Project Management: Core Concepts

• Project management involves planning, organizing, and overseeing resources to achieve specific goals and objectives.
• It is a temporary endeavor with a defined start and end, undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.

Core Concepts

• Project: A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result; it has a defined beginning and end.
• Project Management: The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.
• Program: A group of related projects, subsidiary programs, and program activities managed in a coordinated manner to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually.
• Portfolio: Projects, programs, subsidiary portfolios, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives.
• Operations Management: Concerned with the ongoing production of goods and/or services; it is an ongoing process, unlike projects which are temporary.

Project Management Knowledge Areas

• Integration Management: Processes and activities to identify, define, combine, unify, and coordinate the various processes and project management activities.
• Scope Management: Processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully.
• Schedule Management: Processes concerned with establishing policies, procedures, and documentation for planning, developing, managing, executing, and controlling the project schedule.
• Cost Management: Processes involved in planning, estimating, budgeting, financing, funding, managing, and controlling costs so that the project can be completed within the approved budget.
• Quality Management: Processes and activities of the performing organization that determine quality policies, objectives, and responsibilities so that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken.
• Resource Management: Processes to identify, acquire, and manage the resources needed for the successful completion of the project.
• Communications Management: Processes required to ensure timely and appropriate planning, collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, management, control, monitoring, and ultimate disposition of project information.
• Risk Management: Processes of conducting risk management planning, identification, analysis, response planning, and controlling risk on a project.
• Procurement Management: Processes necessary to purchase or acquire products, services, or results needed from outside the project team.
• Stakeholder Management: Processes required to identify the people, groups, or organizations that could impact or be impacted by the project, to analyze stakeholder expectations and their impact on the project, and to develop appropriate management strategies for effectively engaging stakeholders in project decisions and execution.

Project Constraints

• Scope: Defines the boundaries of the project and what will be delivered.
• Time: The schedule for the project, including start and end dates.
• Cost: The budget allocated for the project.
• Quality: The standards and criteria that the project deliverables must meet.
• Resources: The people, equipment, and materials required to complete the project.
• Risk: Potential events or conditions that can have a positive or negative impact on the project.

Project Management Process Groups

• Initiating: Processes performed to define a new project or a new phase of an existing project by obtaining authorization to start the project or phase.
• Planning: Processes required to establish the scope of the project, refine the objectives, and define the course of action required to attain the objectives that the project was undertaken to achieve.
• Executing: Processes performed to complete the work defined in the project management plan to satisfy the project specifications.
• Monitoring and Controlling: Processes required to track, review, and regulate the progress and performance of the project; identify any areas in which changes are required; and initiate the corresponding changes.
• Closing: Processes performed to finalize all activities across all of the project management process groups to formally complete the project, phase, or contract.

Project Roles

• Project Manager: The person assigned by the performing organization to lead the team that is responsible for achieving the project objectives.
• Project Team: A group of people who perform the work of the project.
• Project Sponsor: The person or group who provides resources and support for the project and is accountable for enabling success.
• Stakeholders: Individuals, groups, or organizations who may affect, be affected by, or perceive themselves to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project.

Project Management Office (PMO)

• A department or group that defines and maintains the standards of project management within the organization.
• Provides guidance and standards for project execution.
• May offer training, software, and support to project teams.
• Can be supportive, controlling, or directive.

Project Life Cycle

• A collection of generally sequential project phases whose name and number are determined by the control needs of the organization or organizations involved in the project.
• Common phases include initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and closure.
• Can be predictive (waterfall), iterative, incremental, adaptive (Agile), or hybrid.

Predictive (Waterfall) Life Cycle

• A sequential project life cycle where the scope, time, and cost are determined in the early phases of the life cycle.
• Changes to the project are carefully managed.
• Well-suited for projects where the requirements are well-defined and stable.

Iterative and Incremental Life Cycle

• Iterative: The project scope is generally determined early, but time and cost estimates are routinely modified as the project team’s understanding of the product increases. Iterations develop the product through a series of repeated cycles, while increments successively add to the functionality of the product.
• Incremental: Delivers a complete, usable portion of the product in each increment.

Adaptive (Agile) Life Cycle

• An iterative and incremental approach focused on adaptability and customer collaboration.
• Requirements are allowed to evolve.
• Well-suited for projects with high levels of change and uncertainty.

Hybrid Life Cycle

• A combination of predictive and adaptive approaches.
• Some aspects of the project are planned in detail upfront, while others are allowed to evolve.

Organizational Structures

• Functional: Organized by departments (e.g., marketing, engineering). Project team members report to functional managers.
• Projectized: Organized around projects; project managers have high authority.
• Matrix: A blend of functional and projectized; team members report to both functional and project managers.

Communication in Project Management

• Key to ensuring all stakeholders are informed and aligned.
• Involves planning, distributing, and managing information.
• Includes status reports, meetings, and other forms of communication.

Risk Management Process

• Risk Identification: Determining which risks might affect the project.
• Risk Analysis: Evaluating the probability and impact of each risk.
• Risk Response Planning: Developing options and actions to enhance opportunities and reduce threats to project objectives.
• Risk Monitoring and Control: Tracking identified risks, monitoring residual risks, identifying new risks, and evaluating the effectiveness of risk responses.

Earned Value Management (EVM)

• A technique for measuring project performance.
• Integrates scope, time, and cost data.
• Provides metrics such as Earned Value (EV), Planned Value (PV), and Actual Cost (AC) to assess project performance.

Project Selection Methods

• Benefit Measurement Methods: Comparing the benefits of different projects to select the most beneficial one.
• Constrained Optimization Methods: Using mathematical techniques to select the best project within given constraints.

Agile Principles

• Customer satisfaction through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
• Welcome changing requirements, even late in development.
• Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
• Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
• Build projects around motivated individuals.
• The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
• Working software is the primary measure of progress.
• Agile processes promote sustainable development.
• Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
• Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
• The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
• At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.