Download What is project management?

Managing projects
Roland Gilbert
BSc MRICS; Prince 2 Practitioner
© Newway UK Consultants Ltd
.
All rights reserved.
What is project management?
• Definition
– Project management is the application of processes,
methods, knowledge, skills and experience to achieve the
project objectives.
• General
– A project is a unique, transient endeavour, undertaken to
achieve planned objectives, which could be defined in
terms of outputs, outcomes or benefits. A project is
usually deemed to be a success if it achieves the objectives
according to their acceptance criteria, within an agreed
timescale and budget.
Elements of a Project
Time
Scope
Cost
Quality
The core components of project management are:
• defining the reason why a project is necessary;
• capturing project requirements, specifying quality of the
deliverables, estimating resources and timescales;
• preparing a business case to justify the investment;
• securing corporate agreement and funding;
• developing and implementing a management plan for the project;
• leading and motivating the project delivery team;
• managing the risks, issues and changes on the project;
• monitoring progress against plan;
• managing the project budget;
• maintaining communications with stakeholders and the project
organisation;
• provider management;
• closing the project in a controlled fashion when appropriate.
When would you use project management?
• Projects are separate to business-as-usual activities, requiring people to
come together temporarily to focus on specific project objectives. As a
result, effective teamwork is central to successful projects.
• Project management is concerned with managing discrete packages of
work to achieve objectives. The way the work is managed depends upon a
wide variety of factors.
• The scale, significance and complexity of the work are obvious factors:
relocating a small office and organising the Olympics share many basic
principles but offer very different managerial challenges.
• A good distinguishing factor is often to look at the nature of the
objectives.
• Objectives may be expressed in terms of outputs (such as a new HQ
building), outcomes (such as staff being relocated from multiple locations
to the new HQ), benefits (such as reduced travel and facilities
management costs) or strategic objectives (such as doubling the
organisation’s share price in three years).
Why do we use project management?
• Investment in effective project management will
have a number of benefits to both the host
organisation and the people involved in delivering
the project. It will:
• provide a greater likelihood of achieving the
desired result;
• ensure efficient and best value use of resources;
• satisfy the differing needs of the project’s
stakeholders.
Project stages
Lessons
learnt
Step 5 –
Benefits
realisation
Key control – 6
Change
control
Key control – 5
Risk
Register
Step 4 –
Closing a
project
Key control – 4
Progress
report
Step 3 –
Running a
project
Key control - 3
Project
Initiation
Document
Key control - 3
Project
Brief
Step 2 –
Initiating a
project
Key control - 2
Key control - 1
Step 1 Starting a
project
Post
project
review
Time management
•
•
•
•
•
Plan the key tasks
Add time to each and dates where critical
Add resources needed for each task
Create interelationships
Create programme incorporating these using
Excel or Microsoft Project etc
• Include risks and float
• Use a baseline and monitor progress against and
report variances to bring back on track
Microsoft project example
Quality Management
•
•
•
•
Define the design brief or quality objectives
Create quality outcomes or
Build a quality specification
Monitor quality outputs during project delivery to
ensure compliance and adjust if needed
• Identify defects and manage rectification
• Operational systems training
• Handover meeting with client/ user
Quality specification example
Cost Management
• Establish high level budget at feasibility
• Build detailed budgets as design/ requirements are
developed
• At tender stage reconcile supplier actual costs to
budget & report
• At start of project delivery have regular cost reports to
report on changes and agree cost changes as you go &
report on potential cost changes to allow for good
management
• During project delivery pay suppliers regularly
• At end of project delivery agree final costs and identify
savings and pay final costs.
Cost report example
Project Name
A284
Lyminster
Bypass
A259 Corridor
Capacity
Enhancement
, East Arun
West
Horsham SDL
Enterprise
Link Road,
Bognor Regis
A2300
Corridor
Capacity
Enhancement
, Burgess Hill
A29
Realignment,
Bognor Regis
NCN2
Strategic
Cycle Route
package
LEP
Budget
Value
Tender/
Target
Cost
Value
Variance - %
Forecast
Tender to Varian Variation Outturn
Budget
ce
s/ CE's Cost
Variance - %
Outturn to Varian
Budget
ce
Notes:
£0 £0
£0 £0
£0 £0
£0 £0
£0 £0
£0 £0
£0 £0
£0 £0
£0 £0
£0 £0
£0 £0
£0 £0
£0 £0
£0 £0
Key Control Documents
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Project brief
Business case
PID
Tender documents
Contract documents (if needed)
Risk register
Change control forms
Progress reports – monthly or similar regular
programme, quality and cost reports
• End of project do final cost report
• Post project create lessons learnt report and savings
register/ benefit realisation
PM Information sources
• General PM information
– Business Innovation and Skills PM Guidelines 2010
– Association for Project Management
– Project Management Institute
• Formal PM systems & processes e.g.
–
–
–
–
Prince 2 PM methodology (OGC) - 1996
AgilePM/ ITil – for IT development and management
MSP/AgilePgM – for large programmes of work
M_o_R – management of risk
Summary