Chapter One

Introduction to Project Management

Chapter Coverage
What is a project?
What is project management?
Constraints of project management
Project management tools and techniques
A system view of project management
Project phases and life cycles
Project life cycle and management review
Reasons for Project Success
Reasons for Project Failures
Successful Project Manager
Chapter Objectives
At the end of the chapter, students will be able to
Define project.
Define project management.
Describe constraints of project management.
List down project management tools and techniques.
Differentiate classical and system view of project management.
Differentiate linear and cyclic project management view of project life cycle.
Describe project life cycles and phases.
List down reasons for project success and failure.
List down traits of successful project manager.
1.1. Why Project Management?
Companies are always in transition now, remodeling and reorganizing to meet the latest global
challenges. Competition is keen and only the flexible will survive. These business conditions translate
directly to the greater demands for efficient, effective management of an entire spectrum of projects.
And the changes just dont stop. Many companies view projects as investments, integral parts of their
strategic plans. This means the project managers must continually demonstrate their contribution to
the bottom line. With this alliance between strategic plan and project management comes an
increasingly close but often tense relationship between project and process management.

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Contrary to popular belief, project management and process management are compatible; projects
become integral players in using and implementing processes. But failure to effectively manage a key
project could cause a malfunction in the core process!
The nature of todays workforce has changed in many companies. Employees are no longer offered or
seek long-term employmentmany people and companies want flexibility or mobility. Such changes
add a new dimension to the work being done on a projecta dimension that directly affects
relationships and ways of doing business. And many projects now involve people from different
occupations and backgrounds. The globalization of the nations business, for instance, requires that a
project managers skills go beyond being able to put together a flowchart.
As the economy continues to expand, key resources will become limited and project managers will
need alternative ways to obtain expertise, such as by using consultants and outsourcing. Certainly,
project managers in the past have faced similar problems of providing alternative sources of
expertisebut never on as great a scale as they do today.
Market pressures complicate the management of projects, too. Customers not only want a quality
product but also want it sooner. Time-to-market pressures force project managers to be efficient and
effective to an unprecedented degree. The complexity involved in managing projects has never been
greater and will likely only grow in the future. So, too, will the risks for failure. It is more critical
than ever that the pieces of the project be in place to ensure delivery of the final service on time and
within budget and to guarantee that it be of the highest quality.
1.2. What is a Project?
A project is a discrete set of activities performed in a logical sequence to attain a specific result. Each
activity, and the entire project, has a start and stop date.
The definition of project varies from one company to another. In some cases, the word is used loosely
to describe any task, exceptional or recurring. Thus, a project could mean any routine that demands
time. We distinguish a project and a routine in four ways:
1. A project is an exception: A project involves investigating, compiling, arranging, and reporting
information outside the range of usual activities while routine is defined within the range of a
departments function.
Example: The manager of a customer service department prepares monthly reports identifying
customer contact trends (complaints, inquiries, suggestions) as part of her routine. When she is
given the task of investigating and comparing automated customer service software, she is
responsible for a project.

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2. Project activities are related. Routines for recurring tasks performed in your department are
related to the activities that define and distinguish that department only, whereas the activities
involved in project phases are related to one another and to a desired end result. So your project
may involve coordinating work that not only takes place in your immediate department but
extends to actions in other departments, as well as to outside resources.
Example: The customer service manager given the project of investigating automated systems
may work with the data processing manager, the marketing department, and several suppliers.
Collectively, the internal and external information will help her identify the points of
comparison.
3. Project goals and deadlines are specific. Recurring tasks may be managed with departmental
goals in mind; but these goals tend to remain fixed, or move forward only with time. The same is
true of deadlines; you may face weekly or monthly deadlines for completion of reports,
processing, and closing. Projects, though, have singular goals that will be either reached or
missed. And projects have clear starting points and completion dates.
Example: The customer service manager is told to compare prices and features of software,
make a recommendation, and complete a report within three months. This project has a clear
goal and deadline. In comparison, her departments routine goals and deadlines extend from one
month to another.
4. The desired result is identified. Routines are aimed not at one outcome but at maintenance of
processes, whereas the research, development of procedures, or construction of systems or
buildings on a project produce a tangible, desired result.
Example: For her project, the customer service manager is expected to deliver a conclusive
report. Its a one-time assignment, not one that will recur each month. But the routine reports her
department generates will still be produced as a maintenance function of her department.

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1.3. What is Project Management?
Project management ensures the delivery of a quality system on time and within budget. The main
components of this definition are quality, time, and money.
Ensuring delivery within budget requires a manager to estimate and assign the resources
required by the project in terms of participants, training, and tools.
Ensuring on-time delivery requires a manager to plan work effort and to monitor the status of
the project in terms of tasks and work products.
Finally, ensuring quality requires a project manager to provide problem reporting mechanisms
and monitor the status the product in terms of defects and risks.
All three aspects of the project, quality, budget, and time, are essential and need to be addressed
together for the project to succeed.
Project management is concerned with planning and allocating resources to ensure the delivery of
quality software system on time and within budget. Project management is subject to the same
barriers as technical activities: complexity and change. Complex products require a large number of
participants with diverse skills and backgrounds. Competitive markets and evolving requirements
introduce change in the development, triggering frequent resource reallocation and making it difficult
to track the status of the project. Managers deal with complexity and change the same way developers
do: through modeling, communication, rationale, and configuration management.
Project management is the tools, techniques, and processes for defining, planning, organizing,
controlling, and leading a project as it completes its tasks and delivers the results. But lets take a
closer look at the functions of project management just mentioned.
Lead: To inspire the participants to accomplish the goals and objectives at a level that meets
or exceeds expectations. It is the only function of project management that occurs
simultaneously with the other functions. Whether defining, planning, organizing, or
controlling, the project manager uses leadership to execute the project efficiently and
effectively.
Define: To determine the overall vision, goals, objectives, scope, responsibilities, and
deliverables of a project. A common way to capture this information is with a statement of
work. This is a document that delineates the above information and is signed by all interested
parties.

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 Plan: To determine the steps needed to execute a project, assign who will perform them, and
identify their start and completion dates. Planning entails activities such as constructing a
work breakdown structure and a schedule for start and completion of the project.
Organize: To orchestrate the resources cost-effectively so as to execute the plan. Organizing
involves activities such as forming a team, allocating resources, calculating costs, assessing
risk, preparing project documentation, and ensuring good communications.
Control: To assess how well a project meets its goals and objectives. Controlling involves
collecting and assessing status reports, managing changes to baselines, and responding to
circumstances that can negatively impact the project participants.
Close: To conclude a project efficiently and effectively. Closing a project involves compiling
statistics, releasing people, and preparing the lessons learned document.
1.4.A System View of Project Management

The field of project management is currently in transition. What worked in the past may not
necessarily work in the future, precisely because the world of business has changed. In the past,
managing a project meant focusing on three key elements of a project: cost, schedule, and quality.
Each element had a direct relationship with the other two. Do something to one and the other two
would be affected, positively or negatively. This viewpoint is considered the classical approach for
managing projects. The classical approach emphasized the formal, structural aspects. Managing
projects meant building neat organizational charts and highly logical schedules, as well as using
formal decision-making disciplines.
Recently, however, project management has taken a more behavioral approach. The emphasis is
shifting toward viewing a project as a total system, or subsystem operating within a system. This
system perspective emphasizes the human aspects of a project as much as the structural ones. This
does not mean that the formal tools, techniques, and principles are less important; it is just that they
share the stage with behavioral techniques. The three elementscost, schedule, and qualitygain an
added dimension: people. Cost, schedule, quality, and people all play integral roles in the success or
failure of a project.
Indeed, it is quite evident that the behavioral aspects of a project can have an impact on final results.
Individual and team motivations, informal power structures, and interpersonal communications can
have as much an effect as a poorly defined schedule or an ill-defined goal. In many cases, the impact
of behavioral problems can be even more dramatic.

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1.5.Project Life Cycle and Management View

In the classical approach, project management was conceived in a linear way, or was at least formally
portrayed that way. Project managers were to define, plan, organize, control, and closein that order.
While it made sense, the reality was usually something else.
Today, we view the project managers role differently; although project managers perform the same
functions, we perceive their performance not in a linear context but in a cyclical one. Each time the
cycle completes (reaches closure), it begins again, requiring the reinstitution or refinement of the
functions that were used in a previous cycle.
Notice the word lead in the middle of the cycle. This function occurs throughout the project life cycle
and plays a prominent role in each iteration of the cycle. It is the centerfocusto ensure that each
functions occurs efficiently and effectively.
The typical project cycle consists of phases that result in output.
During the concept phase, the idea of a project arises and preliminary cost and schedule estimates are
developed at a high level to determine if the project not only is technically feasible but also will have
a payback.
In the formulation phase, the complete project plans are developed. These plans often include a
statement of work, a work breakdown structure, and schedules.
The implementation phase is when the plan is executed. Energy is expended to achieve the goals and
objectives of the project in the manner prescribed during the formulation phase.
Then, in the installation phase, the final product is delivered to the customer. At this point,
considerable training and administrative support are provided to please the customer.
The sustaining phase covers the time the product, such as a computing system or a building, is under
the customers control and an infrastructure exists to maintain and enhance the product. Sometimes
these phases occur linearly; other times, they overlap. Still other times they occur in a spiral.
In todays fast-paced environment, partly owing to time-to-market pressures and partly to a rapidly
changing business environment, theres pressure to accelerate the project cycle without sacrificing
quality. Many projects are on the fast track, meaning they proceed quickly. To accommodate that
acceleration, companies adopt simplistic, modular approaches to building a new product or delivering
a new service. Component-based manufacturing, reuse, and just-in-time delivery, as well as more
sophisticated tools (e.g., in-systems development) for building products, enable such fast-tracking to
become possible and prevalent.

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1.6.Project Phases and Life Cycles

At the highest level of abstraction, the development life cycle can be decomposed into three major
phases: project initiation, during which the project scope and resources are defined, steady state,
during which the bulk of development work occurs, and project termination, during which the
system is delivered and accepted.
I. Project Initiation: During this phase, the project manager defines the scope of the system with
the client and constructs the initial version of the management models. Initially, only the project
manager, selected team leaders, and the client are involved. The project manager sets up the
project environment, organizes teams, hires participants, and kicks off the project. Project
initiation includes the following activities:
Problem statement definition. During this activity, the client and the project manager define
the scope of the system in terms of functionality, constraints, and deliverables. The client and
the project manager agree on acceptance criteria and target dates.
Initial top-level design. The project manager and the system architect decompose the system
into subsystems for the purpose of team assignment. The project manager defines teams and
work products in terms of subsystems. The system architect and the developers will revise the
subsystem decomposition during system design.
Team formation. The project manager assigns a team to each subsystem, defines cross-
functional teams, and selects team leaders. The project manager and the team leaders together
then assign roles and responsibilities to participants as a function of the skills of the
participants. The team leaders establish training needs for the team during this phase.
Communication infrastructure setup. The project manager and the team leaders set up the
communication infrastructure of the project, including bulletin boards, Web sites,
configuration management tools, document templates, and meeting procedures. Project
participants will use this infrastructure for distributing information and report problems in a
timely manner.
Initial milestones planning. The project manager schedules intermediate work products and
external deliverables and assigns them to teams.
Project kickoff. The project manager, the team leaders, and the client officially start the
project. The purpose of the kickoff meetings is to explain to the project participants the scope
of the project, the communication infrastructure, and the responsibilities of each team. After
the kickoff, the project is in steady state.

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II. Steady State: During this phase, the role of team leader becomes critical. During project
initiation, most decisions are made by the project manager. During steady state, team leaders are
responsible for tracking the status of their team and identifying problems via team meetings.
Team leaders report the status of their team to the project manager who then evaluates the status
of the complete project. Team leaders respond to deviation from the plan by reallocating tasks to
developers or obtaining additional resources from the project manager. The project manager is
still responsible for the interaction with the client, obtaining formal agreement and renegotiating
resources and deadlines. Steady state activities include the following:
Project agreement definition. Once the analysis model is stable, the client and the project
manager formally agree on the scope of the system and the delivery date. The Project
Agreement document is derived from the problem statement and revised during analysis.
Status monitoring. Throughout the project, team leaders and management monitor the status
and compare it with the planned schedule. The team leaders are responsible for collecting
status information through meetings, reviews, problem reports, and work product completion,
and for summarizing it for the project manager.
Risk management. During this activity, project participants identify the potential problems
that could cause delays in the schedule and budget overruns. The project manager and the
team leaders identify, analyze, and prioritize risks and prepare contingency plans for the
important risks.
Project replanning. When the project deviates from the schedule or when a contingency plan
is activated, the project manager or the team leader revises the schedule and reallocates
resources to meet the delivery deadline. The project manager can hire new staff, create new
teams, or merge existing teams.
III. Project Termination: During this phase, the product is delivered and the project history is
collected. Most of the developers involvement with the project ends before this phase. A
handful of key developers, the technical writers, and the team leaders are involved with wrapping
up the system for installation and acceptance and collecting the project history for future use.
Client acceptance test. The system is evaluated with the client according to the acceptance
criteria set forth in the Project Agreement. Functional and nonfunctional requirements are
demonstrated and tested using scenarios defined in the Project Agreement. The client formally
accepts the product at this stage.

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 Installation. The system is deployed in the target environment and documents are delivered.
The installation may include user training and a roll out phase, during which data is moved
from the previous system to the new system. Acceptance usually precedes installation.
Postmortem. The project manager and the team leaders collect the history of the project for
the organizational learning. By capturing the history of major and minor failures and by
analyzing their causes, an organization can avoid repeating mistakes and improve its practice.
In all the above activities, timely and accurate communication between project management, the team
leaders, and the developers is crucial for determining the status of a project and for making correct
decisions. Several tools are available to the project participants, including the communication
infrastructure, management documents, such as the Software Project Management Plan (SPMP), and,
more generally, encouraging the free exchange of information. A team leader can substantially
improve communication by rewarding accurate reporting instead of punishing the bearer of bad news,
by releasing as much information as possible in a timely manner, and by responding constructively to
problem reports. Managers use models to deal with complexity and revise them to deal with change.
1.7. Characteristics of Project Management
Just what are these special characteristics that make projects different, and that require special skills
to manage? Lets look at generally accepted characteristics of project management, prefaced with a
definition of a project.
A group of tasks, performed in a definable time period, in order to meet a specific set of
objectives.
It is likely to be a one-time program.
It has a life cycle, with a specific start and end.
It has a work scope that can be categorized into definable tasks.
It has a budget.
It is likely to require the use of multiple resources. Many of these resources may be scarce and
may have to be shared with others.
It may require the establishment of a special organization, or the crossing of traditional
organizational boundaries.

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1.8. Constraints of Project Management
But projects succeed or fail purely on the basis of the three constraints; as follows:
1. Result: Completion of a specific, defined task or a series of tasks is the primary driving force
behind a project. Unlike the recurring tasks faced on the departmental level, a project is targeted
to the idea of a finite, one-time result.
2. Budget: A projects budget is often separate from the departmental budget. Unlike a
departments staff, a project team operates with a degree of independencein terms of both
control and money. Project teams often include people from several different departments; thus,
budgetary control cannot be organized along departmental lines. A project may require a capital
budget as well as an expense budget. As project manager, youre likely to have a greater degree
of control over variances.
3. Time: Projects have specific starting points and stopping points. A well-organized project is
based on careful controls over completion phases, which involve the use of each team members
time.
Projects are also distinguished from routines by the way in which they must operate under the three
constraints of result, budget, and time. To a degree, all management functions operate within these
constraints. For example, your department may be expected to perform and produce certain results;
its subjected to budgeting controls; and its work is planned and executed under a series of deadlines.
These constraints while common to all departments and recognized by every manger, are perpetual.
Not all three are encountered consistently in all cases. And they might not even serve as guidelines
for your actions.
Example: The manager of an insurance claims office keeps an eye on the volume of work, which
varies from one day to the next. His primary concern is completion of processing to avoid backlogs of
work. That may be called a desired result, but it is a constant one and not a one-time goal.

Example: A department is given an expense budget for the next year. In several cases, assigned
expense levels are allocated and beyond the managers immediate control. Thus, he does not track all
aspects of the budget with control in mind.
Example: An accounting department records transactions on a daily basis, and cuts off each day at 3
P.M., when a batch is balanced and processed on an automated system. The daily deadline is part of
the recurring routine and has an ongoing series of cut-off points, unlike a longer-term deadline.

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1.9.The Successful Project Manager

A successful project manager knows how to bring together the definition and control elements and
operate them efficiently. That means you will need to apply the leadership skills you already apply in
running a department and practice the organizational abilities you need to constantly look to the
future. The skills you need just to be successful manager includes:
Organizational and leadership experience: An executive seeking a qualified project manager
usually seeks someone who has already demonstrated the ability to organize work and to lead
others. He or she assumes that you will succeed in a complicated long-term project primarily
because you have already demonstrated the required skills and experience.
Contact with needed resources: For projects that involve a lot of coordination between
departments, divisions, or subsidiaries, top management will look for a project manager who
already communicates outside of a single department. If you have the contacts required for a
project, it will naturally be assumed that you are suited to run a project across departmental
lines.
Ability to coordinate a diverse resource pool: By itself, contact outside of your department
may not be enough. You must also be able to work with a variety of people and departments,
even when their backgrounds and disciplines are dissimilar. For example, as a capable project
manager, you must be able to delegate and monitor work not only in areas familiar to your
own department but in areas that are alien to your background.
Communication and procedural skills: An effective project manager will be able to convey
and receive information to and from a number of team members, even when particular points
of view are different from his own. For example, a strictly administrative manager should
understand the priorities of a sales department, or a customer service manager may need to
understand what motivates a production crew.
Ability to delegate and monitor work: Project managers need to delegate the work that will be
performed by each team member, and to monitor that work to stay on schedule and within
budget. A contractor who builds a house has to understand the processes involved for work
done by each subcontractor, even if the work is highly specialized. The same is true for every
project manager. Its not enough merely to assign someone else a task, complete with a
schedule and a budget. Delegation and monitoring are effective only if youre also able to
supervise and assess progress.

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 Dependability: Your dependability can be tested only in one way: by being given
responsibility and the chance to come through. Once you gain the reputation as a manager
who can and do respond as expected, youre ready to take on a project. These project
management qualifications read like a list of evaluation points for every department manager.
If you think of the process of running your department as a project of its own, then you
already understand what its like to organize a projectthe difference, of course, being that
the project takes place in a finite time period, whereas your departmental tasks are ongoing.
Thus, every successful manager should be ready to tackle a project, provided it is related to
his or her skills, resources, and experience.
2. Project Success or Failure
Projects, of course, are not operated in a vacuum. They are parts, or subsystems, of much bigger
systems called businesses. Each project has or uses elements such as processes, participants, policies,
procedures, and requirements, some of which are dependent upon and interact with related elements
in the larger business system. A conflict between project and system can result in disequilibrium. But
by taking a systems perspective, the project manager can see how all the elements interact, and assess
the impact on the individual project. For example, it becomes easier to understand the impact of a 10
percent budget cut on each element of a project. More important, it is easier to identify potential
project failure by recognizing the disequilibrium. If left unmanaged, disequilibrium can result in
project failure.
So what types of disequilibrium make a project a success or failure? In the past, the view was that
failure resulted from not adequately defining, planning, organizing, or controlling the project in a
step-by-step manner. In many cases, a projects failure was attributed to not having an adequate
statement of work, a work breakdown structure, or a schedule. But, as mentioned earlier, failure of a
project is increasingly seen as a result of bad behavioral circumstancesfor example, poor customer
commitment, lack of vision, low morale, no buy in from people doing the work, or unrealistic
expectations. Such behavioral factors are frequently recognized as having as much importance for
project success, for example, as a well-defined work breakdown structure.
The key, of course, is being able to recognize if and when projects start to fail. To do that requires
maintaining a feedback loop throughout the project cycle. And the effectiveness of the feedback loop
depends on a constant flow of quality information among the project manager, team members, the
customer, and senior management. Table 1. Depicts reasons for project success and Table 2. Depicts
reasons for project failure.

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 Classical
Well-defined goals and objectives
Detailed work breakdown structure
Clear reporting relationships
Formal change management disciplines in place
Channels of communication exist
Adherence to scope
Reliable estimating
Reliable monitoring and tracking techniques
Clear requirements
Reasonable time frame
Broad distribution of work
Behavioral
Agreement over goals and objectives
Commitment to achieving goals and objectives
High morale
Good teaming
Cooperation among all participants
Receptivity to positive and negative feedback
Receptive culture to project management
Realistic expectations
Good conflict resolution
Executive sponsorship
Good customer-supplier relationship

Table 1: Reasons for Project Success

Classical Behavioral
Ill-defined work breakdown structure Inappropriate leadership style
High-level schedule No common vision
No reporting infrastructure Unrealistic expectations
Too pessimistic or optimistic estimates Poor informal communications and interpersonal
relationships
No change management discipline No "buy-in" or commitment from customer or
people doing work
Inadequate formal communications Low morale
Inefficient allocation of resources Lack of training
No accountability and responsibility for results Poor teaming
Poor role definition Culture not conducive to project management
Inadequacy of tools Lack of trust among participants
Ill-defined scope False or unrealistic expectations
Unclear requirements No or weak executive sponsorship
Too high, too long, or too short time frame Mediocre knowledge transfer

Table 2: Reasons for Project Failures

2.1. Project Management Tools and Techniques
Despite a changing project environment, the fundamental tools of project management remain the
same regardless of project or industry. For example, managing a marketing project requires the same
skills as managing a software engineering project.
Management tools and techniques allow representing the resources available to the project, the
constraints resources are subjected to, and the relationships among resources. The following elements
of management tools and techniques are worth mentione

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 Teams: represent sets of participants who work on a common problem.
Role: represent sets of responsibilities. Roles are used to distribute work to participants
within a team.
Work products: represent the deliverables and intermediate products of the project. Work
products are the visible results of work.
Tasks: represent work in terms of sequential steps necessary to generate one or more work
products.
Schedules: represent the mapping of a task model onto a time line. A schedule represents
work in terms of calendar time.
The project manager and team leaders construct and maintain these tools and techniques elements
throughout development. Using these models, team leaders can communicate with managers and
developers about status and responsibilities. If a substantial deviation occurs between the planned
work and the actual work, the project manager reallocates resources or changes the project
environment.

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