Chapter 15 - Project management Flashcards
Define project
An undertaking that has a beginning and an end and is carried out to meet established goals
What are the differences between projects and operations?
- Operations are ongoing, projects have a defined beginning and end
- Operations have resources used full time, projects have resources allocated specifically
- Operations usually follow functional structure, projects cut across functional lines
Define project management
Combination of systems, techniques and people used to control and monitor activities undertaken within the project
Projects are considered successful if they meet three specified objectives. What are they?
- Scope - the work that needs to be done
- Time - agreed date
- Cost - authorised spend
What are the challenges faced in projects?
- Teambuilding
- Expected problems - to be avoided by careful design
- Unexpected problems - mechanisms should be in place to enable these to be resolved quickly
- Delayed benefit - no benefit until work is finished, can cause strain
- Potential for conflict - several parties with different interests
What is an effective way to assess projects?
SAF
What are the pre-initiating tasks?
- Determination of objectives and constraints
- Selecting project manager
- Identifying project sponsor
What does the project manager do?
Takes responsibility for ensuring the desired result is achieved on time and within budget
What are the responsibilities of the project manager?
- Ensure resources used efficiently
- Keep management informed with timely communications
- Behave ethically
- Help new members integrate into team
What are the duties of the project manager?
- Detailed planning - budgeting, activity scheduling
- Obtain necessary resources
- Team building
- Communication
- Monitoring and control - against plan, take corrective measures
- Problem resolution
What does the project sponsor do?
Provides and is accountable for the resources invested into the project and is responsible for the achievement of the project’s objectives
What does the project owner do?
Review project plans and progress at regular intervals - hired if sponsor does not have capacity to provide supervision for the project manager
Define a business case
A key document for a project proposing a course of action to senior management for their consideration - it accounts why project is needed, what it will achieve and how it will proceed
What will a business case include?
- Description of current issues
- Analysis of costs and benefits including assumptions
- Impact of project on organisation
- Key risks and their significance
- Recommendations
What does the project initiation document (project charter) do?
Complements business case - gives authorisation for work to be done and resources used
What will a project initiation document include?
- Project title
- Purpose and objectives
- Start date and expected finish date
- Details of sponsor
- Authorisation by main stakeholders
- Budget info
- Scope
What are the categories that benefits can be classified into?
- Observable - measured by experience or judgement e.g. staff morale
- Measurable - area of performance that can be measured but not possible to quantify how much performance will increase as a result of change
- Quantifiable - level of benefit can be reliably forecast
- Financial - quantified benefits that have had a financial formula applied
What costs should be included as part of the project cost assessment?
- Purchase costs - hardware, software, consultancy, materials
- Internal systems development costs
- Infrastructure costs
- Costs of carrying out changes e.g. training, redundancy
- Ongoing costs - new ways of working
What techniques can be used for investment appraisal?
- ARR - average profits generated as % of average investment
- Payback period
- NPV - sum of discounted value of net cash flows
- IRR - discount rate that will produce NPV of 0
Define work breakdown structure
Analysis of the work required to complete project broken down into manageable components
Define project budget
Amount of resources allocated to a project
What does a Gantt chart show?
The deployment of resources over time
What does critical path analysis (network analysis) do?
Ensures progress of a project is completed in minimum amount of time
What does a resource histogram show?
A view of project data in which resource requirements, usage and availability are shown against a time scale
Define a gateway
A project review point at which certain criteria must be met before the project can pass through the gateway and proceed to the next stage
What do gateways prevent?
Scope creep
Define scope creep
When the scope of the project becomes expanded without proper consideration
Define slippage
When a project is running behind schedule
What can be done when project slippage occurs?
- Do nothing
- Add resources
- Work smarter
- Replan - assumptions of original plan invalid
- Reschedule - change phase of deliverables
- Incentives
Define fast-tracking
Taking activities normally done in sequence and doing them in parallel instead
Define crashing
Assigning additional resources to critical path
What should be considered when considering a change in project?
- Consequences of not implementing
- Impact of change on time, cost, scope
- Expected costs and benefits
- Risks
What could cause changes to original project plan?
- New technology
- Change in personnel
- Change in environment
- New legislation e.g. data protection
How should risks be responded to?
TARA
Define the completion report
Summarises the results of the project and includes client sign-off. Includes:
- Outcomes compared with objectives
- Final cost compared to budget
- Time taken to complete work compared to schedule
Define the post-project review
Formal review of the project that examines the lessons learned and used to benefit future projects
- Was project achieved on time and within budget?
- Was management successful or were there bottlenecks/problems?
Define post-implementation review
Assessment of the completed working solution. Focuses on the output.
What is the purpose of the post-implementation review?
- Determine how well project met objectives
- Improve working solution
- Identify lessons that can be learned and fed back into output production process
