1.1 WHAT IS A PROJECT?

 A temporary endeavor or undertaking to create or provide a unique product or service or

result expected by the requesting party.
 A project is temporary in that there is a defined start (the decision to proceed) and a
defined end (the achievement of the goals and objectives).
 A project is a one-shot, time-limited, goal directed, major undertaking, requiring the
commitment of varied skills and resources.
1.2 PROJECT ATTRIBUTES
1. Unique purpose
2. Temporary
3. Developed progressively
4. Requires various resources
5. Has a Primary Customer or Sponsor who provides project direction and funding
6. Involves uncertainty
1.3 PROJECT CONSTRAINTS
1. Scope- work to be undertaken as part of project or unique product, service or result
expected from project.
2. Time- duration to complete project or time schedule.
3. Cost- how much it will cost to complete project or project budget.
4. Quality- meeting standards satisfying customer or sponsor.
1.4 THREE MAIN COMPONENTS OF A PROJECT

a) Scope
 Work to be undertaken as part of project or unique product, service or result expected
from project.
 Represents the work to be accomplished i.e. the quality and quantity of the work.
 A balance between scope, budget and schedule is a must.
 Alteration in any causes change in the other two.

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 Increasing the scope of works requires a corresponding increase in budget and schedule.
 Conversely, any decrease in scope of work results in a corresponding decrease in budget
and schedule.
 Failure to properly define scope is the source of project failure.
 Project scope should be the first task to be considered in the development of a project.
 This is because the budget and schedule are both derived from the scope of work.
b) Budget
 Budget refers to costs, measured in kwacha and/or labor-hours of work
 It is important to budget because it establishes the amount of money the owner will spend
to obtain the project and the amount of money that the contracted company (individual)
will be compensated for performing the work.
 Each party is concerned about the project cost overrun because it adversely affects
profitability and creates adverse relationship between the parties.
 Alteration in budget causes change in scope and schedule.
 Under budgeting can lead to reduced/incompletion of scope and a decrease in schedule
and poor quality of work
 Over budgeting can lead to decrease in profitability of project.
 Proper budget leads to completion of project in time and quality work.
 Carried out at same time as scheduling.
 Failure to properly budget leads to project failure; either incompletion of project, poor
quality of work, frustrated employees because of unpaid wages, poor reputation for
project team etc.
c) Schedule
 Schedule refers to the logical sequencing and timing of the work to be performed.
 Scheduling is important because it brings together project definition, people, cost,
resources, timing, and methods of performing work to define the logical sequencing of
activities for the project.
 Schedule is the final product of scope definition, budgeting and planning and focuses the
base against which all activities are measured.
 Project tracking and control cannot be accomplished without a good plan and schedule.
 A well planned schedule gives an estimate of project completion time, budget and scope
of project.
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 It avoids reworks and reduces cost of project ensuring high profitability from project
 It highlights the most critical sequence of activities and the less critical sequence of
activities
 Therefore, it makes it easy to control and manage resources (e.g. equipment, materials,
labor, money, time) in a way that can ensure the project is completed in the earliest time
and with the best quality work.
 A well scheduled project eliminates confusion in the work to be undertaken. It ensures no
rework, efficient and effective utilization of resources (i.e. money, labor, time equipment
and machinery etc.)
 Scheduling tools include Gantt charts, PERT diagrams, etc.
d) Quality
 Quality of a project must meet the owner’s satisfaction and is an integral part of the
project management.
 This is an element that is integrated into and between all parts of a project (scope, budget
& schedule).
 It should not be construed as merely creating drawings with a minimum number of errors,
furnishing equipment that meets specifications, or building a project to fulfill the
requirements of a contract.
 Quality is meeting the needs and satisfaction of the ultimate end user of the project, the
owner.
 Quality is the responsibility of all participants in a project including all levels of
management and workers in each of the principal parties.
 An attitude of achieving quality must be instilled in everyone and perpetuate throughout
the work environment.
 Attitude should not be “what can we do to pass quality control or final inspection?”
Instead, it should be “what can we do to improve our work and what is the best way we
can furnish a project that it meets the needs and satisfaction of the owner?”
 It is important to increase productivity, expand market share and raise customer loyalty.
 It also ensures reduced costs (by avoiding reworks), and increases profitability of project.
 Examples of quality concepts include six sigma and total quality management which
emphasis on elimination of defects in processes, continuous improvement of processes
and building quality into all project activities.

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 Examples of quality control tools that can make it easy to identify, interpret and correct
quality problems include flow charts, Pareto chart, control chart, scatter diagrams, and
histogram.
1.5 WHAT IS PROJECT MANAGEMENT?
 PM is the art and science of coordinating people, equipment, materials, money and
schedules to complete a specified project on time and within approved cost.
 It is concerned with the overall planning and coordination of a project from conception to
completion aimed at meeting the stated requirements and ensuring completion on time,
within cost and to required quality standards.
 It involves application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to
meet project requirements.
 Meeting specific scope, time, cost and quality goals of projects.
 It facilitates the entire process to meet the needs and expectations of people involved in
or affected by project activities.
1.6 PROJECT STAKEHOLDERS
 These are people involved in or affected by project activities.
1. Sponsors (owners) - paying for the work to be done.
2. Project manager- contractor undertaking the work
3. Project team- workers undertaking project activities
4. Support staff- buyers and performing administration activities.
5. Suppliers & contractors- providers of various requirements.
6. Opponents- those against project.
1.7 ROLES OF PROJECT MANAGER
 PM is responsible with leading the project team to ensure a quality project within time,
budget and scope constraints.
 PM must achieve the end results despite all risks and problems that are encountered.
 PM must perform all the five (5) basic functions of management:-planning, organizing,
staffing, leading and controlling.
a) Planning
 Planning involves setting goals and objectives.
 This is the heart of good project management.

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 It is important for the PM to realize that he/she is responsible for the planning and it must
be started early in the project before starting any work.
 For proper planning, managers should be aware of the environment around the project,
focus future conditions, prepare contingences or alternative courses of action for
uncertainties, and be good decision makers.
 They should be able to plan strategically and tactically.
 Planning is a continuous process throughout the life of the project, and to be effective it
must be done with input from the people involved in the project.
 Effort spent in planning can save countless hours of confusion and rework.
b) Organizing
 Organizing involves developing organizational structure and allocating human resources
to ensure the accomplishment of established objectives
 Project organization chart must be developed by the PM to show clearly the
communication channels between the people working on the project.
 It provides a graphic representation of the chain of command within the project team.
 Project team must know the authority of every other team member in order to reduce
miscommunication and rework.
 Organized work leads to accomplishments and a sense of pride in the work accomplished.
 Unorganized work leads to rework, rework leads to errors, low productivity and
frustrated team members.
 Organizing encourages people working together to identify problems and determining
solutions to the problems.
c) Staffing
 Staffing involves acquiring a work force of sufficient quantity and quality to create
positive impacts on the effectiveness of the project.
 Project staffing is important because people make things happen.
 People are the most important resource in a project.
 They create ideas, solve problems, produce designs, operate equipment and install
materials to produce the final product.
 The right personal with right competences must be assigned to the carryout the project.
The PM must therefore understand the work to be carried out so that he can hire qualified
people to do those tasks.
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 In a project staff is hired to do specific tasks and once those tasks are completed contracts
are terminated.
 Important to properly plan staff to avoid costs.
 A well-staffed project team will prevent rework hence cost of project, and ensure on time
completion of the project with the desired quality.
d) Directing
 PM must direct the overall project and serve as an effective leader in coordinating all
aspects of the project.
 This requires a close working relationship between the PM and the project staff to build
an effective working team.
 This is because most project team members are assigned (loaned) to the project from their
discipline (home) departments, the PM must foster the development of staff loyalty to the
project while they maintain loyalty to their home department.
 PM must be able to delegate authority and responsibility to others and concentrate on the
linking process between disciplines.
 PM must develop a good working relationship with people in order to benefit from the
best of their abilities.
e) Control
 Project control is a high priority of management and involves a cooperative effort of the
entire project team.
 It ensures that the other four function s are followed correctly and the flow of work is
moving the organization towards the objectives it has set itself.
 It is important for the PM to establish a control system that will anticipate and report
deviations on a timely basis, so that corrective action can be initiated before serious
problems actually occur.
 For control to be effective, it is important to establish standards of performance, measure
the actual performance, compare the actual performance with established standards and
finally take corrective action.
 Since many team members resist being controlled therefore the term project monitoring
may be used as a description for anticipating and reporting deviations in the project.
 An effective project control system must address all parts of the project: quality, work
accomplished, budget, schedule and scope changes.

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 1.8 SPECIFIC ROLES OF PROJECT MANAGER
1. Define scope of project,
2. Identify stakeholders and decision makers,
3. Develop detailed task list, Estimate time requirements,
4. Develop initial project management flow chart,
5. Identify required resources and budget,
6. Evaluate project requirements,
7. Identify and evaluate risks,
8. Prepare contingency plan,
9. Identify and track critical milestones,
10. Participate in project phase review,
11. Secure needed resources,
12. Manage the change control process,
13. Report project status.
1.9 MANAGEMENT KNOWLEDGE AREAS/ KEY COMPETENCIES OF
MANAGERS
a) Core Functions
i. Scope management - defining and managing work required to complete project
successfully.
ii. Time management - estimating how long project completion will take.
iii. Cost management - preparing and managing the project budget.
iv. Quality management - ensuring project will satisfy stated and implied needs.
b) Facilitation Functions
i. HR management- making effective use of the people involved with the project.
ii. Communication management- generating, collecting, disseminating and sorting project
information.
iii. Risk management- identifying, analyzing, and responding to project related risks.
iv. Procurement management- acquiring or procuring goods and services from outside
sources.
1.10 PROJECT SUCCESS FACTORS
 Executive support,
 User involvement,
 Experienced project manager,
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 Clear business objectives,
 Minimized scope,
 Standard infrastructure,
 Firm basic requirements,
 Formal methodology,
 Reliable estimates,
 Proper planning,
 Small milestones,
 Competent staff, and
 Ownership.
1.11 PROJECT LIFE CYCLE
 Project life cycle refers to a logical sequence of activities to accomplish the project’s
goals or objectives.
 Regardless of scope or complexity, any project goes through a series of stages during its
life as follows:
a) Initiation or Birth Phase
 The first project phase represented by conceptualization of the project.
 Its Purpose is to specify what the project should accomplish.
 The outputs and critical success factors are defined.
 Goals and objectives, specifications, tasks, responsibilities, team are also defined.
 It involves
i) Project Feasibility Documentation
 This identifies project constraints, alternative and related assumptions applied to the end
product to be developed.
 Project feasibility is characterized by four basic components:
 Business problem description, Approach overview to be used to develop,
Potential solutions of the problem, Preliminary recommendations.
ii) Development of Project Concept Document
 It determines what is to be done, how it will be done, and why it is to be done.
 Thus determining the business value achieved after project completion.
iii) Creation of Project Charter
 Project Charter formerly communicates the initiation of project.
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 It consists of project scope, project authority and critical success factors.
b) Project Planning Phase (PPP)
 Most important phase of project management.
 Effort spent in planning can save countless hours of confusion and rework in the
subsequent phases.
i) Purpose of the PPP
 Establish business requirements.
 Establish cost, schedules, list of deliverables and delivery date.
 Establish resource plan.
 Get management approval and proceed to next phase.
ii) Basic process of PPP
 Scope planning - this specifies the in-scope requirements for the project
 Preparing the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) - this specifies the breakdown of
the project into tasks and subtasks
 Organizational WBS - this specifies who all in the organization need to be involved and
referred for project completion.
 Resource planning - this specifies who will do what work at which time of the project.
 Project Schedule Development - this specifies the entire schedule of the activities
detailing their sequence of execution.
 Budget planning - this specifies the budgeted cost to be incurred in the completion of the
project.
iii) Facilitation Process
In addition to basic process, the facilitation process planning is essential for successful
project completion and involves;
 Procurement planning -planning for procurement of all resources (staff and non-staff).
 Communication planning - planning on the communication strategy with all project
stakeholders.
 Quality planning - planning for quality assurance to be applied to the project.
 Risk management planning - charting the risks, contingency plan and mitigation
strategies
c) Execution and Controlling Phase
i) Execution;
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  It is important to ensure that all project activities are properly executed and controlled.
 Planned solution is implemented here to solve the problem specified in the project’s
requirements.
 As the execution phase progresses, groups across the organization become more deeply
involved in planning for the final testing, production and support.
 The most common tools or methodologies used in the execution phase are an update to
risk analysis and score cards, in addition to business plan and milestones reviews.
ii) Controlling;
 Controlling starts as soon execution kicks off.
 Project control function that involves comparing actual performance with planned
performance and taking corrective action to get to the desired outcome when there are
significant differences.
 Monitoring and measuring progress regularly, identifying variances from plan and taking
corrective action if required enables the project objectives to be met.
d) Closure/Exiting
 During this phase, the project manager must ensure that the project is brought to its
proper completion.
 Closure phase is characterized by a written formal project review report containing the
following components:
i. A formal acceptance of the final product by the client.
ii. Weighted Critical Measurements (matching the initial requirements specified by the
client with the final delivered product).
iii. Rewarding the team
iv. A list of lessons learnt
v. Releasing project resources
vi. A formal project closure notification to higher management.
1.12 PROJECT TIME MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
a) Activity Definition
 Activity is an element of work found on WBS that has duration, cost and resource
requirements.
 Identifying specific activities project team and stakeholders must perform to produce
deliverable.

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b) Activity Sequencing
 Involves identifying and documenting relationships between project activities and
identifying which activities needed to performed earlier than the others.
 Involves evaluating reasons for dependencies related to the sequencing of activities or
tasks
 It brings to surface what logical relationship do the activities share with each other.
 It also identifies what sequence these activities should be executed based upon
dependencies among different schedule.
 Dependencies are;
 Mandatory - inherent in nature of work being done
 Discretionary - defined by project team
 External - relationship between project and non-project activities.
Methods of Activity Sequencing
i) Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM)
 Also known as activity on node (AON).
 Method of constructing a project schedule network diagram that uses boxes or rectangles
referred to as nodes, to represent activities and connects them with arrows that shows the
logical relationship that exist between them.
 Arrows only represent precedence relationships and events are not shown in this
representation of network. [see diagram]
 Four precedence relationships may exist in a network; finish to start, start to start, start to
finish and finish to finish.
ii) Arrow Diagramming Method (ADM)
 Also known as activity on arrows (AOA).
 Activities are mapped on arcs and nodes represent events.
 Arrows are used to represent activities and connects them at nodes to show their
relationship. [see diagram]
 It only uses finish to start dependencies and may require the use of dummy relationships
called dummy activities for showing all relationship more correctly.
 Dummy activities are not actual activities and they do not consume any time, they show
relationship between different activities and they are represented by dotted lines.
c) Activity Duration Estimating

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 How many work periods needed to complete individual activity.
 Estimate Activity Duration is the process of approximating the number of work periods
needed to complete individual activities with estimated resources.
 This is one of the key steps in the project time management processes as it directly affects
the total project activity durations and it should be carried out with high accuracy.
 It requires information such as scope of activity, required resource types, estimated
resource quantities and resource calendars.
 Requires stakeholder involvement in defining activities followed by estimating resources
and then estimating duration of activities.
 Duration includes actual time worked on activity plus elapsed time.
 Several inputs to duration estimating include; environmental factors, scope statement,
org. process assets, activity list, attributes and resource requirements, project
management plan.
 Once the activity duration estimates are done one can calculate total project duration and
by analyzing the network can identify the critical path.
d) Schedule Development
 Involves analyzing activity sequences, activity resource estimates and duration estimates
to create project schedule It is the process of analyzing activity sequences, durations,
resource requirements and schedule constraints to create the project schedule
 After completing the process, it determines the planned start and finish dates of the
project activities and the milestones. It may require review and revision of activities
duration estimates and resource estimates to optimize tradeoff between time, cost and
resources.
e) Schedule Control
 Involves controlling and managing changes to project schedules.
 It is the process of monitoring the status of the project to update project progress and
manage changes to the schedule baseline.
 It deals with determining the status of the project schedule, determining different factors
that cause changes and managing changes.
1.13 CRITICAL PATH AND PERT DIAGRAM
i) Critical Path Method

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 The Critical Path Method (CPM) is a schedule network analysis technique developed to
calculate the longest path in the network called “critical path”.
 The length of the critical path is the earliest time for the project completion.
 CPM calculates for each activity, how quickly the task can be accomplished i.e. early
start and finish dates of each activity by performing forward pass analysis.
 Once all these dates have been calculated, the finish date can also be determined.
 With this known finish date, CPM then calculates how slowly each task can be
accomplished i.e. late start and late finish dates for each activity.
 Identification of critical activities and paths helps management to optimize resource
allocation and also identifies which tasks can be delayed for while if resource needs to be
reallocated to catch up on missed tasks.
ii) PERT
 PERT- Project Evaluation & Review Technique is a network based aid for planning &
scheduling the many interrelated tasks in a large and complex project.
Critical Path
 The process of finding the critical path answers the first question as well as the second.
 We need to know how long each individual activity will take in order to answer these
questions.
 The activities on the critical path are the ones which absolutely must be done on time in
order for the whole project to complete on time.
 If any of the activities on the critical path are late, then the entire project will finish late.
 For this reason, critical path activities receive the greatest attention from management.
 The non-critical activities have some leeway to be late without affecting the overall
project completion time.
 Step 1: Forward Pass TE = max [(TE of node at tail of arc) + (arc duration)] over all of
the entering arcs. Step 2: Backward Pass TL = min [(TL of node at head of arc) – (arc
duration)] over all of the exiting arcs. Step 3: Node Slack Time SN = TL-TE for each
node. Step 4: Total Arc Slack Time SA= (TL of node at arc head) – ( TE of node at arc
tail)- (arc duration). Step 5: the critical path connects the nodes at which SN=0 via the
arcs at which SA= 0.

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