Sub: Project Management

1. Project-01
Project Management: Introduction
I. Project: Meaning
II. Features of a Project
III. Categories of Project
IV. Project Charter
V. Deliverables in the Project
VI. All Projects Involve Agreements
VII. Project Baselines
VIII. Project and Production
IX. Project and Process
X. Project and Program

2. I. Project: Meaning
A project is a unique venture with specific start and end dates. This is different from an
ongoing task that doesn't have an end date. Projects often involve different parts of an
organization. Constraints on project include cost, schedule, resources, and quality. There
is a give and take between these items i.e. you can't have it all. Usually projects are
divisible into stages or phases each with their own set of priorities and goals.
A project is an important and carefully planned piece of work that is intended to build
or produce something new, or to deal with a problem.
The Project Management Institute, U.S.A. has a good definition for it.
According to the Institute, a project is a one-shot, time-limited, goal-directed, major
undertaking, requiring the commitment of varied skills and resources. It also describes a
project as: a combination of human and non-human resources pooled together in a
temporary organization to achieve a fixed set of objectives
The aforementioned descriptions emphasize that a project does not mean a material body
or form, rather it denotes an operation undertaken temporarily to achieve a goal-directed
objective within a limited time.
In contrast, the Oxford English Dictionary states that a project is "a plan, scheme or table
of something; a tabulated statement; a design or pattern according to which something is
made; something projected or proposed for execution; a proposal."
It is, therefore correct to interpret conceptually that a project can also be a physical
object, that is to say something projected or proposed for execution, such as planned
undertaking, large or small, and for profit or otherwise.
Example:
# Definitely is a Project: Constructing a hotel.
# Might be a Project: Painting a bedroom.
# Definitely is not a Project: Processing employee time data to produce payroll checks.

3. II. Features of a Project
The unique features of a project are:
1. Objective: A project has a fixed set of objectives. Once the objectives have been
achieved, the project ceases to exist.
2. Life span: A project cannot continue endlessly. Projects are temporary set of activities.
Once the goal is achieved, the project is disbanded or configured to begin work on a new
goal.
3. Single entity: A project is one entity and is normally entrusted to one responsibility
center while the participants in the project are many.
4. Team work: A project calls for team work – the team again is constituted of members
belonging to different disciplines, organizations and even countries.
5. Life cycle: A project has a life cycle reflected by growth, maturity, and decay. It has,
naturally, a learning component.
6. Uniqueness: Every project is unique in that it requires doing something different than
was done previously. A project is a one-time activity, never to be exactly repeated again.
7. Successive principle: What is going to happen during the life cycle of a project is not
fully known at any stage. The details get finalised successively with the passage of time.
8. Made to order: A project is always made to the order of its customer.
9. Conflict: Projects are characterized by conflict. Projects compete with functional
departments for resources and personnel.

4. III. Categories of Project
There are four main categories of projects:
1. Individual Projects:
These are short-duration projects normally assigned to a single individual who may be
acting as both a project manager and a functional manager.
2. Staff Projects:
These are projects that can be accomplished by one organizational unit, say a department.
A staff or task force is developed from each section involved. This works best if only one
functional unit is involved.
3. Special Projects:
Very often special projects occur that require certain primary functions and authority to
be assigned temporarily to other individuals or units. This works best for short-duration
projects. Long term projects can lead to severe conflicts under this arrangement.
4. Matrix or Aggregate Projects:
These projects require inputs from a large number of functional units and usually control
vast resources.
Each of these categories of projects can require different responsibilities, job
descriptions, policies, and procedures.

5. IV. The Project Charter
The project charter is the first document that exists in the project. It causes the project to
come into existence.
The project charter names the project and briefly describes it. It names the project
manager and causes a cost account to be opened to capture the cost of the project. Once
these essential things have been done, work on the project can proceed.
The project charter should be written by the project manager, but it must be issued under
the signature of someone above the project manager who has the authority to make
project assignments.
Unless a project charter is written, there is no formal creation of the project, and there is
no formal recognition that the project manager is the project manager for this project.
The early creation of a unique cost account for the project is essential because without it,
the cost of the project in the early stages could be lost or misapplied to other projects or
functions in the company.

6. V. Deliverables in the Project
All projects accomplish something. The "something" that they accomplish can be either a
good or a service and is usually a combination of both. The individual items of goods or
services that are accomplished are called the project deliverables. In other words, the
items that we call the project accomplishments are generally referred to as the project
deliverables.
There are internal and external deliverables.
# The internal deliverables are those that are delivered to the other operating parts of the
project.
# The external deliverables are those that are delivered to some stakeholder outside of the
project team.
# Internal deliverables are the outputs of the project tasks that serve as inputs to other
project tasks.
# The external deliverables serve as inputs to making the stakeholder's deliverables
complete.
The external deliverables must be clearly and completely defined to each of the project
stakeholders, who must understand that the list of deliverables they agree to comprises
the items that will be delivered as a result of the project's completion. They must realize
that they will receive all of these deliverables but that they will not receive any other
deliverables. Making this clear to the stakeholders will go a long way in controlling
changes in the project, especially changes that the stakeholders do not wish to pay for.

7. VI. All Projects Involve Agreements
We know that there is a relationship consisting of a "consuming organization" and a
"delivering organization". The consuming entity is receiving something of value from the
project and, in return, should be paying for the value. If managers are going to be
accountable for performance, they need to be able to judge the costs and benefits of their
projects. In fact, we see more and more companies develop project accounting that allow
them to evaluate the costs and benefits of projects. This exchange-of-value concept
supports an important principle: All projects involve agreements. Good agreements
protect both the consumer and the deliverer of project services.
Organizations that perform projects consistently will always have some formal
agreements in place. These agreements – for all practical purposes – are contracts and
encourage accountability by all parties to the agreement.
Since all projects involve agreements, we can derive a rule: You should only expect
others to provide what they have agreed to provide and at an agreed level of performance.
A good agreement is not coercive, and responsible people will consider carefully whether
they want to enter into an agreement. Thus, an individual is only obligated to do what he
agrees to do.

8. VII. Project Baselines
A project has three baselines that will be used for performance and progress
measurement. They are the scope baseline, the time or schedule baseline, and the cost
baseline.
The scope baseline is the sum of the deliverables of the project. It represents all the work
that must be done to complete the project. Any deliverables that are not included in the
scope baseline will not be delivered to any of the stakeholders.
The time baseline is the schedule of all the work that will be done to produce the scope
baseline. Each item of work in the schedule is an item of work that is required to produce
an output that either contributes to the delivery of a deliverable or that is an input
required by another scheduled task in the project.
The cost baseline is the budget of the project. A budget is the time-phased cost of all the
work in the project schedule. The cost baseline does not include the contingency budget
or the management reserve.

9. VIII. Project and Production
Projects are different from production work because all projects have a beginning and an
end. Production work is generally ongoing for long periods of time and does not have a
definite starting and stopping point. Since projects provide at least a somewhat unique
product or service, they must have a beginning and an end.
Production work and project work both consume resources and produce products or
services. They both cost money and require planning to be done successfully.
IX. Project and Process
Processes have three components: inputs, transformations, and outputs. From an
organizational standpoint, processes are mostly repetitive and produce common outputs.
Projects are different from processes because they have less consistency in inputs,
transformations, and outputs.
X. Project and Program
A program is a collection of projects grouped together to get advantage from their
combined management.
Programs usually are larger than projects and are collections of projects that come to an
end when the sponsoring organization makes a determination to end the program and
when the projects that make up the program are completed.