Introduction to PM

1. Introduction of Project Management
Dr. Huy Nguyen

2. PMI & PMP
• Project Management Institute (PMI) provides global leadership in the
development of standards for the practice of the project management
profession throughout the world. PMI is established in 1969 and located in
US.
• Project Management Professional (PMP) credential recognizes demonstrated
knowledge and skills in leading and directing project teams and in delivering
project results within the constraints of schedule, budget and resources.
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3. References for PMP Study
• This course is using following resources as references:
– A Guide to The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide),
6th edition, © 2017 PMI;
– PMP Exam Prep, Rita’s course in a book for passing PMP Exam,
8th edition, © 2013 Rita Mulcahy, PMP;
– Additional references:
• Project Management - Case Studies, 2nd edition, Harold Kerzner, 2006, John
Wiley & Sons;
• Project Management - The Managerial Process, 5th edition, Erik Larson,
Clifford Gray, 2011, McGraw-Hill.
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4. PMBOK Guide
• Project management is considered as a profession that applying knowledge,
processes, skills, tools, and techniques can have a significant impact on
project success.
• PMBOK Guide is a standard and formal document that describes established
norms, methods, processes and practices, including:
– Guidelines for managing individual projects;
– Good practices which are applicable to most projects most of the time;
– A common vocabulary within project management profession;
– A foundational project management reference.
• PMBOK Guide is a globally recognized standard for managing projects in
today's marketplace.
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5. PMBOK Guide
• PMI is committed to the continuous improvement and expansion of the
PMBOK Guide, as well as the development of additional standards. This
standard gets an update roughly every four years.
• Project management has evolved significantly since PMI published the
PMBOK Guide – Fifth Edition in 2013. PMBOK Guide is accredited by the
American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and must be updated every four
to five years. PMI continually learns more about what drives successful project
outcomes through its research… and PMI wants to share those drivers with
the project management community.
• PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct about the basic obligation of
responsibility, respect, fairness, and honesty is also required for PMP
certification.
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6. Importance of Project Management
• Effective project management helps individuals, groups, and public and private
organizations to:
– Meet business objectives;
– Satisfy stakeholder expectations;
– Be more predictable;
– Increase chances of success;
– Deliver the right products at the right time;
– Resolve problems and issues;
– Respond to risks in a timely manner;
– Optimize the use of organizational resources;
– Identify, recover, or terminate failing projects;
– Manage constraints (e.g., scope, quality, schedule, costs, resources);
– Balance the influence of constraints on the project (e.g., increased scope
may increase cost or schedule); and
– Manage change in a better manner.
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7. Importance of Project Management
• Effective project management enables organizations in their strategic
competency to:
– Tie project results to business goals;
– Compete more effectively in their markets;
– Sustain the organization, and
– Respond to the impact of business environment changes on projects by
appropriately adjusting project management plans.
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8. What is Project?
• A project is a temporary endeavor progressively elaborated and undertaken to
create a unique purpose (product, service, or result):
– Temporary indicates a definite beginning and end;
– Repetitive elements may be present in a project but it has fundamental
uniqueness;
– Distinguishing characteristics of each unique project will be progressively
detailed as the project is better understood;
– Progressive elaboration is continuously improving and detailing a plan as
more detailed and specific information and more accurate estimates
become available as the project progresses, and thereby producing more
accurate and complete plans that result from the successive iterations of
the planning process.
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9. Project Attributes
• Has a new or unique purpose;
• Is temporary, with a defined life span;
• Is developed using progressive elaboration;
• Has a cross organizational participation;
• Requires resources (time, cost), often from various areas;
• Has a target outcome with specific performance requirements;
• Should have a primary customer or sponsor;
• Involves uncertainty.
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10. Projects vs. Operational Works
Projects:
• To attain its objectives and terminate;
• Create own character, organization,
and goals;
• Catalyst for change;
• Unique product or services;
• Heterogeneous teams;
• Start and end date.
Operational works:
• To sustain the business;
• Semi permanent charter,
organization, and goals;
• Maintain status quo;
• Standard product or services;
• Homogeneous teams;
• Ongoing.
Examples:
• Producing a news letter;
• Writing and publishing a book;
• Implementing a LAN;
• Hiring a sales man;
• Arrange for a conference;
• Opening for a new shop;
• Producing the annual report.
Examples:
• Responding to customers requests;
• Writing a letter to a prospect;
• Hooking up a printer to a computer;
• Meeting with an employee;
• Attending a conference;
• Opening the shop;
• Writing a progress update memo.
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11. Projects Drive Change
• The successful completion of a project results in the organization moving to the
future state and achieving the specific objective.
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12. Project Initiation Context
• Organizational leaders initiate
projects in response to factors
acting upon their organizations.
These factors are illustrated as
the context of a project:
– Meet regulatory, legal, or social
requirements;
– Satisfy stakeholder requests or
needs;
– Implement or change business
or technological strategies; and
– Create, improve, or fix
products, processes, or
services.
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13. Project Constraints
• Every project is constrained in different ways by its:
– Time vs. cost vs. scope;
– Schedule vs. resources vs. quality.
• If any one factor changes, at least one other factor is likely to be affected.
• It is the project manager’s duty to balance these competing constraints.
SCOPE / QUALITY
Triple Constraints
or
Trade-off Triangle
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14. Project Success
• There are different ways to define project success:
– The project met scope, time, and cost goals;
– The project satisfied the customer / sponsor;
– The project produced the desired results;
 Different definitions of “quality”.
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15. What is Project Management?
• Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and
technique to project activities to meet project requirements.
• Project management is accomplished through the appropriate application and
integration of 49 processes which are grouped in 5 process groups:
1. Initiating;
2. Planning;
3. Executing or Implementing;
4. Monitoring and Controlling;
5. Closing.
• Due to the nature of change, managing project is iterative and goes through
progressive elaboration throughout the project’s lifecycle.
• Each process group or step has its own inputs, series of activities and outputs.
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16. Project Life Cycle and Project Management
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17. Managing Project and Project Manager
• Project manager is the person responsible for accomplishing the project
objectives.
• Managing a project includes:
– Identifying requirements;
– Addressing the various needs, concerns, and expectations of the
stakeholders in planning and executing the project;
– Setting up, maintaining, and carrying out communications among
stakeholders that are active, effective, and collaborative in nature;
– Managing stakeholders towards meeting project requirements and
creating project deliverables;
– Balancing the competing demands of quality, risk, scope, time and cost.
• Advantages of using formal project management framework:
– Better control of financial, physical and human resources, lower costs,
shorter development times, higher quality and increased reliability;
– Improved customer relations, better internal coordination, improved
productivity, higher profit margins, higher worker morale (less stress).
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18. Functions of Project Management
• Define scope of project;
• Identify stakeholders, decision makers, and escalation procedures;
• Develop initial project management flowchart;
• Develop detailed task list (work breakdown structure, organization breakdown structure);
• Evaluate project requirements;
• Identify required resources and budget;
• Secure needed resources;
• Estimate time requirements;
• Identify interdependencies;
• Identify and track critical milestones;
• Identify and evaluate risks;
• Prepare contingency plan;
• Participate in project phase review;
• Manage change control process;
• Report project status.
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19. Project Manager’s Sphere of Influence
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20. Characteristics of Effective Project Managers
• Technical skills:
– Technically competent;
– Technical and strategic visionaries;
– Good in budgeting, scheduling and documenting;
– Good sense of analytics and synthetics of data and information.
• People (socio-cultural) skills:
– Leadership;
– Decisive;
– Stand up to top management when necessary;
– Good motivators;
– Good communicators;
– Support team members;
– Encourage new ideas.
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21. Project Management Framework
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22. Project Management Core Knowledge Areas
• Four core knowledge areas lead to specific project objectives:
– Project scope management involves in ensuring the project includes all the
work required, and only the work required, to complete the project
successfully;
– Project schedule management includes managing the timely completion of
the project;
– Project cost management consists of planning, estimating, budgeting,
financing, funding, managing, and controlling costs so the project can be
completed within the approved budget;
– Project quality management ensures incorporating the organization’s
quality policy regarding planning, managing, and controlling project and
product quality requirements, in order to meet stakeholders’ expectations.
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23. Project Management Facilitating Knowledge Areas
• Five facilitating knowledge areas are the means through which the project objectives
are achieved:
– Project resource management is concerned to identify, acquire, and manage the
resources needed for the successful completion of the project;
– Project communications management involves in ensuring timely and appropriate
planning, collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, management, control,
monitoring, and ultimate disposition of project information;
– Project risk management includes conducting risk management planning,
identification, analysis, response planning, response implementation, and
monitoring risk on a project;
– Project procurement management involves in purchasing or acquiring products,
services, or results needed from outside the project team;
– Project stakeholder management includes identifying the people, groups, or
organizations that could impact or be impacted by the project, analyzing
stakeholder expectations and their impact on the project, and developing
appropriate management strategies for effectively engaging stakeholders in
project decisions and execution.
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24. Project Integration Management
• One knowledge area (project integration management) affects and is affected
by all of the other knowledge areas.
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25. Project Management Tools and Techniques
• Project management tools and techniques assist project managers and their
teams in various aspects of project management.
• Note that a tool or a technique is more than just a software package.
• Specific tools and techniques include:
– Project charters, scope statements, WBS, and OBS (scope);
– Gantt charts, network diagrams, and critical path analyses (time);
– Net present value, cost estimates, and earned value management (cost).
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26. Projects and Strategic Planning
• Projects are means of:
– Achieving organization’s strategic plan;
– Organizing activities that cannot be addressed within the organizations
normal operational limits.
• Projects are typically authorized as a result of one or more of the following
strategic considerations:
– Market demand;
– Organizational need;
– Strategic opportunity / business need;
– Customer request;
– Technological advancement;
– Legal requirements;
– Ecological Impacts;
– Social need.
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27. Relationships Among Project Management, Program
Management and Portfolio Management
• Project management;
• Program management;
• Portfolio management;
• Project management office (PMO).
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Portfolio
Program
Projects & Operation
PMO
Strategies & missions

28. Relationships Among Project Management, Program
Management and Portfolio Management
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29. Programs and Program Management
• A program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to
obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually.
• Program management is the process of managing a group of ongoing,
interdependent, related projects in a coordinated way to achieve strategic
objectives.
• A program manager provides leadership and direction for the project managers
heading the projects within the program.
• Advantages of program management:
– Decreased risk;
– Economies of scale.
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30. Programs and Program Management
• Program management focuses on the project interdependencies and helps to
determine the optimal approach for managing them by:
– Aligning with the organizational or strategic direction that affects program
and project goals and objectives;
– Allocating the program scope into program components;
– Managing interdependencies among the components of the program to best
serve the program;
– Managing program risks that may impact multiple projects in the program;
– Resolving constraints and conflicts that affect multiple projects within the
program;
– Resolving issues between component projects and the program level;
– Managing change requests within a shared governance framework;
– Allocating budgets across multiple projects within the program; and
– Assuring benefits realization from the program and component projects.
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31. Portfolios and Portfolio Management
• A portfolio is a collection of projects or programs and other work that are
grouped together to facilitate effective management of that work to meet
strategic business objectives.
• Portfolio management is centralized selection and management of a portfolio of
projects to ensure that allocation of resources is directed and balanced toward
the strategic focus of the organization.
• A portfolio manager manages or coordinates portfolio, program and project
management staff that may have reporting responsibilities into the aggregate
portfolio.
• Advantages of portfolio management:
– Make wise investment decisions;
– Select and analyze projects from a strategic perspective.
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32. Portfolios and Portfolio Management
• The aim of portfolio management is to:
– Guide organizational investment decisions.
– Select the optimal mix of programs and projects to meet strategic
objectives.
– Provide decision-making transparency.
– Prioritize team and physical resource allocation.
– Increase the likelihood of realizing the desired return on investment.
– Centralize the management of the aggregate risk profile of all components.
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33. Comparative Overview
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34. Subprojects
• Projects are frequently divided into more manageable components or
subprojects.
– Subprojects are often contracted to an external enterprise or to another
functional unit in the performing organization;
– Subprojects can be referred to as projects and managed as such.
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35. Operations and Project Management
• Operations management is concerned with the ongoing production of goods
and/or services. It ensures that business operations continue efficiently by
using the optimal resources needed to meet customer demands.
• Projects can intersect with operations at various points during the product life
cycle:
– When developing a new product, upgrading a product, or expanding
outputs;
– While improving operations or the product development process;
– At the end of the product life cycle; and
– At each closeout phase
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36. PMO
• A department that centralizes the management of projects.
• A PMO usually takes one of three roles:
– Supportive: Provide a consultative role to projects by supplying templates,
best practices, training, access to information and lessons learned from
other projects as a project repository  low control;
– Controlling: Provide support and require compliance through various
means by adopting project management frameworks or methodologies,
using specific templates, forms and tools, or conformance to governance 
moderate control;
– Directive: Take control of the projects by directly managing the projects 
high control.
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37. Primary Function of PMO
• A primary function of PMO is to support project managers in a variety of ways
which may include, but are not limited to:
– Managing shared resources across all the projects administered by the
PMO;
– Identifying and developing project management methodology, practices &
standards;
– Coaching, mentoring , training and oversight;
– Monitoring compliance with project management standard policies,
procedures , and templates via project audits;
– Developing and managing project policies, procedures, templates, and
other shared documentation (organizational process assets); and
– Coordinating communication across projects.
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38. Project Organization
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Organizational
environment
Stakeholders
Performing
organization
Clients - sponsors - suppliers
Project manager
Project team Stakeholders
Stakeholders
Stakeholders

39. Project Expediter and Project Coordinator
• Project managers’ role can be limited by their availability to take on all of
project management activities. So, they can be or need to be supported by
other members of project team:
– Project expediter:
• Acts primarily as a staff assistant;
• As communications coordinator;
• Cannot personally make or enforce decisions.
– Project coordinator:
• Has some power to make decisions;
• Has some authority;
• Reports to a higher-level manager.
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40. Project Stakeholders
• Stakeholders are persons or organizations who are actively involved in the
project or whose interests may positively or negatively affected by the
performance or completion of the project.
• Stakeholders have varying levels of responsibility and authority and can change
over the project lifecycle.
• Project management team must continuously identify both external and internal
stakeholders.
• Project manager must manage the influence of various stakeholders in relation to
the requirements and balance stakeholders’ interest.
• Stakeholders include:
– Project sponsor;
– Project manager;
– Project team;
– Support staff;
– Customers, suppliers;
– Opponents to the project.
Project team
Suppliers Customers
Opponents
Sponsors
Supporters
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41. Project Stakeholders (cont.)
• Some examples of project stakeholders:
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42. Project Influences
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43. Enterprise Environmental Factors
• Refer to both internal & external environmental factors that surround or
influence a project’s success;
• As an input in almost all project management process;
• May enhance or constrain project management options;
• May have positive or negative influence on the outcome.
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Internal External
 Organizational culture, structure, and
governance;
 Geographic distribution of facilities and
resources;
 Infrastructure;
 Information technology software;
 Resource availability;
 Employee capability.
 Marketplace conditions;
 Social and cultural influences and issues;
 Legal restrictions;
 Commercial databases;
 Academic research;
 Government or industry standards;
 Financial considerations;
 Physical environmental elements.

44. Organizational Process Assets
• Processes, Policies & Procedures:
– Organizational standard processes such as standards, policies;
– Standardized guidelines, work instruction, proposal evaluation criteria, and
performance measurement criteria;
– Templates;
– Financial control procedures;
– Organizational communication requirements;
– Procedures for prioritizing, approving, and issuing work authorization, risk control…
• Organizational Knowledge Base:
– Process measurement databases;
– Project files from previous projects;
– Historical information & lesson learned knowledge bases;
– Issue and defect management databases;
– Configuration management knowledge bases;
– Financial databases…
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45. Thank You
Next topic:
Project Life Cycle and Project Management
Organization
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