PROJECT““A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service.”

Project DefinedA complex, non-routine, one-time effort limited by time,budget, resources, and performance specifications designed to meet customer needs.

Major Characteristics of a Project•Has an established objective.•Has a defined life span with a beginning and an end.•Typically requires across-the-organizational participation.•Involves doing something never been done before.•Has specific time, cost, and performance requirements.

THE IRON TRIANGLE

The Iron Triangle refers to theTriple Constraints of ProjectManagement – Time, Cost &Scope. Associated with all threecomponents is Quality. If any one angle of the trianglechanges, the other two shouldchange too. Otherwise qualitywill be adversely affected. For example, if time is reducedwithout changing cost & scopeaccordingly, quality will becompromised.

Thursday, January 23, 2003

Projects Fail

• Firearms Registry• Standish Group (1995)

– 31.1% cancelled before complete– 52.7% cost more than 189% over original estimates– Only 16.2% of projects completed on time and on budget

• 48% of executives feel more failure now than earlier

Thursday, January 23, 2003

The Reasons Projects Fail1. Lack of User Inputs 12.8%2. Incomplete Requirements & Specifications 12.3%3. Changing Requirements & Specifications 11.8%4. Lack of Executive Support 7.5%5. Technology Incompetence 7.0%6. Lack of Resources 6.4%7. Unrealistic Expectations 5.9%8. Unclear Objectives 5.3%9. Unrealistic Time Frames 4.3%10. New Technology 3.7%

Other 23.0%

OASIG 1995

Thursday, January 23, 2003

Or, depending on who you listen to…

Bull Survey, 1998

Project Life Cycle

Defining

Planning

Executing

Delivering / controlling

DEFINING A PROJECT

ActivitiesSpecifications of project are definedProject objectives are estabilishedScope estabilishedTasks definedStake holders/Teams are formedMajor responsibilities are assignedPrepare for tradeoffs

Key Skills

Task AnalysisCost benefit analysis of options

Planning Stage

Activities:Plans are made to determine what the project will entailWhen it will be scheduled- timeframesMajor and minor milestonesCost calculationsTeams are formedResource requirementsFurther refinement of scope

Key Skills:Process AnalysisTeam buildingNegotiatingDelegatingCommunicating

As the saying has it, "If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail."

A document that clearly outlines the project milestones and major activities required to implement your project.

The project plan also needs to be created at the beginning of the project

Includes the date each milestone or major activity is to be completed, and the owner of each.

One may not know all of the major activities required to implement your project in the beginning,

it is important that you create a draft of the activities you think may need to be tracked via a formal document.

The Work breakdown structure needs to be made

The list of all the possible tasks and subtasks

The logical sequence of these and mile stones

Project Plan

What is a work breakdown structure?

A work breakdown structure is a key project deliverable that organizes the team’s work into manageable sections. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) defines the work breakdown structure as a “deliverable oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team.”

The work breakdown structure visually defines the scope into manageable chunks that a project team can understand, as each level of the work breakdown structure provides further definition and detail.

A work breakdown structure starts with the project as the top level deliverable and is further decomposed into sub-deliverables

A few key items to include in the timeline are:

A unique ID that your team can reference when giving an update The name of the task When the task should start When the task should finish The actual date the task was completed Any tasks that need to happen before other tasks can begin The owner of the task Percent complete of each taskYou or the Project Sponsor you represent may decide to track or maintain more than what has been outlined above in your project plan. This is absolutely fine. These are just the items I have found to be vital, and a good foundation to build upon.

Project Plan contd..

Take some time and really think through what you know about the objective of your project. Look at some historical data from similar projects. You can even have a few informal meetings with knowledgeable individuals you can use as a sounding board to make sure you aren't completely off base. You'll be surprised how good a draft you can develop if you put in a little effort. With this draft you will be able to speak with subject matter experts (SMEs) and stakeholders to flesh out the project plan. If you don't make some level of effort to develop a rough draft, you may give a bad impression which will make it harder for you to obtain the support of the persons you need to implement the project. After you have fleshed out your draft with your core team, and some other SMEs that may not be a part of your team, you should give the document a baseline status. Your timeline / project plan should not undergo many edits, if any, after it achieves baseline status.

Best Practices

EXECUTING

Executing the planInvolves monitoring the schedules, cost and specificationsHolding of weekly reviews Managing contigencies, delays, forecasting future progressMaking necessary changes

Key Skills

SupervisingDelegatingCommunicatingLeading and MotivatingProblem solvingConflict management

Documents

Reports Review meetings

Delivering/Closing/ Handing over

Completion activities include-Signoff by clientTraining of personnelDocumentationTransfering of documentsRedeploying resources

Lesson #1—Project Vision, Mission, and Objectives

Christenson and Walker (2004), as well as Shimizu and Hitt(2004), purport that the development and articulation of a project vision are key to successful project outcomes.

It is the responsibility of senior management to maintain the vision.

WHY PROJECTS FAIL

Lesson #2—Project Sponsorship/ Top leadership

It is vitally important to the success of a project to have aproject champion or sponsor

Further, the project sponsor must have the management span, appropriate knowledge,and organizational authority to harmonize the discordant voices.

An effective project sponsor who believes that the project is both viable and necessary is essential to the success of any organizational project. This sponsor must also be willing to use the authority vested in him or her to build a coalition of support among the various project stakeholders (Hosking, 2005).

Adequate project sponsorship is important in relatively simple projects, so it is even more of a necessity in complex projects, such as defense acquisition projects (Hosking).

Lesson #2—Project Sponsorship/ Top leadership contd..

Lesson #3—Project Planning

A third lesson learned was in the area of total project planning. It has been stated that “… good upfront planning may reduce the number of changes required” (Kerzner, 2003). A corollary to this is that effective project execution requires that the number of subsequent changes be minimized if effective project planning is done on the frond end.It is impossible to perform effective project planning unless the project vision, mission, and all of the project requirements are taken into account at the beginning of the project(Christenson & Walker, 2004; Kerzner, 2003).

Lesson #4—Project Specifications

Quality information is much morelikely to lead to successful project management outcomesrather than the inclusion of unrealistic information