Project Management

Overview

References: Larson 1
Readings in your References Folder.

ITEC841 Week 1 Project Management Overview 1

What is a Project?
Project Defined
A complex, nonroutine, one-time effort limited by
time, budget, resources, and performance
specifications designed to meet customer needs.
Major Characteristics of a Project
Has an established objective.
Has a defined life span with a beginning and an end.
Requires across-the-organisational participation.
Involves doing something never been done before.
Has specific time, cost, and performance
requirements.

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Programs versus Projects
Program Defined
A series of coordinated, related, multiple
projects that continue over an extended time
and are intended to achieve a goal.
A higher level group of projects targeted at a
common goal.
Example:
. Project: completion of a required course in project
management.
. Program: completion of all courses required for a
business major.

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 Comparison of routine work with projects
Routine, repetitive work
Taking class notes
Daily entering sales receipts
into the accounting ledger
Responding to a supply-
chain request
Practising scales on the
piano
Routine manufacture of an
Apple iPod
Attaching tags on a
manufactured product
ITEC841 Week 1 Project Management Overview
Projects
Writing a term paper
Setting up a sales kiosk for a
professional accounting meeting
Developing a supply-chain
information system
Writing a new piano piece
Designing an iPod that is
approximately 2 4 cm,
interfaces with PC and stores
10 000 songs
RFID-tag projects for Target and
David Jones
TABLE 1.1
4
Project Life Cycle

FIGURE 1.1
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The Importance of Project Management
Factors leading to the increased use
of project management:
Compression of the product life
cycle
Global competition
Knowledge explosion
Corporate downsizing
Increased customer focus
Rapid development of Third World
and closed economies
Small projects that represent big
problems

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Integrated Project Management Systems

Problems resulting from the use of piecemeal project

management systems:
Do not tie together the overall strategies of the firm.
Fail to prioritise selection of projects by their
importance of their contribution to the firm.
Are not integrated throughout the project life cycle.
Do not match project planning and controls with
organizational culture to make appropriate
adjustments in support of project endeavours.

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Benefits of an Integrated Approach

Integration of project management provides senior

management with:
an overview of all project management activities
a big picture of how organisational resources are
used
a risk assessment of their portfolio of projects
a rough metric of the firms improvement in
managing projects relative to others in the industry
linkages of senior management with actual project
execution management

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 Integrated Management of Projects

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 Integration of Project with
Organisational Strategy
Use of selection criteria to ensure strategic
alignment and project priorities
A selection process that is systematic, open,
consistent and balanced
Project portfolio management
Value not just on ROI but strategic fit and best
use of resources

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Major Functions of Portfolio
Management
Oversee project selection
Monitor aggregate resource levels and skills
Encourage use of best practices
Balance projects in the portfolio in order to
represent a risk level appropriate to the
organisation
Improve communication among all stakeholders
Create a total organisational perspective that goes
beyond silo thinking
Improve overall management of projects over time
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Technical and Sociocultural Dimensions

Good project
managers
balance their
attention to both
the technical
and the
sociocultural
aspects of
project
management.

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 Software is different!
Thomsett recommends an Agile approach for IT
projects
Traditional PM approaches reflect engineering and
construction models
Fixed requirements, stable teams and technology
and stakeholders who trust their expert project
managers are myths in IT
Dynamic requirements, compressed development
schedules, virtual teams, unstable technology and
active stakeholders are the norm

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10 Ways Software Projects are Different
1. Software is intangible. Artifacts are not as
well understood and visible, such as a
factory blueprint. Incremental delivery
(prototypes) and early testing facilitate
visibility.
2. End state (requirements) is unclear.
Implicit, explicit and creeping requirements.
Learning experience. Defined investment
rather than defined deliverable basis.
3. Software projects vary in difficulty from true
research, to significant development to
relatively simple maintenance. Each
requires a different methodology.
Reference: Bullock (in references folder)
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4. Translating features into code does not happen
at a fixed rate. Tools and methods change as
necessary.
5. Similarly, code production can involve
discovery, investigation, design, integration,
where productivity can be highly variable.
6. Generating code can be the simplest part, with
front-end (requirements) and back-end
(implementation) dominating the project
schedule, risk and budget.
Managing a software project is a continuous
negotiation with customers and sponsors, but
also the technical team, suppliers and support
organisations.

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7. There arent software only projects.
Hardware, operating system, integration
and change management are significant
hand offs or interfaces.
8. Resources are limited and shared.
Need to consider chunks such as work
packages.
9. Tools and methods are tunable.
Constant iteration and improvement.
10. The PM needs to be a real manager, not
an administrator.

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Projects Involve Change Management
A project can meet the metrics of cost, quality
and schedule but disastrously fail to meet
stakeholder expectations.
Either expectations were too high, or the value
add was not delivered.
Setting stakeholder expectations and ensuring
enterprise preparedness are fundamental
aspects of PM.
Stakeholders must be willing, ready and able to
take ownership on delivery.
Reference: Slusarenko (References folder)
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 Stakeholders need to be managed by
keeping them involved and informed.
Support comes from above and
authority from below. Superiors must
support project, so that PM has the
authority to institute change.
PMs need to exert authority
structural, personal, expertise, moral
and charismatic
Author gives 14 lessons on how the PM
can manage change

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Mastering the 3 Worlds of IT
Executives need to stop looking at IT projects
as technology installations and start looking at
them as periods of organisational change that
they have a responsibility to manage.
Three categories of IT:
Function IT (FIT) make execution of stand alone
tasks more efficient e.g. tools to support knowledge
workers such as CAD/CAM for design engineers
Other changes (complements) are not necessary
Companies should consider the optional complements e.g.
process reengineering, integration etc.

Reference: McAfee (References folder), HBR, November, 2006

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 Network IT (NIT) facilitates communication
e.g. email, IM, blogs, groupware, wikis
Users need to modify in built complements e.g. use wikis
to avoid a deluge of emails, blogs to voice views, search
tools can facilitate research and KM
Tend to percolate up from the bottom
Enterprise IT (EIT) enterprise wide apps
that restructure interactions among groups
of employees and define processes e.g.
SCM, CRM, B2Bi
Top down imposed by management
New interdependencies, processes, decision rights
These complements become immediately necessary

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 The Nature of EIT
Unlike FIT and NIT, EIT is hard for companies to adopt
Benefits look great to people at the top, but the users usually dislike
the changes
EIT dictate new processes, impose higher levels of oversight and
are cross-functional
EIT efforts are often sabotaged e.g. 2002 Boston hospital imposition
of electronic prescriptions for checking doses, interactions, accuracy
Complements often need to be negotiated, negating some of the
benefits, or the EIT abandoned altogether, or worse still, persevering
and wreaking havoc
Business leaders from the affected areas need to:
Try to build consensus, but push through regardless
E.g. withholding sales commissions when sales people do not comply
with a SFA app
Extract maximum benefit by fine-tuning complements by leveraging
standardised data and workflows
Successful implementation and exploitation of EIT can be a strategic
advantage meeting the criteria of valuable, rare, inimitable and non
substitutable! (Bhatt and Grover, 2005)

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Agile Concepts

Thomsett presents 8 concepts which

typify the evolution of project
management
We will cover these concepts in more
detail during the course

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 1. Project management is completely
different from technical management.
Technical management concerns the technical
issues such as the development methods and
deliverables of the project e.g. system and
data design, programming, testing and
integration
Project management concerns managing the
expectations of the stakeholders, establishing
(or at least understanding) the business case
and delivering the projects expected benefits.
The two are linked through the scope,
objectives, strategy and quality.
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 Context Content

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2. Context is more important than content.
The PM needs to balance the content
(technical) with the context (managerial,
political and cultural) aspects.
The PMs focus is outward to the sponsor and
stakeholders.
The less the PM knows about the technical
details the better.
Projects fail because of context, not content.
Can we see this view demonstrated in IT
project manager ads on seek.com.au ?

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3. Whole-of-Life Project Management
Traditional PM uses process metrics
cost, duration, within budget
Tracking and reporting mechanisms are
stopped after project is finished
IT seen as a cost centre
Support costs and benefits realisation
are more important

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Traditional Focus

Agile Focus

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4. The PM is a facilitator and integrator
rather than a manager.
Traditional PM was driven by technically
orientated PMs
Intuitive and unilateral decision making by the
PM
For business projects, a shift from planning to
facilitating the planning process.
PM needs to build up relationship capital
Complexity of projects can overwhelm a single
person
Preferred team-driven planning approach is
based on consensus PM still has the casting
vote.

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5. Senior management are executive PMs.

The effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the project

sponsor is the single best predictor of the
project success or failure.
No sponsor, no start. ( A plane that has
crashed before it has even taken off!)
Traditional sponsors assume a passive or
reactive role inundated with technical reports,
not alerted to major problems until they have
become critical.
Proactive sponsors become executive PMs:
Active participation in the planning
Assistance given to the PM
Monitoring of key project variables

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6. Scenario planning rather than macroplanning.

If you cant predict the future with certainty,

dont put in a schedule all you are doing is
creating false expectations.
Bad example Iraq war won the war and lost
the peace
Good example Desert storm planned to
last for 100 days and was over in 100 hours
Real time planning (no more than 3 months)
accepts that requirements, resources,
technology etc. will alter during the project.

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7. Participative Rapid Planning

A plan created by one person is another

persons nightmare.
Traditional corporate strategic plans and
annual budgets keep the filing cabinet from
falling over
Bottom up plans are participative and build
buy in
Thomsett proposes a RAP (rapid application
planning) session, similar to SCRUM

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8. Virtual Teams Rather than Traditional Teams
Team members will often be consultants or
contractors working for external organanisations
Part-time or ad hoc commitment to the team
and the project
Virtual teams represent a challenge to the PM
due to:
Little or no loyalty to the team
Trust limited to professional skills
No friendship
Little shared experience or vision
Varied belief systems

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 Traditional vs. Agile
The two most common traditional project management
(TPM) methods are PMIs PMBOK and PRINCE2
[PMI now has an Agile Project Management
qualification and DSDM qualifies managers in Atern.]
These worked well in the more stable and engineered
projects of the past
Thomsett argues that creative and dynamic project
management must replace the over-engineered and
mechanistic TPM methods
Agile Project Management (APM) is the management
of creativity

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Focus on the development
cycle ofTraditional
systems
Treats quality, risk and cost-
benefit as plug-ins
Treats team members as a
resource that has costs and
requires constant tracking
Focuses downward to the
team and cost, schedule and
scope
Focuses on costs
Expensive, report and forms
laden, slow and bureaucratic
ITEC841 Week 1 Project Management Overview
Focuses on the whole of life
including benefits realisation
Fully integrates
Agilequality, risk
and cost-benefit into the
management process
Treats team members as
creative and motivated who
will work towards project
success
Focuses outward and upward
towards the sponsor,
stakeholders and clients
Focuses on benefits
realisation
Inexpensive, low-tech, rapid
and open
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 Traditional Project Management
Closed. Project management is undertaken by experts.
The PM owns the project, team, scope, budget etc.
(PRINCE2 is better than PMBOK in this regard.)
Distrust. Project team members need to be constantly
monitored, to avoid slacking off. All estimates are padded
and haggled down by management.
Dishonesty. Projects are reported as Green to avoid
executive attention and punishment. Expected benefits
are overstated and costs understated to get the project
approved.
Lack of courage. Agreeing to unrealistic expectations e.g.
time, budget, scope etc. Asking for help is seen as a sign
of weakness.
Technical fun. Team focuses on the innovative technology
and leaves benefits realisation to the users.
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 Agile Project Management
Open. Full participation by the stakeholders and facilitated
by the PM. PM owns the process not the project and its
outputs and outcomes.
Trust. Project team members are trusted to work hard and
be committed to the project and the organisation.
Honesty. Honest estimates are given. It is acceptable to
not know the true estimates and ask for some time and
resources to investigate.
Courage. Telling the truth, asking for assistance, admitting
uncertainty and mistakes are signs of strength and acting
as a professional.
Money. There is a duty of care to wisely use stakeholder
funds. PM needs to engage with stakeholders to assist
with benefits realisation.

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