Project Management

Lect#1

Overview and Concepts of Project

Management
 What is a Project?
“A project is a sequence of temporary, unique,
complex and connected activities having one goal
or purpose and that must be completed by a
specific time, within budget, and according to
specifications.”

“A project is a group of activities that are to be

undertaken with limited resources to yield specific
objectives in a specific time in a specific locality. A
project has a specific starting point, and a specific
ending point.”
 What is a Project?
 An investment on which resources are used to create
assets that will produce benefits over an extended
period of time.

 PMI has defined the project as single effort undertaken

in order to create unique project or service.

 ISO 10006 Standard defines the project as, “unique

processes, consisting of a set of coordinated and
controlled activities with start and finish dates,
undertaken to achieve an objective conforming to
specific requirements, including the constraints of
time, cost and resources”.
 Time & Cost Limits
Project Inputs Project Output(s)

Scope Constraint
 What is a Project?
Unique Activities
 The project has never happened before and will never happen
again under the same conditions.
Complex Activities
 Not simple, repetitive acts, such as mowing the lawn, running the
weekly payroll or loading the delivery truck.
Connected Activities
 There is some order or sequence
 Output from one activity is input to another.
Temporary Activities
 Start and Finish Dates
 What is a Project?
 One Goal
 Projects must have a single goal.
Specified Time
 Projects have a specified completion date
Within Budget
 Projects also have resource limits (people, money,
machines)
According to Specification
 The customer or recipient expectation
 Self-imposed
 What is a Sub-Project?
Projects are frequently divided into more manageable
components or subprojects, although the individual subprojects
can be referred to as projects and managed as such. Subprojects
are often contracted to an external enterprise or to another
functional unit in the performing organization.

 Subprojects according to human resource skill requirements,

such as plumbers or electricians needed on a construction
project.

 Subprojects involving specialized technology, such as the

automated testing of computer programs in a software
development project.
Project Parameters (Constraints)

 Cost

 Time

 Scope
 What is a Project ?
Triple Constraint: Trade-off between Time, Cost and Scope

The triple constraint is often depicted as

a triangle where one of the sides or one
of the corners represent one of the
parameters being managed by the
project team.
Project managers often talk of a “triple
constraint”—project scope, time and
Cost cost—in managing competing project
Quality Time requirements. Project quality is affected
by balancing these three factors. High
quality projects deliver the required
product, service within scope, on time,
and within budget. The relationship
Scope among these factors is such that if any
one of the three factors changes, at least
one other factor is likely to be affected.
 What is a Project ?
Triple Constraint: Trade-off between Time, Cost and Scope

• If the duration (time) of your project schedule decreases, you might

need to increase budget (cost) because you must hire more
resources to do the same work in less time. If you can’t increase the
budget, you might need to reduce the scope because the resources
you have can’t do all of the planned work in less time.

• If you must decrease a project’s duration, make sure that overall

project quality is not unintentionally lowered. For example, testing
and quality control often occur last in a software development
project; if the project duration is decreased late in the project, those
tasks might be the ones cut back. You must weigh the benefits of
decreasing the project duration against the potential downside of a
deliverable with poorer quality.
 What is a Project ?
Triple Constraint: Trade-off between Time, Cost and Scope

• If the budget (cost) of your project decreases, you might need more
time because you can’t pay for as many resources or for resources of
the same efficiency. If you can’t increase the time, you might need to
reduce project scope because fewer resources can’t do all of the
planned work in the time you have.

• Reducing project costs can lead to a poorer quality deliverable.

However, as a project manager, you must consider the benefits
versus the risks of reducing costs.
 Project Scope

 “The work that needs to be accomplished to deliver a

product, service, or result with the specified features
and functions.”

 Project objectives can be used for defining the project

scope.
 Project Scope

 Scope can involve a variety of things, depending on

the type of project. For example, if the project was to
design an aeroplane, the scope could include the
functional requirements of the plane, such as how
many passengers it can carry or how fast it should be
able to travel.
 Scope Creep
 Scope creep is something common with every project. This
refers to the incremental expansion of the project scope. Most
of the time, the client may come back to the service provider
during the project execution and add more requirements.
 Most of such requirements haven't been in the initial
requirements. As a result, change requests need to be raised in
order to cover the increasing costs of the service provider.
 Due to business scope creep, there can be technological scope
creep as well. The project team may require new technologies
in order to address some of the new requirements in the scope
 Scope Creep
• If your project scope increases, you might need more time or
more resources (cost) to do the additional work.

• Changing project scope midway through a project is not

necessarily a bad thing.

• Changing project scope is a bad thing only if the project

manager doesn’t recognize and plan for the new requirements
—that is, when other constraints (cost, time) are not
correspondingly examined and, if necessary, adjusted.