Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Project Management


PMè Project Management is the discipline of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling resources to achieve specific goals. Initiate - Plan - Execute - Monitor - Close. These are the five main process groups of the project management life cycle.

Each portion of the life cycle has its own process and set of deliverables. For example, during the initiation phase, project managers, stakeholders, and team members will be working on the project proposal and scope statement. During the closing phase, project managers will work on the closing documents and the process of putting the project to bed

  1. Initiation

The initiating processes determine the nature and scope of the project. The initiating stage should include a plan that covers the following areas

a.     Analyzing the business needs / requirements in measurable goals

b.     Reviewing of the current operations

c.     Financial analysis of the costs and benefits including a budget

d.     Stakeholder analysis, including users, and support personnel for the project

e.     Project charter including costs, tasks, deliverables, and schedule

  1. Planning and design: The main purpose is to plan time, cost and resources adequately to estimate the work needed and to effectively manage risk during project execution.

Project planning generally consists of,


a.     Determining how to plan (e.g. By level of detail or rolling wave)

b.     Developing the scope statement

c.     Selecting the planning team

d.     Identifying deliverables and creating the work breakdown structure(Work packages to drill down to all levels)

e.     Identifying the activities needed to complete those deliverables and networking the activities in their logical sequence

f.      Estimating the resource requirements for the activities -HR

g.     Estimating time and cost for activities - Finance

h.     Developing the schedule

i.      Developing the budget - Finance

j.      Risk planning

k.     Gaining formal approval to begin work

  1. Execution and Construction: When you're executing the project, you're carrying out the pre-defined tasks for that project. The project execution process group is the phase during which all of the aspects that you have planned out carefully will be carried out. During this phase of the project, you will be making heavy use of the project plan and of any project tracking tools you have selected.

generally consists of,


a)    Direct and Manage Project execution

b)    Quality Assurance of deliverables

c)     Acquire, Develop and Manage Project team

d)    Distribute Information

e)    Manage stakeholder expectations

f)     Conduct Procurement

  1. Monitoring and controlling systems: We check to see whether the various milestones are being met, what the quality of work being performed is and the progress being made by the team as a whole.

generally consists of,


a.     Measuring the ongoing project activities ('where we are')

b.     Monitoring the project variables (cost, effort, scope, etc.) against the project management plan and the project performance baseline (where we should be)

c.     Identify corrective actions to address issues and risks properly (How can we get on track again)

d.     Influencing the factors that could circumvent integrated change control so only approved changes are implemented.

e.     Project maintenance is an ongoing process and it includes

                              i.        Continuing support of end-users

                             ii.        Correction of errors

                            iii.        Updates of the software over time

  1. Completion/Closing: During the closing phase, files are archived (making room for new projects), closing forms are filled out, and lessons are recorded in order to make the next project run more smoothly.

    1. Project close: Finalize all activities across all of the process groups to formally close the project or a project phase
    2. Contract closure: Complete and settle each contract (including the resolution of any open items) and close each contract applicable to the project or project phase
    3. A Sign-Off for Closing Your Project Out

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