A Tool For Project Success

Project Management: A tool for Project
Success (Kesorn Tongwan)
Abstract
Project Management is used as a tool to discipline all resource involved in the project to achieve the goals of the
project
The objective of this paper is to indicate how project management plays an importance role to make the project
succeed
It also points out the risk and risk management, which is important for the project manager to identify the risk and
plan the strategy for it
Introduction
As the business has shifted from local to global, it raises the competition more intense and complex
Each company needs to improve and develop its system in order to be able to compete with others
Project management is applied to facilitate the organization to ensure that the project has done within budget, on
time and meet customer expectation
Project manager needs to consider the risks that happen for each project, duration of the project, and the factor that
can bring the project to succeed
Definition and terminology

Understanding the definition of project is very crucial in order to be able to measure a success of it
A project is a temporary endeavor, having a defined beginning and end (usually constrained by date, but can be by
funding or deliverables), undertaken to meet particular goals and objectives, usually to bring about beneficial change
or added value
A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (3rd edition, published by the Project Management
/An appropriate response: (‫ رد مناسب‬/Abstract: ‫ملخص‬/A standardized commodity: ‫سلعة موحدة‬/Alternative: ‫بديل‬
/Alternatively: ‫ بدال من ذلك‬/Authority: ‫ سلطة‬/Accountability: ‫المساءله‬/Aspects: ‫ جوانب‬/Additionally: ‫باإلضافة إلى ذلك‬/Although: ‫ بالرغم من‬/Assigned:
‫ تحديد‬/Argument: ‫ جدال‬/Arbitrarily: ‫ على نحو تحكمي‬,‫اعتباطيا‬/Assumed: ‫ يفترض‬/Assumption: ‫ أفتراض‬/Arise: ‫ تنشأ‬/Agile: ‫ مرن‬/Agreed: ‫متفق‬
‫عليه‬/Beneficial: ‫مفيد‬/Broad: ‫ واسع‬/Bottlenecks: ‫االختناقات‬/Beyond: ‫ وراء‬/Consumes: ‫ يستهلك‬/Criteria: ‫المعايير‬
/Contingency plans: ‫ خطط الطوارئ‬/Critical: ‫ حرج أو بالغ االهميه‬/Circumstance under: ‫ تحت ظرف‬/Completion: ‫انتهاء‬/Compete: ‫ تتنافس‬/Contingencies:
‫ الطوارئ‬/Crucial: ‫ حاسم و مصيري‬/Constrained: ‫مقيده‬/Capability: ‫قدره‬/Common: ‫مشترك‬/Conclusion: ‫الخالصه‬
/Cited: ‫استشهد أو نوه‬/Cross-disciplinary: ‫عبر التخصصات‬/Discipline: ‫ مراقبه و عقاب‬/Duration: ‫المده الزمنية‬/Distinguished: (‫متميز‬
/Deterministic: ‫حتميه‬/Desired completion date: ‫تاريخ االنتهاء المطلوب‬/Empirical studies: ‫دراسات تجريبية‬/Elapsed time: ‫ الوقت المنقضي‬/Exceeds:
‫يتجاوز‬/Earned: ‫ مكتسب‬/Evaluation: ‫تقييم‬/Eliminate: ‫يستبعد‬/Facilitate: ‫تسهيل‬/Factors: ‫ العوامل‬/Funding: ‫تمويل‬/Forecasting: (‫ التنبؤ‬/Govern: ‫ حكم‬/However:
‫ لكن‬/Implementation: (‫تنفيذ‬/Integration occurs: ‫ يحدث التكامل‬/In the form of: ‫علي شكل‬/Influence: ‫ تأثير‬/Indicate: ‫ تحديد‬/Intense: ‫شديد‬/Institute: ‫معهد‬
/Indefinitely: ‫ إلى أجل غير مسمى‬/Implies: ‫يعني‬/Impacting: ‫التاثير‬/Iterative: ‫ممل‬
/Literature: ‫ المؤلفات‬/Lack: ‫ نقص‬/Likelihood: ‫ أحتمال‬/Motivation: ‫ التحفيز‬/Manner: ‫الطريق‬/Materializes: (‫ يتحقق‬/Mitigation: ‫ تخفيف و تعديل‬/Moreover:
‫عالوه على ذلك‬/Notion: ‫مفهوم‬/Numerous: ‫كثير‬/On the other hand: ‫من ناحية اخري‬/ Overall: ‫عموما‬
/Operates: ‫تعمل‬/Provision of extra funds: ‫توفير أموال أضافيه‬/Penalty& consequences: ‫ عواقب‬/Precisely: ‫ بشكل دقيق‬/Principles: ‫ المبادئ‬/Practices:
‫ ممارسات‬/Passive; ‫ سلبي‬/Probability: ‫أحتمال‬/principal–agent: ‫ وكيل الرئيسي‬/Potential Impact: ‫التاثير المحتمل‬/Recognition: ‫أعتراف‬
/Refinery: ‫معمل تكرير‬/Represent: ‫ توضيح‬/Reinforcing: ‫دعم‬/Risk Response: ‫ األستجابة للمخاطر‬/Spontaneously: ‫بشكل عفوي‬
/Significantly: ‫ بشكل ملحوظ‬/Set: ‫ مجموعة‬/Stochastic nature; ‫الطبيعة العشوائية‬/Tangible: ‫ ملموسه‬/Terminology: ‫ مصطلح‬/Tracking: (‫ تتبع‬/Threat:
‫التهديد‬/Thus: ‫وهكذا‬/ Theoretically: ‫ نظريا‬/ This implies: ‫ هذا يعني‬/Undertaken: (‫ تتعهد‬/ Ultimately: ‫في النهايه‬/Upon: ‫ بناء علي‬/Uncertainly: ‫عدم‬
‫اليقين‬/Within: ‫ في حدود‬/Whereas: ‫ بينما‬/ Wherein: ‫حيث‬/Validation: ‫التحقق من صحة‬
Institute, 2004) — referred to as the PMBOK and pronounced “pimbok” — defines a project as “a temporary
endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service“
Let’s walk through this definition to clarify what a project is and is not
First, a project is temporary
A project’s duration might be just one week or it might go on for years, but every project has an end date
You might not know that end date when the project begins, but it’s out there somewhere in the future
Projects are not the same as ongoing operations, although the two have a great deal in common
Ongoing operations, as the name suggests, go on indefinitely; you don’t establish an end date
Examples include most activities of accounting and human resources departments
Next, a project is an endeavor
Resources, such as people and equipment, need to do work
The endeavor is undertaken by a team or an organization, and therefore projects have a sense of being intentional,
planned events
Successful projects do not happen spontaneously; some amount of preparation and planning happens first
Finally, every project creates a unique product or service
This is the deliverable for the project and the reason that the project was undertaken
A refinery that produces gasoline does not produce a unique product
The whole idea, in this case, is to produce a standardized commodity; you typically don’t want to buy gas from one
station that is significantly different from gas at another station
On the other hand, commercial airplanes are unique products
Although all Boeing 777 airplanes might look the same to most of us, each is, in fact, highly customized for the
needs of its purchaser
Project management is a planning, monitoring and control of all aspects of a project and the motivation of all those
involved in it to achieve the project objectives on time and to the specified cost, quality and performance
(Alternative definition – The controlled implementation of defined change)
Project manager is an Individual or body with authority, accountability and responsibility for managing a project to
achieve specific objectives
The Project Lifecycle
In order to manage effectively it helps to understand the typical lifecycle of a project and how it applies to your
specific project
You need to decide how the management activities of the lifecycle steps will be achieved, and precisely who will be
involved
You must make sure you understand your role in

making these things happen in the right way and at the
right time
Much of the project management effort across the

lifecycle will be driven by the owner/sponsor of the
project (known as the Senior Responsible Owner
(SRO)), and the Project Manager
To achieve success they will almost certainly need to

draw upon the skills and experience of many others
from within the organization, its partners and suppliers
Project Success
There are two broad issues associated with project success: the criteria used to define and measure success project
success criteria and the factors that influence success project critical success factors (CSFs)
Generally, project management triangle, or called iron triangle, that consists of cost, time and quality is used to
measure the success of the project
Traditional project success criteria focused on the ‘iron triangle’ of meeting cost, time and quality-related objectives
and, although there is general recognition in the project management community that defining project success is not
so simple, a survey of 236 project managers, reported in 2002, found that iron triangle criteria were still the most
commonly cited measures of project success
Project success can be distinguished between short-term and long-term success criteria
Criteria linked to the iron triangle, such as delivering projects distinguished budget and meeting time objectives and
project specifications, are short-term and measured prior to project closure
Long-term criteria, such as providing both tangible and intangible benefits, are often measured after project closure
Another factor is CSF that is based on the notion that there are a number of factors common to most projects, such
as the establishment of a set of agreed project objectives that are critical to success ‫مثل إنشاء مجموعة من أهداف المشروع‬
‫المتفق عليها التي تعتبر بالغة األهمية لنجاح‬
The general CSF (independent variable) – success criteria (dependent variable) relationship has been the focus of
empirical studies in the business and management literature
in relation to supply chain management and, management accounting, information systems development, human
resource management, leadership and operations as well as in respect of project environments
Project Durations
Since the project is temporary and needed to be within budget, it needs to be assigned the beginning and an end time
in order to meet these aspects
Project duration was calculated as the total elapsed time for the project in calendar months
It should be noted that project duration covers all activities, including unplanned or planned lack of activity
However, costs and time are not the main concern for the manager to estimate the duration of the project
Some manager also considers learning curve that is established a long the project process
Network analysis such as PERT/CRM tool is used to estimate the duration of the project by considering costs
This technique uses the series of arrow to represent activities in the project
The arrow also shows cost of each activity; therefore, the project manager can decide to follow the path that
consumes the lowest cost
Figure 2 An example of Critical Path Methods (CRM)
However, there is argument that the traditional method of crashing Project Evaluation and Review Technique
(PERT) networks ignores the stochastic nature of activity completion times, reducing the stochastic model to a
deterministic Critical Path Method (CPM) model and simply using activity time means in calculations
The project is then arbitrarily crashed to some desired completion date, without consideration for what the penalty
for late completion of the project is
Additionally, the method ignores the fact that reducing some activity times may reduce the mean project completion
time more than others, due to such factors as bottlenecks
The traditional PERT method of crashing uses only the activity time means in calculating the critical path, reducing
the stochastic model to a deterministic model
A single critical path is thus calculated and used, whereas, in reality, there may be numerous critical paths
For a large network, the probability that any given path may be the critical one may be very small
As a result, the traditional PERT method of calculating the time to complete the project is almost always too low
The extent to which PERT underestimates the completion times of projects is examined for a variety of networks by
Klingel (1966)
The traditional method of crashing PERT networks has been to convert the model to a deterministic model by using
the means of the activity times
The network is then crashed in a series of iterative steps until the expected completion time of the project is
acceptable, the cost of crashing exceeds the benefits, or all activities have been crashed as much as possible
Although, a scheduling construction project by CPM does not provide a measure of uncertainty, most of the
available software is based on CPM; it is deterministic tool
The duration of each activity is assumed to have one value
Yet the time required for completing an activity in a project depends on many factors, including the following
• Resources
• Methods
• Technology
• Site condition
• Weather
• Regulations
Another tool that is useful for estimate the project duration is Earned Value Method (EVM)
This technique values the project by considering learning curve of the team member
EVM is a popular project control technique that has been used successfully for managing various types of projects
since 1960
Most applications of EVM are based on the assumption that project team performance is a constant function of time
The problem with this assumption for cross-disciplinary teams is that a great deal of knowledge transfer and team
integration occurs during the project's initial stages
The knowledge transfer and team integration affect team performance during project implementation in a way that
performance (per unit time) of the team gradually increases
This causes difficulties when forecasting the project duration, and makes a linear project control method ineffective
when tracking project progress
Figure 3 The basic earn value method Figure 4 Extension to EVM

Risk and Risk Management
Risk occurs when the organization operates in the face of uncertainty, constrained by capability and cost
The project manager or team project needs to find the dimension that causes the risk
Risk management is usually defined as a set of principles and practices aimed

at identifying, analyzing and handling risk ‫ التي تهدف إلى تحديد وتحليل ومعالجة المخاطر‬8‫ مجموعة من المبادئ والممارسات‬factors to
improve the chances of achieving a successful project outcome and/or avoid project failure
Risk and risk management are also important because IT projects (including software projects) can be vehicles of
delivering IT-enabled organizational change, so achieving business objectives can be critically dependent upon their
success
Four common risk response strategies are found in the literature
• Avoidance
Avoidance strategies aim to prevent a negative effect occurring or impacting a project
This may involve, for example, changing the project design so that the circumstance under which a particular risk
event might occur cannot arise, or so that the event will have little impact on the project if it does
For example, planned functionality might be ‘descoped’) removed from the scope of a project) to remove a highly
uncertain feature to a separate phase or project in which more agile development methods might be applied to
determine the requirement
• Transference
This strategy involves shifting the responsibility for a risk to a third party
This action does not eliminate the threat to the project; it just passes the responsibility for its management to
someone else
Theoretically, this implies a principal–agent relationship wherein the agent is better able to manage the risk,
resulting in a better overall outcome for the project
This can be a high risk strategy because the threat to the project remains, which the principal must ultimately bear,
but direct control is surrendered to the agent
Common risk transfer strategies include insurance, contracts, warranties, and outsourcing
In most cases, a risk premium of some kind is paid to the agent for taking ownership of the risk
The agent must then develop its own response strategy for the risk
• Mitigation
Risk mitigation is one or more reinforcing actions designed to reduce a threat to a project by reducing its likelihood
and/or potential impact before the risk is realized
Ultimately, the aim is to manage the project in such a manner that the risk event does not occur or, if it does, the
impact can be contained to a low level (that is, to ‘manage the threat to zero’)
For example, using independent testers and test scripts to verify and validate software progressively throughout the
development and integration stages of a project may reduce the likelihood of defects being found post-delivery and
minimize project delays due to software quality problems
• Acceptance
Risk acceptance can include a range of passive and active response strategies
One is to passively accept that the risk exists but choose to do nothing about it other than, perhaps, to monitor its
status
This may be an appropriate response when the threat is low and the source of the risk is external to the project’s
control
Alternatively, the threat may be real but there is little that can be done about it until it materializes
In this case, contingencies can be established to handle the condition when and if it occurs
The contingency may be in the form of provision of extra funds or other reserves, or it may be a detailed action plan
(contingency plan) that can be quickly enacted when the problem arises
Validation and maintenance of contingency plans is a critical part of this strategy to ensure that contingency plans
work as expected when required
Conclusion
Project management is very important for the organization to govern the project
A team leader needs to understand project lifecycle, risk and risk management in order to create the
strategy for the project to be successful
Moreover, applying the proper tool during the process duration estimation by considering the iron
triangle can lead to reach the goal of the project
However, team project need to keep in mind that when the project seems to not achieve the goal, they
need to know when to stop it before they are going to spend beyond the budget

A Tool For Project Success

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Project Management: A tool for Project

Success (Kesorn Tongwan)

Definition and terminology

First, a project is temporary

Examples include most activities of accounting and human resources departments

Next, a project is an endeavor

Resources, such as people and equipment, need to do work

Finally, every project creates a unique product or service

A refinery that produces gasoline does not produce a unique product

station that is significantly different from gas at another station

On the other hand, commercial airplanes are unique products

You must make sure you understand your role in

Much of the project management effort across the

To achieve success they will almost certainly need to

Figure 2 An example of Critical Path Methods (CRM)

The duration of each activity is assumed to have one value

Figure 3 The basic earn value method Figure 4 Extension to EVM

Risk management is usually defined as a set of principles and practices aimed

Four common risk response strategies are found in the literature

Avoidance strategies aim to prevent a negative effect occurring or impacting a project

resulting in a better overall outcome for the project

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