Project Management

Project Management
Afshin Ahmadi
Afshin.Ahmadi@yahoo.com
WHAT IS A PROJECT?
 A project is a unique endeavor to produce a
set of deliverables within clearly specified
time, cost and quality constraints.
Projects are different from standard business
operational activities as they:
 Are unique in nature.
 Have a defined timescale.
 Have an approved budget.
 Have limited resources.
 Involve an element of risk.
 Achieve beneficial change.
Why Projects Fail
 Failure to align project with organizational
objectives
 Poor scope
 Unrealistic expectations
 Lack of executive sponsorship
 Lack of project management
 Inability to move beyond individual and
personality conflicts
 Politics
Why Projects Succeed!
 Project Sponsorship at executive level
 Good project charter
 Strong project management
 The right mix of team players
 Good decision making structure
 Good communication
 Team members are working toward common
goals
Why Project Management?
 Today’s complex environments require
ongoing implementations
 Project management is a method and
mindset…a disciplined approach to managing
chaos
 Project management provides a framework
for working amidst persistent change
Project Management: Official Definition
 Project Management is the skills, tools and

management processes required to
undertake a project successfully. It
incorporates:
 A set of skills.
 A suite of tools.
 A series of processes.
Project management components
Project Management: Unofficial Definition
Project management is about organization
Project management is about
decision making
changing people’s behavior

creating an environment conducive to
getting critical projects done!
Laws of Project Management
 No major project is ever installed on
time, within budget, or with the same
staff that started it. Yours will not be the
first.
 Projects progress quickly until they
become 90% complete, then they
remain at 90% complete forever.
 When things are going well, something
will go wrong.
 When things just cannot get any worse,
they will.
Project Planning and Implementation.
by Abraham Shtub, Jonathan F. Bard, and Shlomo Globerson Copyright © 1994
by Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Laws of Project Management
 When things appear to be going better, you
have overlooked something.
 No system is ever completely debugged.
Attempts to debug a system inevitably
introduce new bugs that are even harder to
find.
 A carelessly planned project will take three
times longer to complete than expected
 A carefully planned project will take only twice
as long.
 Project teams detest progress reporting
because it vividly manifests their lack of
progress.
Planning the Project
Planning the Project
 The Project Life Cycle

 Organizing the Project Team
 Project Plans
Planning the Project: The Project Life Cycle
Stages:
• Initiation
• Planning
• Execution and controlling
• Closure
 Initiation
 Planning
 Execution and Controlling

 Closure
Planning the Project: Organizing the Project Team
 Project Leader
 The Team
 Work Methods and Procedures
 Work Plan
Planning the Project: Project Plans
 Estimating Time Accurately
 Scheduling Simple Projects
 Gantt Charts – Scheduling Projects with Dependent
Stages
 Critical Path Analysis and PERT – Scheduling
Complex Projects
 The Planning Cycle – A Planning Process for Middle-
Sized Projects
 Planning Large Projects and Programs
Estimating Time Accurately
 Time estimates drive the setting of deadlines
for delivery of projects, and hence people's
assessments of your reliability.
 They often determine the pricing of contracts
and hence their profitability.
Estimating Time Accurately
 Other high urgency tasks to be carried out which will have
priority over this one
 Accidents and emergencies
 Internal meetings
 Holidays and sickness in essential staff
 Contact with other customers, perhaps to arrange the next job
 Breakdowns in equipment
 Missed deliveries by suppliers
 Interruptions
 Quality control rejections
Scheduling Simple Project
 Examples might be coordinating delivery of

resources for a workshop session,
implementing a small marketing plan, or
delivering a simple software enhancement.
Sequential and Parallel Activities
 An essential concept behind project planning and
Critical Path Analysis is that some activities are
dependent on other activities being completed first.
 These dependent activities need to be completed in a
sequence, with each stage being more-or-less
completed before the next activity can begin. We can
call dependent activities 'sequential' or 'linear'.
 Other activities are not dependent on completion of
any other tasks. These may be done at any time
before or after a particular stage is reached. These
are nondependent or 'parallel' tasks.
Gantt Chart
Gantt Charts are useful tools for analyzing and planning
complex projects. They:
 Help you to plan out the tasks that need to be
completed
 Give you a basis for scheduling when these tasks will
be carried out
 Allow you to plan the allocation of resources needed
to complete the project, and
 Help you to work out the critical path for a project
where you must complete it by a particular date.
Gantt Chart
To draw up a Gantt diagram, follow these steps:
 1. List all activities in the plan
 2. Head up graph paper with the days or
weeks through to task completion
 3. Plot the tasks onto the graph paper
 4. Schedule Activities
 5. Presenting the Analysis
Gantt Chart
1. List all activities in the plan
 For each task, show the earliest start date,
estimated length of time it will take, and
whether it is parallel or sequential. If tasks are
sequential, show which stages they depend
on.
Gantt Chart
Gantt Chart
2. Head up graph paper with the days or weeks
through to task completion
3. Plot the tasks onto the graph paper

 Plot each task on the graph paper, showing it
starting on the earliest possible date. Draw it
as a bar, with the length of the bar being the
length of the task.
Gantt Chart
Gantt Chart
4. Schedule Activities
 Now take the draft Gantt Chart, and use it to
schedule actions. Schedule them in such a
way that sequential actions are carried out in
the required sequence. Ensure that
dependent activities do not start until the
activities they depend on have been
completed.
Gantt Chart
5. Presenting the Analysis
 The final stage in this process is to prepare a
final version of the Gantt Chart. This should
combine the draft analysis with your
scheduling and analysis of resources. This
chart will show when you anticipate that jobs
should start and finish.
Gantt Chart
Critical Path Analysis and PERT Charts
 Critical Path Analysis and PERT are powerful tools
that help you to schedule and manage complex
projects.
 As with Gantt Charts, Critical Path Analysis (CPA)
helps you to plan all tasks that must be completed
as part of a project. They act as the basis both for
preparation of a schedule, and of resource
planning.
 The benefit of using CPA over Gantt Charts is that Critical Path
Analysis formally identifies tasks which must be completed on
time for the whole project to be completed on time, and also
identifies which tasks can be delayed for a while if resource
needs to be reallocated to catch up on missed tasks.
 A further benefit of Critical Path Analysis is that it helps you to
identify the minimum length of time needed to complete a
project.
 The disadvantage of CPA is that the relation of tasks to time is
not as immediately obvious as with Gantt Charts. This can make
them more difficult to understand for someone who is not
familiar with the technique.
Drawing a Critical Path Analysis Chart
 1. List all activities in the plan
 2. Plot the activities as a circle and arrow
diagram
1. List all activities in the plan
 For each activity, show the earliest start date,
estimated length of time it will take, and
whether it is parallel or sequential. If tasks are
sequential, show which stage they depend
on.
2. Plot the activities as a circle and arrow
diagram
 Critical Path Analyses are presented using
circle and arrow diagrams.
 In these, circles show events within the
project, such as the start and finish of tasks.
Circles are normally numbered to allow you to
identify them.
Figure 2: Simple Circle and Arrow Diagram

 Where one activity cannot start until another has
been completed, we start the arrow for the dependent
activity at the completion event circle of the previous
activity. An example of this is shown below:
 A different case is shown below
 Figure 5: Full circle and arrow diagram for the computer project
we are using as an example
Crash Action
 You may find that you need to complete a
project earlier than your Critical Path Analysis
says is possible. In this case you need to take
action to reduce the length of time spent on
project stages.
 As with Gantt Charts, in practice project
managers tend to use software tools like
Microsoft Project to create CPA Charts. Not
only do these ease make them easier to
draw, they also make modification of plans
easier and provide facilities for monitoring
progress against plans. Microsoft Project is
reviewed at the top of our left hand title bar.
PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique)
 PERT is a variation on Critical Path Analysis that
takes a slightly more skeptical view of time estimates
made for each project stage.
 Use the formula below to calculate the time to use for
each project stage:
Critical Path Analysis is an effective and powerful method of
assessing:
 What tasks must be carried out
 Where parallel activity can be performed
 The shortest time in which you can complete a project
 Resources needed to execute a project
 The sequence of activities, scheduling and timings
involved
 Task priorities
 The most efficient way of shortening time on urgent
projects.
The Planning Cycle
A Planning Process for Middle-Sized Projects
 Planning using this cycle will help you to plan and
manage ongoing projects up to a certain level of
complexity – this will depend on the circumstance.
For projects involving many people over a long period
of time, more formal methodologies and approaches
are necessary .
The Planning Cycle
The Planning Cycle
The stages in this planning process are:
1. Analysis of Opportunities:
The first thing to do is to do is to spot what needs to
be done. You will crystallize this into a formal aim at
the next stage in the process.
There are a number of techniques that will help you

to do this:
The Planning Cycle
 � SWOT Analysis
 This is a formal analysis of your strengths and weaknesses, and
of the opportunities and threats that you face.
 � Risk Analysis
 This helps you to spot project risks, weaknesses in your
organization or operation, and identify the risks to which you are
exposed. From this you can plan to neutralize some risks.
 � Understanding pressures for change
Alternatively, other people (e.g. clients) may be pressing you to
change the way you do things. Alternatively your environment
may be changing, and you may need to anticipate or respond to
this.
The Planning Cycle
2. Identifying the Aim of Your Plan
Once you have completed a realistic analysis of the
opportunities for change, the next step is to decide
precisely what the aim of your plan is.
 What do I want the future to be?
 What benefit do I want to give to my customers?
 What returns do I seek?
 What standards am I aiming at?
 What values do I and my organization believe in?
The Planning Cycle
 You can present this aim as a 'Vision
Statement' or 'Mission Statement'. Vision
Statements express the benefit that an
organization will provide to its customers.
 Mission statements give concrete expression
to the Vision statement, explaining how it is to
be achieved.
The Planning Cycle
3. Exploring Options
 By this stage you should know where you are
and what you want to do. The next thing to do
is to work out how to do it. The Creativity
Tools section of this site explains a wide
range of powerful creativity tools that will help
you to generate options.
The Planning Cycle
4. Selecting the Best Option
Once you have explored the options available
to you, it is time to decide which one to use. If
you have the time and resources available,
then you might decide to evaluate all options,
carrying out detailed planning, costing, risk
assessment, etc. for each. Normally you will
not have this luxury.
The Planning Cycle
5. Detailed Planning
By the time you start detailed planning, you should
have a good picture of where you are, what you want
to achieve and the range of options available to you.
You may well have selected one of the options as the
most likely to yield the best results.
The Planning Cycle
6. Evaluation of the Plan and its Impact
Once you have worked out the details of your plan,
the next stage is to review it to decide whether it is
worth implementing. Here you must be objective –
however much work you have carried out to reach
this stage, the plan may still not be worth
implementing.
Depending on the circumstances, the following
techniques can be helpful in evaluating a plan:
The Planning Cycle
 � PMI (Plus/Minus/Interesting)
This is a good, simple technique for 'weighing the pros and cons' of a
decision. It involves listing the plus points in the plan in one column, the
minus points in a second column, and the implications and points of
uncertainty of the plan in a third column. Each point can be allocated a
positive or negative score.
 � Cost/Benefit Analysis
This is useful for confirming that the plan makes financial sense. This
involves adding up all the costs involved with the plan, and comparing
them with the expected benefits.
 � Force Field Analysis
Similar to PMI, Force Field Analysis helps you to get a good overall
view of all the forces for and against your plan. This allows you to see
where you can make adjustments that will make the plan more likely to
succeed.
The Planning Cycle
 � Cash Flow Forecasts
It allows you to assess the effect of time on costs and revenue. It also
helps in assessing the size of the greatest negative and positive cash
flows associated with a plan. When it is set up on a spreadsheet
package, a good Cash Flow Forecast also functions as an extremely
effective model of the plan.
 � 6 Thinking Hats
6 Thinking Hats is a very good technique to use to get a rounded view
of your plan and its implications. It provides a context within which you
can examine a plan rationally, emotionally, optimistically, pessimistically
and creatively.
The Planning Cycle
 7. Implementing Change
Once you have completed your plan and decided that it will
work satisfactorily, it is time to implement it. Your plan will
explain how! It should also detail the controls that you will
use to monitor the execution of the plan.
 8. Closing the Plan
Once you have achieved a plan, you can close the project. At
this point is often worth carrying out an evaluation of the
project to see whether there are any lessons that you can
learn. This should include an evaluation of your project
planning to see if this could be improved.
Project Schedule Tools
 Many tools available
 Microsoft Project
 Many more specialized software
 www.dotproject.net
 Excel
 Most important Features:
 Monitor tasks
 Gantt views of project
 one page views for executives
 rollout and more complex views for work teams
 Critical Paths
 Inputs from multiple teams that roll up to project manager
 Dependencies
 Resources assigned to tasks

Project Management

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Project Management

 Project Management is the skills, tools and

Project management is about

 The Project Life Cycle

 Execution and Controlling

 Examples might be coordinating delivery of

3. Plot the tasks onto the graph paper

Figure 2: Simple Circle and Arrow Diagram

There are a number of techniques that will help you

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