Transcript Introduction
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Content
A System view of Project Management?
Understanding Organization?
Stakeholder Management?
Project Phases and the Project Life Cycle?
The Context of Information Technology Projects?
Role of Project Manager
A System view of Project Management
Even though projects are temporary & intended to provide a unique project or service , you can’t run projects in isolation If projects manager lead projects in isolation it is unlikely that those projects will ever truly serve the needs of the organization Therefore ,projects must operate in a broad organization environment , a Projects manager need to consider projects within the greater organization.
A System view of Project Management
To handle complex situations effectively , project managers need to take a holistic view of project & understand how it relates to the larger organization.
Systems management addresses the business ,technologic & organizational issues associated with creating ,maintain ,&making a change to a system.
Top management & project managers to identify key business ,technological, and organization issues related to each project in order to identify & satisfy key stakeholder & so what is best for the entire organization.
The three-sphere model for systems management
The simple idea of addressing the three spheres of systems management – business, organization and technology- can have a huge impact on selecting a managing project successfully Fig shows sample of some of the business, organizational and technological issues that could be factors in laptop project.
Projects must address issues in all three spheres of the systems management model
The three-sphere model for systems management
• What will be laptop Project cost the collage?
• What will support cost be?
Business • • all students?
support training?
Organization Technology • • • Should the laptop use windows os ?
What application s/w will be loaded?
What will h/w specification be?
Understanding organization:
To improve the success rate of information technology projects it is important for project managers to develop a better understanding of people as well as organizations.
The Four frames of organizations Organizations can be viewed as having four different frames: structural , human resource, political and symbolic.
Structural : a key information technology use is whether a company should centralizes the information technology . Personnel in on e department or decentralize across several department.
Human resource : Focuses on producing harmony between the needs of the organization and the needs of the people.
It recognizes that there are often mismatches both the needs of the organization and the need of individuals and groups.
Political : addresses organizational and personal politics.
Symbolic frame: focuses on symbols and meanings many IT projects are international and include stakeholders from various cultures.
Understanding those cultures is also a Crucial pat of the symbolic frame.
Organizational structures The general classifications of organizational structures are:
Functional organization
Project organization
Matrix organization
Functional organization
A functional organizational structure is the hierarchy that most people think of when picturing are organizational chart.
Functional managers or VP’s in specialties such as engineering, manufacturing , IT , HR report to the chief executive officer (CEO) Their staffs have specialized skills in their respective disciplines.
CEO
VP Engs.
Staff VP Manufacturing Staff VP IT Staff VP HR Staff
Functional organization
Advantage * Facilitates specialization * Facilitates co-ordination * Effective supervision Disadvantage * Decision making delayed.
Matrix organization
Represents the middle ground between functional and project structures.
Personal often report to both a functional manager and the or more project manager.
E.g. IT personal at many companies often split their time between two or more projects but they report to their managers in IT department.
Project managers in matrix organization have staff from various functional areas working on their project as shown below:
Matrix organization
CEO
Program Manger Staff PM 1 PM2 PM3 VP Engs.
Staff 2 Engs 5 Engs.
1 Engs.
VP Manufacturing VP IT Staff Staff 1 Manufacturing 3 IT 3 Manufacturing 10 IT 0 Manufacturing 4 IT VP HR Staff 1 HR 1 HR 2 HR
Matrix organization
Advantage
It is suitable for large projects.
Full use of available resources Improves efficiency.
Disadvantage
Complex operation Difficult to manage.
Project organizational structure
Project organization is proposed when an organization has less number of projects but with longer duration.
The project manager has full authority for the execution of the project and he reports to the program manager in the parent organization.
It has a hierarchical structure but instead of functional managers or VP reporting to the CEO ,program manager reports to the CEO Their staffs have a variety of skills needed to complete the projects within their programs.
E.g. Defense, architectural engineering and consulting companies us a project organizational structure.
Project organizational structure
CEO
Program Manager A Staff Program Manager B Staff Program Manager C Staff Companies often hire people specifically to work on particular project
Stakeholder management
Stakeholders can be internal to the organization, external to the organization directly involved in the project or simply affected by the project.
Internal project stakeholder generally includes the project sponsor, project team, support staff and internal customers for the project.
Other internal stakeholders include top management, other functional managers and other project managers.
External project stakeholders include the project’s customers ( if they are external to the organization) competitor’s , suppliers and the other external groups potentially involved in or affected by the project, such as government officials or concerned citizen’s Since the purpose of project management is to meet project requirement and satisfy stake holder’s it is critical that PM’s take adequate time to identify a understand and manage relationship with all project stake holder’s Using the four frames of organizations to link about project stake holder’s can help to meet their expectation.
Project phases and the project life cycle
Project operates as a part of a system and involves uncertainty it is good practice to divide projects into several phases.
A project life cycle is a collection of project phases.
In general, project life cycles define what work will be performed in each phase what deliverables will be produced & when, who is involved in each phase and how management will control and approve work produced in each phase.
A deliverable is a product or services such as a report a training session, a piece of H/W. or a segment of S/W code, produced or provided as a part of project.
In early phases of project life cycle, resources needs are usually lowest and the level of uncertainty is highest.
Project phases vary by project or industry, but some general phases in traditional project management are often called the concept, development, implementation and close out phases.
Project phases and the project life cycle
Concept phase: In this phase project managers usually broadly describe the projects- they develop a very high level or summary plan for the project, which describes the need for the project.
A preliminary or rough cost estimate is developing in this phase and an overview of the work involved is created.
WBS outlines project work and is a deliverable oriented document that defines the total scope and the project.
Project phases and the project life cycle
Development phase.
In this phase the project team creates more detailed project plans ,a more accurate cost estimate and more through WBS.
Implementation phase In this phase, the project team creates a definitive or very accurate cost estimates , delivers the required work and provides performance reports to stakeholders.
Close-out phase: In the close out phase, all of the work is completed, and there should be some sort of customer acceptance of the entire project.
The project team should document their experience on the project in a lesson-learned report.
Traditional project life cycle
Traditional project life cycle
The first two phases (Concepts and development) focuses on planning and are often returned to as project feasibility.
The last tow phase (implementation and close-out focus on delivering the actual work and often referred to as project acquisition.
A project should successfully complete each phase before moving on to the next.
Project life cycle approach provides better management control and appropriate links to the ongoing operations of the organization
.
The context of information Technology projects:
Issues unique to the IT industry that affects project management, including the nature of project, the characteristic of project team members and nature often technologies involved.
The nature of It project:
Project labeled on IT project can be very diverse.
some involve a small number of people installing of the shelf H/W and associated S/w Other involves hundred of people anal sizing several organization’s business processes and then developing new s/w in a collaborative effort with use to meet business needs.
Even for small h/w –oriented projects, there is a wide diversity in the type of h/w that could be involved – personal computer s mainframe computers network equipment etc.
An s/w development project might include developing a simple, stand alone excel or access application or sophisticated a global e-commerce system using programming language.
Characteristics and IT project team members
The people involved in project come from diverse back ground and posses different skill sets.
Even with these different educational back ground there are some common job titles for the people working on most information technology projects, such as business analyst, programmer , n/w specialist , data base analyst, s/w engineers etc.
Within the category of programmer there are several other job titles used to describe the specific technologies the programmer uses such as java programmer, XML, C/C++ programmers etc.
Diverse technologies
Many job titles for IT professional reflect the different technologies required to hold that position.
Unfortunately, H/W specialist might not understand the language of database analyst and vice versa.
It is also unfortunate that people within the same information technology job function often do ‘not understand each other because each uses different technology.
A project team might be close to finishing a project when they discover a new technology that can a greatly enhance the project and better meet long-term business needs.