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” (Levine, 1998), “manage­ment by projects” (Boznak, 1996), and similar names, was created to tie projects more closely to the organization’s goals and strategy and to integrate and centralize manage­ment methods for the growing number of ongoing projects.

Why this emphasis on project management? The answer is simple: Daily, organiza­tions are asked to accomplish work activities that do not fit neatly into business-as-usual. A software group may be asked to develop an application program that will access U.S. government data on certain commodity prices and generate records on the value of commodity inventories held by a firm; the software must be available for use on April 1. The Illinois State Bureau for Children’s Services may require an annually updated census of all Illinois resident children, aged 17 years or younger, living with an illiterate single parent; the census must begin in 18 months. A manufacturer initiates a process improvement project to offset higher energy costs.

Note that each work activity is unique with a specific deliverable aimed at meeting a specific need or purpose. These are projects. The routine issuance of reports on the value of commodity inventories, the routine counseling of single parents on nurturing their off­spring, the day-to-day activities associated with running a machine in a factory—these are not projects. The difference between a project and a nonproject is not always crystal clear. For almost any precise definition, we can point to exceptions. At base, however, projects are unique, have a specific deliverable, and have a specific due date. Note that our examples have all those characteristics. The Project Management Institute (PMI) defines in its Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), 5th edition, a project as “A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result” (Project Management Institute, 2013).

Projects vary widely in size and type. The writing of this book is a project. The reor­ganization of Procter & Gamble (P&G) into a global enterprise is a project, or more accurately a program, a large integrated set of projects. The construction of a fly-in fish­ing lodge in Manitoba, Canada, is a project. The organization of “Cat-in-the-Hat Day” so that Mrs. Payne’s third grade class can celebrate Dr. Suess’s birthday is also a project.

Both the hypothetical projects we mentioned earlier and the real-world projects listed just above have the same characteristics. They are unique, specific, and have desired completion dates. They all qualify as projects under the PMI’s definition. They have an additional characteristic in common—they are multidisciplinary. They require input from people with different kinds of knowledge and expertise. This multidiscipli­nary nature of projects means that they tend to be complex, that is, composed of many interconnected elements and requiring input from groups outside the project. The vari­ous areas of knowledge required for the construction of the fly-in fishing lodge are not difficult to imagine. The knowledge needed for globalization of a large conglomerate like P&G is quite beyond the imagination of any one individual and requires input from a diversified group of specialists. Working as a team, the specialists investigate the problem to discover what information, skills, and knowledge are needed to accomplish the overall task. It may take weeks, months, or even years to find the correct inputs and understand how they fit together.

A secondary effect of using multidisciplinary teams to deal with complex problems is conflict. Projects are characterized by conflict. As we will see in later chapters, the pro­ject schedule, budget, and specifications conflict with each other. The needs and desires of the client conflict with those of the project team, the senior management of the organization conducting the project and others who may have a less direct stake in the project. Some of the most intense conflicts are those between members of the project team. Much more will be said about this in later chapters. For the moment, it is sufficient to recognize that projects and conflict are often inseparable companions, an environ­ment that is unsuitable and uncomfortable for conflict avoiders.

It is also important to note that projects do not exist in isolation. They are often parts of a larger entity or program, just as projects to develop a new engine and an improved suspension system are parts of the program to develop a new automobile. The overall activity is called a program. Projects are subdivisions of programs. Likewise, pro­jects are composed of tasks, which can be further divided into subtasks that can be broken down further still. The purpose of these subdivisions is to allow the project to be viewed at various levels of detail. The fact that projects are typically parts of larger organizational programs is important for another reason, as is explained in Section (1.5).

Finally, it is appropriate to ask, “Why projects?” The reason is simple. We form projects in order to fix the responsibility and authority for the achievement of an organi­zational goal on an individual or small group when the job does not clearly fall within the definition of routine work.

Trends in Project Management

Many recent developments in project management are being driven by quickly changing global markets, technology, and education. Global competition is putting pressure on prices, response times, and product/service innovation. Computer and telecommunica­tion technology, along with rapidly expanding higher education across the world allows the use of project management for types of projects and in regions where these sophisti­cated tools had never been considered before. The most important of these recent devel­opments are covered in this book.

Achieving Strategic Goals There has been a growing use of projects to achieve an organization’s strategic goals, and a new role has arisen to help attain the target benefits desired by the funder of the project: a project “owner” (Section 1.5). Additionally, exist­ing major projects are screened to make sure that their objectives support the organiza­tion’s strategy and mission. Projects that do not have clear ties to the strategy and mission are not approved. A discussion of this is given in Section 1.6, where the Project Portfolio Process is described.

PMOs for Improving Project Effectiveness A variety of efforts are being pursued to improve the process and results of project management, whether strategic or routine. These efforts are typically now being led by a formal Project Management Office (PMO, Section 2.5) that provides training in project management skills and techniques such as the use of phase gates and agile (Section 3.4), earned value (Section 7.3), critical ratios (Section 7.4), and other such approaches; continually evaluates and helps improve the organization’s project management “maturity” (Section 7.5); educates project managers about the evolving ancillary goals of the organization (Section 8.1); and generally helps oversee the organization’s portfolio of programs and projects (Section 1.6).

Virtual Projects With the rapid increase in globalization of industry, many projects now involve global teams whose members operate in different countries and different time zones, each bringing a unique set of talents to the project. These are known as vir­tual projects because the team members may never physically meet before the team is disbanded and another team reconstituted. Advanced telecommunications and com­puter technology allow such virtual projects to be created, do their work, and complete their project successfully (see Section 2.1).

Quasi-Projects Led by the demands of the information technology/systems depart­ments, project management is now being extended into areas where the project’s objectives are not well understood, time deadlines unknown, and/or budgets undeter­mined. This ill-defined type of project is extremely difficult to conduct and to date has often resulted in setting an artificial due date and budget, and then specifying project objectives to meet those limits. However, new tools for these quasi-projects are now being developed—agile management, prototyping, phase-gating, and others—to help these projects achieve results that satisfy the customer in spite of the unknowns.

A project, then, is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. It is specific, timely, usually multidisciplinary, and typically conflict ridden. Projects are parts of overall programs and may be broken down into tasks, subtasks, and further if desired. Current trends in project management include achieving strategic goals, achieving routine goals, improving project effectiveness, virtual projects, and quasi-projects.

Source: Meredith Jack R., Mantel Jr. Samuel J., Shafer Scott M., Sutton Margaret M. (2017), Project Management in Practice, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 3th Edition.

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