Project Management is the defining, planning, scheduling and controlling of the tasks which
must be completed to achieve your goal(s).

Defining and planning help you work out what has to be done and by whom. Scheduling
means you know when you have to do it .... and controlling is necessary because some things
will not turn out as planned!

1.2 So how does it work? The Project Life Cycle.

One possible rather general project model (there are others - eg PRINCE, PMBOK, etc. )
gives each project four phases:

a) Define the project.

b) Create and refine the project plan.
c) Track the project and update the plan.
d) Close the Project.

We discuss each stage briefly below.

a) Define the Project:

Suppose our project is to build a house. Before we start building the house:

First: what sort of house? e.g. How many bedrooms? garage? landscaping? type of brick? etc.

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This determines the “scope” of our project (which helps to determine the budget and the
likely project duration).

b) Create and Refine the Project Plan:

Second: what tasks need to be done in order to build our house? Tasks might be foundations,
electrical work, walls, floors, plastering, roof, etc. though some of these may eventually be
broken down in to smaller more manageable tasks (e.g. foundations involves quite a lot of
things to be done). There may be hundreds or thousands of tasks in even quite small projects.
Getting them all right can be difficult and time consuming. You may need to draw on expert
advice for this stage to be successful.

Third: In what order do these tasks need to be done? For example, we cannot put the roof on
until the walls are up, etc. Again, we may need expert help to determine all this.

Fourth: For each task which resources does it need? What raw materials does it need? When
are they due on site, where will we store them? What finance does it need? At this point we
will make assumptions about our supply of labour, about costs, about prices and about
delivery times. This will determine for each task how long it will take to complete (generally,
if you attach more resources to a task then you can make it happen more quickly).

Fifth: by combining all the above and entering the information on the computer ... we now
have a project plan before the project actually starts. It will tell us when each task is expected
to start and to finish as well as how long the project takes and how much it is expected to
cost. This enables us to plan the delivery of raw materials (using “JIT” for example) and the
work load of our various resources and to make sure the finance will be in place to pay for it
all.

You might then spend time “fine tuning” the project ... and run through a whole range of
scenarios and “what if” analyses. You might discuss ways of making the project quicker or
cheaper. But this may involve changes in the “scope” ... so you go round the whole thing
again! Eventually, you agree on a plan. If you are lucky, this will still be before the project
starts!

Your plan can also be used to:

* Gain approval for the project from management.
* Show that goals are achievable to stakeholders.
* Communicate to others inside and outside the organisation.
* Make a reasoned case for the resources, time and finance required.
* Determine in advance likely cash flow needs, allow for effective budgeting.

c) Track the Project and Update the Project Plan:

Finally: the project actually starts.

Tracking only commences once the project begins. Tracking involves entering actual start

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and finish dates, actual costs and actual resources used. These actual values can be compared
to the original (expected) project plan to determine if the project is running to the expected
schedule. Any difference between the two is called a “variance”.

Once you identify any significant variances you must make changes to the tasks in the project
that have not yet started (alas, you are unable to change what has already happened!) ... and
keep trying to balance the whole thing!

d) Closing the Project:

Once all the project goals are achieved - you can close the project! This means agreeing with
the stakeholders that the goals are achieved and the project is finished.

You will also wish to analyse how things went and try to identify what went wrong and why
..... so that things might be improved for any future, similar projects.

1.3 Types of Projects:

Projects vary enormously in size and complexity. The biggest can take many years to plan
and complete (think of the pyramids, cathedrals, the M25, the London Olympics and various
river dams around the world).

There can be no exact classification but, starting from the most complex:

They might be strategic projects lasting between 2 and 5 years or longer with an impact felt
throughout the organisation and beyond. Examples might be develop a new product, move
location, build a new motorway, write a new suite of software, build a power station, etc.

They might be systems orientated projects lasting, perhaps, 1 to 2 years with more limited
impact across the organisation. Examples might be implement a new quality system, contract
out a service, write a database application programme, undertake system maintenance on
software, conduct a sample survey, etc.

They might be operational projects lasting up to a year. Examples might be changing

operating procedures on the factory floor, overhauling a piece of machinery, finding a new
supplier via tender, debug some software code, cross train staff to perform new roles, etc.

All projects will consist of many tasks. In the lecture, we will show you an example taken
from the journal “Project Management Today” URL: http://www.pmtoday.co.uk involving
the building of a nuclear power plant. Depending on how you count the activities, there are
about 1.5 million of them! Clearly, there is a need in such a large project to “group” related
activities into a single “joint” activity. Top management could control the entire project
using these (possibly hundreds of) joint activities. Smaller teams (or subcontractors) would
be responsible for the control within each joint activity - breaking it down in to its component
parts. We will see how this might be done later in the course.

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Every project is planned as carefully as possible by top quality project managers and other
interested bodies. But, as you can see from the newspaper cuttings displayed in the lecture,
projects can and do “go wrong”. Especially large projects involve leading edge technology
over longer periods of time. Typically, large IT projects or defence based work can and will
go wrong. This is because we can not possibly know how the technology we are using will
change over the time we are running the project (sometimes even before it actually starts!) –
there is no way round this. But does this mean we should not even try to plan and control
such projects?

For interest, there is an old saying about projects: you can have any two of the following three
things ...

* a project which comes in on time

* a project which comes in on cost
* a project which meets the specifications!

Of course, for some projects some of these are more important than others.

For example: which is/are the most important for The London Olympic Games?
A new aircraft carrier?
A new supermarket?

1.4 Project Management Software

In these notes we shall be using Microsoft Project. It is an impressive and flexible package
capable of performing effective control of one or more projects simultaneously using a
common resource pool if required. If you use another package at work (or at home) then
please feel free to use that package as well or instead. It is your responsibility to find out
exactly how your own package will carry out the concepts used here.

Other packages include:

CA SuperProject, Corel TimeLine, MacProject Pro, Primavera, Artemis, etc.

For a fuller list, see advertisements or features in any copy of “Project Management Today”
or see the web site http://www.pmtoday.co.uk or see the Project Management Institute’s
pages at http://www.pmi.org/ This site offers access to an online journal, off prints and the
PMBOK guides.

1.5 Why use Project Management Software at all?

People have always managed projects (think of the pyramids, stonehenge or most older
cathedrals and museums). Only recently have suitable packages become available on cheap
microcomputers. It was once necessary to fit the project to the software - but this is no longer
true.

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You can still run a project without the software - but not (or not efficiently!) if it gets too
large. One rule of thumb says the software is necessary if the project involves more than 25
resources and 100 tasks .... and takes longer than 30 days (Lowery and Ferrara).

Of course, most of the exercises and examples we use in this course involve less than that.
But we are teaching the principles of project management which you can then apply to larger
projects in your workplace.

As well as the important and obvious gains from using the software (automatic calculation
and recalculation of dates and costs, spotting and resolving resource conflicts and so on) you
might consider these aspects as well:

• You can display the project in a wide variety of views (charts and tables) using filters
according to need. Hence, you can readily communicate relevant information to a
wide variety of potential users.

• Incorporates e-mail and/or world wide web for ease of communications. Resources
(who might also be members of the project team) can have email and/or web
addresses entered in their resource details. These can be used to notify them that a
task they are involved in is about to start ... or is running late or early!

• Shares project information with other packages: word processors, databases,

spreadsheets or other project management software. You can copy/paste, link/embed,
import/export or attach text, tables and/or graphics.

Clearly, then, effective project managers will be familiar with suitable software.

At first sight, this software is complex and not very intuitive. But if you keep in mind what
you are trying to achieve and concentrate on the project and its needs (rather than the
software) ..... you should be alright!

Any questions?

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