Project management

The issues or problems facing general management come in two different forms. There are those that can be called repeating or process problems, while others are one-off or project problems. In reality the two types of problems will come mixed together but it is useful to separate them here. Project management deals with the one-off problems, and because these one-off problems are turning up more frequently there is great interest in project management.

For example, anyone running a retail outlet (a clothes shop, say, or a food shop) will have many repeating activities, e.g., making sure that replacement stock is delivered and put out on the shelves to replace that which has been sold. In deciding how much to re-order one can gain guidance from how sales are going. If stock is clearing fast, that is, people are buying a lot and buying quickly, one has a good basis for increasing the amount of the re-order. If they reduce their buying, then orders can be adjusted accordingly. So this re-ordering part of the managing of a retail outlet is a repeating problem, and because it is repeating it has a history to help in the decision making. But every now and then the retail outlet has to decide to change the products or product line it is selling, e.g., to introduce new season clothes or new food lines – this is more of a one-off problem than the re-ordering of stock. So in managing a retail outlet one has mainly repeating problems, with one-off problems arising every so often. What has happened, however, is that these

‘every so often’ problems have started to arise much more frequently. New products are being introduced at a faster rate and businesses have to become more flexible so that they can cope with changing tastes. Such one-off issues have to be dealt with and it is managing these one-off issues that is the work of project management.

While builders, in many forms and guises, have been constructing one-offs for thousands of years, it is only relatively recently that the form of management they have been practising has been recognized and given the name project management. It is also known under other names: it is called construction management when applied to the specific area of site construction management, and it is called design management when dealing with the design of a building (i.e., managing the architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, etc.). The term project management is now often reserved for the management of the process of design and construction of buildings, however, the names vary from

company to company. The important point is that project management has been practised in the building and construction industries for a long time and carries a number of different labels.

While project management has been used in construction for a very long time, it has, in the last half century, been recognized as something that applies to many industries. The main reason it applies to these other industries is because it applies to the management of one-off problems, and these industries have recognized that they have many one-off problems.

There is debate about the amount of industry-specific knowledge one needs to practise project management in any specific industry; one needs some but it is not clear how much.

This is certainly true in the construction industry – one may not need an intimate knowledge of the process to be able to manage it successfully.

11.3.1 Defining project management

Typically, any attempt to define project management begins with a definition of a project.

The Project Management Institute (PMI), based in the USA, defines a project as ‘a temporary endeavor [sic] undertaken to create a unique product or service’ (PMI, 1996).

An updated version of this (PMI, 2000) adds ‘result’ to ‘product or service’.

This is a perfectly valid and useful definition and it has widespread acceptance. The word ‘temporary’ in this context does not imply that a project occupies a short period of time, but that it has a beginning and an end. This is crucial in understanding project management; the temporary endeavour may last for a week, for a year, or for decades but it is seen as having an end point, and it ends when the product or service is delivered.

While more recently there has been a push to regard the ‘temporary endeavour’ as extending to the whole of life of the facility or product or service there is still an end to it.

The other key word in this definition is ‘unique’; a project is a one-off, it is somehow different to all that went before. It is this quality that is the source of much of the difference in how one should manage a project as against managing an ongoing operation.

The lack of repetition is a key factor in determining the need for project management and in influencing how project management should be practised.

The UK Association for Project Management (APM) provides two definitions (APM, 2000):

[A project is a] unique set of co-ordinated activities, with definite starting and finishing points, undertaken by an individual or organization to meet specific objectives within defined time, cost and performance parameters.

or

An endeavour in which human, material and financial resources are organized in a novel way to deliver a unique scope of work of given specification, often within constraints of cost and time, and to achieve beneficial change by quantitative and qualitative objectives.

Both definitions are compatible with that of the PMI, as is that offered by the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM, 1996):

A set of inter-related activities, with defined start and end dates, designed to achieve a unique and common objective.

Having defined the project, the following definitions of project management emerge; PMI provides the following definition of project management (PMI, 1996):

[Project management is the] . . . application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities in order to meet or exceed stakeholder needs and expectations from a project.

So they are applying knowledge, skills, and techniques to the temporary endeavour. A later version (PMI, 2000) modifies this definition by removing reference to ‘stakeholder needs and expectations’ and replaces it with ‘meeting project requirements’.

APM (2000) offers these definitions of project management:

Planning, monitoring and control of all aspects of a project and the motivation of all those involved in it to achieve the project objectives on time and to the specified cost, quality and performance.

and

The controlled implementation of defined change.

This second definition is quite succinct and telling.

The AIPM definition of project management is (AIPM, 1996):

The planning, organizing, monitoring and controlling of all aspects of a project in a continuous process to achieve its objectives, both internal and external. It is a discipline requiring the application of skills, tools and techniques and the balancing of competing demands of product or service specification, time and cost.

All these definitions of projects and project management are essentially compatible, however, in all of them the project has been identified as the ‘temporary endeavour’

rather than the output at the end. There is an alternative view (Healy, 1997) that suggests that the output should be called the project and the work that leads to that output be called the project sequence. For instance, the Sydney Opera House itself, the physical building, is the project, rather than the working, the doing, on the Sydney Opera House being seen as the project. Taking the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games as another example: the project was the Games themselves, not all the work that went on before hand. Another definition now emerges (Healy, 1997):

A project is a one-off change to be achieved by a finite, time-ordered and interrelated set of tasks. The one-off change is the project; the time-ordered set of tasks is called the project sequence. Project management is the identification of the one-off change and the management of the project sequence.

This definition has three parts: the project, the project sequence, and project management.

The project is seen as a one-off change that is produced as a result of a set of tasks.

Change, in this context, has a very wide meaning and can be generic in that it applies across all industries. It can mean many things: a new building, a better software package, a new way of doing things and so on. This change has to be achieved by an effort, by a set of tasks. They may be described using some qualifiers, viz. finite, time-ordered and

interrelated. The tasks need to be finite in that they are expected to end, and they are time-ordered and interrelated because the tasks need to be related to one another in some time framework.

The project sequence is the set of tasks. This is commonly referred to as the project process but here we will reserve ‘process’ for tasks that repeat and use ‘sequence’ to imply a one-off and a finite effort. Sequences often have processes within them, so process management may get mixed up within project management but, for now, we have a project delivered by a project sequence.

Project management can then be defined as the identification of the project and the management of the project sequence. One of the key tasks of project management is to identify the project; not being clear about what the project is leads to all sorts of difficulties and it is up to the project manager to make sure that agreement exists as to what the project is.

In summary, project management is identifying the project (i.e., the result) and managing how to get there.

11.3.2 The elements of project management

People have been trying for a few decades now to define what project management encompasses, to identify the methods, techniques, and knowledge that constitute project management, and it is not an easy task. PMI (1996) suggests that there are nine

‘knowledge areas’ in project management – note the use of the word ‘knowledge’:

䊉 project integration management

䊉 project scope management

䊉 project time management

䊉 project cost management

䊉 project quality management

䊉 project resource management

䊉 project communications management

䊉 project risk management

䊉 project procurement management.

Project integration management is the co-ordination of all the activities so that all is consistent, e.g., making sure that the time management is compatible with the cost management and with the scope management.

Project scope management is concerned with defining the project and defining the work that needs to be done to achieve the project. This is arguably the main driver of the project management sequence.

Project time management is ensuring completion of the project on time. Key techniques include CPM (Critical Path Method) and PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique).

Project cost management is concerned with finishing the project within budget – not necessarily the least expensive or cheapest or best value but simply within budget.

Project quality management is aimed at delivering the project with the required quality characteristics. There are special challenges facing project managers in this area as they are dealing with one-offs rather than repetition.

Project human resources management is concerned with getting people with the right skills working on the project sequence as long as is required.

Project communications management is about keeping people informed and meeting the information needs of various stakeholders.

Project risk management is concerned with identifying risk and deciding how to respond to it.

Project procurement management is about sub-contractor management and the acquisition of various goods and services.

PMI breaks up these nine knowledge areas into 39 processes that are embedded in the project sequence. This division is useful particularly as it is integrated with what can be loosely described as a ‘plan, do, check, act’ approach to managing the project sequence.

The AIPM has adopted a different approach based on competencies and defines nine units of project management competence. The names of the competencies are the same as those of PMI, that is integration, scope, time, cost, quality, human resources, communications, risk and procurement. The approach is different, however, as the AIPM wants people to display these competencies rather than simply possessing the knowledge associated with the various areas.

The APM, by contrast, has 44 topic areas grouped under seven headings: general, strategic, control, technical, commercial, organizational and people.

There are other bodies of knowledge or statements of what is the essence of project management, e.g., that put forward by the German Project Management Institute. They all are fairly similar in regard to the main sweep of topics that constitute project management, but they group them a little differently. The International Project Management Association (IPMA) has its topics arranged in a circle like a sunflower and so avoids having to attempt to group topics.

There is considerable debate about whether the professional institutions should go for knowledge or go for competencies. In rough terms we see the Americans going for knowledge, with the British, Australians and Europeans leaning towards competencies.

The debate continues.

11.3.3 Examples of projects

The most famous projects are arguably the space projects, and in fact NASA has made a significant contribution to the understanding of project management. NASA often has an overall aim or outcome, for example, it wanted to get to the moon and now wants to get to Mars. The overall project, for example, getting to the moon, is broken down into a series of smaller projects. The first NASA space flight only lasted a few minutes; the object of that project was to make sure they could go up and then come down. After that they went up, went around the earth and then came down. Each project was building on a previous project until they could run a complete flight to the moon and back. Sometimes the overall project is referred to as a program, which consists of a set of projects, or one project with a set of sub-projects. This is a very powerful strategy in management and business as although you may not be able to get all of what you want now, you may be able to identify the stages you need to go through to reach the ultimate goal. There are managers who are working towards quite long-term goals, such as improving the skills in

an organization, and are getting there by a series of projects. Thus you can have your own project and sub-projects and follow a project management strategy in your personal career.

A major area in which project management is employed is computing, in both hardware and software development. Putting together a large piece of software is a major endeavour; submarines, for example, need programmes with millions of lines of code, as does any jet airliner or any small fighter plane.

Battles that have had a decisive impact on the history of the world required project management: one side’s project management ended in success while the other side’s project management ended in failure. Victory was the desired ‘project’ (result) – one side achieved this while the other failed.

Allied to this there has been a long history of developing weapons for war. Weapons development continues today and is a major consumer of project management skills.

Various defence departments around the world have grappled with project management and have, in the process, undertaken much research, which has brought a degree of standardization to the area. It should, therefore, come as no surprise to find project managers referring to MIL standards, which are actually US military standards.

Movies are projects; the producers are probably best described as the project managers.

Conferences are projects; conference organizers are project managers. Well known examples of projects come from the construction industry: all the great buildings of antiquity were built using project management; it was not called project management then but we would recognize it now as such.

11.3.4 Separating project and process management

A ‘project’ has been defined very generically as a ‘one-off change’ that is wanted or brought about by one or more people or organizations. The one-off change can be one of a vast range of items. It can be a building, it can be a rock concert, it can be a new production process, it can be a new model car, a new software package, or a motion picture – the important characteristic is that it is a one-off. Essentially there is no second chance. It has to be right first time. To achieve this one-off, the time-ordered set of tasks, called the project sequence, is used. Thus a project sequence, while it might contain some repetition, is essentially unique.

On the other hand a process is a set of repeating activities. Examples of a process include a train service that runs to a schedule day after day, manufacturing the same product day after day, repeat performances of a play, and routine daily activities in a hotel.

Essentially there is a second chance, if it goes wrong now it can be improved tomorrow or the next time round. Process management is the management of the set of repeating activities. This does not, however, include the identification of the process – setting up the process is a function of project management.

There are, then, two distinct types of management situation: process management and project management. In one, the activity is repetitive, just keeping the plant turning over producing the same product day after day; in the other, there are one-off management objectives, such as writing a new computer program.

This differentiation can be refined further: process management is, for example, the management of a chemical production process where the work is mainly directed towards

keeping the process going and monitoring progress, while the installation of new machinery would be a project management.

Where an activity is repeated, there is the possibility of improving performance the next time round by identifying trends, by improving the process and so on. In quality terms, the activity is amenable to quite well recognized continuous improvement techniques. With the one-off activity, however, when it is finished, it has either worked or it hasn’t. If it hasn’t it is sometimes, but not always, possible to repair the damage, so it is important to get it right the first time. Examples that fall in the one-off category are constructing a building (a well-known activity often leading to lots of undesired repair work), reorganizing a company (mistakes here can be fatal) and building a ship (a bad design could result in the ship sinking).

These definitions suggest a wider separation between project sequence and process management than actually exists. Getting involved in one form of management usually implies getting involved in the other. Constructing a building involves much repetition at the trade level while running a train service involves one-offs such as introducing new services and timetables. The pure form of either process or project sequence is rare, and in fact a pure form of project sequence, involving all new and unique activities without repetition, would be a very risky business. The notion or idea of a pure project sequence

These definitions suggest a wider separation between project sequence and process management than actually exists. Getting involved in one form of management usually implies getting involved in the other. Constructing a building involves much repetition at the trade level while running a train service involves one-offs such as introducing new services and timetables. The pure form of either process or project sequence is rare, and in fact a pure form of project sequence, involving all new and unique activities without repetition, would be a very risky business. The notion or idea of a pure project sequence