Meaning & Definition
All companies work on projects, which unlike their permanent and ongoing daily routine operations are “temporary activities undertaken to produce a unique product or service or result, thus, making them have a defined beginning and end time” (PMI Inc., 2013). They “achieve a specific goal of creating the product or service in question, by performing defined activities that consume a given set of limited resources” (Munns & Bjeirmi, 1996, p.81). All projects are successfully mobilized and completed by employees, by judiciously leveraging other limited resources such as time, money etc., thus, bringing into the picture, the need for proper “planning, execution and control” (ITC Infotech India Ltd., n.d.) Hence, the term project management, which is “an organization’s strategic competency involving the application of knowledge, skills and techniques to execute projects effectively and efficiently, thereby, enabling it to tie project results to business goals, and thus, better compete in the market” (PMI Inc., 2013). PMI’s annual publication - Project Management Body of Knowledge Guide (PMBOK@ Guide) “considers all projects to have a five-stage lifecycle, namely; initiating, planning, executing, monitoring & controlling, and closing and that draws on nine knowledge areas, namely; integration, scope, time, cost, quality, procurement, human resources, communications, and risk management” (Haughey, 2013).
Brief History
Historically, current project management evolved from three time periods, namely; “pre-1950s era, 1950s era and 1990s era” (Maylor, 2005).
Before 1950s, project management was purely mechanical and only dealt with construction of churches and pyramids in Europe as part of the Roman Empire, totally devoid of any consensual industry standards or rules to be followed in doing so, as evident from perennially long time they took to see the daylight, thanks to fewer time, money and resource constraints than we have today (Maylor, 2005). The 1950s saw using formal “tools & techniques comprising of the ‘one best way’ approach based on numerical methods established in the USA to manage large-scale and complex projects with a risky outcome, such as the CPA devised by Du Pont to schedule maintenance shutdown at the company’s production facilities or the PERT developed by RAND Corp. to plan missile development” (Maylor, 2005). However, post 1990s, project management both as a discipline and industry practice begun to be perceived as an important weapon in a company’s strategic artillery necessitating its proactive rather than reactive treatment, considering the shrinking project turnaround times that exist today, requiring companies to not just manage complexly large projects in a timely fashion, but also add value to them, in order to cope with the fast plunging patience levels of ‘better informed customers’ in this information age (Maylor, 2005).
Overview
“Every project has the following key participants” (George Washington University, n.d.):
- Project Stakeholders - People who may be positively or negatively affected by the project outcome, such as project team, vendors, customers/users, project sponsors, business partners etc.
- Project Sponsors - The key decision-makers actually funding the project by fostering cross-functional support, managing escalations, providing overall direction and support.
- Project Manager - Key person responsible for final project outcomes including planning, leading, managing, monitoring, escalating, and communicating the project status, issues and tasks. Sometimes he might also be the project owner.
- Project Team - All the core team members, including the project manager, who actually complete the project with their diverse skill-sets and expertise, ensuring that “it is carried out within the triple constraints of cost, scope & time, while meeting or exceeding the customer quality requirements, as shown below” (Haughney, 2013):
Figure 1: The Triple Constraints of Project Management
However, “the dissimilarity and dynamism surrounding customers’ expectations, has recently led to project management diamond with customer expectations replacing quality, which got added as a fourth vertex to cost, scope & time”, as shown below” (Haughney, 2013):
Figure 2: The Project Management Diamond
Efficient and effective execution of the task at hand, requires the team to make use of the following project management tools (George Washington University, n.d.):
- Project Charter - A document prepared by the project owner containing a macro-level description of the project, such as its objectives and business requirements, scope level, budget, timelines, status (approved/disapproved) and the project leadership etc.
- Project Management Plan - Prepared by the project manager outlining the project life cycle. In addition, project phases and deliverables, as well as roles and responsibilities are also clearly listed in it
- Work Breakdown Structure - Breaks the project deliverables into small and manageable work packages, in accordance with current resource and time availability, effort levels and the cost involved; which in a way also helps in determining future resource requirements.
- Project Schedule - Helps in tracking team progress in terms of task accomplishment and resource usage by sequentially listing detailed project tasks, and highlighting any external dependencies or critical escalations, if required.
- Action, Risk & Change Tracking - Identifies, logs and tracks all actions and issues being worked upon by the project team and the risks arising from it to ensure accountability, while also monitoring any change requests to modify the scope of the project.
- Documentation Management - Involves managing all documentation required as part of the project in an excel sheet known as RASI Matrix (Responsible, Approve, Support/Consult, Inform) that not only clearly lists all anticipated documentation required as part of the project, but also the people required to complete it in terms of their roles in the RASI Matrix .
Project Life Cycle
Once the tools are in place, the actual project starts, and goes through the following stages:
- Initiation - The project is conceptualized in terms of its initial goal and technical specifications, which includes “defining scope of work, resource identification, & conducting feasibility study” (Olateju et al., 2011).
- Planning - It involves developing project plans, schedules, specifications, as well as “breaking the project into work packages, making individual assignments, scheduling the actual work and its cost of completion and finally identifying project stakeholders to establish a clear-cut communication plan with them” (Olateju et al., 2011).
- Executing (Monitoring & Controlling) - Here the actual work commences which is continuously “monitored for progress and deviations from the original project plan are controlled by making adjustments and variances, which are promptly communicated through team meet-ups” (Olateju et al., 2011).
- Closing - Sometimes also referred to as “termination, occurs when after completion, the project is transferred to the client, project documentation handed over to the business, suppliers’ contracts terminated, project sources released and project closure communicated to all stakeholders” (Olateju et al., 2011),
Why is Project Management Importance?
Though common sense suggests that the ‘triple constraints’ discussed earlier which put a project manager in a tight spot of managing the competing demands of cost, scope, and time, necessitate successful project management know-how on his part to avoid getting into a chaotic and unpredictable situation with little control (Anon., 2012), there is more to project management that makes it popular among organizations.
Firstly, project management helps many organizations and sectors worldwide “reduce risks, cut costs and improve success rates, as reported by many executives surveyed in the Economist Unit Intelligence Report” (PMI Inc., 2010).
Secondly, in the words of Ron Kasabian, general manager, Intel, Folsom, California, USA, “good project management stopped us from spending money on projects that fail, thereby, equipping organizations with the necessary foresight and expertise to streamline their delivery and sideline risks” (PMI Inc., 2010).
Finally, successful project management is also a crucial source of competitive advantage for organizations as pin-pointed by the same survey results that indicated, “90% of global senior executives ramking project management methids as either critical or somewhat important to their ability to deliver successful projects and remain competitive” (PMI Inc., 2010).
Barriers to Successful Project Management Implementation
Despite global industry-wide cognizance of project management benefits, organizations still fail at it for a variety of reasons. Studying project management tools and techniques in Nigeria’s 23 public sector enterprises reveals “lack of project management knowledge as the most frequently appearing obstacle (75%) in the way of successful project management implementation, followed by bribery and corruption (45%), lack of professional PM training (40%), rigid organizational structure (31%), incessant change of authority (28%), and lack of leadership commitment (25%)” (Olateju et al., 2011, p. 5).
Similarly, Anbari (2005) has identified the following factors crucial to Six Sigma projects in many organizations, which, conversely, due to their absence can translate into project failures:
- Firstly, project management, be it six sigma or any other process improvement or commercial project, is basically a ‘top-down affair’, requiring top management commitment, to ensure “appropriate linkages between project goals and organizational commitments” (Anbari, 2005).
- Secondly, besides senior management involvement organization-wide dedicated buy-in and commitment in terms of time, money and effort is required at all levels to “ensure project goals are in-sync with the resource availability, organizational culture, environment and other constraints” (Anbari, 2005).
- Thirdly, “effective project governance” (Anbari, 2005) ensures open acceptance of the project by the organization as part of its normal functioning, rather than a super imposed duty or task.
- Fourthly, “judicious project selection and its careful planning” (Anbari, 2005) ensures a well-defined project scope, keeping project costs, scheduling and progress reporting under control.
- Fifthly, open communication in the form of “knowledge management and sharing” (Anbari, 2005) makes organizational change initiatives more easy manageable.
- Finally, as already pointed earlier, there is no substitute for appropriate education and training in project management for employees for them to be able to “understand its tools and techniques and their application” (Anbari, 2005).
References
Anbari, F.T., 2005. Current Topics in Management [pdf]. Available at:
Anon., 2012. Importance of Project Management for Organizations. [Online] Available at:
George Washington University, n.d. Project Management Fundamentals. [pdf]. Available at:
Haughey, D., 2013. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). [Online] Available at:
Haughney, D., 2013. An Introduction to Project Management. [Online] Available at:
ITC Infotech India Ltd., n.d. Project Management Fundamentals [pdf]. Available at:
Maylor, H., 2005. Project Management. Delhi: Pearson Education.
Munns, A.K. & Bjeirmi, B.F., 1996. The role of project management in achieving project success, International Journal of Project Management, [online]. Available at:
Olateju, O.I., Abdul-Azeez, I.A. & Alamutu, S.A., 2011. PROJECT MANAGEMENT PRACTICE IN NIGERIAN PUBLIC SECTOR - AN EMPIRICAL STUDY. Australian Journal of Business and Management Research, [Online]. Available at:
PMI Inc., 2010. White Paper - The Value of Project Management. [pdf] Available at:
PMI Inc., 2013. What is Project Management? [Online] Available at:
