Identify project management skill areas
Identify project management skill areas
Inside this reading:
What are the nine areas of expertise? 2
Scope management 2
Scope planning 2
Cost management 3
Time management 4
Defining and sequencing activities 4
Estimating activity duration 5
Schedule planning and control 6
Quality management 6
Planning for quality assurance and control 7
Communication management 8
Communication methods 8
Human resource management 9
Organisational planning, staff acquisition and team development 9
Procurement management 10
Risk management 11
Risk assessment and monitoring 11
Project integration management 12
Developing and executing project plans 12
Change management 13
Summary 14
What are the nine areas of expertise?
According to the Project Management Institute of America (PMI) and most experts in the field, project managers must coordinate activity in nine areas of expertise to successfully manage projects.
All of the major activities that occur during the life cycle of a project are all part of one of the following nine areas of expertise. They are:
· Scope management
· Communication management
· Project integration management
· Time management
· Cost management
· Quality management
· Human resource management
· Risk management
Before proceeding further, it would be a good idea for you to visit the web site of the Project Management Institute of America at http://www.pmi.org
Scope management
One of the most difficult aspects of project management is defining the scope of a project. The word ‘scope’ means extent or depth. When applied to project management, it refers to how much work there is to do.
Think of a project to build a one-kilometre road from point A to point B. It may cross a straight stretch of flat ground. On the other hand, there may be a river between, requiring a bridge. The scope of the work in the second example would obviously be much greater.
The scope is all work needed to fulfil the project goal, or make the products of the project. It includes all the resources and processes used to do this.
The budget is one of the most important aspects of a project. If there is more money available, you should be able to provide more detail, more volume, higher quality, and so on. Estimating just what you can do with a specific amount of money is what ‘scoping’ is all about.
The project scope must provide a clear and refined description of:
· the project goal
· what is to be achieved
· how is it to be achieved
· who will achieve it
· when it will be achieved
· with what resources it will be achieved.
Once these have been determined, they are written down in a document called a scope statement.
Scope planning
Scope planning is the greater part of scope management. Scope planning develops the key document that controls the future of the project.
The scope document then developed includes the project charter and the following key sections:
· A scope statement that clearly identifies the project goal, objectives, and deliverables.
· Constraints. These are normally limiting factors that prevent the project from moving in a particular path.
· Assumptions. These are aspects that the project manager builds into the scope document to allow for any of the uncertainties that may occur.
· A list of tasks and deliverables that have to be achieved during the project.
· Initial estimates which relate to cost, time and human resource requirements.
· A contract statement, which includes the names of people authorised to initiate contract work, sign contracts and completion acceptances.
The details from the scope document will later help develop the project plan that describes all of the activities, resources and schedules required to meet the project goal and objectives. You will continually revisit the scope document during the project life cycle, to check if the project is meeting its objectives and to constantly verify that activities are within the scope of the project.
Scope definition, verification and change control
Scope is defined by breaking down of major project deliverables into many smaller, more manageable tasks, in a work breakdown structure (WBS)
Scope verification requires the formal acceptance of the project, when project manager gets agreement and sign-off from the key stakeholders for the project deliverables.
Scope change control is the formal controlling of any changes that occur to the scope of the project. Here we make sure that all of the changes are agreed to by stakeholders, and are documented and any corrective action that is necessary is taken.
Scope planning and the parts of the scope document are explained in more detail in the Learning Pack: Plan for a simple IT project.
Cost management
Just as budgets determine scope, cost management is one of the more critical areas of project management. Cost management is making sure the project is completed within the approved budget.
An important part of cost management is being sure that the scope document is as accurate as possible so that budget estimates are realistic. Work cost money. An accurate scope document also helps to make sure that the only work done on the project is within the scope.
It is the project manager’s role to constantly satisfy the needs of the stakeholders while continuously trying to keep costs down and under control.
Cost management processes, outlined below, include:
· resource planning
· cost estimating
· cost budgeting
· and cost control
Resource planning
The project manager must determine and list in detail of exactly what resources are required and in what quantities, to complete all of the project activities. Resources can include people, machinery, facilities, and materials. To make sure that this list is as accurate as possible it is important that resource estimates are made by people with experience and expertise in similar projects and in the use of the resources being estimated.
Cost estimating
Once resources are listed and detailed, the cost of each resource is approximated. A detailed list of cost estimates would then by accompanied by a cost management plan. A project manager must take cost estimates seriously to complete projects within budget.
Cost budgeting
Budgeting involves allocating the overall cost estimate to the individual work items to establish a baseline for measuring and tracking performance. The work breakdown structure (WBS), and the project schedule are both used to do this. The result is a cost baseline that is used to track expenditure throughout the project. The cost baseline accurately maps out the expected costs against activities and resources and allows for regular measurement and reviews.
Cost control
Cost control involves controlling changes to the project budget by means of revised cost estimates, budget updates, corrective actions and completion estimates. Expenditure is constantly monitored against the cost baseline produced in budgeting. Cost estimates can be revised and the cost baseline modified—but only under strict change control.
Time management
Time management for timely completion of a project is not an easy thing to accomplish, with so many aspects to it, yet especially for projects that affect business operations and even profit; it is also a critical area.
The main processes of time management can be broken down into:
· activity definition
· activity sequencing, including the use of network diagrams
· activity duration estimates
· schedule planning and control.
Defining and sequencing activities
Activity definition involves identifying all of the specific activities or tasks for the project. A task is an element of work that is contained in the work breakdown structure found in the scope document that was developed at part of scope management.
Each task has:
· an expected duration
· an estimated cost
· resource requirements.
Activity definition usually results in a very detailed work breakdown structure from which the project team has a complete understanding of the work that is required to achieve the project deliverables.
Activity sequencing
Activity sequencing involves identifying and documenting relationships between project activities. These relationships are also known as dependencies. Dependencies can be of three types:
· mandatory, such as software testing that cannot occur until software is written
· discretionary, for example if the project manager decides that ordering of certain resources will not be done until funds are made available
· external, such as in the installation of a new computer system that may depend on the delivery of software from a vendor.
Once you have determined all of the task dependencies, the sequencing of the tasks can be done with something as simple as a list for small projects. However as the projects get larger the preferred method of showing the activity sequence is to use a network diagram.
Network diagrams
A network diagram is a schematic display of the logical relationships between tasks as shown in the simple example in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Example of a precedence diagram method (PDM) network diagram
There are several types of network diagrams, but those most commonly used are the PDM (as above) and the arrow diagram method (ADM).
Figure 2: An example of an ADM network diagram
It is outside of the scope of this topic to discuss these methods in detail, but basically, they are read from left to right and follow the same rules:
· all predecessors must be to the left of their successor tasks
· there are no loops or backward flow sequences
· all nodes except ‘start project’ and ‘end project’ have at least one predecessor and one successor node and therefore there are no ‘orphan’ nodes
· a path is a sequence of tasks from the start to the finish
· each network may have several paths from start to finish.
The critical path is the sequence of tasks that forms the longest duration of the project, based on the task work estimates. A delay in any of the tasks and all tasks that are on this path affect the final completion date.
Estimating activity duration
After the sequence of tasks is set, the next thing is to estimate the duration of the activities. The duration is the actual time that is needed to do the work of a task plus the elapsed time of the activity. For example it may take two days or 14 hours of work to install a new server, but the duration of the activity may be four days because the assigned person may only do 3.5 hours a day on the task. The activity may also take longer because of public holidays and weekends.
To complete the duration estimates you need to know:
· the detailed activity list
· the sequence of the activities
· the availability of resources
· the skill levels of the personnel
· any constraints and assumptions that have been made
· any historical information from previous projects.
The results then are:
· a detailed list of activity durations
· a document describing the background of the estimates
· updates to the work breakdown structure.
Schedule planning and control
Now we can put together the schedule using the outputs of all the previous time management activities. The desired result is to have a realistic project schedule that will provide a baseline for monitoring and measuring the project performance.
Tools available to help with this process are discussed briefly below and in more detail in a later topic.
Gantt charts
Gantt charts are the most common means for displaying project schedule information. Gantt charts use a list of tasks. Activities are represented as a series of horizontal bars under a calendar scale. Figure 3 is an example.
Figure 3: An example of a Gantt chart
Critical path and PERT analysis
Critical path analysis is a technique for calculating the duration of the project by analysing and calculating the duration of the longest path, the critical path, through the project.
PERT analysis is a technique that is used when there is a high degree of uncertainty about the individual activity duration estimates. PERT calculates the critical path method but uses a statistically weighted average duration estimates.
Schedule control
There are many reasons to amend of change a project schedule and many issues arise from doing so. This is why a realistic project schedule is important to successful project management. Strong leadership is important to make sure that project schedules are met.
There is constant pressure to shorten schedules and delivery dates, so you will need to have strong negotiation skills to maintain control of the project timetable.
The importance of correctly negotiated and realistic milestones in the scope document will be the measuring tool for any rescheduling requests. Requests for changes in the schedule should go through a change management process, be assessed for relevance and impact, and then approved by a properly implemented change control group.
Quality management
Quality control is the means of consistently meeting the negotiated expectations of stakeholders in a project. It is something that every organisation strives to achieve to give it a competitive edge in industry. Quality objectives are often expressed in a policy document that reflects the standards the organisation wishes to achieve and the responsibilities associated in meeting those objectives. Project management needs to follow organisational policy in this regard.
Quality management is perhaps the most difficult area of expertise in project management to define. It helps to remember that the customer ultimately decides if quality is acceptable, the basis for quality exist in the original intentions of the project. Quality control is otherwise a continuous process of evaluation and improvement.
Project quality management has three main processes.
· Quality planning includes identifying which quality standards are required and how to measure and satisfy them.
· Quality assurance involves the regular evaluation of overall project performance against the relevant quality standards. This process also requires senior management to take the lead in accepting responsibility for quality during the project.
· Quality control involves monitoring specific project deliverables to ensure that they meet the relevant standards and identifying ways to improve overall quality.