Naked Project Management

The Bare Facts

Dennis Lock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351915977
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Project Management
• Index: Business

Books about project management are plentiful. The best of those books are too comprehensive for the person faced for the first time with managing a small and relatively straightforward project, or for the student studying for a degree or business qualification in which project management is only one of several modules. But, at the other extreme too many of the simpler books treat project management lightly, gloss over or ignore some essential processes, and even get the facts wrong and give incorrect examples. Naked Project Management is an introductory guide to the world of project management from one of the world's most accomplished project management authors. Lock has stripped project management down to its bare facts - simplifying everything but trivializing nothing - leaving sound practical advice on how to organize and manage a small or medium sized project. The book is written in the direct jargon-free style that has become Dennis Lock's hallmark. Everything is carefully explained and supported with clear diagrams. It covers all the essential aspect of project management in astonishingly few words and provides further instruction with an entertaining case study project that flows logically through the chapters from beginning to end. Degree and other students for whom project management is an elective or small part of their course will love this compact time-saving and reasonably priced study resource.

1 Projects

A project is a human enterprise that sets out to achieve one or more set objectives. Unlike routine work, projects break new ground and require many decisions. They are usually associated with risk.

Project Types

Roughly speaking, most projects that we see in our everyday lives fall into one of four types:

1. Construction projects. These can be anything from putting up a garden shed to erecting a 300m skyscraper. Most involve work at a site that is remote from the headquarters of the company managing the project. They are usually visible to the public gaze. Tunnelling, mining, quarrying and civil engineering projects also belong to this group. In these projects people often have to work in unpleasant or even dangerous conditions.

2. Manufacturing projects. Whether you design and manufacture a hearing aid, develop a defence system or build an ocean liner you are undertaking a manufacturing project. These projects can be conducted within the company’s own enclosed or fenced premises. They result in a tangible product, which can be anything from a new kind of safety pin to an aircraft.

3. Management change projects. When companies change their working procedures, install new IT, reorganize or relocate they have a management change project. Company mergers and acquisitions are also management projects.

4. Scientific research projects. A pure scientific research project is truly an act of faith for its investor. Often no one can tell if the research will produce a useful result or be a complete waste of time. Projects for pharmaceuticals, medical research and the quest for new man-made materials are examples that come into this category.

So why have I taken the trouble to make these different classifications? Well, I want to identify some of their similarities and their differences when it comes to project management.

Broadly speaking, projects in the first, second and third categories listed above can all be managed using the same project management methods for planning and control. But management change projects usually mean that workpeople have to accept changes to their working lives. People generally prefer familiar surroundings and work processes and they dislike or fear change. For these reasons management change projects can be particularly difficult to implement, so I have devoted Chapter 7 to that subject.

So almost any kind of project will benefit from recognized project management methods (like those described in this book). The only exceptions are projects for pure scientific research because they are difficult to plan and have usually unpredictable outcomes. There are ways in which control over research expenditure can be exercised periodically, but those are outside the scope of this book.

Project Life Cycles

Two things that set projects apart from other commercial and industrial activities are:

1. a project is new, usually having no exact precedent, and carrying all the risks that stepping into the unknown can bring;

2. projects have finite life cycles. Every successful project progresses through several life cycle phases from birth to death.

Figure 1.1 shows the life cycle of a typical project. Although no two projects are ever exactly the same, their life cycles share common characteristics and they all progress through a series of phases. The boundaries between these phases are not always well defined and some phases can overlap each other considerably.

Figure 1.1 Phases of a typical project life cycle

LIFE CYCLE PHASES

Phase 1 concept or recognition of a need for a project

Now the project is merely a gleam in someone’s eye. An idea has occurred for a venture that could bring benefit to an entrepreneur, an organization or a community. All that is known at this embryo stage is that something could and should be done to improve an existing situation, make a profit or produce some other kind of benefit. So far, no money has been spent on the project.

Phase 2 project definition or business plan

Now is the time for the initial project idea to be developed into a project definition or business plan. A person wanting a new home built can specify many things that an architect can later develop into a design scheme. A company wishing to expand its production facility can specify what new machinery it needs, so that a detailed order can be sent to a manufacturer. A person contemplating a business change must prepare a business plan that sets out what must be done, how long the project would take, how much it would cost and what the expected benefits should be.

Even at this early stage some money must be spent. How much money depends on the complexity of the proposed project. A straightforward machine replacement for a factory can be specified relatively easily. But developing a new oilfield or mining operation can require a feasibility study project costing millions of pounds.

Every business plan or study should look at how the main project activities will be funded. Possible sources of finance for a commercial project include:

• cash reserves (funds saved from previous company profits);

• revenue from current company operations;

• an issue of ordinary or preference shares;

• loans from banks or other financial institutions;

• an investment from a specialist investor company;

• a government grant or loan;

• a grant from the National Lottery.

• a public appeal campaign (particularly for a charitable project or a venture deemed to appeal to the general public for any reason).

The successful output of this project definition or business proposal stage is a management instruction for the project to go ahead. That will mean the issue of a contract or a purchase order when the project is to be purchased from a contractor or supplier of goods and services. If the project is an internal management change initiative, then senior management approval will be needed to launch the project.

Phase 3 design

Now the project has been approved it is time to establish the organization, appoint the project manager, carry out detailed planning, and produce drawings and specifications that will enable the project to be carried out. I’m sorry, but I did not have room in Figure 1.1 to list all these things, so I have lumped them all together as ‘design’, which is what many people do. Now the serious expenditure begins as people join the project organization to start work.

Phase 4 contracts and purchases

As design progresses, specifications can be drawn up for materials purchases and for contracted-out services. Now the bulk of the project expenditure must be committed when the purchase orders are released and contracts are signed. You will find some basic advice on contracts in Chapter 5.

Phase 5 fulfilment (which means doing the work)

This is the most active part of the project when the number of people engaged is at its peak. The project manager must exercise control over the progress and quality of the work.

Apart from possible technical difficulties and design errors, a well-known risk during this phase is that changes will be allowed which cause the project (and its costs) to expand beyond the original business plan. Project managers call this danger ‘scope creep’.

Phase 6 commissioning and implementation

If the initial design was reasonably free from mistakes, and all the fulfilment work has been done successfully, the project should now be finished and fit for purpose. But, of course, there will often be some teething problems. So the active phases of most projects end with a period of trial, testing and adjustment to find and correct all the snags. Some project budgets become overspent and run late because this phase was not taken into account during cost estimating.

This phase is particularly important for management change projects, when all the people involved have to accept the change and learn to work with the new procedures and conditions.

Phase 7 useful working life

The project manager usually has no direct involvement in this phase, and should by now have moved on to another project or other things. However the project manager might be asked to sort out queries and snags during the first few months as defects and problems become apparent when the project is first put to use.

It is to be hoped that the project will have a long, profitable and trouble-free working life. But this lifespan might be brief for a project where the technology is moving fast (think of anything to do with computers). A new building might last for many hundreds of years.

Phase 8 disposal

For many projects this final phase lies well into the future, when the original project manager has long since lost interest. He or she might be retired or dead. However, project designers often have to take the environment into account when considering the original project design. Choices between recyclable materials or substances that could pose a threat to the environment upon disposal are considerations that have to be taken seriously. By far the most obvious example would be a project to build a nuclear-powered electricity generation plant. The time required for safe disposal can be very great, and the disposal costs might be greater even than those for the original project.

Principal Project Players

CUSTOMER AND CONTRACTOR

Every project is done because someone wants it. That ‘someone’ or customer might be an affluent individual, a commercial organization, a group of people, a government department – there are clearly many possibilities. The customer could be a group or person within the project company or other organization itself (for a management project). Now, this book could get incredibly complicated if in every instance I were to consider all these possibilities. So I am going to take the simple approach of calling any person or organization that wants a project the customer.

A similar argument applies to the organization that carries out a project for the customer. Depending on the type of project, this could a public company, a large joint venture company, a small contractor or a not-for-profit organization. For simplicity I shall refer to the organization with principal responsibility for doing the project as the contractor.

An internally conducted management change project is a special case, because the company is its own customer as well as being the project contractor.

SPONSORS AND STAKEHOLDERS

A stakeholder is any organization or person who can affect the outcome of a project or who could be affected by the project. Thus local residents, motorists and other road users would all be stakeholders in a project to drive a new road through green fields adjacent to existing housing. People and organizations who invest money in a project usually expect to see some return on their investment (in management projects this is often called benefits realization) and they are stakeholders. Some large projects, such as a new shopping mall, will have many stakeholders (including shopkeepers, shoppers and all those affected in any way by the new construction).

A project sponsor is a special kind of stakeholder who invests money in the project or otherwise helps to promote it. In a management change project, for instance, a senior manager within the compan...