Project Management in Practice

Jack R. Meredith, Scott M. Shafer, Samuel J. Mantel, Jr., Margaret M. Sutton

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781119298601
• Edition: 6
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

Offering streamlined coverage with an applied approach, Project Management in Practice, 6th Edition focuses on the essentials of project management. This concise, hands-on text is ideal for a one semester project management course, or as a module on project management. This textbook is organized around the project management life cycle, and provides students with essential project management concepts while addressing an important area of industry growth: the use of projects to achieve the strategic goals of organizations.

CHAPTER 1
The World of Project Management

Once upon a time there was a heroine project manager. Her projects were never late. They never ran over budget. They always met contract specifications and invariably satisfied the expectations of her clients. And you know as well as we do, anything that begins with “Once upon a time …” is just a fairy tale.

This book is not about fairy tales. Throughout these pages we will be as realistic as we know how to be. We will explain project management practices that we know will work. We will describe project management tools that we know can help the project manager come as close as Mother Nature and Lady Luck will allow to meeting the expectations of all who have a stake in the outcome of the project.

1.1 WHAT IS A PROJECT?

The accomplishment of important tasks and goals in organizations today is being achieved increasingly through the use of projects. As a result, a new kind of organization is emerging to deal with the accelerating growth in the number of multiple, simultaneously ongoing, and often interrelated projects in organizations. This project oriented organization, often called “enterprise project management” (Levine, 1998), “management by projects” (Boznak, 1996), and similar names, was created to tie projects more closely to the organization's goals and strategy and to integrate and centralize management methods for the growing number of ongoing projects.

Why this emphasis on project management? The answer is simple: Daily, organizations are asked to accomplish work activities that do not fit neatly into business‐as‐usual. A software group may be asked to develop an application program that will access U.S. government data on certain commodity prices and generate records on the value of commodity inventories held by a firm; the software must be available for use on April 1. The Illinois State Bureau for Children's Services may require an annually updated census of all Illinois resident children, aged 17 years or younger, living with an illiterate single parent; the census must begin in 18 months. A manufacturer initiates a process improvement project to offset higher energy costs.

Note that each work activity is unique with a specific deliverable aimed at meeting a specific need or purpose. These are projects. The routine issuance of reports on the value of commodity inventories, the routine counseling of single parents on nurturing their offspring, the day‐to‐day activities associated with running a machine in a factory—these are not projects. The difference between a project and a nonproject is not always crystal clear. For almost any precise definition, we can point to exceptions. At base, however, projects are unique, have a specific deliverable, and have a specific due date. Note that our examples have all those characteristics. The Project Management Institute (PMI) defines in its Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), 5th edition, a project as “A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result” (Project Management Institute, 2013).

Projects vary widely in size and type. The writing of this book is a project. The reorganization of Procter & Gamble (P&G) into a global enterprise is a project, or more accurately a program, a large integrated set of projects. The construction of a fly‐in fishing lodge in Manitoba, Canada, is a project. The organization of “Cat‐in‐the‐Hat Day” so that Mrs. Payne's third grade class can celebrate Dr. Suess's birthday is also a project.

Both the hypothetical projects we mentioned earlier and the real‐world projects listed just above have the same characteristics. They are unique, specific, and have desired completion dates. They all qualify as projects under the PMI's definition. They have an additional characteristic in common—they are multidisciplinary. They require input from people with different kinds of knowledge and expertise. This multidisciplinary nature of projects means that they tend to be complex, that is, composed of many interconnected elements and requiring input from groups outside the project. The various areas of knowledge required for the construction of the fly‐in fishing lodge are not difficult to imagine. The knowledge needed for globalization of a large conglomerate like P&G is quite beyond the imagination of any one individual and requires input from a diversified group of specialists. Working as a team, the specialists investigate the problem to discover what information, skills, and knowledge are needed to accomplish the overall task. It may take weeks, months, or even years to find the correct inputs and understand how they fit together.

A secondary effect of using multidisciplinary teams to deal with complex problems is conflict. Projects are characterized by conflict. As we will see in later chapters, the project schedule, budget, and specifications conflict with each other. The needs and desires of the client conflict with those of the project team, the senior management of the organization conducting the project and others who may have a less direct stake in the project. Some of the most intense conflicts are those between members of the project team. Much more will be said about this in later chapters. For the moment, it is sufficient to recognize that projects and conflict are often inseparable companions, an environment that is unsuitable and uncomfortable for conflict avoiders.

It is also important to note that projects do not exist in isolation. They are often parts of a larger entity or program, just as projects to develop a new engine and an improved suspension system are parts of the program to develop a new automobile. The overall activity is called a program. Projects are subdivisions of programs. Likewise, projects are composed of tasks, which can be further divided into subtasks that can be broken down further still. The purpose of these subdivisions is to allow the project to be viewed at various levels of detail. The fact that projects are typically parts of larger organizational progr...