The Silver Bullets of Project Management

Christopher Lennon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032037813
• eBook ISBN: 9781000433234
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book provides practical guidance for corporate decision makers, project managers, project engineers, and for those wishing to grasp the key issues that define project success. The book represents a distillation of years of practical experience and offers a clear and concise 'blueprint' for how to approach projects and their management.

This book is designed to be 'clean and simple' in its delivery – allowing the reader to immediately have 'take aways' that could be implemented within a project, adding value to any approach dealing with the key common problems and issues that arise within the project medium. The book can be applied to a wide range of scenarios in which project management is required – from setting up an organisation, creating distribution networks, bringing new technology to market, and to designing a leadership and training architecture within an organisation.

The book, in addition to being a go-to reference book on project management for professional project managers and business leaders, is also ideal for postgraduate and undergraduate students studying project management. It is written to be user friendly, yet provides a wealth of information and tips that will enhance the readers knowledge and understanding of managing projects.

1

The PROJECT METHODOLOGY

DOI: 10.4324/9781003188964-2

This book’s Introduction alluded to the project methodology and its many ramifications to modern-day organisations with good reason. Increasingly, the rate of change within operating environments continues to accelerate due to technological progression, ever more remote and challenging physical environments, political machinations and social/economic factors. Scarcity of resources and limitations in experience and knowledge – particularly within the aforementioned more ‘extreme’ operating environments – all point to an increasingly consistent approach to adopting a project methodology in order to achieve corporate objectives.

Where the project methodology comes into its own is from the perspective of structure and control. Many projects are representative of a foray into the unknown for the organisation, often with some serious strategic drivers or initiatives riding on a successful outcome – consider, for instance, a market penetration project that takes the organisation away from its core competencies, potentially high risk and likely to be subject to a high level of uncertainty. What the organisation normally lacks in these types of endeavours is either experience within the target environment, knowledge as to how to ‘do things’ or, realistically, a combination of both. This in itself underpins the strategic dimension to utilising the project methodology – it is a sensible way to make a limited and controlled expedition into the unknown. If successful, the organisation can capitalise on the experience and knowledge gained. It is also worth pointing out that ‘lessons learnt’ will also have a certain transferability, i.e. underpinning future endeavours, avoiding previous mistakes, etc. If the project proves to be an utter and complete failure, then the risk and financial exposure to the organisation as a whole is generally minimised.

The project methodology allows the organisation to clearly define the amount of resources that will be devolved to an initiative in a structured and logical manner; thus the risk factor is at least (in the majority of cases) ‘contained’ within some known budgetary boundaries.

Many projects, as well as for the reason mentioned above, are also the harbingers or agents of change – again the project methodology allows a greater level of control and structure to be imposed upon a change initiative – perhaps providing an element of ‘comfort’ to those driving the process. Change is inevitable – my earlier mentioned points regarding the increasing strategic significance of corporate usage of the project methodology are often proven by the fact that there is an upward trend in the adoption of this approach by organisations faced with the implementation of change programmes. Change is scary – it is more than likely that a particular initiative will face opposition of some sort, yet the project methodology can prove to be a powerful tool in demonstrating the structured and controlled approach to be adopted – thus easing some concerns by displeased parties within the organisation. The project methodology will demonstrate control across many areas of potential concern such as cost (a defined budget is allocated); time (the project will run to a clearly defined schedule); and quality (there will be a minimum specification of deliverable).

Coupled to all the points raised above, the project methodology will also clearly identify what the key performance indicators (KPIs) and critical success factors (CSFs) are. KPIs might be the achievement of a particular milestone in a project’s execution, or the end of a phase (i.e. the ‘stage gate approach’). They might also be represented by financial (budgetary) indicators. CSFs might be a particular level of quality achieved, or some defined time-based goal (e.g. successful critical lead time management).

Further evidence of the linkage with corporate strategy or strategic ambition is evidenced by the extension of the project methodology – many organisations today utilise both ‘programmes’ of projects and ‘portfolios’ of projects, both of which may actually be more representative of the execution of core capabilities to achieve longer term outcomes and goals – the major difference between the two being whether or not the projects in question are working towards a common objective/deliverable. There is also a question of scale. A programme of projects may involve a number of parallel projects that could have direct interdependencies, but may not – they will all however be representative of a piece of the overall goal/deliverable/objective. Portfolios can consist of a number of programmes of projects and thus could be thought of as the ‘macro’ or overarching strategic usage of the project methodology.

This chapter has made a case for the importance and usage of the project methodology in achieving organisation goals and aims – not only from a strategic perspective but also from an operations perspective. But, like anything, there are both advantages and disadvantages to its utilisation. The main advantages are as follows.

First, as mentioned previously, should the project be representative of a ‘journey into the unknown’ for the organisation, the financial costs and liabilities will be strictly contained within a designated budget, thus limiting exposure and mitigating risk (only a defined amount of resources will be committed to any particular project, so in effect ‘damage’ will be controlled should things go awry (in the tangible sense of materials, personnel and money). Second, in the intangible sense such as corporate reputation, it is unlikely that the adoption and utilisation of a project methodology would ‘contain’ any fallout, unless the project was deemed ‘top secret’ and the project team were sworn to silence and assuming that nothing was to leak out (e.g. if a project’s operations were going to cause some kind of environmental pollution or disaster).The author would suggest that any responsible organisation would not want to operate projects in this way, though regrettably there have been many examples of such practices that have only been revealed due to ‘whistle blowers.’

From the operational or tactical perspective of actually implementing and successfully delivering a project, another key advantage of the project methodology is that it requires or facilitates the need for detailed planning. While a plan, if properly followed and executed, is a great help, it should never be rigid and inflexible. Often the best way to build robustness in a plan is that it contains some element of flexibility allowing for changes and modifications as either the situation on the ground, the physical environment or customer requirements change. This aside (but always kept in mind), project planning is an art form in itself – the main difficulty is to recognise that the ‘Devil really is in the details’ yet not to ‘over-engineer’ the plan to the extent that its complexity, size and detail become unwieldy and of minimum practical use to the project manager having to execute it.

As mentioned above, a project plan must be robust – the need to make changes to it and to have an awareness of the likelihood of this requirement is often helped if the organisation has a system of checks and balances that allow for accurate and meaningful monitoring of project activities as per the defined schedule. The ability to review progress thus far against budgeted and planned progress is truly invaluable to the project practitioner. This is often reflected by the usage of ‘milestones’ or ‘stage gates’ that represent a point of achievement at a particular point in time.

The main disadvantages are likely to be relatively ‘simple’ matters that may result from lack of experience and/or mismanagement. As we have established, the very fact that projects are often a foray into the unknown – a departure from the organisations’ core competencies or skills, and that through the utilisation of the project methodology there is an assigned budget – mistakes and cost/time overruns will result in resource consumption that may simply be irreplaceable. A strong advantage of the structure imposed by the project methodology is that it enables focus on essential project performance elements vital to delivery such as KPIs and CSFs – both discussed in later chapters. This will allow a greater degree of control as the project progresses – particularly if it is of a ‘change’ nature as mentioned above – seeking new revenue streams or competing within new markets.

Table 1.1 summarises the main advantages and disadvantages of the project methodology.

Table 1.1 The project methodology: key advantages and disadvantages

Advantages	Disadvantages
1 ‘Damage control’	1 Departure from ‘core’ activities
2 Limitation of risk	2 High risk
3 Planning and control	3 Competition for resources
4 Monitoring and review	4 Multiple constraints
5 Configuration	5 Lack of knowledge and experience
6 Learning and experience	6 Conflicting stakeholder agendas

2

IDENTIFYING PROJECT RISK and OPPORTUNITIES

DOI: 10.4324/9781003188964-3

As we have established in Chapter 1, projects will often represent a higher-than-normal risk factor. In some industries such as the ‘upstream’ exploration and production (E&P) segment of the international oil and gas business, projects can represent an extreme level of risk. It is important to point out at this stage a brief maxim that explains the relationship between risk and reward:

The further into the future that is being planned for the greater the level of uncertainty. The greater the level of uncertainty the greater the risk. The greater the risk the greater the reward.

Contemporary research suggests that there are three main attitudes towards risk within practically any context: Individuals (and organisations) that are risk takers, those that are risk averse and, by far the largest segment, those who will attempt to balance the level of risk to the level of reward. It is important to understand with crystal clarity that the level of risk that is acceptable not only depends on an attitude or culture but also on the level of perceived reward. This is why in the E&P business mentioned above projects often represent an almost prohibitive level of risk – but if successful the returns can be enormous, more than justif...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The project methodology
• 2 Identifying project risk and opportunities
• 3 The project lifecycle
• 4 The project manager
• 5 Project components
• 6 Project interface management
• 7 Project budgetary management
• 8 Project scheduling
• Index