Why have a project management method?

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What is a project?

Everything from building a shed to hosting the Olympics can be considered a project.  Two of the key features of projects are:

1. Uniqueness: Projects are different from business-as-usual activities, requiring people to come together temporarily to focus on specific project objectives. As a result, effective teamwork is central to successful projects.
2. Transience:  A project has a specific start and end point and is set up to meet specific objectives, to create a specified result, product, or service.

So a project could be defined as:

• A unique, transient endeavour undertaken to achieve planned objectives (outcomes, outputs, products or benefits).

• A temporary organisation that is needed to produce a unique and predefined outcome or result, at a pre-specified time using predetermined resources.

Project management is therefore a way of managing change.  It describes the activities that meet specific objectives and can be used to introduce or improve new or existing products and services.

Constraints and scope

Projects need to be controlled to meet their objectives and deliver benefits: 

• quantifiable and measurable improvements resulting from completion of deliverables, that are perceived as positive by a stakeholder.  
• have a tangible value, expressed in monetary terms that will justify the investment.  

Constraints on a project are defined in terms of expectations of time, cost and quality.  All the work that has to be done to achieve objectives within the time, cost and quality constraints defines the project scope.  The project's scope can change over time, and it is the project manager’s responsibility to ensure the project will still deliver its defined benefits.  A project manager must maintain focus on the relative priorities of time, cost and quality.

Why use project management?

Project failures are all too common – some make the headlines, but the vast majority are quickly forgotten. The reasons for failure are many and varied. Some common causes of project failure are:

• Insufficient attention to checking that a valid business case exists for the project
• Insufficient attention to quality at the outset and during development
• Insufficient definition of the required outcomes, leading to confusion over what the project is expected to achieve
• Lack of communication with stakeholders and interested parties, leading to products being delivered that are not what the customer wanted
• Inadequate definition and lack of acceptance of project management roles and responsibilities, leading to lack of direction and poor decision making
• Poor estimation of duration and costs, leading to projects taking more time and costing more money than expected
• Inadequate planning and co-ordination of resources, leading to poor scheduling
• Insufficient measurables and lack of control over progress, so that projects do not reveal their exact status until too late
• Lack of quality control, resulting in the delivery of products that are unacceptable or unusable.

Without a project management method, those who commission a project, those who manage it and those who work on it will have different ideas about how things should be organised and when the different aspects of the project will be completed. Those involved will not be clear about how much responsibility, authority and accountability they have and, as a result, there will often be confusion surrounding the project. Without a project management method, projects are rarely completed on time and within acceptable cost.

A good project management method will guide the project through a controlled, well-managed, visible set of activities to achieve the desired results. Principles of good project management avoid the problems identified and so helps to achieve successful projects. These principles are:

• A project is a finite process with a definite start and end
• Projects always need to be managed in order to be successful
• For genuine commitment to the project, all parties must be clear about why the project is needed, what it is intended to achieve, how the outcome is to be achieved and what their responsibilities are in that achievement.

And the project manager?

Project managers focus on controlling the introduction of the desired change(s).  This involves:

• Understanding the needs of stakeholders.
• Planning what needs to be done, when, by whom, and to what standards.
• Building and motivating the team.
• Coordinating the work of different people.
• Monitoring work being done.
• Managing any changes to the plan.
• Delivering the expected benefits.