Project Management Today

Project Management is important to the success of any project at a corporation and the financial success of the same. PM is considered a strategic imperative in business today. There are a set of collaborative tools used for success in the global market place today. Integrated management of projects today consists of an organizational culture environment. The environment emphasis is on strategic alignment with portfolio management and its relationship with project management. Global awareness of the economic, political, and product needs in the global environment is key to competition in the global marketplace. Research on the global marketplace needs is crucial to keeping in touch with the current trends, needs, and changes that are occurring at an alarming rate in the world today. The world market and being successful competition will yield positive results once we understand the future needs and trends by the consumers and corporation in the global marketplace. Such books as “Wikenomics” and “Macro-Wikenomics” give insight to the global future of business, and project mananagment techniques in the world today.

A project in business is an endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. (Larson, 2011) Pg.5. Success project management will allow a project to be structured by having:

1. An established objective and a goal of the project

2. A defined project life-cycle that has a start and end to the project.   

3. The project is composed of various departments and professionals with expertise in various disciplines that lend that expertise to the completion of a project.

4. Typically, many projects involve the attempt at creating or doing something new.

5. Time schedule management, cost value management, and performance management requirements for a project success.

There are the following issues in regards to the importance of project management.

 The following items contribute to the importance of project management by establishing a project life-cycle management with benefits of project management to an organization.

The stages found in all Project Life Cycle consist of: (Larson, 2011) pg. 7

1.      Definition - The specifications of the project are defined, project objectives are established, the terms and specification are formed, various management task responsibilities delegated. This is the initiation phase where the project proposal is created.

2.      Planning - This is the phase where work schedules, budgets, resources, risks, and staffing responsibilities for the project are formed.

3.      Execution - During this phase, the status reports, project changes, quality control implantation, and project forecasts are created.

4.      Delivery – This is the closing phase of the project that includes; training the customers, transfer of documents to the customer, release of resources, project evaluation, and lessons learned from the project.

The importance of the above phases can be illustrated for the below reasons:

A.    Compression of the Product Life Cycle - A time to market for new products has a life cycle of 1 to 3 years. Cross-functional project teams work in parallel to bring high-tech products to market in less than six months.

B.     Global Competition – International competition from China, India, Japan, South Korea are amongst the top competitors in the world marketplace the United States has to contend. The NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) has eliminated many import tariffs that used to protect the American marketplace. We now have to change our approach to the creation, engineering, production, and distribution of products to the global marketplace

C.     Knowledge Explosion – The internet and world collaborative efforts have increased the complexity in areas: materials, specification, codes, aesthetics, equipment, and the myriad of specialists necessary to compete with the cutting edge of technology that is exploding today. The digital electronic age with its ever faster computers has allowed the creation of products today in the world community to be necessarily created at an ever faster pace. We have gone from slow pc’s and slow global communication to an internet broadband mass collaboration that has forever changed how products are marketed on a global basis.

D.    Corporate Downsizing – The dramatic restructuring of organizational life has necessitated the downsizing of companies to maximize profit during this worldwide recession. Project management is replacing middle management with engineers having to assume additional roles of customer, manufacturing, and product creation responsibilities.

E.     Increased Customer Focus – Today there is a demand for premium and very specialized products, and services to be competitive in the global marketplace.

F.      Small Projects Represent Big Problems – Some specialists think that small project management doesn’t contribute to the bottom line of a company. I disagree, products such as the iPhone, iPod, tablets, and computers are the foundation of billion dollar companies such as Apple, Toshiba, and Intel.

Project organizations must have an effective leadership structure and sponsorship structure to be competitive in today’s society. Stockholders, stakeholders in companies, and projects must have those willing to invest in the completion of the project towards its completion.

Project managers must understand and communicate with all the stakeholders of a project. The project sponsor is one very important stakeholder that needs to be satisfied with the outcome of a project. Describe why the project sponsor is one of the most important stakeholders, and what a project manager should do to keep them informed of the status of a project. Provide professional examples if possible.

A project stakeholder or sponsor has the financial interest and support of a project. They are involved with the project's tasks and activities. Stakeholders can affect the project and develop methods for managing the dependency. (Larson & Gray, 2011, p. 339-343). As a project manager it is their job to keep the stakeholders apprised of all the developments and schedules of the project they are involved. The project sponsor is someone who has influence to gain approval of the project. (Larson & Gray, 2011, p. 343)  The sponsor is the person who is supposed to defend the project as a key project ally. When managing project stakeholders they will consist of one or more of the following. They all have some type of vested interest in the project.

A.  Project Team

B.  Project Managers

C.  Administrative Support

D.  Functional Managers

E.   Top Management

F.   Project Sponsors

G.  Contractors

H.  Government Agencies

I.   Other Organizations

J.   Customers

Influence as Exchange is governed by the law of reciprocity. A project manager must build a cooperative network among various allies. The creation of a work breakdown structure is critical to the success of any project. There is the Product Breakdown Structure, Activity Breakdown Structure, Responsibility Assignment Matrix, and Organizational Breakdown Structure.

1.      Pre-planning activities – Management styles in project planning can be as a directive which presents the project to a group and participatory which requires the project manager to engage with the team, and facilitate the project team members to their building of the project plan. (Miller, 2009) pg.04

2.      Sources of Deliverables – The requirements document with a set of project objectives is essential to “spell out” the deliverables at the end of the project.

3.      Timing of planning session - The length of the project, team size, and number of day’s session is something to consider in the planning stage.

4.      Specific Preparation – Communications between all the stakeholders and potential team members is important. A personal calendar, planning session site, handouts, supplies, break materials should be supplies at the planning meetings.

5.      Project Deliverables – Physical deliverables, expectations, just-in-time training,

6.      Review of Initial Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) –Gantt chart, and organizational chart will aid in the creating the PBS for the team members.

7.      Building the PBS – Project Breakdown Structure during JIT training will provide a start to the planning session.

8.      Establishing the Activities – Planning Activities with a PBS, stating the project’s purpose, how much to plan, assembly points, gaining team buy-in,

9.      Building the Physical Logical Network – Network Diagram in a time-orientated matrix will help facilitate what happens in a specific sequence of events. PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique), CPM (critical path method), PDM (Precedence Diagramming Method) are methods for establishing various network diagrams for the project. Milestone activities, parallel paths, finish starting relationship, are methods to allocate tasks within the project and how they are interlinked together in a network matrix.

10.  Assigning the Resources – Allocation of resources will be developed in teams to various people with the expertise in areas from product design, electrical support, mechanical, software, documentation control, manufacturing, and other areas to allocate appropriate people to the tasks relative to their expertise.

11.  Establishing the Durations – A PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique) can be used to estimate the  phases of the project:

a.       Most Likely (ML)

b.      The optimistic (OP)

c.       The pessimistic (PS)

Calculating the average of the three types will be a good starting point. Team members will give their estimates of their time estimate to better give an accurate estimate of the time necessary to complete the project.

12.  Verify the Project Timeline – Performing network mathematics with the aid of (CPA) critical path analysis in completion of PERT in comparison of absolute days, all paths methods, the zero method, and the one method for creating an estimate of the time necessary. Other methods as the forward pass, backward pass, float, free float, mutual path are other methods for determining the projects target date.

Post-Planning Activities

13.  Second Pass – Used for redefining activities, predecessor order of activities, assigned person, and duration. (Miller, 2009) Timing parameters are key elements to establishing the project duration, and expectations on the critical path.

14.  Manual Scheduling - Early start, early finish, float, are aspect of manual scheduling.

15.  Scheduling Network – It is built on the original network for scheduling with Gantt charts. A good layout and scheduling software is important relative to the type of project.

16.  Tracking and Reporting – Reporting the actual performance of a project through tracking information will help gauge how long the project is taking and where scope creep, and a project control cycle is in sync with where the status of the project resides.

17.  Resource Allocation – You can perform a “rough cut” of resource allocations by developing a charter, conducting a status review of available resources for different phases of the project. (Miller, 2009) The RBS (Resource Breakdown Structure) describes the project’s resource organization which can be used in conjunction with the WBS to define work package assignments. (Institute, 2006)

All of the above areas in creating a work breakdown structure can help to minimize the risks that occur over the course of the project. (Institute, 2006) There are various WBS tree structures that a project can utilize depending on the type of project that will be created.

Risk management is a complex process that if not taken seriously can create major problems and threaten the success of any project. There are always unforeseen and potentially things that always occur during the course of a project. The four main steps in the management of risk are (Larson & Gray 2011 p. 211) as follow. The creation of a risk breakdown structure (RBS) in conjunction with work breakdown structure (WBS)

1. Risk Identification – Whereby you identify the sources of potential risk on a project should not be limited to the core group or team. Customers, sponsors, subcontractors, vendors, and stakeholders should be consulted.
2. Risk Assessment – Scenario analysis, Utilize the Risk severity matrix to minimize risk is also known as (FMEA) Failure Mode and Effects Analysis:

Impact X Probability X Detection = Risk Value

1. Evaluate the severity of the impact
2. Probability Analysis - Calculate the probability of likelihood of occurrence
3. Analyze the controllability
2. Risk Response Development

1. Mitigating Risk - Must develop a strategy to reduce possible damage in the project
2. Avoiding Risk - Development of contingency plans for problems that arise during a projects duration
3. Transferring Risk – To an areas or categories with lower failure rates to maximize project success
4. Retaining Risk – Sometimes certain risks in a project can possibly have positive results along with stress reduction
5. Schedule Risks – When the schedule may slip due to problems in timelines
6. Technical Risks – State of the art technology used in a project can be a great success or flop if it’s testing and implementation is flawed.
7. Cost Risk – Not properly estimating costs properly, or long term projects that more expensive with time.
8. Funding Risks – Make sure that your stakeholder or source of project funds is reliable and will sponsor you throughout the duration of the project.

Opportunity Responses – Exploit, Share, Enhance, Accept

4. Risk Response Control
1. The implementation of risk strategy
2. Monitor and adjust plan for new risks
3. Change management – Reporting, controlling, and recording change to the project baseline
5. All of the above methodology has been proven to be effective flowcharts of methods of how companies minimize risks when involved in large or small projects. When companies take shortcuts and ignore the identified, and unidentified risks, fail to categorize the known associated risks, then disaster and failure of a project is guaranteed with time.

Today such program as Microsoft Office Project, Minitab,  Cerebro, SharePoint, and NetSuite, and others are only a few of the dozens of software packages available as illustrated in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software) can help in the risk management process. They aid in the scheduling of a project and the events which depend on each other in different ways or dependencies. The software can aid in the scheduling of people to work on, resources, tasks, and resource scheduling.  The type of software utilized can be desktop, personal, single user, collaborative, integrated, and web-based. Web-based software can be accessed from any type of computer, east of access-control, naturally multi-user, one software version, and centralized data repository, slower than desktop applications. Finding an appropriate software package that is commensurate with the type of project that is dealt with is as important as the resources, time schedule, cost management phases of any project. Project management software should include planning phases, project tracking, and plan-adjustment aspects in its software criteria makeup. Task prioritization and resource leveling algorithms are important to managing large project. Every project has different emphasis on its uniqueness, ranging from software, hardware, small projects to long term defense contract endeavors.

Over the course of time I have been involved with a few of the following projects:

1. Utilize and manage CADAM R21.0 databases in the creation of complex digital schematics, mechanical design drawings, diagrams by the use of MILSPECS, ANSI, DOD standards, and positional tolerance for the Hubble Space Telescope

2.) Coordinate input from five mechanical engineers. Detail over 400 machine drawings of weldments, piston assemblies, shaft and bushing assemblies, 3D exploded isometric drawings, 3D kinematics, and weight/volume analysis on AUTOCAD R.12  with AME 2.1 and  Cadkey 6.04, for deep ocean two-man submersible submarine.

3. Responsible for: organization and creation of mechanical components, complex family table and flexible parts, connectors, for EFV Marine Vehicle. Design new brackets and pclamp assemblies as necessary to correct interference at system level. Organize all harness assembly information and product structure spreadsheets in Excel.

4. Responsible for developing design solutions to engineering problems by the creation of parts, assemblies and drawings for vacuum product in Pro/Engineer Wildfire 2.0. Design and analysis of robotic arm systems with mechanical power transmission for wafer transfer tools

5. Responsible for the design of the entire Harpoon (Ion-Implant Tool) enclosure which comprised of the Enclosure, Bi-Fold Doors, Standard Doors and various sub-assemblies, extensive time in clean room environment; designed Polycarbonate (plastic) LED light electronic assemblies for enclosure.

Weekly design review presentations with Power Point and Excel.

6.      Designed and detailed laser optical precision diagnostics sub-systems. Project worked: NIF (National Ignition Facility), Laser transformer sub-assemblies.

The key to a project’s success is making everyone aware in the team that by being aware of all the complex issues in the project ranging from budget, schedule, performance, and client acceptance. There are specialties in project time management, project cost management, project quality management, project human resource management, project communications management, project risk management, and project procurement management. You must your judgment and experiences to best allocate the resources to the correct individuals whose expertise is best suited for each area. The appropriate WBS level of detail during the development process, culminating in a level of detail that captures the essential element of the scope of the project is pivotal to its success. (Institute, 2006)

The steps involved in a project: Objectives, general approach, contractual aspects, schedules, resource requirements, personnel, evaluation methods, potential problems, (Smith, 2004) are all ingredients to a successfully completed project. For the notice this can seem overwhelming, but with time, experience, and collaborative effort American business can get back on track to retain its place as the leading country with the highest success rate of project completion.

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