Project Management

A practical guide to planning and managing projects

Stephen Hartley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781760631789
• eBook ISBN: 9781000246940
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Organisations increasingly look to project management to deal with short timeframes, tight budgets, changing requirements and risk management in everyday operations, as well as for major strategic projects. Project management knowledge and skills are now essential for professionals just about everywhere, from teachers, social workers and lawyers, to engineers, builders and accountants.

Stephen Hartley's Project Management is based on the recognised global standard for project management, the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), and it incorporates aspects of Agile, PRINCE2, Lean and other popular methodologies. It offers a thorough overview of the principles of project management, combined with tools and guidelines to manage projects of all sizes, from inception to evaluation.

Written in an accessible and engaging style, Stephen Hartley's widely used text has been fully revised and updated. It focuses on shared responsibility, transparent documentation, reporting achievement over activity, and continuous improvement. It is illustrated with examples and case studies, and accompanied by a suite of downloadable templates and tools.

'Stephen Hartley is without doubt Australia's leading authority on project management. This book is the bible for any current or future project manager.' - Dr Tim Baker, author of The End of the Performance Review

Chapter 1
Project management

An adaptable body of knowledge

Key points

• ∎ What a project is and isn't
• ∎ Four interdependent project constraints
• ∎ Defining project management
• ∎ Comparing management and leadership
• ∎ Delegating by degrees
• ∎ Previewing four popular project management methodologies
• ∎ Navigating the project management life-cycle
• ∎ Factors behind project success and failure
• ∎ The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)^® knowledge areas

In practice

Why, these days, is nearly everyone working on one or more projects? Everything we do appears to be a project of one sort or another. People aren't simply working on tasks, files, activities or just 'work stuff' anymore—they are all, increasingly, on things called 'projects' for some reason.

Job advertisements are regularly populated with project management positions, while position descriptions are quickly being rewritten (sadly, not always well, despite the intent) with more of a project management focus to them. Business and industry are rushing to develop project management methodologies, processes, templates and software aligned to things called PMBOK^®, PRINCE2^®, Agile, Project ^PRACTITIONER (my own methodology), Microsoft Project, Primavera, along with a raft of other popular methodologies and tools. Academic qualifications, industry certification and public training in project management are increasingly in high demand.

Why the interest, why the focus, why the growing preoccupation with things loosely (and often incorrectly) called projects? Why is it that all this work will be (allegedly) better planned and managed with (allegedly) better outcomes merely by re-labelling it a project? Why is it that people believe everyone will become more committed and motivated to do the work because it is now called a project?

At the same time, look at what project work offers the organisation and the individual: strategic justification, executive mandate, operational prioritisation, not to mention a phased, controlled and approved evolution of performance, output and, one would hope, outcome. For the individual, it provides an opportunity to complete challenging work, to work with and or manage diverse stakeholders while also being part of a change initiative impacting the business. Perhaps the truequestion should be: Are they really projects at all? Further, having made this distinction, what actions does this then trigger? What benefits will be identified and measured? What deliverables will be planned, managed and handed over? How do organisations then begin to balance both these strategic initiatives with the constantly changing and competing operational priorities?

Chapter overview

Project management means different things to different people. For some, it represents a growing body of global knowledge, methodologies and best practice; for others, it is a borrowed set of methods, techniques, tools and tips modelled from the cornerstones of professional disciplines of accounting, risk, finance, human resources, total quality management, or industry and business, and/or the government with its policy, regulatory and compliance frameworks.

Are projects strategic initiatives thought up by boards, CEOs and executive management? Are they initiatives that will drive the organisation forward in response to the challenges of global competition, market pressure, tight deadlines, limited budgets, contractual conditions or a heightened need for compliance, transparency and accountability? Or are they workplace priorities populated in the operational plans of the organisation? Clearly, projects are no longer the sole domain of construction, engineering and other capital works infrastructure projects. Projects have literally flooded into management, customer service, hospitality, sales, marketing, IT, operations, finance, legal, healthcare, banking, community services, economics, sport, real estate, logistics, education, manufacturing, tourism, aviation, insurance and administration, to cite just a few growth areas across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors.

Should we embrace particular methodologies: the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), PRINCE2 (projects in a controlled environment), Agile, Project ^PRACTITIONER (my proprietary methodology), or the myriad other options and solutions actively promoted to respond to the differing degrees of uncertainty, complexity, risk and value? Or does the solution rest with a raft of technical, people and conceptual management skills that will underpin the success of the project? Some projects will range from the ambitious to the mundane, from those sired and protected by 'sacred cows' to those that are underfunded, from projects that never should have been approved in the first place and those that should have had the 'plug' pulled oil them a long time ago (if only the brave would step up!) to projects with unlimited funding (yes, unlimited funding still does exist in some commercial and government corridors—perhaps you know it as contingency funding). Some projects will require enormous resources, while others need only one or two people at most. Some projects will be political hot potatoes, attracting considerable publicity and controversy, while others will barely appear on the public radar. Some will have organisation-wide impacts; some will be driven by markets and competitors; others will be generated by external regulatory authorities demanding compliance. Some will be risky, some complex, others perhaps straightforward and still others perhaps mediocre in design, execution and management.

In recent times, the evolution of projects has increased exponentially to the point where the discipline, methods and tools behind projects (and their management) have reached giddy heights of application, sophistication and popularity What is driving this modern-day development and interest in projects? Is it due to:

• ∎ the constant cycle of change within which business operates
• ∎ time-poor business driven by tight (sometimes impossible) deadlines
• ∎ advances in technology
• ∎ the increasing influence of market pressures
• ∎ global competition and the need to remain competitive
• ∎ greater rates of (financial) return required
• ∎ higher degrees of transparency accountability and consistency
• ∎ an increased interest in measured outcomes (benefits accruing from the project)
• ∎ increased attention on legal and contractual obligations
• ∎ the need to deliver products or services meeting benchmarks, quality assurance or best-practice guidelines
• ∎ greater emphasis on businesses producing cost-effective solutions?

Perhaps the answer can be found in each of the points cited above, and the reason should be obvious. Projects have transformation at their heart as they create and deliver change of one type or another—small, easy, large, complex and over time—that must be managed effectively if the project is to succeed. In other words, projects provide the structure, th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables and figures
• Acronyms and abbreviations
• About the author
• Preface
• Using this textbook
• Project management life-cycle on a page
• 1 Project management: An adaptable body of knowledge
• 2 Organisational capability: Emerging strategy, justification and capability
• 3 Stakeholder management: Strategies for continuous engagement
• 4 Scope management: Delivering on changing expectations
• 5 Time management: Developing and controlling the schedule
• 6 Cost management: Ending the reliance on the budget variance
• 7 Quality management: Achieving technical excellence and customer satisfaction
• 8 Human resource management: Developing and maintaining individual and team performance
• 9 Communications management: Matching intent with outcome
• 10 Risk management: Proactively managing uncertainty, complexity and change
• 11 Procurement management: Embedding value into the project
• 12 Integration management: Unifying a coordinated approach
• Appendix 1: Issue matrix
• Appendix 2: Linking theory and practice activities
• Appendix 3: Project management templates
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index