Ardhya Pratiwi Setiowati MSc in Business Development Grenoble Graduate School of Business

Approaches in Project Management

Introduction Project management is a field of knowledge that focuses on planning, organizing, securing, and managing limited resources to achieve unique product or objectives with a specific time line. Projects generally carried out by a project team and a project manager as a leader, this team usually outside the normal structure of a company. There are several approaches in project management that help project teams to achieve their goals, such as; Prince2, PMI/PMBOK and Scrum. The first approach is Prince2. Prince2 stands for Projects IN Controlled Environment, it is a process-driven and structured method for project management. It is developed by UK government, but also used in private sectors internationally. Prince2 divides all project activities into seven process; starting up a project, initiating a project, directing a project, controlling a stage, managing stage boundaries, managing product delivery and closing a project. It allows an efficient resources control. Each of the process has a well-specified inputs, outputs, objectives and activities to be performed so any plan deviations can be automatically controlled. The second approach is PMI or PMBOK. PMI stands for Project Management Institute, it is a non-profit organization that focuses on enhancing the field of project management and develops Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). PMBOK is a book that provides general guidelines of accepted knowledge, process, tools and techniques for project management. PMBOK covers the knowledge areas that are needed to organize, plan and manage a project. It also defines the required techniques and tools to deliver a project. PMBOK divides a project into five processes; initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and closing and closing. It describes nine knowledge areas of project management; project integration management, project scope management, project time management, project cost management, project quality management, project human resource management, project communications management, project risk management and project procurement management Scrum is a people-oriented framework that uses agile management process to coordinate teams of approximately five or nine people. It is also an adaptive framework that is used for a project with dynamic environment and changing requirements. It needs a cross-functional team that is self-organized, a certain amount of meetings and produce four artifacts. There are three roles in Scrum; team members, product owner and Scrum master. Team ideally consists of five to nine cross-functional participants, they are responsible for completing work and they will work in a set of short-term (1 to 4 weeks) sub-projects in sequential phases, called sprints. Product Owner communicates the vision and objectives of the project to the team members, and ScrumMaster coaches the team and connects the team to the Product Owner. Strengths, Limitations and Comparison Each of the approach in project management has its own strengths and limitations. There are several strengths of Prince2. The first one is that it provides specific roles and responsibilities of the management. Another strength is that Prince2 has a well-defined path that covers the start, middle, and end of a project. It is also a well-known approach in private and public sectors, so it serves a common language to all participants. Prince2 also has several limitations. Prince2 is a well-documented method, so it can be heavily document-driven and too bureaucratic. Another limitations is that Prince2 is not an adaptive method, so it incapable to manage changes and uncertainties easily. PMBOK has several strengths and limitations. The first strength is that it covers knowledge

Ardhya Pratiwi Setiowati MSc in Business Development Grenoble Graduate School of Business

areas that are needed to manage projects throughout their process for any industry, so the company can build and apply the best practices. The second one is that it defines the required tools, techniques, inputs and outputs of each process. The limitations of PMBOK are it is too complex for a small project and the application of PMBOK requires adaptation to the area industry, project size, time and budget. PMBOK is a great approach to teach the knowledge in project management, however it doesnt provide an affective guidance to carry a project. There are several strengths of Scrum. The first one is that it offers a structured framework without bureaucracy. It gives freedom to team members to speak their minds, as a result the miscommunication is lessened and mistakes are reduced. The second strength is that Scrum emphasizes ongoing assessment throughout a project, it gives flexibility to adapt to business realities that are highly dynamic. The third strength is that it also emphasizes on output rather than input, that helps the team to focus on the bigger picture. However Scrum also has several limitations. The first one is it expects every member in the team to be a smart, experienced and high-motivated people. In reality, not every team can be experienced, skilled and high-achieving enough to be a self-organized and efficient team. So applying Scrum framework would be sufficient only for highly functional organization. The second one is the requirement of enormous freedom in individual and team throughout the process. It would be difficult for traditional companies that underline strong controls over their employees. This requirement also has another drawback, it can cause the teams to be insufficiently controlled. The last limitation is inadequately support a large company or large project. As a highly participative style of framework, the efficiency of the process is affected by the number of the team members. This drawback extends to project size because generally the bigger the project, the larger the teams. Prince2 is a process-driven approach, it defines when and what things that the project team and project manager should do. It offers a clear and fixed path to do a project. In the other hand, PMBOK is a knowledge-driven approach, it describes how to do those things. It stands as a reference that offers standard guidelines to all project managers. While Scrum is significantly different from the other two approaches, it offers a framework that is responsive and people-oriented as a base of completing a project. These three approaches also have different controls or checkpoints. Prince2 has multi level controls carried out to improve reporting and tracking at various levels. Whereas, PMBOK left all the controls to the project managers decision. And Scrums checkpoint are the daily Scrum meeting and sprint review, where all the team members, ScrumMaster and Product Owner review the performance of the team and maybe revise the objectives. Fortunately, projects may use Prince2 and PMBOK at the same time because two of these approaches are complement each other. Prince2 missing several keys of project management areas, such as; procurement, contract administration and cost control. PMBOK offers a practical guidance to prepare, interpret and use good quality plans to control a project. Bibliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management http://www.12manage.com/methods_pmi_pmbok.html http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/2042.aspx http://www.pmforum.org/library/papers/2002/Prince2vsGuide3.pdf http://www.scribd.com/doc/10319690/Limitations-of-Agile-Software-Development