Project management and evaluation

By Sunesh Hettiarachchi

B.Sc, MBA, MACS, MBCS, IDPM

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What is a Project?

• What is a project?

• Planned set of interrelated tasks to be executed over a

fixed period and within certain cost and defined specification to

produce a product or a service.

• Major Characteristics of a Project

• Has an established objective.

• Has a defined life span with a beginning and an end.

• Has specific time, cost, and performance requirements (scope).

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The Triple Constraint

Cost

how much?

Quality/Scope

how good?

Time how fast?

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The Three P’s

• Program- operates over the long-term, and is

designed to use the organization’s resources to

impact a specific subject area that is part of an

organization’s mission.

• Project- has a beginning and end, defined resources,

and creates a unique product or service.

• Process- part of the ongoing operations of the

organization; may be introduced or changed over

time, but once established, an organizational process

operates on a continuous basis without a specified

end. 1–4

Example - Program and Project

• Program name : “Champions of Change : Rebuilding

America’s Infrastructure”

• Estimated budget : 48 billion dollars

• Number of projects : 15000 projects

• Capacity : 65000 people

• Duration : 3 years

• Purpose : To rebuild United State of America

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqTzjLTL_Ug&feature=relmfu

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Project failure

• Examples for project failures…

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IBM 7030

• “In 1956, a group of computer scientists at IBM set out to

build the world's fastest supercomputer. Five years later,

they produced the IBM 7030 , the world fastest computer.

But the 7030 was considered a failure.

• “IBM's original bid to Los Alamos was to develop a

computer 100 times faster than the system it was meant

to replace, and the 7030 came in only 30 to 40 times

faster. “

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IBM 7030

• “Because it failed to meet its goal, IBM had to drop IBM

7030 's price to $7.8 million from the planned $13.5

million, which meant the system was priced below cost.

The company stopped offering the 7030 for sale, and only

nine were ever built.”

• This project has been recorded as one of the biggest

project failed in the history.

• “No proper technical competency hired for the project”

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SAP project failure

• Shane Company – SAP ERP project failure overview

(2008)

• “The initial project cost was budgeted or planned for $10 million but

ended up costing approximately $36 million and was planned for 1

year but ended up taking approximately 3 years.”

• Reasons:-

• An improper budget and implementation plan.

• Scope and cost were not properly managed.

• Poor or undefined processes along with poor or untested system

functionality.

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What is Project Management?

• Project management is a set of principles, practices, and

techniques applied to lead project teams and control

project schedule, cost, and performance risks to result in

delighted customers.

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• Project Management in Your Organization

• What are the current methods of project management in your

organization?

• What project management issues is your organization facing?

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Practical issues of project management

• Accomplish with shared resources often only available on

part-time basis

• Require cross-functional team work

• Involve uncertainty and are subject to change during

execution

• Subject to specific deadlines and time and resource

constraints

• Project manager often lacks functional authority over

team members

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Proven Benefits of Project Management

• Provides clear roles, responsibilities, activities and

schedules for team efforts

• Includes a method for considering the consequences of

decreasing or increasing funds, resources, time, or quality

• Specifies a detailed plan of how to achieve our objectives

• Assists in the realistic assignments of tasks and

responsibilities to team members according to the skills

and resources available

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Proven Benefits of Project Management (contd..)

• Gives structure to communicating the progress of projects

• Allows teams to identify potential problems and take

preventive action early

• Keeps management officers and project stakeholders

well-informed and supportive

• Helps manage pressure for expanding the scope of

projects without proper decision criteria and analysis of

changes

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Let’s practice

• Activity 1

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Diverse Skills Needed for Project Management

• Planning skills—the ability to plan the use or organizational resources of time, personnel, budget, facilities, equipment, and supplies to achieve organizational objectives

• Technical skills—the specific professional technical skills needed for a project.

• People skills—the ability to manage and motivate people who will implement the project activities, communicate effectively with stakeholders, and resolve conflicts and interpersonal problems.

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What skills make the best project managers so

good?

• Communication: listening, persuading, negotiating

• Organizational: planning, goal-setting, analyzing

• Team building: empathy, motivation, team spirit

• Leadership: sets example, energetic, vision,

delegates, positive attitude

• Coping: flexibility, creativity, patience, persistence

• Technical: experience, project knowledge

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Knowledge areas required for a project

manager

• Scope Management

• Time Management

• Cost Management

• Risk Management

• Quality Management

• Human Resource Management

• Communications Management

• Procurement Management

• Integrated Management

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Step 1: Select project

• Define project scope: Selecting Priority Projects

• Project selection can be a difficult process, especially

when there are a large number of potential projects

competing for scarce dollars.

• Some selection methods are highly intuitive; some very

political.

• Others try to add rigor through more scientific selection

processes.

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Selection Criteria Matrix: Un-weighted Criteria

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Project Agreement

• What: A written description that clearly communicates what the

project is (and is not)

• When: Ideally, at the beginning of a project. Also useful to develop

one for a project already started. Update it as needed.

• Why:

• Establish agreement between project team members and

stakeholders about what the project is (and is not)

• Build team member commitment – team should write the charter

together

• Foundation for project planning

• Helps in managing expectations

• Communicate project to others

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Project Stakeholders

• Within the team

• Project manager

• Team members

• Within the organization

• Internal customers

• Project sponsor

• Senior managers

• Functional managers

• Outside the organization

• External customers

• Collaborating organizations

• Affected organizations

• Vendors

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Project Agreement Development Meeting

• Allow 2 ½ hours to half day, depending on complexity or

project

• Recognize that the process and team involvement is as

important as document

• Ensure participation by all team members

• Use group techniques such as brainstorming and

consensus

• Do not let the project manager dominate the meeting

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Managing the Triple Constraint: Set Priorities

• Need to discuss with customer and sponsor near startup

and agree on priority order.

• Example : Priority matrix

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1 - Critical 2 - Major 3 – Minor

Time X

Cost X

Scope X

Step 2: Define project activities

• Work Breakdown Structure

• Prepare based on project scope, objectives, and/or deliverables

• Organizes and defines work to be done

• Divides work into logical, manageable segments

• Objective is to identify all project tasks that must be completed with

action verbs

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Let’s practice

• Activity 2

• Activity 3

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