Download Project management precis 1

Lindsey Schwartz
Freshman Project
September 16, 2012
Précis
Project management: cost, time and quality, two best guesses and a phenomenon, its time to
accept other success criteria
R. Atkinson, Project management: cost, time and quality, two best guesses and a
phenomenon, its time to accept other success criteria, Edition of book, Great Britain: Elsevier
Science Ltd and IPMA, 1999, p. 337-342.
Throughout the article, the author, Roger Atkinson, tries to define what project
management is and what criteria are needed to guarantee success of a project versus its fail.
There were several different definitions included in this article that contributed to a better
understanding of what project management really was. The first definition said that project
management was, “The planning, monitoring, and control of all aspects of a project and the
motivation of all those involved in it to achieve the project objectives on time and to the
specified cost, quality, and performance.” Another defined it as, “The application of a collection
of tools and techniques…to direct the use of diverse resources toward the accomplishment of a
unique, complex, one-time task within time, cost, and quality constraints.” There are many more
definitions of project management. I felt that the above definitions, if merged into one, would be
a great overall definition covering, very broadly, everything that project management is about.
A concept that Roger Atkinson refers to a lot throughout his article is the idea of an Iron
Triangle in which the three points represent cost, time, and quality. The author believes that this
is how you measure the success of a project. Time and cost are almost always guesses. They are
unknown quantities when a project is undertaken. This is not always the case though. In our case
we know both of these factors. We only have so much money to work with and we have to fit
everything into the budget. As far as time goes, we have a deadline in which it has to be finished
by and it can’t be any later than that. When people talk about projects, they generally have a
rough estimate of the time and money it will take and they have the ability to move up or down
on the amount of time and money it will take; to a certain degree. Our scenario is much different
than the typical one due to our unique constraints. The last factor is the quality of the project.
Quality is a relative term. It combines different people’s views and beliefs about how the project
should turn out to be. Different people value different aspects of a certain item and there might
be tradeoffs along the way that would lead to a final design and the quality of that design.
When working on a project, who should be the one to decide the criteria? The answer is
not hard at all. It should be a combination of the people working on the project from the project
manager to the customer-client to the team members. Everyone has to add input and
communicate to each other. If this doesn’t happen then there will be a communication break
down and client may not get what he or she wants, thus an ineffective project result. These
breakdowns are called performance gaps. Table three in the article shows the performance gaps.
One of the biggest gaps is between the actual project outcome needed by the customer and the
desired project outcome as described by the customer. Sometimes when working on a project
there is a misunderstanding of what the customer wants and what the project manager thinks that
they want. Before we go too far with our project, I think it would be wise to meet with them in
person to go over exactly what they want from us as their designers before we make too many
assumptions.
I believe that this article gave some good insight as to how some projects fall apart while
others stay strong and succeed. It tells us certain key areas to focus on, specifically
communication, in order to get a good start to the project and follow it through.