Project management is the planning, organizing and managing the effort to accomplish a

successful project. A project is a one-time activity that produces a specific output and or
outcome, for example, a building or a major new computer system. This is in contrast to a
program, which is a) an ongoing process, such as a quality control program, or b) an activity to
manage a number of multiple projects together.
Project management includes developing a project plan, which involves defining and confirming
the project goals and objectives, how they will be achieved, identifying tasks and quantifying the
resources needed, and determining budgets and timelines for completion. It also includes
managing the implementation of the project plan, along with operating regular 'controls' to
ensure that there is accurate and objective information on 'performance' relative to the plan, and
the mechanisms to implement recovery actions where necessary.
Projects often follow major phases or stages (with various titles for these), for example:
feasibility, definition, planning, implementation, evaluation and realisation.

Project management is the application of processes, methods, skills, knowledge and experience
to achieve specific project objectives according to the project acceptance criteria within agreed
parameters. Project management has final deliverables that are constrained to a finite timescale
and budget.
A key factor that distinguishes project management from just 'management' is that it has this
final deliverable and a finite timespan, unlike management which is an ongoing process. Because
of this a project professional needs a wide range of skills; often technical skills, and certainly
people management skills and good business awareness.

What is a project?
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. Time, cost and quality are the building blocks of every project.

Time: scheduling is a collection of techniques used to develop and present schedules that show
when work will be performed.

Cost: how are necessary funds acquired and finances managed?

Quality: how will fitness for purpose of the deliverables and management processes be assured?

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.

Why do we use project management

Project management is aimed at producing an end product that will effect some change for the
benefit of the organisation that instigated the project. It is the initiation, planning and control of a
range of tasks required to deliver this end product. Projects that require formal management are
those that:

Project management is aimed at producing an end product that will effect some change for the
benefit of the organisation that instigated the project. It is the initiation, planning and control of a
range of tasks required to deliver this end product. Projects that require formal management are
those that:

 produce something new or altered, tangible or intangible;

 have a finite timespan: a definite start and end;
 are likely to be complex in terms of work or groups involved;
 require the management of change;
 require the management of risks.
 Investment in effective project management will have a number of benefits, such as:
 providing a greater likelihood of achieving the desired result;
 ensuring efficient and best value use of resources;
 satisfying the differing needs of the project’s stakeholders.
When do we use project management?
Projects are separate from business-as-usual activities and occur when an organisation wants to
deliver a solution to set requirements within an agreed budget and timeframe. Projects require a
team of people to come together temporarily to focus on specific project objectives. As a result,
effective teamwork is central to successful projects.

Projects require a team of 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 specific 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. 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);
 strategic objectives (such as doubling the organisation’s share price in three years).
Who uses project management?
Anyone and everyone manages projects, even if they aren’t formally called a ‘project manager’.
Ever organised an event? That’s a project you managed with a team of people, and project
management is life skill for all. More formally, projects crop up in all industries and business:

 Transport and Infrastructure

 IT
 Product manufacture
 Building and Construction
 Finance and Law

APM Body of Knowledge 7th edition, 2018

https://www.apm.org.uk/resources/what-is-project-management/

Project planning is at the heart of the project life cycle, and tells everyone involved where you’re
going and how you’re going to get there. The planning phase is when the project plans are
documented, the project deliverables and requirements are defined, and the project schedule is
created. It involves creating a set of plans to help guide your team through the implementation
and closure phases of the project. The plans created during this phase will help you manage time,
cost, quality, changes, risk, and related issues. They will also help you control staff and external
suppliers to ensure that you deliver the project on time, within budget, and within schedule.

The project planning phase is often the most challenging phase for a project manager, as you
need to make an educated guess about the staff, resources, and equipment needed to complete
your project. You may also need to plan your communications and procurement activities, as
well as contract any third-party suppliers.

The purpose of the project planning phase is to:

 Establish business requirements

 Establish cost, schedule, list of deliverables, and delivery dates
 Establish resources plans
 Obtain management approval and proceed to the next phase

The planning phase refines the project’s objectives, which were gathered during the initiation
phase. It includes planning the steps necessary to meet those objectives by further identifying the
specific activities and resources required to complete the project. Now that these objectives have
been recognized, they must be clearly articulated, detailing an in-depth scrutiny of each
recognized objective. With such scrutiny, our understanding of the objective may change. Often
the very act of trying to describe something precisely gives us a better understanding of what we
are looking at. This articulation serves as the basis for the development of requirements. What
this means is that after an objective has been clearly articulated, we can describe it in concrete
(measurable) terms and identify what we have to do to achieve it. Obviously, if we do a poor job
of articulating the objective, our requirements will be misdirected and the resulting project will
not represent the true need.

Users will often begin describing their objectives in qualitative language. The project manager
must work with the user to provide quantifiable definitions to those qualitative terms. These
quantifiable criteria include schedule, cost, and quality measures. In the case of project
objectives, these elements are used as measurements to determine project satisfaction and
successful completion. Subjective evaluations are replaced by actual numeric attributes.

Project Management by Adrienne Watt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License
https://opentextbc.ca/projectmanagement/chapter/chapter-8-overview-of-project-planning-
project-management/

THE 5 STAGES OF THE PROJECT PLANNING PROCESS

The life cycle of a project has five stages.

Stage 1: Visualizing, selling, and initiating the project

An effective way to get buy-in for a project or idea is to link it to what is important to the person
or group you are approaching and demonstrate that you are openly soliciting their input. By
doing so, they can help shape the concept.

Stage 2: Planning the project

Assuming the project concept and feasibility have been determined, the plan-do-check-act
(PDCA) cycle (see figure below) is directly applicable to project planning and management.

Using the PDCA Cycle for Project Management

Stage 3: Designing the processes and outputs

(deliverables)
When the project is approved, the project team may proceed with the content design along with
the persons or items needed to implement the project.
The design process includes defining:

 Measurements
 The monitoring method
 Status reporting protocols
 Evaluation criteria
 Design of the ultimate processes and outputs
 Implementation schedules
Stage 4: Implementing and tracking the project
The project design team may also implement the project, possibly with the help of additional
personnel. A trial or test implementation may be used to check out the project design and outputs
to determine if they meet the project objectives.

Using the planned reporting methods, the implementation team monitors the project and reports
on its status to appropriate interested parties at designated project milestones. Interim results may
also be communicated to interested parties. The implementation team makes any course
corrections and trade-offs that may be necessary and are approved.

Stage 5: Evaluating and closing out the project

The implementation team officially closes the project when the scheduled tasks have been
completed.

Usually evaluations are done to determine:

 Objectives met versus objectives planned

 Actual tasks and events scheduled versus planned
 Resources used versus planned resource usage
 Costs versus budget
 Organizational outcomes achieved versus planned outcomes; any unplanned outcomes
 Effectiveness of project planning team (optional)
 Effectiveness of implementation team (optional)
 Team’s compilation of project documents, evaluations, and lessons learned
The project is then officially closed out. Participants are recognized for their contributions, and
the team disbands.

For some projects, many organizations find value in a post-implementation assessment of the
outcomes achieved from implementing the project. This may occur several months after project
completion.

PROJECT OUTPUTS VS. OUTCOMES

Frequently the project management terms “outputs” and “outcomes” are used as if their
meanings were interchangeable; however, they are not.
  Outputs are defined as what the project produces. Project outputs may be an improved
process, installation of a new machine, a benchmarking study, etc. Outputs of the project
team process itself may be project plans and supporting documents, status reports, and
the like.
 Outcomes are defined as the effects that the implementation of the project has on the
overall organization and should support the strategic direction of the organization.
Outcomes may consist of measurable improvements in customer satisfaction, profits or
cost containment, improved market position and market penetration, etc. For ease of
understanding, outcomes are usually expressed as dollar values.
https://asq.org/quality-resources/project-management

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a popular customer-based methodology of quality control

and improvement derived from Japanese industry since the 1950’s. It offers a unique approach
for managing quality of a product or process while looking to customers as the major source of
quality definition. In other words, TQM principles are based on customer requirements and
standards to establish a continuous and dynamic process for product improvement. The
methodology lets create an effective working environment where every person strives to
consistently improve the product or process.

Principles and Key Components

Total Quality Management contains its own system of productivity tools. The first three
principles of TQM are as follows:

 It requires everyone in the company to be completely involved and it covers all company
activities.
 It requires that the standards are set by customers, and that all practices conform to those
requirements.
 It requires that quality is monitored and controlled for optimum results.
https://www.brighthubpm.com/monitoring-projects/47485-explaining-total-quality-management-
tqm/ by Bowen

Improvement Sequence

PDCA model
The improvement method of Total Quality Management requires
using an iterative four-step management process for planning
and monitoring quality of a product/service. This process is
known as PDCA (Plan–Do–Check–Act). It creates an improvement sequence to be used within
the methodology.
  Plan. First you must determine the problem, then identify possible reasons for that
problem, and finally evaluate possible alternative problems and their reasons thought
cause/effect analysis. Output: you develop a plan describing your problem, reasons,
effect, and course of action for addressing the problem.
 Do. Now you need to implement your plan. You must involve a team in the
implementation and start the improvement process.
 Check. During and after the implementation you must gather information on the observed
effects of the problem. Your goal here is to find out what improvement solutions were
successful.
 Action. At the final step you need to ensure that the improvement process has been
implemented so the problem is successfully solved and the product quality is improved.
In combination with TQM principles, the PDCA improvement sequence significantly increases
the likelihood of quality improvement success because it allows avoiding common management
mistakes. The project manager gets a set of tools for planning, monitoring and solving potential
issues.

TQM Implementation Steps

The method of Total Quality Management in combination with project management ideas can be
carried out in 10 basic steps, which are listed below.

1. Define the problem. First, you must define the problem to be addressed by your TQM-
driven project. Cause-effect analysis and statistical data can be used for problem
definition.
2. Develop new strategic thinking. Your project team can use brainstorming and brain-
writing as effective tools for developing solutions to the defined problem.
3. Know the customer. TQM focuses on customers and their expectations so you must
research needs and requirements of your customers. Conducting a customer survey,
gathering data, and determining who your customers are will be the primary goals at this
step.
4. Determine quality requirements. Results of your customer survey will give you a
description of customer needs and expectations. This information will be helpful for you
to determine quality standards and requirements for your new TQM-based project.
5. Plan for contingency. As you have a list of quality requirements based on your
customers’ needs now you need to think about potential threats and uncertainties that
surround your project and may negatively affect quality levels. You must plan for
contingency and develop a risk response strategy to managing risks and eliminating their
negative effect.
6. Reduce waste. The TQM methodology requires you to run the project with minimized
waste of resources. If you meet this requirement you reduce sources of waste and
improve quality of your product/process in a cost-effective way.
7. Develop a continuous improvement strategy. There should a strategy that ensures a
continuous improvement process with multiple iterations and “buffers” (safety margins).
 You need to develop such a strategy or otherwise there’s no sense to start the TQM-based
project because there’s n solid framework for managing and maintaining the
improvement process continuously.
8. Reduce variations. Total Quality Management offers a set of tools to reduce variations in
quality of your product. You can use these tools to optimize use of project resources and
minimize the likelihood of quality deficiencies and variations.
9. Balance the approach. Your goal here is to make sure that the implementation process
runs smoothly so there’s no lack of resources for every task or procedure of the process.
You can reach this goal through continuous monitoring and tracking of your project.
10. Apply the improvement process. The final step of TQM implementation is to use the
improvement process in every facet of your project to start improving quality of your
product.
https://mymanagementguide.com/total-quality-management-tqm-for-projects/
BY ERIC MCCONNELL 2011

Project risk management is a process to identify, analyze, and minimize potential problems that
could negatively affect the progress of a project. The main objective of risk management in
project management is to take care of anything that might deflect the project from reaching its
ultimate goal. If project risks aren’t identified, avoided or rectified, your project may end up over
budget, delayed, or even brought to a complete standstill.

Risk analysis and risk management is a process that allows individual risk events and overall risk
to be understood and managed proactively, optimising success by minimising threats and
maximising opportunities and outcomes.
Risk management is focused on anticipating what might not go to plan and putting in place
actions to reduce uncertainty to a tolerable level.

Risk can be perceived either positively (upside opportunities) or negatively (downside threats). A
risk is the potential of a situation or event to impact on the achievement of specific objectives
Working with the risk owner, the project professional ensures that risks are clearly identified
before moving on to the risk analysis step of the risk management process.
The project risk management process reflects the dynamic nature of projectwork, capturing and
managing emerging risks and reflecting new knowledge in existing risk analyses.
A risk register is used to document risks, analysis and responses, and to assign clear ownership
of actions.
https://www.apm.org.uk/resources/what-is-project-management/what-is-risk-management/
Risk management is not a separate discipline but an integral part of project management so
should be part of the regular activities of a project manager.
A risk is any uncertain event or condition that might affect your project. Not all risks are
negative. Some events (like finding an easier way to do an activity) or conditions (like lower
prices for certain materials) can help your project. When this happens, we call it an opportunity;
but it’s still handled just like a risk.
There are four basic ways to handle a risk.
1. Avoid: The best thing you can do with a risk is avoid it. If you can prevent it from
happening, it definitely won’t hurt your project. The easiest way to avoid this risk is to
walk away from the cliff, but that may not be an option on this project.
2. Mitigate: If you can’t avoid the risk, you can mitigate it. This means taking some sort of
action that will cause it to do as little damage to your project as possible.
3. Transfer: One effective way to deal with a risk is to pay someone else to accept it for you.
The most common way to do this is to buy insurance.
4. Accept: When you can’t avoid, mitigate, or transfer a risk, then you have to accept it. But
even when you accept a risk, at least you’ve looked at the alternatives and you know
what will happen if it occurs. If you can’t avoid the risk, and there’s nothing you can do
to reduce its impact, then accepting it is your only choice.
By the time a risk actually occurs on your project, it’s too late to do anything about it. That’s
why you need to plan for risks from the beginning and keep coming back to do more planning
throughout the project.

The risk management plan tells you how you’re going to handle risk in your project. It
documents how you’ll assess risk, who is responsible for doing it, and how often you’ll do risk
planning (since you’ll have to meet about risk planning with your team throughout the project).

Some risks are technical, like a component that might turn out to be difficult to use. Others are
external, like changes in the market or even problems with the weather.
Risk Management Process
Managing risks on projects is a process that includes risk assessment and a mitigation strategy
for those risks. Risk assessment includes both the identification of potential risk and the
evaluation of the potential impact of the risk. A risk mitigation plan is designed to eliminate or
minimize the impact of the risk events—occurrences that have a negative impact on the project.
Identifying risk is both a creative and a disciplined process. The creative process includes
brainstorming sessions where the team is asked to create a list of everything that could go wrong.
All ideas are welcome at this stage with the evaluation of the ideas coming later.

Risk Identification
A more disciplined process involves using checklists of potential risks and evaluating the
likelihood that those events might happen on the project. Some companies and industries develop
risk checklists based on experience from past projects. These checklists can be helpful to the
project manager and project team in identifying both specific risks on the checklist and
expanding the thinking of the team. The past experience of the project team, project experience
within the company, and experts in the industry can be valuable resources for identifying
potential risk on a project.

Identifying the sources of risk by category is another method for exploring potential risk on a
project. Some examples of categories for potential risks include the following:
  Technical
 Cost
 Schedule
 Client
 Contractual
 Weather
 Financial
 Political
 Environmental
 People

A risk breakdown structure (RBS) can be used. It organizes the risks that have been identified
into categories using a table with increasing levels of detail to the right. The people category can
be subdivided into different types of risks associated with the people. Examples of people risks
include the risk of not finding people with the skills needed to execute the project or the sudden
unavailability of key people on the project.

Risk Evaluation
After the potential risks have been
identified, the project team then evaluates
each risk based on the probability that a risk
event will occur and the potential loss
associated with it. Not all risks are equal. Some risk events are more likely to happen than others,
and the cost of a risk can vary greatly. Evaluating the risk for probability of occurrence and the
severity or the potential loss to the project is the next step in the risk management process.

Having criteria to determine high-impact risks can help narrow the focus on a few critical risks
that require mitigation. For example, suppose high-impact risks are those that could increase the
project costs by 5% of the conceptual budget or 2% of the detailed budget. Only a few potential
risk events meet these criteria. These are the critical few potential risk events that the project
management team should focus on when developing a project risk mitigation or management
plan. Risk evaluation is about developing an understanding of which potential risks have the
greatest possibility of occurring and can have the greatest negative impact on the project (Figure
16.2). These become the critical few.
There is a positive correlation—both increase or decrease together—between project risk and
project complexity. A project with new and emerging technology will have a high-complexity
rating and a correspondingly high risk. The project management team will assign the appropriate
resources to the technology managers to ensure the accomplishment of project goals. The more
complex the technology, the more resources the technology manager typically needs to meet
project goals, and each of those resources could face unexpected problems.

Risk evaluation often occurs in a workshop setting. Building on the identification of the risks,
each risk event is analyzed to determine the likelihood of occurrence and the potential cost if it
did occur. The likelihood and impact
are both rated as high, medium, or low. A risk
mitigation plan addresses the items that
have high ratings on both factors—likelihood
and impact.

Risk Mitigation
After the risk has been identified and evaluated, the project team develops a risk mitigation plan,
which is a plan to reduce the impact of an unexpected event. The risk mitigation plan captures
the risk mitigation approach for each identified risk event and the actions the project
management team will take to reduce or eliminate the risk. The project team mitigates risks in
various ways:
 Risk avoidance usually involves developing an alternative strategy that has a higher
probability of success but usually at a higher cost associated with accomplishing a project
task. A common risk avoidance technique is to use proven and existing technologies
rather than adopt new techniques, even though the new techniques may show promise of
better performance or lower costs. A project team may choose a vendor with a proven
track record over a new vendor that is providing significant price incentives to avoid the
risk of working with a new vendor. The project team that requires drug testing for team
members is practising risk avoidance by avoiding damage done by someone under the
influence of drugs.
  Risk sharing involves partnering with others to share responsibility for the risky
activities. Many organizations that work on international projects will reduce political,
legal, labour, and others risk types associated with international projects by developing a
joint venture with a company located in that country. Partnering with another company to
share the risk associated with a portion of the project is advantageous when the other
company has expertise and experience the project team does not have. If a risk event does
occur, then the partnering company absorbs some or all of the negative impact of the
event. The company will also derive some of the profit or benefit gained by a successful
project.

 Risk reduction is an investment of funds to reduce the risk on a project. On international

projects, companies will often purchase the guarantee of a currency rate to reduce the risk
associated with fluctuations in the currency exchange rate. A project manager may hire
an expert to review the technical plans or the cost estimate on a project to increase the
confidence in that plan and reduce the project risk. Assigning highly skilled project
personnel to manage the high-risk activities is another risk-reduction method. Experts
managing a high-risk activity can often predict problems and find solutions that prevent
the activities from having a negative impact on the project. Some companies reduce risk
by forbidding key executives or technology experts to ride on the same airplane.

 Risk transfer is a risk reduction method that shifts the risk from the project to another
party. The purchase of insurance on certain items is a risk-transfer method. The risk is
transferred from the project to the insurance company. A construction project in the
Caribbean may purchase hurricane insurance that would cover the cost of a hurricane
damaging the construction site. The purchase of insurance is usually in areas outside the
control of the project team. Weather, political unrest, and labour strikes are examples of
events that can significantly impact the project and that are outside the control of the
project team.
Contingency Plan
The project risk plan balances the investment of the mitigation against the benefit for the project.
The project team often develops an alternative method for accomplishing a project goal when a
risk event has been identified that may frustrate the accomplishment of that goal. These plans are
called contingency plans. The risk of a truck drivers’ strike may be mitigated with a contingency
plan that uses a train to transport the needed equipment for the project. If a critical piece of
equipment is late, the impact on the schedule can be mitigated by making changes to the
schedule to accommodate a late equipment delivery.

Contingency funds are funds set aside by the project team to address unforeseen events that
cause the project costs to increase. Projects with a high-risk profile will typically have a large
contingency budget. Although the amount of contingency allocated in the project budget is a
function of the risks identified in the risk analysis process, contingency is typically managed as
one line item in the project budget.
Some project managers allocate the contingency budget to the items in the budget that have high
risk rather than developing one line item in the budget for contingencies. This approach allows
the project team to track the use of contingency against the risk plan. This approach also
allocates the responsibility to manage the risk budget to the managers responsible for those line
items. The availability of contingency funds in the line item budget may also increase the use of
contingency funds to solve problems rather than finding alternative, less costly solutions. Most
project managers, especially on more complex projects, manage contingency funds at the project
level, with approval of the project manager required before contingency funds can be used.