Section 1 - Project Fundamentals Flashcards
What is a project?
A unique, transient endeavour undertaken to bring about change and to achieve planned objectives
What is the difference between a project and BAU activity?
Projects are NOT repetitive nor static.
Key Characteristics of projects
- In order to derive benefit, the project will be required to produce a set of products/deliverables
- Projects are transient and there is finite time for everything to be delivered
- They are of varying sizes and risk levels
- They operate within a pre-determined and planned project budget
- Projects are unique and only occur once
Success Criteria Definition
The satisfaction of stakeholder needs for the deployment of a project. This is a different performance measure to benefits which are focused on the strategic intent and delivering beneficial change
What are the 3 key criteria?
Time, Cost & Quality
What is Scope?
It covers everything that the project will produce and all the work involved to produce it.
When is the success criteria developed?
This is done after it has been agreed and documented in the business case and PMP
BAU
An organisation’s normal day-to-day operations. Also referred to as ‘steady state’.
Features of Projects
- Seek to introduce change
- Limited by time. The timescale is decided based on the business needs
- Teams work with unique bespoke plans & risks
- Produce specific, one-off deliverables
- Have a discrete number of steps called a ‘project lifecycle’
- Seek step change & transformation
- Require a specific authorised business case
BAU - Characteristics
- Seek to maintain a stable platform for efficient production
- Repetitive and continues indefinitely
- Highly procedural working practices to enable complex operations to be delivered in a consistent way
- Produce specific deliverables but repeatedly and in similar timescales
- Products go through a lifecycle from build, through operations to disposal, called a product lifecycle
- BAU seeks continuity, consistency and slow incremental improvement
- Normally funded through operational budgets rather than capital
Life Cycle
A framework comprising a set of distinct high-level stages required to transform an idea or concept into reality in an orderly and efficient manner. It offers a systematic and organised way to undertake project-based work and can be viewed as the structure underpinning deployment.
It can be viewed as describing the project journey and the processes working throughout that life cycle.
Linear Project Life Cycle
- Allows to consider a managed and evolutionary progression through the phases of a project
- The length of each phase can vary considerably between different projects
- Useful for sequentially structured projects with clearly defined outputs. APM defines these as stable, low-risk projects with greater structure.
- The expectations of each phase are known
- It provides a clear framework which allows for early definition of requirements and maximum control and governance.
- Controls and information can easily be passed on to the next phase subject to milestones being reached and accomplished
The 4 phases of the linear project life cycle
- Concept Phase
- Definition Phase
- Deployment Phase
- Transition Phase
Concept Phase
- Encompasses everything up to and including the production of the business case
- Includes the feasibility and optioneering to arrive at the chosen single solution for deployment into the project
- Overseen by the sponsor and the PM may well be appointed to develop the business case. The business case sets the baseline for the project.
Definition Phase
- This includes the production of the PMP and all its component plans such as the risk management/quality plan etc.
- Culminates in the approval to proceed to deployment
- The primary output is the PMP. This documents the entirety of the project and what it will produce
- The plan will undergo changes throughout the project in line with changing circumstances and may or may not have an impact on the business case
Deployment Phase
- Covers the construction of the various components that comprise the end product of the project
- There may be many sub-phases (separated by a stage review) to allow for proper evaluation of progress
- The results are the primary outputs of the project
Transition Phase
This is the process of commissioning the products and the migration of them to practical use in BAU operations. It encompasses the administrative closure of the project including things such as the final accounts, final drawings, agreement from the sponsor that the project has finished etc.
Benefits of structuring projects in phases
- Gives us an understanding of which resources may be required and when. This helps to plan the necessary levels of resource requirements
- Provides a high-level initial breakdown so that the detailed planning can be carried out in each phase prior to moving to the next
- Provides an indication of when the key project reviews can take place. This ensures that the relevant authorities are in place and co-ordinated to proceed
- Ensures proper attention is given to the early stages by demanding that the project goes through a number of phasegates
- Enables us to link progress directly to these and recognise the completion of a phase which will in turn give greater confidence to the stakeholders
- Provides clear identification of priorities
- Achieves early understanding of requirements through spending adequate time developing the initial idea or detailed plan
- Delivers more effective stakeholder communication and regular project reviews
- Achieves maximum transparency by assessment of achievements against requirements at end of phase (pre-defined milestones)
- Allows for maximum control and governance over the project
Iterative life cycle
- Doesn’t allow for pre-determined flow unlike linear
- Assumes that there is always going to be change
- Allows for evolution as more becomes known
- It is important that the assumption isn’t made that there is no need to plan and that everything can change indefinitely
- Best for projects with evolving objectives or where the project scope is vague
- More frequent reviews of progress and decision making. If all goes well, has the potential to deliver benefits earlier than may otherwise be the case. This is due to products being streamed out in an incremental way, each building on the previous one.
- Allows to consider more dynamic and evolutionary progress.
Hybrid life cycle
- A mixture of linear and iterative
- Offers adaptability within a more structured approach
- Project team are able to choose the best of both to best suit the project
When should each life cycle be used?
Linear - When the scope is fixed. Allows to work through the different phases with a clear idea of what the outcome is
Iterative - Suitable for projects that don’t have a fixed scope. There will be fixed resources and budget along with a fixed timeline. There will also be the opportunity to flex the scope to suit these factors
Hybrid - Suitable for projects that are governed by a linear process but might contain an iterative element such as design or process that needs to be worked out
