Introduction to Project Management
Welcome to Project Management Essentials! Whether you have been managing projects for years, are tasked with managing your first project, or are just interested in learning more about Project Management, this book will be a great resource for you. We’ll not only go through best practices from start to finish of a project life cycle, but we’ll provide you with templates and examples from a variety of different organizations.
The purpose of this chapter is to help you:
1. Describe measures of project success on your projects and use that knowledge to guide your planning and implementation.
2. Determine the project life cycle you will use, along with stages of work and approvals needed to move from one stage to the next.
3. Define major responsibilities of the project manager, sponsor, and functional managers at each stage of your project life cycle to achieve project success.
In this chapter, we will introduce project management, and then discuss what project success is and what is required to achieve it. We will also introduce the concept of a project life cycle with both traditional (planning) and agile (adaptive) approaches. The final section of this chapter deals with key roles and responsibilities needed to successfully complete projects.
So, let’s start at the very beginning: What is a project? A project is a one-time undertaking that will result in a new product, event, or way of doing things. It will have a defined start and finish—though a project’s duration could be anywhere from a few hours to many years. And just as efficient management is needed for the day-to-day activities of running a business or a household, effective project management is needed to guide any type of change. An effective project manager must be adept at overseeing the planning and work necessary to create the unique product or service proscribed by the project. In fact, the top 2% of project managers spend, on the average, twice as much time planning as the other 98% of project managers.1 This includes both the tasks (science) and relationships (art) needed to understand the work and keep it moving with, through, and for people.
Here are just a few of the reasons executives we’ve worked with have given for why project management is so important to them:
• Project management brings objectivity to projects.
• It represents an investment in current and future projects.
• It’s necessary for planning and executing communication and coordination throughout projects.
• Project Management helps our understanding of the big picture.
• It provides a standardized process for resolving conflicts.
• Can’t run a business without project management.
• Without it, people just assume things.
While the tools we will show you in this book are scalable—in other words, they can be made more or less detailed to fit the size and scope of your project—they will all be based on the international standards detailed in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), 5th Edition.
Exhibit 1.1 Meeting Agreements
An old rule of thumb has been that successful project completion is comprised of three factors: being on time, on budget, and achieving the specified level of technical performance. Performance includes both completing everything (called scope) and having it work correctly (called quality). These three factors (time, cost, and performance) make up a factor called meeting agreements as shown in Exhibit 1.1. Meeting agreements is often how project managers are most closely evaluated, but it is second in importance.
The more important issue is the impact on the project customer. The very reason for performing a project is that someone or some group wants the project deliverables to use. Customer success includes customer satisfaction and successful implementation of project deliverables. Regardless of whether your customers are internal or external to your organization, their approval should be your first and foremost goal.2, 3 Sometimes additional success measures are also considered, such as other benefits to the organization and development of project participants.
Exhibit 1.2 Project Success Measures Template
In later chapters, we will go into greater detail about how to set and attain project success metrics. For now, begin to consider how important each success measure may be and how and when you expect to measure it. Exhibit 1.2 is a template to help you gather your thoughts on success for your project and Exhibit 1.3 is a partially completed success measure template for a project meant to improve the workflow in a department.
Exhibit 1.3 Partially Completed Project Success Measures Template
Not only do all projects have starting and ending points, they also go through similar, predictable stages that collectively make up their life cycles. A simple project life cycle includes the four stages—Initiating, Planning, Executing, and Closing—as shown in Exhibit 1.4.4,5 The vertical dimension shows the level of effort expended (usually in amount of work hours and money spent). The horizontal axis shows time. To move from one stage to another, normally an approval of some kind is needed. These typically include a charter to make the project official and grant the project manager authority; a detailed project plan to proceed; customer acceptance of the primary project deliverables; and completion of any required documentation, respectively.
Although that looks and sounds very straightforward, keep in mind that projects, by definition, are unique and thus will vary greatly from one to another. Furthermore, depending on which field you are in, the life cycle you use may be different from the generic project life cycle above. One of the main differences among life cycles in projects pertains to how much uncertainty there is at the start of a project. The most extreme cases are called Waterfall and Agile.
Exhibit 1.4 Generic Project Life Cycle
Exhibit 1.5 Waterfall Project Life Cycle
Let’s illustrate this point through examples. Suppose you work for a construction company, and you are tasked with the project of building a house. Although this particular house and this particular project are new to you, you’ve likely completed many similar projects in the past and, therefore, have a great deal of understanding of the work you need to do and the order you need to do it in. You would be able to plan your project in its entirety before moving to the “executing” phase of the project in which you perform the work. Throughout the executing stage, you would expect to have periodic progress reports as you completed things such as design, erection, finishing, etc. This is an example of Waterfall—so named because the project cascades from one stage to another in succession. A simple Waterfall life cycle is shown in Exhibit 1.5.
In terms of planning, the absolute opposite of Waterfall is the Agile method of project management. Suppose you are a scientist working toward developing a life-saving drug. You understand your starting point, your end goal, and may have a plan as to how to move from here to there. Yet, so much of your plan will come down to the results of hypothesis testing … which may lead you in a new direction entirely or to tweak something you’ve already tried. In other words, there is a great degree of uncertainty over the life of your project. In this case, you will create a broad overarching plan at the beginning, but you will do your more detailed planning iteratively, or repetitively, one bit at a time. An Agile project life cycle is shown in Exhibit 1.6. Note that it starts the same with a charter to authorize the project. The next main stage is to capture the customer requirements. Once this is done, the project is planned and executed in short increments called sprints. These sprints may range up to 4 weeks in duration. As one sprint is complete with accepted deliverables, the next sprint is planned and executed. A key tenant of Agile is that something of value will be delivered at the end of each sprint. Whatever project life cycle model you use, this is good advice—provide something of value early and often.
Exhibit 1.6 Agile Project Life Cycle
Another tenant of Agile is that with less detail in the up-front planning, the project team needs to be more self-organizing and self-managing. This works best with experienced and motivated workers. The project ends in a similar fashion to Waterfall in that the detailed plans are finally completed, final deliverables are accepted, and all of the administrative closing is completed.
Each of these methods, as well as many other industry-specific or hybrid life cycle models, is equally valid, and they still have more commonalities than differences. For example, whether the planning is done entirely up front (Waterfall) or iteratively (Agile), it is essential to allow ample time for planning. In fact, the most successful project managers spend much more time on project planning than their less-successful counterparts. Although it is tempting to shortchange the planning process and dive right into project execution, it will save you time—as well as headaches—to plan adequately from the start. Consider planning to be an investment. You can expect that the time you invest in planning will yield a return in better project execution. With that in mind, as with any investment, it is wise to evaluate carefully. Detailed planning for a large, high-risk project makes plenty of sense, but simple planning for a simple project also makes sense. We’ll show you some of the most helpful project planning documents and templates in the following chapters.
Key Roles in Project Management
Before we move on, let’s take a moment to discuss the various roles in project management. In addition to you, the project manager, hopefully you have executive support from your organization, in the form of a project sponsor. This person will oversee and champion your project throughout. She will not be the person performing the work, but she will provide guidance, encouragement, and assistance over the life of the project. Some of the ways a sponsor may assist a project manager include attending the project kick-off meeting, establishing and nurturing relationships with project stakeholders, signing off on major project decisions, and mentoring the project manager.
Keep in mind that even the best of project managers does not necessarily have a great deal of legitimate authority over the other project team members. There are many ways to deal with this, which we will discuss in Chapter 3. However, an adept sponsor will be aware of this and will facilitate interdisciplinary cooperation and pre-empt problems when possible or as necessary. Finally, a sponsor will help determine up front the project’s success criteria. Even if the sponsor is not in the best position to make this decision herself, she needs to be in accord with the project manager. The sponsor and project manager will arguably be the two most essential players on the project, so it is crucial they share a common understanding of the job before them.
So, what do you—or any project manager, for that matter—do? You will be responsible for planning and overseeing the project in its entirety. Like any good manager, you will need to prioritize, delegate, encourage, troubleshoot, and deal with change. In addition, you will use your project-specific knowledge and tools provided by this book to meet the requirements of your customer(s) and various stakeholders. You will lead the project team through the planning stage of the project and oversee its execution. Above all else, what you must do well is communicate. It is commonly accepted that a good project manager spends the preponderance of her work hours (maybe 80% to 90%) communicating with the project team members, sponsor, and other stakeholders. When comparing the skills most often cited in literature as those a project manager needs to the most commonly sought-after project management skills and abilities listed in job advertisements, the following six demands are at the top of both lists:
1. Communication
2. Technical skills
3. Leadership
4. Planning
5. Team building and management
6. Stakeholder management.6
In addition to the project manager and sponsor, a project is carried out by project team members. The number and function of these team members will vary depending on your project, but generally speaking, project team members fall into two categories: core team members and subject matter experts (SMEs). Core team members are the workers who are assigned to the project from the earliest possible time (ideally during the Initiating stage) and stick with the project until it is either completed or terminated. SMEs, on the other hand, are there to help with certain parts of the project that require their input or specialized work. They can join (via “on-boarding”) and leave the project team at almost any point along the project’s life cycle.
Additional suggestions as to who is responsible for what at various stages throughout the project can be found in Exhibit 1.7.7 Certainly the project manager’s direct supervisor may also be the project sponsor, but we differentiate here because that is not always the case. Also, many organizations have their own specified responsibilities for various roles that may include variations on this list.
Exhibit 1.7 Sponsor, Project Manager, and Supervisor of Project Manager Responsibilities
The structure of your organization will largely determine to whom the project manager will report, though most likely it will be to a functional manager or portfolio manager. In turn, your project team members will likely be working on more than just the project you are managing and will have their own functional managers to report to. It is important to keep this in mind because your project success largely depends on having competent, motivated workers. It would behoove you to have good working relationships with the various functional managers since you will need to negotiate with them for workers. And by respecting the fact that your workers have priorities beyond your project, you will create goodwill among your workers—workers you may very well work with again on future projects.
Regardless of one’s role on a project, a person needs to remember that project management is a profession with expectations of ethical conduct that apply to everyone. The Project Management Institute Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct includes both mandatory and aspirational standards in the four areas of responsibility, respect, fairness, and honesty.8 In this book, we will always conform to the mandatory standards and will often describe desired behavior that leads toward the aspirational standards.
Exhibit 1.8 is a template to help you organize your thoughts about who needs to do what and when they need to do it. You can modify this according to the project life cycle model you use, the deliverables required to move from one stage to the next, and the various participants.
Exhibit 1.8 Project Life Cycle Roles and Responsibilities Template
Overview of Remaining Chapters
Here is a brief overview of what to expect in the following chapters. If you are just beginning a project or are reading this to help you with projects in the future, we’ll follow the life cycle of a project from start to finish so you can see how each of the process groups and various components are interrelated. If you need help with one particular component of project management, on the other hand, we’ll provide enough instruction and examples to help you at any stage of the project life cycle.
In Chapter 2, we’ll briefly touch on portfolio management, then continue on to discussing the key output of the Initiating process group: the charter. Portfolio management involves strategic planning at the executive level, and although it is likely that you are not involved in this, we want you to understand how your project fits in to the strategic vision of your organization. The second part of Chapter 2 centers on creating the charter, the document that sums up your project and, once agreed to, gives the project manager and team the authorization to pursue the project. Although the charter is generally brief (on average, only a couple pages long), it is a crucial document that serves as the basis for all further project planning.
In Chapter 3, we’ll talk about how to identify, prioritize, and engage your stakeholders. The term stakeholder refers to anyone with a vested interest in your project. Most projects have a wide range of stakeholders, including both those internal and external to the project. We’ll also go into detail about how to manage a very special group of internal stakeholders: your project team. In addition to summarizing some of the best up-to-date management and communication strategies, we’ll discuss issues unique to projects and how to best address them as the project manager. A great deal of the how-to’s in this chapter will involve effective communication in its various forms.
Chapter 4 delves into project requirements. More specifically, what are peoples’ expectations of this project, how will we meet those expectations, and how will we deal with changes that occur during the project? One of the key deliverables from this chapter is the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), which progressively breaks down the entirety of the project into smaller, manageable deliverables. We’ll show examples of several different WBSs and guide you through the process of creating your own. We will also introduce project risk and how to plan for changes.
Chapter 5 will show you how to create a project schedule, using the WBS from Chapter 4 as a guide. We’ll show you how to convert the various deliverables from the WBS into activities, which will be sequenced in a logical manner in order to create the most efficient project schedule possible. We’ll then put these schedules into Gantt charts, and will help you effectively resource your projects—addressing resource overloads where necessary.
In Chapter 6, we’ll discuss the financial side to project management. We’ll use best practices and examples for how to estimate cost; determine budget; and create a project baseline that integrates schedule, budget, scope, and resources. This baseline will be used to judge progress throughout the execution of your project. Upon completion of a project baseline, it will be time for you, the project manager, to schedule an official project kick-off. We’ll show you how to do that, too!
Finally, Chapter 7 will coach you through Directing Project Performance. You’ll learn how to perform quality assurance and control, address project changes, and use Earned Value Analysis (EVA) to control your schedule and budget. You’ll learn effective methods of managing communications and be given corresponding templates to use or adapt. Finally, we’ll walk you through the Closing process group, which includes both project closing and postproject activities.
In Summary
A project is a temporary endeavor whose purpose is to create or change something. A project’s life cycle will vary depending on industry and degree of uncertainty, but generally a project moves through Initiating, Planning, Executing, and Closing phases. Each project should have a project manager to oversee the planning and work, a project sponsor to offer executive support, and a project team comprised of core team members and subject matter experts. To be deemed successful, a project should be completed on time, on budget, and to the agreed-upon level of quality. That said, the single most important project objective is satisfying the customer.
1. How will you define and measure project success for your projects?
2. What project life cycle model will you use and does everyone understand the approvals needed to move from one stage to the next?
3. Who will play each key role on your projects and do they understand their roles?
Notes
1. Crowe, A. (2006), p. 107.
2. Kloppenborg, T. J., Tesch, D., and Manolis, C. (2014), p. 11.
3. Morris, P. (2013), p. 16.
4. PMBOK® Guide (2013), pp. 38-41.
5. Kloppenborg, T. J. (2015), pp. 6-8.
6. Ahsan, K., Ho, M., and Khan, S. (2013), p. 47.
7. Kloppenborg, T. J. and Laning L. J. (2012), pp. 47, 80.
8. PMI (2015), pp. 53-57.
References
1. Crowe, A. (2006). Alpha Project Managers: What the top 2% know that everyone else does not. Kenneshaw, GA: Velociteach.
2. PMBOK® Guide (2013). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (5th ed.). Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
3. Kloppenborg, T. J., Tesch, D., and Manolis, C. (2014). Project Success and Executive Sponsor Behaviors: Empirical Life Cycle Stage Investigations. Project Management Journal 45(1), 9-20.
4. Morris, P. (2013). Reconstructing Project Management Reprised: A Knowledge Perspective. Project Management Journal 44(5), 6-23.
5. Kloppenborg, T. J. (2015). Contemporary Project Management (3rd ed.). Mason, OH: CENGAGE Learning.
6. Ahsan, K., Ho, M., and Khan S. (2013). Recruiting Project Managers: A Comparative Analysis of Competencies and Recruitment Signals from Job Advertisements. Project Management Journal 44(5), 36-54.
7. Kloppenborg, T. J. and Laning L. J. (2012). Strategic Leadership of Portfolio and Project Management. New York: Business Expert Press.
8. http://www.pmi.org/Certification/~/media/PDF/Certifications/pdc_pmphandbook.ashx Accessed June 23, 2015.