Definitions of Project Management

What is a Project?
The starting point in discussing how projects should be properly terminated is to first understand what a project is and just as importantly what it is not. People have been undertaking projects since the earliest days of organized human activity. The hunting parties of our prehistoric ancestors were projects for example; they were temporary undertakings directed at the goal of obtaining meat for the community. Large complex projects have also been with us for a long time. The pyramids and the Great Wall of China were in their day of roughly the same dimensions as the Apollo Project to send man to the moon. We use the term project frequently in our daily conversations. A husband, for example may tell his wife, My main project for this weekend is to straighten out the garage. Going hunting, building pyramids, and fixing faucets all share certain features that make them projects. A project has distinctive attributes, which distinguish it from ongoing work or business operations. Projects are temporary in nature. They are not an everyday business process and have definitive start dates and end dates. This characteristic is important because a large part of the project effort is dedicated to ensuring that the project is completed at the appointed time. To do this, schedules are created showing when tasks should begin and end. Projects can last minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years. Projects exist to bring about a product or service that hasnt existed before. In this sense, a project is unique. Unique means that this is new, this has never been done before. Maybe its been done in a very similar fashion before but never exactly in this way. For example, Ford Motor Company is in the business of designing and assembling cars. Each model that Ford designs and produces can be considered a project. The models differ from each other in their
1

Definitions of Project Management

features and are marketed to people with various needs. An SUV serves a different purpose and clientele than a luxury model. The design and marketing of these two models are unique projects. However the actual assembly of the cars is considered an operation, i.e., a repetitive process that is followed for most makes and models. In contrast with projects, operations are ongoing and repetitive. They involve work that is continuous without an ending date and you often repeat the same processes and produce the same results. The purpose of operations is to keep the organization functioning while the purpose of a project is to meet its goals and to conclude. Therefore, operations are ongoing while projects are unique and temporary. The project is completed when its goals and objectives are accomplished. It is these goals that drive the project and all the planning and implementation efforts are undertaken to achieve them. Sometimes projects end when its determined that the goals and objectives cannot be accomplished or when the product or service of the project is no longer needed and the project is cancelled.

Project Termination
2

Definitions of Project Management

Other Definitions

By definition, all projects have fixed start and completion dates. GCP - funded projects are typically
between one and three years. For some projects, there is a degree of uncertainty on exactly when a project should formally end: projects do not necessarily end when all the funds are exhausted.

(Project Development Guide Generation Foundation - Cultivating Plant Diversity for the Resource poor)

As projects near completion, there is a natural tendency to minimize costs by transferring

people as soon as possible and by closing out work orders. This is the stage where it becomes the responsibility of the Project Manager to devise project termination activities into the project work-plan. These should be seen as vital parts of the project and not just an afterthought. If however, the value of effective project termination activities is not banked then the opportunity to tie up the loose ends, do staff evaluations and document vital learning is lost. Thus it should be ensured that final reports are well written and an effective transfer of raw materials to other programs takes place on time. For this purpose, many projects may even require one to two months after work completion simply for administrative reporting and final cost summary. Just like every other phase, the project termination can also be summarized with the help of a few guidelines. The first one pertains to the Project Audit which includes the status, forecasts, risk assessments and recommendations for the project. The next activity concerns the Evaluation phase which deals with the scope accomplished, technical objectives met and projection of historical data. Other close-out items may consist of final measurements, final reports, client feedback and testimonials.
3

Definitions of Project Management

Project Termination cannot even be disregarded for an unsuccessful project. Even in such a case, there are key learnings, team evaluations and other wrap-up activities to make the most of what has been done in the project.

(Visitask - resource center for top-notch tips, insights and best practices on project management)

Natural Terminations the projects goals have been met and the effort is concluded with
delivery of the product. Unnatural Terminations project constraints have been violated (for instance funding, time), performance is inadequate, or goals have become irrelevant. (Dr Carlo Kopp, PEng Monash University)

It is that task that involves submission of final report, the power-on of new
equipment, or the signing of a release order. It may trigger follow-ups or spin - off projects. (JEDI, Software Engineering, 2006)

Just like every other phase, the project termination can also be summarized with the help of a
few guidelines. The first one pertains to the Project Audit which includes the status, forecasts,
4

Definitions of Project Management

risk assessments and recommendations for the project. The next activity concerns the Evaluation phase which deals with the scope accomplished, technical objectives met and projection of historical data. Other close-out items may consist of final measurements, final reports, client feedback and testimonials. (McGary, 2003)

My Definitions

Definitions of Project Management

Every project has exact time period set when the project is planned, after the project has achieved its final output within that specified time period or before, the project has to end and project members have to leave the project as there is no further goal to achieve.

There are some instances where the projects are ended before achieving its final output due different reasons such as insufficient fund allocation, sudden loss of human capital of the project, management weaknesses in the project, identification of that the desired output of the project would not be benefitted to the society anymore, etc. But it has to remember that always project termination is not considered as a project failure. Sometimes project terminates after it has achieved its goals and sometimes project terminates without achieving its goals.

Project Audit
Other Definitions

Definitions of Project Management

All projects need to be closely monitored to ensure they are progressing as planned. Sometimes
troubles surface and it becomes necessary to terminate a project before it is completed. The audit activity is designed to give the project every possible chance to be completed and go to closure. The term audit is synonymous with analysis, checkup, inspection, review, scan, scrutiny, survey, and view. Audits are used throughout the project life cycle as follows:

Project audit Scheduled audits Unscheduled audits Subcontractor and vendor audits Quality audits Project safety audits

The main purpose of a project audit is to assist in satisfying the goals of the project in relation to its contribution to the parent organization's goals. All elements of the project are reviewed in an effort to identify and understand strengths and weaknesses.

(Thomas M. Cappels - Project Audit, Termination, and Closure)

A formal inquiry into any aspect of a project

-

Like control, auditing involves data collection for the purpose of evaluation
7

Definitions of Project Management -

The evaluation is not necessarily financial (Thamhain H J, Best Practices for Controlling Technology-Based Projects. Project Management Journal, 1996.)

A comprehensive thorough fact finding exercise of all aspects of a project including

-

the quality of the projects work whether or not it meets the clients needs resources expended and required the suitability of schedule for the work done or to be done organizational issues etc. (Montgomery D C, Introduction to Statistical Quality Control. 3rd edition, Wiley, 1996.)

A structured independent review to determine whether project activities comply within

organizational and project policies and procedures. (The Project Management Institute (PMI) - Project Management Body of Knowledge)

My Definitions

Definitions of Project Management

Auditing is the independent examination of financial information of any project, whether it is profit oriented or not, and irrespective of its size or legal form, when such an examination is conducted with a view to expressing an opinion about the projects funds and other accounting policies.

Every project needs to be audited, where through the project it examines whether the project has achieved its goals using the allocated resources to the project. Through the audit it further examine whether the resources of the project such as raw materials, funds, human effort, etc. are utilize in a maximum way or not to evaluate the successfulness of the project.

Project Crashing
Other Definitions
9

Definitions of Project Management

Crashing is a process of expediting project schedule by compressing the total project duration.
It is helpful when managers want to avoid incoming bad weather season. However, the downside is that more resources are needed to speed-up a part of a project, even if resources may be withdrawn from one facet of the project and used to speed-up the section that is lagging behind. Moreover, that may also depend on what slack is available in a non-critical activity, thus resources can be reassigned to critical project activity. Hence, utmost care should be taken to make sure that appropriate activities are being crashed and that diverted resources are not causing needless risk and project scope integrity. (Josh Chrisfoya)

As definition, abnormal reduction of schedule to deliver the project on time or before time. This
happens when any of the tasks in project path (critical) takes more time, which delays the overall schedule, the project crashing technique is used to ensure on-time delivery. For Project Crashing, the best practice suggests that break up the task in critical path to smaller granularity so that it can be carried out parallel. (Management Philosophy - Discussion on General Management Ethics around)

Crashing refers to a particular variety of project schedule compression which is performed for
the purposes of decreasing total period of time (also known as the total project schedule duration). The diminishing of the project duration typically take place after a careful and
10

Definitions of Project Management

thorough analysis of all possible project duration minimization alternatives in which any and all methods to attain the maximum schedule duration for the least additional cost. There are a number of standard and typical approaches to attempting to crash a project schedule. One of the most commonly utilized methods of crashing a project schedule involves minimizing the schedule activity durations while, at the same time, increasing the assignment of resources on schedule activities. Crashing is something which can be utilized to attempt to get the most value out of a project assignment. Essentially, it boils down to an attempt to get the most productivity out of the least time and expense. Crashing is also similar to schedule compression as well as schedule fast tracking. (Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK))

The

goal

of

crashing

is

to

reduce

project

duration

at

minimum

cost.

To reduce project duration while minimizing the cost of crashing, the project team should estimate require time, require the cost, crash time, crash cost for each activities. And then the team can estimate total crash time, total crash cost, the crash cost per week to reduce project duration at minimum cost. (St. Norbert College)

Crashing is a schedule compression technique used to reduce or shorten the project schedule.
The PM can various measures to accomplish this goal. Some of the common methods used are

11

Definitions of Project Management

Adding additional resources to the critical path tasks This option has various constraints such as the securing of the budget to add the resources, and the availability of the resources.

Reduce the project requirements or scope This can be done only if the sponsor and major stakeholders agree to reduce the scope

(Sivaraj Dhanasekaran - Definition of Crashing (In Project Management Terms))

My Definitions

12

Definitions of Project Management

Crashing method for shortening the project duration by reducing the time of one or more of the critical project activities to less than its normal activity time. The object crashing is to reduce project duration while minimizing the cost of crashing. It reduces project time by expending additional resources.

Adding more resources to a project to shorten its duration is called crashing.

13