PROJECT

A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique

product or service.

Project Defined
A 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 the
Triple Constraints of Project
Management Time, Cost &
Scope. Associated with all three
components is Quality.
If any one angle of the triangle
changes, the other two should
change too. Otherwise quality
will be adversely affected.
For example, if time is reduced
without changing cost & scope
accordingly, quality will be
compromised.

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 Fail

1. 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

Thursday, January 23, 2003

Bull Survey, 1998

Project Life Cycle

Defining

Planning

Executing

Delivering / controlling

DEFINING A PROJECT
Activities

Specifications of project are defined

Project objectives are estabilished

Scope estabilished

Tasks defined

Stake holders/Teams are formed

Major responsibilities are assigned

Prepare for tradeoffs

Key Skills
Task Analysis
Cost benefit analysis of options

Planning Stage
Activities:
Plans are made to determine what the project will entail
When it will be scheduled- timeframes
Major and minor milestones
Cost calculations
Teams are formed
Resource requirements
Further refinement of scope

Key Skills:
Process Analysis
Team building
Negotiating
Delegating
Communicating

Project Plan
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

What is a work breakdown structure?

A work breakdown structure is a key project deliverable that
organizes the teams 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

Project Plan contd..

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 task
You 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.

Best Practices
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.

EXECUTING
Executing the plan
Involves monitoring the schedules, cost and specifications
Holding of weekly reviews
Managing contigencies, delays, forecasting future progress
Making necessary changes

Key Skills
Supervising
Delegating
Communicating
Leading and Motivating
Problem solving
Conflict management

Documents

Reports
Review meetings

Delivering/Closing/ Handing over

Completion activities include
Signoff by client

Training of personnel

Documentation

Transfering of documents

Redeploying resources

WHY PROJECTS FAIL

Lesson #1Project 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.

Lesson #2Project Sponsorship/

Top leadership
It is vitally important to the success of a
project to have a
project champion or sponsor
Further, the project sponsor must have
the management span, appropriate
knowledge,
and organizational authority to
harmonize the discordant voices.

Lesson #2Project Sponsorship/

Top leadership contd..
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 #3Project 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 #4Project Specifications

Quality information is much more
likely to lead to successful project management outcomes
rather than the inclusion of unrealistic information