Enterprise Project Management: meaning, benefits, process and best practices

Traditional project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve goals and meet success criteria at a specified time. Enterprise project management puts the focus on the enterprise, prioritizing and highlighting its business goals and managing and grouping projects to ensure they meet those broader organizational objectives. The end objective is

1 Comment

What Is a Project?

The accomplishment of important tasks and goals in organizations today is being achieved increasingly through the use of projects. As a result, a new kind of organization is emerging to deal with the accelerating growth in the number of multiple, simultane­ously ongoing, and often interrelated projects in organizations. This project oriented organization, often called “enterprise

Project Management vs. general Management

As is shown in Table 1-1, project management differs from general management largely because projects differ from what we have referred to as “nonprojects.” The naturally high level of conflict present in projects means that the project manager (PM) must have special skills in conflict resolution. The fact that projects are unique means that the

5 Comments

What Is Managed? The Three goals of a Project

The performance of a project, commonly called its “efficiency,” is assessed on the basis of three criteria, variously known as the “triple constraints,” the “iron triangle,” the “golden constraints,” and so on. Is the project on time or early? Is the project on or under budget? Does the project deliver the scope to the agreed-upon

The life cycles of Projects

All organisms have a life cycle. They are born, grow, wane, and die. This is true for all living things, for stars and planets, for the products we buy and sell, for our organizations, and for our projects as well. A project’s life cycle measures project completion as a func­tion of either time (schedule) or

Selecting Projects To Meet organizational objectives

As noted earlier, a major trend occurring in organizations is the use of project management to implement the organization’s strategic objectives, especially organizational change. Organizations spend about $100 billion a year on creating competitive strategies (Morgan et al., 2007, p. 1), yet 90 percent of them (thousands) fail due to poor execution of these projects.

The Project Portfolio Process

The Project Portfolio Process (PPP) attempts to link the organization’s projects directly to the goals and strategy of the organization. This occurs not only in the project’s initia­tion and planning phases, but also throughout the life cycle of the projects as they are managed and eventually brought to completion. This topic is compared to project

4 Comments

The Project Manager’s Roles

In the previous chapter it was noted that the primary roles of the PM were to manage trade-offs and manage risks. In addition to managing trade-offs and risks, the PM also has several other important roles including serving as a facilitator, communicator, virtual project manager, and convener and chair of meetings. 1. Facilitator First, to

The Project Manager’s Responsibilities to the Project

The PM has three overriding responsibilities to the project. First is the acquisition of resources and personnel. Second is dealing with the obstacles that arise during the course of the project. Third is exercising the leadership needed to bring the project to a success­ful conclusion primarily by managing the trade-offs necessary to do so and

Selection of a Project Manager

A note to senior management: It is rarely a good idea to select a project manager from a list of engineers (or other technical specialists) who can be spared from their current jobs at the moment. Unfortunately, in many firms this appears to be the primary criterion for choice. We do not argue that current

Project Management as a Profession

It should be obvious to the reader that project management is a demanding job. Planning and controlling the complexities of a project’s activities, schedule, and budget would be difficult even if the project had the highest claim on the parent organization’s knowledge and resources, and if the PM had full authority to take any action

Fitting Projects into the Parent Organization

Earlier in this chapter we referred several times to problems caused by the way projects are organized and fit in as a part of the parent organization. It is now time to deal with this subject. Project organization is also discussed in Chapter 2: Organizational Influences and Project Life Cycle of PMBOK. It would be

The Project Team

We have mentioned the project team several times in the foregoing sections. Effective team members have some characteristics in common. Only the first of these is usually taken into account. They must be technically competent. This is so obvious that it is often the only criterion applied. While the functional departments will always remain the

From the Project charter to the Project Plan

Before considering how to plan, we should decide why we are planning and what infor­mation the plan should contain. The project planning process begins with the develop­ment of a project charter—a high-level description of the project. While the elements of the project charter vary from organization to organization, they should always include a statement of

The Project Planning Process – overview

A great deal has been written about planning. Some of the literature focuses on the stra­tegic aspect of planning—(e.g., Webster, Reif, and Bracker, 1989) choosing and planning projects that contribute to the organization’s goals (cf., the introduction to Section 1.5). Another body of writing is directed at the techniques of how to plan rather than

The Project Planning Process – Nuts and Bolts

This section deals with the problem of determining and listing the various tasks that must be accomplished in order to complete a project. The important matters of generat­ing a project budget and developing a precise project schedule are left to succeeding chapters, though much of the raw material for doing those important things will come

The RACI Matrix for Project Planning

Like the WBS, the RACI Matrix comes in a variety of sizes and shapes. Typically, the RACI matrix is in the form of a table with the project tasks derived from the WBS listed in the rows and departments or individuals in the columns. PMBOK describes the RACI matrix in Chapter 9 on Human Resources.

A Whole-Brain Approach to Project Planning

In today’s fiercely competitive environment, project teams are facing increasing pressure to achieve project performance goals while at the same time completing their projects on time and on schedule. Typically project managers and project team members rely on the “left” side or the analytical part of the brain to address the challenges. Indeed, if you

The Design Structure Matrix for Project Planning

The mind mapping approach just described is an excellent complement to traditional project management tools like the work breakdown structure for helping identify the tasks that need to be executed to complete a project. Other project management planning tools such as Gantt charts and precedence diagrams (both discussed in Chapter 5) were devel­oped primarily to

Agile Project Management

In an effort to lower costs, improve project outcomes, and reduce project completion times, a group of software developers in 2001 leveraged lean management principles and other continuous improvement methodologies to develop a new approach to project management. This new approach was spelled out in a document entitled the “Agile Manifesto” and from this document

1 Comment