Risk can be defined as uncertainty of outcome, whether positive opportunity or negative impact. Some amount of risk-taking is inevitable, whatever the project. There has to be a deliberate acceptance of some degree of risk because the value to the business makes it worthwhile. Project risk management includes the processes concerned about conducting risk management planning, identification, analysis (both qualitative and quantitative), responses, and monitoring and control on a project; most of these processes are updated throughout the project. Risk management in projects involves identifying and assessing the risks in terms of impact and probability, establishing and maintaining a joint risk register, agreed by the integrated project team, establishing procedures for actively managing and monitoring risks throughout the project and during occupation on completion, ensuring that members of the team have the opportunity to engage in a dialogue that will promote agreement of an appropriate allocation of risk, updating risk Continue reading
Project Management Concepts
Project Constraints
A project should possess identifiable goals and a definite starting and finishing point. Project goals must be defined clearly. A useful checklist can be developed in relation to project success criteria. Criteria may be hard and concerned with what the project should achieve, or soft when they will cover how the project should proceed. The major constraints on the completion of projects are time, resource availability and the need to achieve the required standard of performance/quality for the project. This is also known as Project Management Triangle. Each of these project constraints is linked to the other two. If one or more of the constraints is changed, the remaining ones will also be changed. For instance, decreasing the budget/cost of a project is likely to lengthen its schedule or force the creation of a new, more restrained quality. Or an increase in quality generally results in an Continue reading
History and Development of Project Management
A project is a temporary endeavor to create a unique product, service or result. The temporary nature of projects creates a defining beginning and end. Project management is the application of knowledge, skills and tools and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirement. Project is accomplished through appropriate application and integration of different process groups. A project fills an essential need in society. Indeed, projects are the major mode in which change is accomplished. It is the mode in which corporate strategy is implemented, business change is addressed, productive teams and their necessary competencies are dealt with, quality of deliverables, and tracking pre-established metrics for management’s decision making, as well as closing out a project and creating lessons learned are performed. Historical Developments on Project Management Pre – 1950 Era The project management is now in its modern form. There has been some form of projects since early Continue reading
Concept of Project Based Organizations (PBO)
In today’s turbulent market, a lot of organizations is still seeking for a strategic advantage over others and a lot of them has actually seek Project Based Organization (PBO) as a way to propel them for greater height and thus, gain a strategic advantage over other companies. However, there are still questions how they can best make use of this new organization structure approach to create a synergy between company business mission, strategy, and project as well as portfolio management Project Based Organizations refer to organizational forms that involve the creation of temporary systems for the performance of project tasks or activities. PBOs are gaining increased attention as an emerging organizational form, but there is very little knowledge on how PBO function in practice and what value or benefits in adopting the practice of Project Based Organizations. Needless to say, there are not many findings on how the extensive use Continue reading
Project Scope Management
Scope is the description of the boundaries of the project. It defines what the project will deliver and what it will not deliver. Scope is the view all stakeholders have from the project; it is a definition of the limits of the project. Project Scope Management includes the processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required to complete the project successfully. Project scope management’s primary concern is with defining and controlling what is and is not included in the project. One of the leading causes for project failures is poor management of the project scope, either because the project manager did not spend enough time defining the work, there was not an agreement on the scope by stakeholders, or there was a lack of scope management which leads to adding work not authorized or budgeted to the project, this is known Continue reading
Characteristics of Project Phases
The completion and approval of one or more deliverables characterizes a project phase. A deliverable is a measurable, verifiable work product such as a specification, feasibility study report, detailed design document, or working prototype. Some deliverables can correspond to the project management process, whereas others are the end products or components of the end products for which the project was conceived. The deliverables, and hence the phases, are part of a generally sequential process designed to ensure proper control of the project and to attain the desired product or service, which is the objective of the project. In any specific project, for reasons of size, complexity, level of risk, and cash flow constraints, phases can be further subdivided into subphases. Each subphase is aligned with one or more specific deliverables for monitoring and control. The majority of these subphase deliverables are related to the primary phase deliverable, and the phases Continue reading