Project Management: Introduction

• Introduction to project management, session #1, 19 Feb 2025.
• Topics include the project development life cycle, project management process groups, and knowledge areas.

What is a project?

• A temporary endeavor with a definite beginning and an end that creates a unique product, service, or result.
• Project attributes include a unique product, service, or result; temporary endeavor; driving change; and enabling business value creation.

Unique Product, Service, or Result

• Projects are undertaken to fulfill objectives by producing deliverables.
• Deliverables can be a unique product, service, result, or a combination thereof.
• Unique products can be a component, enhancement, correction, or a new end item.
• Unique services involve capabilities to perform tasks.
• Unique results encompass outcomes or documents.

Temporary Endeavor

• Projects have a definite beginning and end, but short duration is not necessary.
• Deliverables can exist beyond the project's end.
• Projects conclude when objectives are achieved or cannot be met.
• Project termination reasons include exhausted funding, no longer existing need, unavailable resources, or legal/convenience-related causes.

Projects Drive Change

• Projects aim to move an organization from one state to another to achieve a specific objective.
• The successful completion results in the organization moving to the future state and achieving its specific objective.

Projects Enable Business Value Creation

• Business value represents the net return of benefits from a business endeavor, including tangible and intangible elements.
• Business value is unique to each organization.
• Successful business value realization begins with comprehensive strategic planning and management.

Why Start Projects?

• Projects start to meet regulatory, legal, or social requirements and satisfy stakeholder requests or needs.
• Also to create, improve, or fix products, processes, or services and implement or change business or technological strategies.

What is Project Management?

• Application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.
• Project management is used to meet business objectives, satisfy stakeholders, resolve problems, deliver the right products at the right time, provide risk responses, optimize resources, manage changes, and address failing projects.

Why is Project Management Important?

• Project management ensures goals are defined, objectives are set, budgets are managed, and projects are delivered on time.
• Project management aligns teams with the same goals, ensuring accountability and smooth project progress.
• Progress lessons can inform future improvements, and project management methods improve success rates by reducing risks and costs.

Relationship of Portfolios, Programs & Projects

• Portfolio refers to a grouping of unrelated programs, projects, sub-portfolios, and operations managed to achieve strategic objectives.
• Portfolio managers aid wise investment decisions by helping to select and analyze projects strategically.
• Programs are groupings of related projects, subprograms, and program activities managed to obtain benefits unavailable from managing them individually.
• Program managers provide leadership for project managers within a program.
• Projects can be either within or outside a program and are part of a portfolio.

Project Development Life Cycle

• Encompasses project development life cycle, predictive, iterative, and incremental and adaptive/agile life cycles.

Project Development Life Cycle

• The phases are associated with the development of the product, service, or result, following a methodology or approach.
• Predictive, incremental, iterative, adaptive, and hybrid models are all possible.

Predictive Life Cycles

• In predictive life cycles, the project scope, time, and cost are determined early, and scope changes are carefully managed.

Iterative and Incremental Life Cycles

• Each iteration repeats project activities to increase understanding.
• Incremental life cycles complete segments that add functionality, with the project finalized after the final iteration delivery.
• Iterative life cycles repeat until a desired goal is reached; here the scope is known, but time and cost can change.

Adaptive/Agile Life Cycle

• Adaptive life cycles respond to rapid changes and ongoing stakeholder involvement.
• The scope is defined before each iteration.
• Known as agile or change-driven cycles, they involve rapid iterations or sprints with fixed time and cost, product feature backlog, lite estimation of tasks, standing meetings, and retrospective iteration reviews.

Hybrid Life Cycle

• A blend of predictive and adaptive life cycles.
• Elements are well-known with fixed requirements or evolving/changing elements leading to choosing between predictive and adaptive life cycles.
• Project life cycle flexibility is achieved by identifying and performing processes for each phase.
• Adjusting the attributes of a phase (name, duration, exit/entrance criteria also helps.)

Typical Use Cases

• Agile use cases include software, intellectual property, and research projects.
• Predictive or plan-driven approaches suit construction or projects with physical assets or repeats of similar, completed projects.
• Iterative is ideal where learning and correction are expected to reach the ideal solution.
• Incremental is for customers wanting to see early outputs.
• Hybrid is used with mixed resources or those seeking new methods.

Project Management Methodologies and Approaches

• Waterfall is a traditional, linear methodology where project stages must be completed sequentially.
• Agile involves short, iterative work phases with testing and continuous improvements, with some overlapping tasks.
• Scrum is an Agile framework focused on collaboration, accountability, and iterative development for complex projects.
• Kanban is an Agile approach for visual feedback via Kanban boards or charts to track work progress. Lean eliminates waste, saves money, and streamlines processes. Lean's principles enable you to do more with less by fixing problems that cause waste.
• Six Sigma minimizes variations by adhering to quality processes, using DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control).

Impact of Variables over Time

• Project costs and staffing start low, increase as work progresses, and decrease as the project concludes.
• The risk is highest at the beginning and decreases as decisions are made and deliverables are accepted.
• Stakeholders have the greatest influence at the start, which diminishes as the project progresses, impacting cost and schedule less.

Project Management Process Groups & Knowledge Areas

• Project management involves project management process groups and project management knowledge areas.

Key Components of the PMBOK Guide

• Project life cycle is the series of phases from start to completion.
• Project phase: collection of activities completing one or more deliverables.
• Phase gate: a review deciding to continue, modify, or end.
• Project management processes: systematic activities creating outputs.
• Project Management Process Group: groupings of inputs, tools, and outputs.
• Project Management Knowledge Area: areas with defined knowledge requirements.

Project Management Process Groups

• Five process groups contain 49 processes to manage projects and achieve specific objectives.
• Processes are performed for project work and management.
• Process groups are not phases, and they are used for each phase or the whole project.

Project Management Process Groups (Within the Phases)

• Initiating Process Group defines a new project or phase upon authorization.
• Planning Process Group establishes project scope, refines objectives, and defines actions.
• Executing Process Group completes work defined in the project management plan.
• Monitoring and Controlling Process Group tracks, reviews and regulates progress.
• Closing Process Group formally completes or closes projects/phases.

Project Management Process Groups Characteristics

• Processes are used once or at predefined points (e.g., project charter or closing phase).
• Processes are performed periodically as needed (e.g., acquiring resources).
• Processes are performed continuously (e.g., defining activities, monitoring).

Project Management Knowledge Areas

• Fields or areas of specialization used in managing projects.
• Project integration management combines and coordinates project processes.
• Project scope management ensures the project includes only the required work.
• Project schedule management focuses on timely project completion.
• Project cost management handles costs within the approved budget.
• Project quality management incorporates quality policies to meet stakeholder expectations.
• Project resource management identifies, acquires, and manages necessary resources.
• Project communications management ensures timely and appropriate information flow.
• Project risk management plans, implements, and monitors risk responses.
• Project procurement management manages the purchase or acquisition of external products or services.
• Project stakeholder management identifies and engages stakeholders effectively.