PRJM 6000

Project Management Overview

Dr Brad Carey
Curtin University

Brad Carey, PhD

• Builder (Infrastructure & Heavy Civil)

• Consultant (PM IT, Delay Claims, Procurement, Risk
Management, Sustainability)
• PhD Sustainable Engineering – ASU (2012)
• Director of Curtin MPM
• Brad.carey@curtin.edu.au

About You:
• Job Title/ Work History
• Program You are enrolled (MsC, Dip, Cert)
• Goals for your studies
• Biggest challenge you face on your projects

1
 PM as a Profession

Professions have at least four key elements:

1. An accepted body of knowledge

2. A system for certifying that individuals have mastered that body of
knowledge
3. A commitment to the public good
4. An enforceable code of ethics

Thus, professions are oriented toward practice and focused on client

needs. Above all, professions integrate knowledge and practice.

Project Management Overview

• Foundation unit of PM course

• Unit Outline
• Assignments (Two – 80%) Turnitin
• Online Tests x 2 (10% each = 20% Total)
• Guest Speakers
• Oasis / My Studies & evaluate / Blackboard

Unit Resources

• Each topic
• Tutorials by students (onliners do at home – do not
submit)
• Lecture covering answers to tutorials + more!
• Release Video of lecture on BB (under ‘iLecture’)
• Release Topic Notes on BB (under ‘Study Area’)
• Release PowerPoints on BB (under ‘Study Area’)
• Release extra Reading Material on BB (under ‘reading list’)

2
 BOOKS

• PROJECT MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE. (6th Edition). A Guide to

the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)
• For PRJM6000 + whole course!

3
 Curtin PM

• Course began in 1993

• Endorsed by AIPM

• PMI accreditation

• Course – Generic – Any type of project

Project Management – Amazing Facts

• PMI membership growth

• 2000: 50,000; now: 500,000+

• Curtin PM course growth

• 1990s: 20 pa; now: 120+pa

• PM education in China
• 120 universities in past 3 years– Masters in PM

• Australia’s Fastest growing career 2010-20

• PM = #1 (Dept Ed., Science, & Training, Federal Government, IT,
Healthcare, Engineering, Resources etc.)

• PM Outlook

Projects = Strategy

“Operations keeps the lights on,

strategy provides a light at the end of
the tunnel, but project management is
the train engine that moves the
organization forward.” ~ Joy Gumz

4
 PM Professional Organisations

PMI – Project Management Institute

• Learning Resources (PMBOK)
• Credentials (i.e. PMP)
• Research
• Networking

www.pmi.org

PM Professional Organisations

AIPM – Australian Institute of Project Management

• Learning Resources
• Credentials (i.e. RegPM)
• Research
• Networking

www.aipm.com.au/home

Topic 1: Intro to Projects

Learning Outcomes:
• Describe 6 attributes of projects
• Describe differences between projects and operations

5
 Tutorial Sheet
• List 4 distinctive features of projects

• Do you agree/disagree with following (from sponsor’s

viewpoint):

• A project is a solution to a problem

• A project is created to bring about change

What is a Project?

• Unique process, to achieve an objective to specific

requirements, including constraints of time, cost, resources
(British Standard)

• A project is a solution to a problem (Juran)

• A temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product,

service or result (PMBOK)

What is a Project?

Endeavour in which ,
• human, material & financial resources
• are organized in a novel way,
• to undertake unique scope of work,
• of given specification,
• with constraints of cost & time,
• to achieve beneficial change.

• Rodney Turner

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 Projects - Attributes

PROCESS & SPECIFIED DELIVERABLE

• Project is a process
• Process = set of activities to achieve specified deliverable
• Deliverable:
• product (e.g. building)
• result (e.g. trained personnel, documents, new knowledge)
• service capability (e.g. new business process).
• Life beyond project process
• Deliverables must conform to specification / requirements

Projects Attributes

LIFE CYCLE
• Project process: several phases.
• Activities change as project progresses
• Specifications progressively elaborated
• Slow start, progressive build-up & peak, end.

TEMPORARY ORGANISATION
• Whenever people gather together to do something, they form
an organisation. So a project is an organisation

Projects - Attributes

BUSINESS BENEFIT
• Deliverables used - to achieve business benefits
• Change must be beneficial, & justify costs
• Benefit - solve problem or exploit opportunity

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES
• “All projects should support the organisation’s strategic
goals“(PMI)
• “Strategic change in firms is largely delivered through multiple
simultaneous projects” (PMI)

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 Projects - Attributes

UNIQUE
1-off undertaking, never exactly repeat
Range of uniqueness for projects:
• Repeaters – virtually routine processing
• Runners – quite similar to previous projects
• Strangers – different from previous projects, some common elements
• Aliens – unlike anything we have done before

Projects - Attributes

RESOURCES
• Projects need resources eg. human, equipment.
• Limited
• Internal or external to organisation.
FINITE
• Finite duration - beginning & end
• End: objectives met; can’t be met; need no longer exists
Budget
• Projects have defined costs constraints i.e. budget

Projects - Attributes

COMPLEXITY - INTERDEPENDANCY
• Team of people with discrete skills, technologies
• Separate sections of 1 organisation
• From separate organisations
RISK
• Uniqueness creates uncertainty & risk
STAKEHOLDERS
• Stakeholders – interests affected by project
• Project is governed on behalf of project stakeholders

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 PROJECTS - ATTRIBUTES

CHANGE

“All managers must manage change through projects. We

undertake projects because we cannot produce, or achieve the
benefit, by doing routine things”

• Project brings something new

• Projects are the change efforts of society

Project Achieve Goals

GOALS

Project
3
Project
2
Project
1

NO CHANGE
NOW FUTURE

STRATEGIC GOALS

BENEFICAL CHANGE

PROJECT:
SOLVE PROBLEM
SEIZE OPPORTUNITY

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 OPERATIONS vs. PROJECTS

Project
Eg build a shopping centre
v
Operation
Eg operate a shopping centre

Tutorial Sheet: 4 differences working in these

environments ?

PROJECT vs OPERATIONS
Creating vs Maintaining
Create
Temporary process / finite
Novel teams
Unique effort
Strong management involvement
Revolutionary improvements
Deliverable orientated
Uncertainty
Today different to yesterday
Project management
eg getting married
Use
Permanent process / on-going
Stable teams
Similar effort
Low management involvement
Evolutionary improvement
Efficiency orientated
Greater certainty
Today similar to yesterday
Operations Management
eg staying married

OPERATIONS vs PROJECT
• Car being serviced – project or operation?

• “When I take my car to be serviced, the service is

unique,
• but it is performed by the garage as part of their
routine work,
• so it is a temporary task, not a project.
• For a project, we create a temporary organisation”.

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 Operations vs Projects

Operations & projects share characteristics:

• Resources
• Processes
• Managed - Planned and controlled
• Achieve organisational objectives

Projects
What’s different in managing a project, where:
• Project goal & work method well defined, (eg construction project)

• Project goal & work method not well defined (eg research &
development)

Project Types - Why & How

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 Type 1 projects

('Painting by
Numbers")

Goals well defined

Methods well defined

 Eg engineering
 move quickly into planning

Type 2 ("Quest")

Goals well defined,

Methods poorly
defined.
• Eg new product development
• Eg functionality known, but not how to get it
• Aim - determine how (i.e. method) to achieve goals
• Can’t plan activities. So milestone planning
• Milestones = components to be delivered.
• Continue until sufficient visibility on how to achieve goal

Type 3 projects (Movie/ IT)

Goals poorly defined

Methods well defined

 Eg IT systems development, movie

 determination of users' needs is difficult,
 So follow a life cycle, using stage milestones

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 Type 4 projects ('Fog")

Goals poorly defined

Methods poorly
defined

 eg research or organisational change.

 milestones - go/no-go decision points
 tight control of costs & time
 Many options investigated.
 "can end up in delivering nothing unless controlled"

5. ABC – Case Study:

• Sue Miller, Senior Executive Officer of ABC Candle Co, has just completed a 2-day
program on PM and is keen to apply the new knowledge on a recurring problem faced
by her company.
• About 60% of ABC’s revenue results from the pre-Christmas sale of the XMAS-PAK,
consisting of 12 candles. XMAS-PAK was introduced 8 years ago, and sales have been
increasing by 20% pa.
• All orders not supplied by 16th December are lost. Sue estimated that XMAS-PAK sales
would have been higher last year if it were not for lost orders. It was a frustrating
problem because the loss was not due to a shortage of capability. Sales forecast were
not very accurate, and the Manufacturing Manager has strict instructions to minimise
inventory in finished goods. Sue was sure that project management could somehow
help solve this problem without appreciably increasing inventories
• Sue assigned both Sam Smith (Marketing Manager) and Ken Knight (Manufacturing
Manager) as project managers for this problem. She reviewed the problem with them
and gave them 8 years of historical sales data. The objective was to reduce lost sales
to 5% within 3 years

ABC - Question
• IS THIS A PROJECT? WHY?

• ANY OTHER COMMENTS ?

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 ABC Case Study:

• Aims to improve EXISTING OPERATIONAL PROCESS i.e. marketing

– forecasting demand
• Task is mainly ON-GOING, not one-off, unique
• Does not have a SPECIFIC project budget, timeframe,
• So, probably not a project - or is it? Does it need PM?
• Other Comments:
• Two Project Managers - not advisable
• Same data, same result ?

OPERATIONS vs PROJECT:
IMPORTANCE
• To use project management to run a operational process is
highly inefficient. Suppose every time you shipped an
overnight package, the carrier put together a project team to
plan and then monitor that shipment? That’s ridiculous, of
course; but why?

• Because you already know the customer requirements.

Because you already have a budget and a schedule for the
process – it’s part of the yearly budget planning process. You
already have people in place to do the tasks of the process.
You don’t need project management” (Martin & Tate, 2001).

Review
• 3 Characteristics of Projects

• 2 comparisons: Projects vs. Operations

• How to manage a “Fog”?

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