Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Team Engagement
Selecting the right people for the right tasks is one of the determining factors of a successful project.
Diversity within a team is common. Therefore, it is your responsibility as an efficient manager to
assign tasks to team members according to their skills and capabilities. Understand your resources'
strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. This will enable you to accurately select which tasks are
best suited for your resources.
Time Assessment
Successful project management involves successful execution of many small tasks in a particular
period. Assigning the time frame for each task is essential not only for the team to be focused but
also for you as a manager to monitor the progress of the project. Deadlines are critical and hold
your team accountable for completing the project on time. Use deadlines and emphasize their
importance.
Project Planning
The first technical requirement of project management is to establish project planning standards.
The role of management at this step is to develop project plans to analyze project resources,
identification and risks. Plans should highlight and describe management system processes
(organizational management), benefits and weaknesses, information management resources and
network requirements. At this level, project goals are established and communicated throughout
the organization.
Configuration Management
Configuration management is a controller function that monitors abrupt changes or delays in a
project management plan. When a problem has occurred during a project that may cause delays in
the project, this technical requirement analyzes the baseline needs of the project and suggests
alternate plans to avoid disruption.
Quality Assurance
At every step of a project management plan, quality assurance should be implemented to ensure
those involved are following procedures. Every technical requirement should have a quality
assurance inspection or audit checklist to review different processes of the plan. For example, the
construction of a new highway must have quality assurance modules implemented in the area of
construction and public safety. Quality assurance checks are typically written and documented into
the start phase of each project.
Documentation
Documentation includes descriptions of current systems, procedures, amendments and the use of
information systems in a project management environment. Without documentation, there is no
reference or history of activities of project development. Documentation can be used as a resource
to help project managers or engineers understand the "big picture" of the project and where certain
activities fit. Documentation also includes exception reports, which provide personnel with "what
if" and "decision support" information. Automated programs can provide various PERT or Gannt
charts to document project timelines and statistics.
Delivery Constraints
Deliverables submitted for approval will require working days for review.
There is no limit to review and approval cycles.
Equipment order lead times cannot be specified with accuracy.
Environmental Constraints
The development or operating environment is new, and no project staff members are
familiar with it.
Key decision-makers are difficult to contact when issues arise.
The project does not have a customer project manager (or executive sponsor, or steering
committee)
The project environment is new and the components have not yet been successfully
integrated.
The project depends upon the successful and timely completion of associated projects.
Budgetary Constraints
Statistics used in preparing the estimates are unreliable.
Outside consulting requirements cannot be accurately estimated.
Functionality Constraints
The scope of the project is unclear.
The project depends upon receiving data from other, external applications.
A common misconception is that the plan equates to the project timeline, which is only one of the
many components of the plan. The project plan is the major work product from the entire planning
process, so it contains all the planning documents for the project.
Typically many of the project's key stakeholders, that is those affected by both the project and the
project's end result, do not fully understand the nature of the project plan. Since one of the most
important and difficult aspects of project management is getting commitment and buying, the first
step is to explain the planning process and the project plan to all key stakeholders. It is essential for
them to understand the importance of this set of documents and to be familiar with its content,
since they will be asked to review and approve the documents that pertain to them.
Baseline management plans: These plans include documentation on how variances to the
baselines will be handled throughout the project. Each project baseline will need to be reviewed
and managed. A result of this process may include the need to do additional planning, with the
possibility that the baseline(s) will change. Project management plans document what the project
team will do when variances to the baselines occur, including what process will be followed, who
will be notified, how the changes will be funded, etc.
Other work products from the planning process. These include a risk management plan, a quality
plan, a procurement plan, a staffing plan, and a communications plan
Project sponsor, who owns and funds the entire project, Sponsors need to review and
approve all aspects of the plan.
Designated business experts, who will define their requirements for the end product.
They need to help develop the scope baseline and approve the documents relating to scope.
They will be quite interested in the timeline as well.
Project manager, who creates, executes, and controls the project plan. Since project
managers build the plan, they do not need to approve it.
Project team, who build the end product. The team needs to participate in the development
of many aspects of the plan, such as identifying risks, quality, and design issues, but the
team does not usually approve it.
End users, who use the end product. They too, need to participate in the development of
the plan, and review the plan, but rarely do they actually need to sign off.
Others, such as auditors, quality and risk analysts, procurement specialists, and so on may
also participate on the project. They may need to approve the parts that pertain to them,
such as the Quality or Procurement plan.
Ground rules
How large the group should be and whether sub-groups are necessary
It can be treated like a contract between the project manager and sponsor, one that can only be
changed with sponsor approval.
Identifies all the deliverables produced on the project, and therefore, identifies all the work
to be done.
Takes large deliverables and breaks them into a hierarchy of smaller deliverables. That is,
each deliverable starts at a high level and is broken into subsequently lower and lower
levels of detail.
The lowest level is called a "work package" and can be numbered to correspond to activities
and tasks.
The WBS is often thought of as a task breakdown, but activities and tasks are a separate
breakdown, identified in the next step.
Identify activities and tasks needed to produce each of the work packages, creating a WBS of
tasks.
This process is not a one-time effort. Throughout the project you will most likely be adding to
repeating some or all of these steps.
Creating the Quality Plan involves setting the standards, acceptance criteria, and metrics that will
be used throughout the project. The plan, then, becomes the foundation for all the quality reviews
and inspections performed during the project and are used throughout project execution.
Project Risks: A risk is an event that may or may not happen, but could have a significant effect on
the outcome of a project, if it were to occur. For example, there may be a 50% chance of a significant
change in sponsorship in the next few months. Analyzing risks includes making a determination of
both the probability that a specific event may occur and if it does, assessing its impact. The
quantification of both the probability and impact will lead to determining which the highest risks
that need attention are. Risk management includes not just assessing the risk, but developing risk
management plans to understand and communicate how the team will respond to the high-risk
events.
Who on the project wants which reports, how often, in what format, and using what media?
How issues will be escalated and when.
Where project information will be stored and who can access it.
For complex projects, a formal communications matrix is a tool that can help determine some of the
above criteria. It helps document the project team's agreed-on method for communicating various
aspects of the project, such as routine status, problem resolution, decisions, etc.
Once the project plan is complete, it is important not just to communicate the importance of the
project plan to the sponsor, but also to communicate its contents once it's created. This
communication should include such things as:
Construction work
Construction Work is classified as
I. Light construction works are works with light structural members. E.g. Residential
buildings, Schools etc.
II. Heavy construction works are the works with heavy structural members on massive
foundations and these require heavy machinery and equipment E.g. Bridge, Dams, Railways
etc.
III. Industrial construction works are the works related to industries, which needs special
equipment and skills. E.g. Oil refineries, Steel mills, Atomic reactors etc.
Stages of construction
Stage 1. Conception
Stage 2. Study and evaluation
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I. Project Planning
II. Project Scheduling
III. Project Controlling
Project Planning and Project Scheduling are accomplished before the actual project starts.
Project Controlling is operative during the execution of the project and its aim is to recognize the
difficulties during the execution and to apply corrective measures to deal with these difficulties.
I. Project Planning
Planning is the most important phase of the project management. Planning involves defining
objectives of the project, listing of tasks or jobs that must be performed, determining gross
requirements of materials, equipment and manpower and preparing estimates of costs and
durations for various jobs or activities to bring about the satisfactory completion of the project.
Importance of Planning
It provides direction.
It provides unifying framework.
It helps to reveal future opportunities and threats.
It provides performance standards.
Plan is made strategies are set, taking into consideration the company’s policies procedures
and rules.
Plan
It is interpreted in terms of what has to be done to resources to achieve the intent.
The resources to be used may be office staff, labor, materials, plant and machinery, space
and funds.
Plans simply list goals (target) and define the means of achieving them.
Strategies
Strategies are one important type of plan.
It specifies the central concept or purpose of the enterprise as well as the means by which it
intends to carry that purpose.
Scheduling is the layout of the actual activities of the project in time order in which they are to be
performed and calculating the manpower and material requirements needed at each stage of
project work along with the expected completion time of each activity.
Step 1. Establish standard or targets. These targets are generally expressed in terms of time.
Step 2. Measure performance against the standards set down in the first step.
Step 3. Identify the deviations from the standards.
Step 4. Suggest and Select corrective measure involves all problems – identifying, decision-making
and organizing and leadership skill of the decision-maker.
Decision Making
Decision making is a daily activity for any human being. There is no exception about that. When it comes
to business organizations, decision making is a habit and a process as well.
Effective and successful decisions make profit to the company and unsuccessful ones make losses.
Therefore, corporate decision making process is the most critical process in any organization.
In the decision making process, we choose one course of action from a few possible alternatives. In the
process of decision making, we may use many tools, techniques and perceptions.
In addition, we may make our own private decisions or may prefer a collective decision.
Usually, decision making is hard. Majority of corporate decisions involve some level of dissatisfaction or
conflict with another party.
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Resources
In running a project there is a basic need of resources. These resources can be classified as
Resources are the starting point of many problems that have to be solved by the manager in the
planning phase, before proceeding for scheduling phase of the project.
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