Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stanley Portny, PMP, president of Stanley E. Portny and Associates, LLC, is an internationally recognized expert in project management and project leadership. During the past 28 years, he has provided training and consultation to more than 100 public and private organizations in the fields of finance, consumer products, insurance, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, information technology, defense, and health care. He has developed and conducted training programs for over 25,000 management and staff personnel in engineering, sales and marketing, research and development, information systems, manufacturing, operations, and support areas.

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You can get there

Where do you want to go? You might already be working in the business world and may be looking to expand your skills. You might be setting out on a new career path. Or, you might want to learn more about exciting opportunities in project management.

Wherever you want to go, Wiley Pathways Project Management will help you get there. Easy-to-read, practical, and up-to-date, this text not only helps you learn fundamental project management concepts; it also helps you master the core competencies and skills you need to succeed in the classroom and in the real world. The book’s brief, modular format and variety of built-in learning resources enable you to learn at your own pace and focus your studies.

With this book, you will be able to:

• Identify common types of projects and the various roles within them.
• Identify a project’s needs and use the Statement of Work to focus your project.
• Choose and use the right project management software for your project.
• Organize your project and establish a realistic schedule.
• Use tools such as a Work Breakdown Structure and Linear Responsibility Chart to plan your project.
• Budget a project and allocate human resources, materials, and equipment optimally.
• Become adept at juggling limited resources among multiple projects.
• Become an effective team leader.
• Track your project and ensure that it’s on-time and on-budget.
• Lead productive meetings and generate useful reports to communicate and document your project's progress.
• Terminate and evaluate your project in a positive manner.

Wiley Pathwayshelps you achieve your goals

When it comes to learning about business, not every student is on the same path, but every student wants to succeed. The business series in the new Wiley Pathways imprint helps you achieve your goals. The books in this series—Marketing, Business Communication, Finance, Business Math, Real Estate, Small Business Management, Supervision, Project Management, Selling, and Personal Finance—offer a coordinated curriculum for learning business. Learn more at www.wiley.com/go/pathways.

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Pathways Project Management

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Starting Point

Go to www.wiley.com/college/portny to assess your knowledge of the basics of project management.

Determine where you need to concentrate your effort.

What You'll Learn in This Chapter

* The range of projects in today's workplace

* Three essential elements of any project

* The contrasts between project management and general management

* The responsibilities of project managers

* Roles of key people associated with projects

* The challenges of project management

* Four types of projects based on product and process change

* On-site and off-site project management

After Studying This Chapter, You'll Be Able To

* Understand the foundational knowledge of project roles, responsibilities, types, and terms in order to manage projects

* Differentiate among the roles of project managers, functional managers, functional employees, upper management, and project champions

* Propose solutions to common project management challenges

* Compare projects based on product and process change they involve

INTRODUCTION

Dynamic companies organize their employees and resources around projects, which are managed by project managers. Project managers' careful balancing of outcomes, schedules, and resources often determines whether a project is a success. Although project management is considerably different from general management, typical roles and responsibilities exist for the people involved in projects. The challenges of project management-most notably the high expectations from upper management combined with little or no hierarchical authority-are intense, but savvy, thoughtful project managers can impact the entire direction of an organization. Projects fall into four general categories, regardless of industry. Thanks to technology, project managers can manage people and resources anywhere in the world.

1.1 Understanding Project Management

Successful organizations create projects that produce desired results in established timeframes with assigned resources. As a result, businesses are increasingly driven to find individuals who can excel in this project-oriented environment.

People wanting to move ahead in their careers appear to be getting the message. Growing numbers of people at all levels in organizations are looking for ways to get a better handle on their projects. A Fortune magazine article recently identified "project manager" as the number-one career option. What the article didn't say is that the majority of people who are becoming project managers aren't doing so by choice. Instead, project management is often an unexpected but required progression in their chosen career paths.

Successful project managers need targeted skills and techniques so they can steer projects to successful completion.

1.1.1 Defining Projects

A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. It is specific, timely, usually multidisciplinary, and always conflict ridden. Projects also vary greatly.

* Projects may be large or small. Installing a new subway system, which may cost more than $1 billion and take 10 to 15 years to complete, is a project, and so is preparing a report of monthly sales figures, which may take one day to complete.

* Projects may involve many persons or just one. Training all 10,000 members of an organization's staff in a new affirmative-action policy is a project, as is rearranging the furniture and equipment in an office.

* Projects may be planned formally or informally. Many projects are included in an organization's annual plan and require formal approval of all work to be performed, all personnel assignments, and all resource expenditures. Others projects are assigned to workers in the course of a conversation, with no mention of budget or additional staff.

* Projects may be tracked formally or informally. For some projects, all hours spent are faithfully recorded on time sheets and all dollars expended are separately identified in the organization's financial system. For others, no record of hours spent is ever kept and expenditures are just considered as part of the organization's operating budget.

* Projects may be performed for external or internal clients and customers. Repairing a piece of equipment that your company sold to a customer is a project. Writing an article for your organization's internal newsletter is also a project.

* Projects may be defined by a legal contract or an informal agreement. A signed contract between a builder and a customer to construct a house defines a project; a promise made to install a new software package on a colleague's computer similarly defines a project.

In the workplace, the following two terms are often confused with a project:

1. A process is a series of steps by which a particular job function is routinely performed. A company's annual budgeting process or the procedure a manager goes through to procure new office equipment are examples of processes. A process is not a one-time activity that achieves a specific result; instead, a process defines how a particular job is to be done every time it's done. Processes, such as the activities performed to buy needed materials, are often included as parts of projects.

2. A program is work performed towards achieving a long-range goal. A health-awareness program and an employee-morale program are examples. A program never completely achieves its goal (for example, the public will never be totally aware of all health issues). Instead, one or more projects may be performed to accomplish specific results that are related to the program's goal (such as conducting a workshop on how to minimize the risk of heart disease). In this case, a program is comprised of a series of projects.

1.1.2 Defining Project Management

Project management is the process of guiding a project from its beginning through its performance to its closure. Project management includes the following three basic operations, or activities:

1. Planning includes specifying results to be achieved, determining schedules, and estimating resources required. Chapter 4 deals with project planning in detail.

2. Organizing includes defining people's roles and responsibilities. See Sections 1.4 and 4.2.

3. Controlling includes reconfirming people's expected performance, monitoring actions and results, addressing problems encountered, and sharing information with interested people. The chapters in Part IV deal with these responsibilities.

1.1.3 Why Projects and Project Management?

The reason that more organizations and businesses are organizing their operations around projects and assigning project managers to specific goals is simple. Projects attach the responsibility and authority for achieving an organizational goal on an individual or small group when the job does not clearly fall within the definition of routine work.

1.2 Defining Project Success

No matter the specific characteristics of a project, the same three core elements are essential.

1. Outcome: a project has at least one goal (and often several goals) of creating a specific product (a new car) or result (10 percent reduction in the number of negative customer service surveys).

2. Schedule: project work begins and ends on specific, established dates.

3. Resources: projects require amounts of people, funds, equipment, facilities, and information.

Figure 1-1 illustrates that each of the three core elements affects the other two. Expanding desired outcomes may require more time (a later end date, for example) or more resources (additional staff). Moving up the end date may necessitate paring down the results to be accomplished or increasing project expenditures (exceeding the established budgets) by paying overtime to project staff.

The performance of the project-and the effectiveness of the project manager-is measured by the degree to which these goals are achieved. Specifically,

* Outcome: does the project meet the agreed-upon specifications to the satisfaction of the customer?

* Schedule: is the project on time or early?

* Resources: is the project within or under budget?

Acting in response to the three essentials, a project team works to achieve the desired results. The type of information a project manager needs to plan and manage a project is the same, although the ease and the time required to develop it may differ. The more thoroughly a project manager plans and manages a project, the more likely the project will be deemed a success.

When project information is determined accurately and completely and shared effectively, project managers dramatically increase their chances of project success. When pieces of this information are vague, missing, or not shared effectively, the chances of success are reduced.

1.2.1 Meeting Specifications

A client sets the expectations of a project's outcomes; this makes each project unique. The success of outcome-related goals-meeting specifications-is set primarily by the customer or client. For the purposes of this book, the client can be someone or some organization outside the company performing the project or someone or some organization within the company performing the project.

Some management theorists insist that quality is a separate and distinct goal of the project along with time, cost, and specifications. However, this book considers quality an inherent part of the project specifications, not separable from them.

1.2.2 Factoring in Uncertainty

If this were a predictable world, no project would ever go awry. Managing projects would be relatively simple, requiring only careful planning. However, this is an uncertain world, filled with chance events and uncertainty. The best-made plans often go awry. Uncertainty ensures that projects travel a rough road.

All projects are carried out under conditions of uncertainty. Well-tested software routines may not perform properly when integrated with other well-tested routines. A chemical compound may destroy cancer cells in a test tube-and even in the bodies of test animals-but may kill the host as well as the cancer. As a result, project managers spend a great deal of time adapting to unpredicted change.

1.3 Comparing Project Management and General Management

Project management differs from general management largely because projects differ from "nonprojects." For example:

* Each project is unique. Project managers must be creative and flexible, and have the ability to adjust rapidly to changes. When managing nonprojects, the general manager tries to "manage by exception." In other words, for nonprojects, almost everything is routine and is handled routinely by subordinates. The manager deals only with the exceptions. For the project manager, almost everything is an exception.

* Projects have a higher potential for conflict than nonprojects. Project managers must have special skills in conflict resolution.

* Project success is absolutely dependent on detailed planning. The project plan is the immediate source of the project's budget, schedule, control, and evaluation. Detailed planning is critically important. Project planning is discussed in Section 4.1.

* Project budgets and schedules are constructed differently from standard, nonproject budgets and schedules. Budgets for nonprojects are primarily modifications of budgets for the same activity in the previous quarter or year. By contrast, project budgets are newly created for each project and often cover several periods in the future. A project budget is derived directly from the project plan that calls for specific activities. These activities require resources, and such resources are the heart of the project budget. Similarly, the project schedule is also derived from the project plan.

* Projects are accomplished in unique ways. In a nonproject manufacturing line, for example, the sequence in which various things are done is set when the production line is designed. The sequence of activities usually is not altered when new models are produced. On the other hand, each project has a schedule of its own. Previous projects with deliverables similar to the one at hand may provide a rough template for the current project, but its schedule is set by the project's unique plan and by the date on which the project is due for delivery to the client.

* Projects are often multidisciplinary. The routine work of most organizations takes place within a well-defined structure of divisions, departments, sections, and similar subdivisions. The typical project cannot thrive under such restrictions. Most projects need technical knowledge, information, and special skills from various departments to be successful. Section 4.6 discusses the multidisciplinary nature of projects.

* Projects often don't fit into traditional managerial hierarchy. A reasonably well-defined managerial hierarchy still exists in general management; subordinates report to superiors and the lines of authority are clear. In project management, this is rarely the case. The project manager may be relatively low in the hierarchical chain of command and still have a high level of responsibility for completing a project successfully. Responsibility without the authority of rank or position is so common in project management that it is the rule, not the exception.

1.4 Defining Project Roles

Various individuals and groups are often involved in a single project. The following people typically play critical roles in a project's success:

* Project manager: the person ultimately responsible for the successful completion of the project.

* Functional managers: the team members' direct-line supervisors.

* Functional employees or project team members: people responsible for successfully performing individual project activities.

* Upper management: people in charge of the organization's major business units.

1.4.1 Considering the Project Manager's Role

Project managers are responsible for all aspects of the project. This doesn't mean they have to do everything themselves, but it does mean that project managers must see that everything gets done satisfactorily.

Project managers are specifically responsible for the following:

* Describing objectives, schedule, and resource budgets.

* Ensuring a clear, feasible project plan for how everyone will reach performance targets.

* Creating and sustaining a focused and committed team.

* Selecting or creating a team's operating practices and procedures.

* Managing the accomplishment of objectives, within time and budget targets.

* Monitoring performance against plans and dealing with any problems that arise.

* Resolving priority, work approach, or interpersonal conflicts.

* Controlling project changes.

* Reporting on project activities.

* Keeping clients informed and committed.

* Contributing to team members' performance appraisals.

Some companies use the terms project director or project leader, rather than project manager. Check with the expectations of the specific organization, but usually project manager and project director describe the same position. Project leaders, however, often do not have traditional management responsibilities (budgeting, employee evaluations, and so on) but are responsible for stimulating a shared vision and creating positive interpersonal relationships. But again, check with the specific organization for its expectation of project leaders-this may be its term for project manager.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Pathways Project Managementby Samuel E. Portny Samuel J. Mantel Jr. Jack R. Meredith Scott M. Shafer Margaret M. Sutton Brian E. Kramer Copyright © 2007 by Samuel E. Portny. Excerpted by permission.
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