Project Management Ross L. Fink

Definition of Project  A project is a specific, finite task to be accomplished.

Brief History  Modern Project Management can be traced to the “Manhattan” project.  Early project management dealt with large complex projects or R&D (weapons systems)  Today -- Project management is more important than ever.

Importance of Project Management Today  More customization in manufacturing  Shorter product life cycles  Use in service organizations  Nonprofit sector

Why Project Management?  Better control  Better customer relations  Shorter development time  Lower costs  Higher quality and reliability  Higher profits  Better interdepartmental coordination  Better worker morale

Characteristics of a Project  One-time focus  Specific purpose and desired results  Identifiable start and finish  Time fence (or due-date) for completion  Involvement of cross-functional work team  Limited set of resources  Logical sequence of events  A clear client (user, customer) of results

Project Management Tools  Major tools developed in the 1950s  PERT - Program Evaluation and Review Technique - Polaris Missile (NAVY)  CPM - Critical Path Method (CPM) - DuPont and Remington Rand - Maintenance of Chemical Plant

Project Performance Objectives  PCT Objectives  “Good, Fast, Cheap” Performance Cost Time

Reason for Project Failures  Unrealistic expectations  Poor project leadership  Poor project planning

The Project Manager is Responsible to  Superiors  Team  Customer or Sponsor of project

A Project Manager Needs to:  Communicate -  Importance of project  Role others play in project  Importance of their contribution  With customers  Understand project dimensions -  Technical  Cultural  Political

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)  Breaks the Program (or Project) into smaller and smaller units of work. The following are common levels of work:  Program  Project  Task  Subtask  Work Package

Why Use WBS  Provides a logical means of identifying the activities of a project  Provides structure to the project plan  Different levels of WBS can be used for control by different individuals

Types of WBS  Outcome (things)  Task  Task-outcome

WBS Procedure  Simply ask “What will have to be done in order to _________ “  Don’t worry about sequencing at this point

Stopping Rules For WBS  Level of detail is too great to be useful  Control to smallest time unit used for control  Typically, no more than 5 to 6 levels is appropriate  For large project, no more than 20

PERT Diagrams  PERT (or Network) diagrams showing the relationship between activities  There are more than one way of constructing these networks, we will use what is called activities-on-the-node (AON) or activities-in-the-box. This is the same as MS Project

PERT Diagram Notation  Box or circle (node) represents the activity  Arrow (arc) represents the relationship between activities

Example ActivityImmediate Predecessor A-- BA CA DB,C EC

PERT Diagram

Modeling Time  Simple model assumes times are deterministic (constant)  More elaborate models allow stochastic representation (most common being one that uses 3 time estimates)

Example

Example - Maximum Time  Sequential  Sum of all task times  In our example: 21 periods

Finding time  ES and EF go forward through PERT diagram (ES + Time= EF)  LS and LF go backwards through PERT diagram (LF - Time = LS)  Slack is LS - ES or LF - EF

PERT Diagram

PERT Diagram with Times

Critical Path  A-C-E  Significance--critical path determines project completion time

Example in MS Project