Project Management

An overview

What is a Project

A temporary job to accomplish a specific task Attributes

Unique purpose Involves resources May involve uncertainty

Factors influencing a project

Goal Time Cost

Project management
Involves applications of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities in order to meet or exceed stakeholders expectation from a project

The process

Who are stakeholders

Are the people involved or affected by the project It may be

The project sponsor and the team Support staff Customers Users Supplier etc.,

Tools and Techniques

Assist the team in various functions Some tools

Scope Critical path analysis, PERT and Gantt charts Cost estimates

Advantages

Minimizes surprises Provides assurance and reduces risk Manages resources effectively Helps in future plans Integrates activities of people from different functions Encourages teamwork

Risk

Complexity

Pace of technological change Interdependency of components

Clarity the ability to define the requirements clearly Size

Steps

Visualizing the project Identifying of requirement Organizational integration Team management Risk and opportunity management Project control Corrective action

Project Time management

Why Time management?

Delivering projects on time is high on agenda for managers Time is not a flexible unit; It passes no matter what happens Scheduling project which involves many components is main reason for conflicts

Process

Activity definition Sequencing

Building dependencies

Estimating duration Developing schedule Controlling schedule

Project network diagram

A method for showing activity sequencing Portrays logical relationships among activities Schematic display of Sequencing of Project activities

Sample network diagrams

Also called Activity on Arrow diagrams Activities represented by arrows Nodes or circles are starting and ending point of activities Can show only Finish-to-Start dependencies

Precedence diagram

Activities represented by boxes Arrows show relationships between activities Better at displaying dependencies Used by Project management software

Duration estimating

After defining the activities and determining their sequence, the next step is estimating duration Duration means time worked on activity plus time elapsed Duration estimating should be done by people doing the work and reviewed by management

Schedule development

Determines the start and end date of project and other activities The goal is to create a realistic project schedule that works as the basis for monitoring project progress Important tools are Gantt charts, PERT and Critical Path analysis

Gantt charts

Provides a standard format for displaying project schedule by listing activities and their corresponding start to finish dates in a calendar format Symbols used are

A black diamond milestones or events with zero duration Thick black bars Summary tasks Light horizontal bars tasks Arrows dependencies between tasks

Sample Gantt chart

Finding the critical path for a project

Develop a project network diagram Add the durations of all activities on each path through the network diagram The longest path is the critical path

Using software in time management

Helps people exchange project related information Help analyze tradeoffs

Features of Project management(MS Project) software

Reports Overview reports: critical tasks and milestones Current activities reports: unstarted tasks, tasks starting soon, tasks in progress, completed tasks, should have started tasks, and slipping tasks Assignment reports: who does what when Views and Table Views Gantt chart, PERT chart, Tracking Gantt, schedule, tracking, variance, constraint dates, and delay Filters All tasks, completed tasks, critical tasks, incomplete tasks, and milestone tasks