Why Are Projects Challenging?

With the value that project management offers any organization, it is easy to understand why more and more industries are adopting project management as the way to do business. But projects aren't easy to manage and involves a lot of challenges. The key reasons why projects are challenging to manage are:

1. Uncharted territory—Each project is unique. The work to be done has likely never been done before by this group of people in this particular environment.

2. Multiple expectations—Each project has multiple stakeholders that each have their own needs and expectations for the project.

3. Communication obstacles—Due to natural organizational boundaries,communication channels, and team development stages, communication of project information must be proactively managed to ensure proper flow.

4. Balancing the competing demands—Every project is defined to produce one or more deliverables (scope) within a defined time period (time), under an approved budget (cost) with a specified set of resources. In addition, the deliverables must achieve a certain performance level (quality) and meet
the approval of the key stakeholders (expectations). Each of these factors can affect the others, as the figure below illustrates.




For example, if additional functionality (scope, quality) is desired, the time and cost (resources needed) of the project will increase. This is a key focus of an effective project manager.

5. Cutting edge—Often, projects have a strategic, innovative focus. As a result, they often deal with new, leading-edge technologies. In these cases, the project has more risks, more unknowns, and is much more difficult to estimate accurately.

6. Organizational impacts—In addition to overcoming natural communication obstacles created by the project structure, the project manager must also manage overlaps in organizational approval and
authority domains, contend with competing priorities for shared resources, deal with annual budget cycles that might not be aligned with the project’s funding needs, and ensure that the project is aligned with the focus of the organization.

7. Collaboration—Depending on the strategic level and scope of your project, your project team will consist of stakeholders across the organization from different functional areas that are likely not accustomed to working together. For project success, these different stakeholders must learn to work together and to understand the others’ perspectives to make the best decisions for the project. Often, the project manager plays a key facilitating role in this collaboration process.

8. Estimating the work—Estimating project work is difficult, yet the time and cost dimensions of the project are built upon these work effort estimates. Given the facts that the work of the project is often unique (never been done before at all, never been done with these tools, and never been done by these people), and most organizations do not maintain accurate historical records on previous projects (that might have similar work components), it is difficult to accurately estimate the effort for individual work items, not to mention the entire project. For the entire project, you need to anticipate the quantity and severity of the issues and obstacles that are likely to surface.

Thus a Project Manager plays an important role in any organization. With the business trends of global competition and increased worker productivity continuing for the foreseeable future, the demand for successful project managers will only increase. Even in industries and organizations that are experiencing staff reductions, the individuals who have the knowledge, the people skills, and the management competence to solve problems and get projects done are the individuals most valued and retained by the parent organization.

Why project management is important?

As the organizational operating environment continues to become more global, more competitive, and more demanding, organizations must adapt. They must become more efficient, more productive—they must “do more with less.” They must continually innovate. They must respond rapidly to a fast-changing environment. How can they do this? How can they do this in a strategic manner? How can they do this and still have the proper management controls?

They can do this with effective project management. The strategic value points that effective project management can offer an organization include, but are not limited by, the following:

1. Provide a controlled way to rapidly respond to changing market conditions and new strategic      opportunities
2. Maximize the innovative and creative capabilities of the organization by creating environments of focus and open communication
3. Enable organizations to accomplish more with less costs
4. Enable better leverage of both internal and external expertise
5. Provide key information and visibility on project metrics to enable better decision-making management
6. Increase the pace and level of stakeholder acceptance for any strategic change
7. Reduce financial losses by “killing off” poor project investments early in their life cycles

In addition to providing apparent value to any organization, project management also offers tremendous value to each of us as individuals. At a personal level, the value of effective project management:

1. Ensures that our work is put to the best use for the organization and properly recognized
2. Provides a career path that offers unique, challenging opportunities on each new project
3. Provides a career path that requires all our abilities and knowledge,including our management, business, people, and technical skills
4. Provides a career path that is high in demand, and, generally, offers an increase in income
5. Provides a career path that prepares you for organizational leadership positions
6. Provides a career path that is recognized more each year as excellent preparation for CxO positions (as more CxO positions are filled by individuals with project management experience)
7. Provides a career path that enables you to be on the front lines of strategic organizational initiatives and have major impact on the organization’s future

Trends in Project Management

Other than to focus on organizational process improvements, there are other trends in business and project management that a first-time project manager is likely to encounter. Some of these trends are:

Managing vendors—With the increased outsourcing of non-core activities, more projects leverage one or more vendors (suppliers) to get work done.

Facilitating a selection process—To determine which vendors you will partner with to get work done, a selection and evaluation process is normally conducted.

Change agent—Because most projects represent a “change” to business as usual, the project manager is expected to play a key role in leading the stakeholders through the change and acceptance process.

Servant leadership—Due to a lack of formal authority, the need to understand the requirements of all stakeholders and the importance of facilitation, collaboration, and managing expectations, there is a growing awareness that a servant leadership style is paramount for effective project management.

Managing virtual, cross-functional, and multicultural teams—With the continuous advancements in workgroup and communications tools, the increased integration of processes within an organization, and the continuous drive for increased organizational efficiencies, it is very likely that your project team will consist of members from different physical locations (virtual), different functional departments (cross-functional), or different cultures (multicultural, global).

Quality management—Much like the factors driving the emphasis on risk management, the link between rigorous quality management procedures and improved project management practices continues to strengthen.

Requirements management—Closely intertwined with managing quality, scope, and stakeholder expectations, the effective definition and the proper management of both a project’s and the product’s requirements are essential to success.

Facilitating a testing process—Because it is paramount to verifying stakeholder satisfaction with the focus of the project, the project manager is best positioned to facilitate the testing process.

Risk management—Coinciding with the focus on enterprise-wide process improvements and in response to past project experiences, more organizations are placing additional emphasis and formality on their project risk management processes.

Working with PMOs and corporate governance processes—If you are working in any type of corporate or multiple business unit environment, you most likely deal with Project Management Office (PMO) or other corporate governance processes.

Thus Project Management is not just meeting deadlines, in itself it's a very challenging role. The following diagram depicts an overview of Project Management-

By now we know:

• The elements of project management
• The common challenges of managing projects
• The value of effective project management to an organization.
• The merits of project management as a career choice
• The latest business and project management trends that might impact your first opportunity

After the overview of Project Management process we'll focus on the role of Project manager in the coming posts. Till we meet again keep exploring this unique field.

The project life cycle (PLC)

Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. The project management discipline can be highlighted from various angles and sub-disciplines and contains important issues such as project objective and scope management, human resource management and setting the roles and responsibilities of all participants and stakeholders of a project, planning principles and resource allocation models, etc.

Typically, a project goes through a number of different phases, which is often referred to as the project life cycle, which can be described as follows:

The project life cycle has identifiable start and end points, which can be associated with a time scale. A project passes through several distinct phases as it matures. The life cycle includes all phases from point of inception to final termination of the project. The interfaces between phases are rarely clearly separated, except in cases where proposal acceptance of formal authorization to proceed separates the two phases.

Consequently, the PLC is defined by the time window between the initial start of the project and the final termination and consists of a number of phases, separated by major milestones. The number of phases and their corresponding titles differ from industry to industry and from project to project. Let's now focus on various project phases. 

Project Phases

A project consists of sequential phases. These phases are extremely useful in planning a project since they provide a framework for budgeting, manpower and resource allocation and for scheduling project milestones and project reviews. The method of dividing a project into phases may differ somewhat from industry to industry and from product to product and it can be summarized as follows:
• Concept (initiation, identification, selection). • Definition (feasibility, development, demonstration, design prototype). • Execution (implementation, production, design/construct/commission, install and test). • Closeout (termination and post completion evaluation).

Some argue that the number of phases and the titles are so generic that they are of little value in describing the project life cycle process. Although the construction and presentation of a generic project life cycle seems to be difficult, if not impossible, each PLC shares a number of common characteristics.
• The major milestones between the phases represent high-level decision points. • The phases may, and frequently will, overlap.
Between the various phases are decision points, at which an explicit decision is made concerning whether the next phase should be undertaken. A major review of the entire project occurs at the end of each phase, resulting in authorization to proceed with the next phase, cancellation of the project, or repetition of a previous phase.

Initially in PMBOK the project life cycle concept was not mentioned at all. In the later editions, PMI realized the importance of the “divide and conquer” principle as the complexity and the size of the project increase and included the PLC concept in the book.

More precisely, PMBOK describes the project life cycle as follows:
Because projects are unique undertakings, they involve a degree of uncertainty. Organizations performing projects will usually divide each into several project phases to improve management control and provide for links to the ongoing operations of the performing organization. Collectively, the project phases are known as the project life cycle.
Each project is marked by the completion of one or more deliverable, such as a feasibility study or a detail design. These deliverable, and hence the phases, are part of a generally sequential logic designed to ensure proper definition of the project.
The conclusion of each phase is generally marked by a review. These reviews, often called milestones, phase exits, stage gates or kill points, are necessary to:
• Determine if the project should continue to the next phase. • Detect and correct errors cost effectively.
Although PMBOK presents a sample generic life cycle as shown in figure below they argue that many project life cycles have similar phase names with similar deliverables required but few are identical.

The next figure shows a generic project life cycle which we'll use in our post. It consists of a project conception phase, a project definition phase, a phase in which the project has to be scheduled, the execution of the project, the project control phase and the termination of the project.

At the beginning, in the so-called conceptual phase, an organization identifies the need for a project or receives a request from a customer. In the definition phase, the organization defines the project objectives, the project specifications and requirements and the organization of the whole project. The project objectives need to be refined and translated into a list of activities, a set of technological precedence relations and the resource availability and requirements. In doing so, the organization decides in detail on how it is going to achieve these objectives.

The next phase, the scheduling phase, aims at the construction of a timetable for the project activities. The construction of a precedence and/or resource feasible schedule determines a start and finish time for each activity, and hence, relies on the information obtained by the previous phase.

During the execution and project control phases, the project has to be monitored and controlled to see whether it is performed according to the existing schedule. If deviations occur, corrective actions have to be taken. This control mechanism has been incorporated in the project life cycle by means of the feedback loop between the control phase and the scheduling phase of the above shown figure.

The termination phase involves the completion and a critical evaluation of the project. This information can then be used during the project life cycle of future, similar projects since the specifications of a project, the estimates of the duration, costs and resource requirements are often determined based on averages of past performance.

With this our post comes to an end. We shall meet again with a new topic, till then keep exploring the world of Project Management!.

How project, program, portfolio and operations management are related

A project may be managed in three separate scenarios: as a stand-alone project (outside of a portfolio or program), within a program, or within a portfolio. Project managers interact with portfolio and
program managers when a project is within a program or portfolio. For example, multiple projects may be needed to accomplish a set of goals and objectives for an organization. In those situations, projects may be grouped together into a program.

A program is defined as a group of related projects, subsidiary programs, and program activities managed in a coordinated manner to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually. Programs are not large projects.

A very large project may be referred to as a megaproject. As a guideline, megaprojects cost US$1billion or more, affect 1 million or more people, and run for years.

A portfolio is defined as projects, programs, subsidiary portfolios, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives. Some organizations may employ the use of a project portfolio to effectively manage multiple programs and projects that are underway at any given time. The figure below illustrates an example of how portfolios, programs, projects, and operations are related in a specific situation:

Program management and portfolio management differ from project management in their life cycles, activities,objectives, focus, and benefits. However, portfolios, programs, projects, and operations often engage with the same stakeholders and may need to use the same resources (see Figure above), which may result in a conflict in the organization.

This type of a situation increases the need for coordination within the organization through the use of portfolio, program, and project management to achieve a workable balance in the organization. The above figure illustrates a sample portfolio structure indicating relationships between the programs, projects, shared resources, and stakeholders.

The portfolio components are grouped together in order to facilitate the effective governance and management of the work that helps to achieve organizational strategies and priorities. Organizational and portfolio planning impact the components by means of prioritization based on risk, funding, and other considerations. The portfolio view allows organizations to see how the strategic goals are reflected in the portfolio. This portfolio view also enables the implementation and coordination of appropriate portfolio, program, and project governance.

This coordinated governance allows authorized allocation of human, financial, and physical resources based on expected performance and benefits. Thus from an organizational perspective :

• Program and project management focus on doing programs and projects the “right” way; and
• Portfolio management focuses on doing the “right” programs and projects.

This is end of today's post, in the next post we shall discuss about basics of Program management.

Project management and it's importance

Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements. Project management is accomplished through the appropriate application and integration of the project management processes identified for the project. Project management enables organizations to execute projects effectively and efficiently. Using project management processes, tools, and techniques puts in place a sound foundation for organizations to achieve their goals and objectives.

Effective project management helps individuals, groups, and public and private organizations to:

• Meet business objectives;
• Satisfy stakeholder expectations;
• Be more predictable;
• Increase chances of success;
• Deliver the right products at the right time;
• Resolve problems and issues;
• Respond to risks in a timely manner;
• Optimize the use of organizational resources;
• Identify, recover, or terminate failing projects;
• Manage constraints (e.g., scope, quality, schedule, costs, resources);
• Balance the influence of constraints on the project (e.g., increased scope may increase cost or schedule); and
• Manage change in a better manner.

Poorly managed projects or the absence of project management may result in:

• Missed deadlines,
• Cost overruns,
• Poor quality,
• Rework,
• Uncontrolled expansion of the project,
• Loss of reputation for the organization,
• Unsatisfied stakeholders, and
• Failure in achieving the objectives for which the project was undertaken.

Projects are a key way to create value and benefits in organizations. In today’s business environment, organizational leaders need to be able to manage with tighter budgets, shorter timelines, scarcity of resources, and rapidly changing technology. The business environment is dynamic with an accelerating rate of change. To remain competitive in the world economy, companies are embracing project management to consistently deliver business value.

Effective and efficient project management should be considered a strategic competency within organizations. It enables organizations to:

• Tie project results to business goals,
• Compete more effectively in their markets,
• Sustain the organization, and
• Respond to the impact of business environment changes on projects by appropriately adjusting project management plans.

This is end of today's post, in the next post we shall discuss about relationship of project, program, portfolio and operations management.