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Identifying requirements;
Addressing the various needs, concerns, and expectations of the stakeholders in
planning and executing the project.
Setting up, maintaining, and carrying out communications among stakeholders
that are active, effective, and collaborative in nature.
Managing stakeholders towards meeting project requirements and creating
project deliverables.
Balancing the competing project constraints, which include, but are not limited
to:
Time.
Scope.
Quality.
Schedule.
Budget.
Resources.
Risks.
You work for a wireless phone provider and the VP of marketing approaches
you with a fabulous idea—“fabulous” because he’s the big boss and because
he thought it up. He wants to set up kiosks in local grocery and big-box stores
as mini-offices. These offices will offer customers the ability to sign up for new
wireless phone services, make their wireless phone bill payments, and
purchase equipment and accessories. He believes that the exposure in grocery
stores will increase awareness of the company’s offerings.
After all, everyone has to eat, right? He told you that the board of directors
has already cleared the project, and he’ll dedicate as many resources to this as
he can. He wants the new kiosks in place in 12 stores by the end of this year.
The best news is he has assigned you to head up this project. Your first
question should be “Is it a project?”
Every project creates a unique product, service, or result. The outcome of the
project may be tangible or intangible. Although repetitive elements may be
present in some project deliverables and activities, this repetition does not
change the fundamental, unique characteristics of the project work. For
example, office buildings can be constructed with the same or similar materials
and by the same or different teams. However, each building project remains
unique with a different location, different design, different circumstances and
situations, different stakeholders, and so on.
A young couple hires a firm to design and build them a new house.
A retail store manager works with employees to display a new clothing line.
A college campus upgrades its technology infrastructure to provide wireless
Internet access.
A construction company designs and constructs a new office building for a
client.
A school implements new government standards for tracking student
achievement.
A pharmaceutical company launches a new drug
A television network develops a system to allow viewers to vote for contestants
and provide other feedback on programs.
The auto-mobile industry develops standards to streamline procurement.
Project Attributes
As you can see, projects come in all shapes and sizes. The following attributes
help to define a project further:
Example:
The topic What is Program Management may further be elaborated with the
following example. building a new shopping mall is a program. Many sub-
projects exist underneath this program management, such as excavation,
construction, interior design, store placement, marketing, facilities
management, and so on. Each of the sub-projects is really a project unto itself.
Each sub-project has its own project manager, who reports to a project
manager with responsibility over several of the areas, who in turn reports to
the head project manager who is responsible for the entire program. All the
projects are related and are managed together so that collective benefits are
realized and controls are implemented and managed in a coordinated fashion.
The following are some examples of programs, which help you understand
What is Program Management?
Program managers often have review meetings with all their project managers
to share important information and coordinate important aspects of each
project. Many program managers worked as project managers earlier in their
careers, and they enjoy sharing their wisdom and expertise with their project
managers. Effective program managers recognize that managing a program is
much more complex than managing a single project. They recognize that
technical and project management skills are not enough. In addition to skills
required for project managers, program managers must also possess strong
business knowledge, leadership capability, and communication skills.
What is Project Portfolio Management?
After understanding What is Program Management?, let us elaborate What is
roject Portfolio Management? Project Portfolios are collections of programs
and projects that support a specific business goal or objective. Let’s say our
company is in the construction business. Our organization has several business
units: retail, single-family residential and multifamily residential. Collectively,
the projects within all of these business units make up the portfolio. The
program we talked about in the preceding section (the collection of projects
associated with building the new shopping mall) is a program within our
portfolio. Other programs and projects could be within this portfolio as well.
Programs and projects within a project portfolio are not necessarily related to
one another in a direct way. However, the overall objective of any program or
project in this portfolio is to meet the strategic objectives of the portfolio,
which in turn should meet the objectives of the department and ultimately the
business unit or corporation.
Pacific Edge Software’s product manager, Eric Burke, defines project portfolio
management as:
Let us first understand, what is project scope management? It refers to all the
work involved in creating the deliverables of the project and the processes
used to create them. Project Scope Management includes the processes
required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the
work required, to complete the project successfully. Managing the project
scope is primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is and is not
included in the project.
Product Scope
Project Scope:
Project scope describes the work required to produce the project deliverables.
The deliverables can be meetings, reports, analysis, design documents, etc.
and all the parts of the project management that become part of the scope
management plan. Completion is measured against the project scope
management plan that is a subsidiary to the project management plan.
The client comes and asks you to construct a school building for him. He gave
you his requirements like what would be the size of the school building, how
many rooms it will have, size of the playground, number of toilets, color of
painting, when he needs it, etc. You take the project and start working on it.
You make the plan, create the schedule, and estimate the budget.
Subsequently, you move on to the execution part. You bring workers to the
site and start constructing the school building. You complete the project and
verify with client that the school building is as per his requirements. Then you
hand over the school building to the client, get the payment, and the project is
closed.
In the above example, there are two parts: In the first part client asks you to
make a school building for him and gives you his requirements
(characteristics). This school building is the Product and the requirements for
this product are known as Scope. Therefore, in the first part, what he gave you
is the Product Scope. In the second part, you work to construct the school
building within the given time, and budget, meeting all the client’s
requirements by following the project management plans. Lastly, you deliver it
to the client. In this part, what you have done to construct the school building,
is the Project Scope.
Defining project scope is critical to the success of the project since it spells out
exactly what the product or service of the project looks like. Conversely, poor
scope definition, while finding what is project scope management, might lead
to cost increases, rework, schedule delays, and poor morale.
Requirements are typically conditions that must be met or criteria that the
product or service of the project must possess in order to satisfy the objectives
of the project. Requirements quantify and prioritize the wants, needs, and
expectations of the project sponsor and stakeholders. The primary purpose of
the Collect Requirements process is to define and document the project
sponsor, the customer, and the stakeholder’s expectations and needs for
meeting the project objective, as explained in the first para of the lecture what
is project scope management. Recording the requirements and attaining
stakeholder approval of the requirements will help you define and manage
their expectations throughout the project.
The scope management plan provides clarity as to how project teams will
determine which type of requirements need to be collected for the project.
Stakeholder Register:
There are several tools and techniques in this process you can use to help
identify the requirements of the project. The following tools and techniques
are used for Collect Requirements:
Interviews:
Interviews are typically one-on-one conversations with stakeholders.
Interviews can be formal or informal and generally consist of questions
prepared ahead of time. The advantages to this tool are that subject matter
experts and experienced project participants can impart a lot of information in
a short amount of time and typically have a good understanding of the
features and functions needed from the project deliverables. You should
record the responses during the interviews and don’t be afraid to ask
spontaneous questions as they occur to you during the interview.
Focus groups:
Focus groups are usually conducted by a trained moderator. The key to this
tool lies in picking the subject matter experts and stakeholders to participate
in the focus group.
Facilitated workshops:
Cross-functional stakeholders come together in a facilitated work- shop to
discuss and define requirements that affect more than one department. For
example, if you’re implementing a software package that impacts several
business units, you’ll need representatives from each unit together in a
workshop so that each of their needs are represented and prioritized. This way
of explaining what is project scope management, all the participants
understand the various needs and have a facilitated forum to discuss and
resolve their issues.
Idea/mind mapping:
is a group creativity technique where participants first use brainstorming
techniques to record their ideas. White boards or flip charts are a great tool to
use with this process. The facilitator uses the white board to map ideas and,
using a mind-mapping layout, group similar topics together. There are a few
mind-mapping software packages available on the market that can greatly
assist with this process. Mind mapping allows the participants to get an
understanding of common ideas and themes, create new ideas, and
understand differences.
Group decision making techniques:
There are many methods groups can use to reach decisions. These methods
can also be used with the group creativity techniques. The four methods
mentioned include unanimity, where everyone agrees on the resolution or
course of action; majority, where more than 50 percent of the members
support the resolution; plurality, where the largest subgroup within the group
makes the decision if majority is not reached; and dictatorship, where one
person makes the decision on behalf of the group.
Observations:
This technique is typically a one-on-one experience where an observer sits
side by side with the participant to observe how the participant interacts with
the product or service. This technique is also known as job shadowing. For
example, you may use this technique to determine requirements for an
upgrade to a software product. Sitting with the user and watching their
interactions with the product enables the observer to uncover requirements
they would not have ordinarily discovered. This technique can also involve
participant observers who perform the job themselves in order to ascertain
requirements.
Prototypes:
Prototyping is a technique involving constructing a working model or mock-
up of the final product for participants to experiment with. The prototype does
not usually contain all the functionality the end product does, but it gives
participants enough information that they can provide feedback regarding the
mock-up. This is an iterative process where participants experiment and
provide feedback and the prototype is revised and the cycle starts again.
Below is one of the best way to explain what is project scope management
Requirements Documentation:
You’re worked hard to gather and define requirements and you don’t want all
that effort going to waste. Now that you’ve employed the tools and
techniques of this process to gather requirements, you’ll want to record them
in a requirements document. This involves recording the requirements in a
requirements document.
The PMBOK® Guide does not dictate the format of this document and
acknowledges it can be formal with lots of detail or a simple list categorized
by stakeholder and priority. However, it does state that the requirements
document may include at least the following elements:
One of the most important elements of the requirements document that isn’t
in the preceding list is the signatures of the key stakeholders indicating their
acceptance of the requirements. Stakeholders sometimes have short
memories, particularly on long-term projects, so documenting requirements
and obtaining their approval is essential for project success.
Two of the most important documents you’ll prepare for any project are the
project schedule and the project budget. You’ll use the schedule and budget
documents throughout the Executing and Monitoring and Controlling
processes to measure progress and determine if the project is on track.
There are two processes in the Planning group we’ll perform that will lead us
to the cost performance baseline output that is the authorized budget. They
are Estimate Costs and Determine Budget. There are several tools and
techniques to cover in these processes. There is one process in Monitoring &
controlling group, Control Costs that is used to manage the changes in the
cost baseline.
Estimate Costs
Many of the inputs of the Estimate Costs process are already familiar to you.
However, we’ll look briefly at each one so you can see the key elements that
should be considered when creating the project budget. Cost management in
project management explains the inputs to this process, are as follows:
Project baseline.
Project schedule.
Human resource plan.
Risk register.
Enterprise environmental factors.
Organizational process assets.
Estimate Costs has nine tools and techniques used to derive estimates:
Expert judgement.
Analogous estimating.
Parametric estimating.
Bottom-up estimating.
Three-point estimate.
Reserve analysis.
Cost of quality.
Project management estimating software.
Vendor bid analysis.
Basis of Estimates: Basis of estimates is the supporting detail for the activity
cost estimates and includes any information that describes how the estimates
were developed, what assumptions were made during the Estimate Costs
process, and any other details you think are needed. According to the
PMBOK® Guide and as you can find details in project management
certification online and online diploma of project management(globally
recognized best project management qualifications). The basis of estimates
should include at least the following:
A description of how the estimate was developed or the basis for the estimate.
A description of the assumptions made about the estimates or the method used
to determine them.
A description of the constraints
A range of possible results. You should state the cost estimates within ranges
such as $5000 ± 10%.
The confidence level regarding the final estimates.
The next process in the project cost management concerns determining the
cost performance baseline, which is the primary output of the Determine
Budget process. The Determine Budget process aggregates the cost estimates
of activities and establishes a cost performance baseline for the project that is
used to measure performance of the project throughout the remaining
process groups. An important goal of cost baseline is to provide info for
project funding requirements –at what point(s) in time will the money be
needed Only the costs associated with the project become part of the
authorized project budget. For example, future period operating costs are not
project costs and therefore aren’t included in the project budget.
These are an output of the Estimate Costs process. Activity cost estimates are
determined for each activity within a work package and then summed to
determine the total estimate for a work package.
BASIS OF ESTIMATES:
This is also an output of the Estimate Costs process and contains all the
supporting detail regarding the estimates. You should consider assumptions
regarding indirect costs and whether they will be included in the project
budget. Indirect costs cannot be directly linked to any one project. They are
allocated among several projects, usually within the department or division in
which the project is being performed. Indirect costs can include items like
building leases, management and administrative salaries (those not directly
assigned full time to a specific project), and so on.
SCOPE BASELINE:
Scope baseline includes the scope statement, WBS, and WBS dictionary. The
scope statement describes the constraints of the project you should consider
when developing the budget. The WBS shows how the project deliverables are
related to their components, and the work package level typically contains
control account information (although control accounts can be assigned at
any level of the WBS).
PROJECT SCHEDULE:
RESOURCE CALENDERS:
Resource calendars help you determine costs in calendar periods and over the
length of the project because they describe what resources are needed when
on the project.
CONTRACTS:
Contracts include cost information you should include in the overall project
budget. We’ll talk more about contracts in Procurement Management.
Organizational process assets: The organization process assets that will assist
you with the work of this process include cost budgeting tools, the policies
and procedures your organization (or PMO) may have regarding budgeting
exercises, and reporting methods.
The Determine Budget process has five tools and techniques, including two
you haven’t seen before:
Cost aggregation.
Reserve analysis.
Expert judgement.
Historical relationships.
Funding limit reconciliation.
Control Costs
Control Costs is the process of monitoring the status of the project to update
the project costs and managing changes to the cost baseline. The key benefit
of this process is that it provides the means to recognize variance from the
plan in order to take corrective action and minimize risk.
The key to effective cost control is the management of the approved cost
baseline and the changes to that baseline. Project cost control includes:
Influencing the factors that create changes to the authorized cost baseline.
Ensuring that all change requests are acted on in a timely manner.
Ensuring that cost expenditures do not exceed the authorized funding.
Monitoring cost performance to isolate and understand variances from the
approved cost baseline.
Monitoring work performance against funds expended.
Bringing expected cost overruns within acceptable limits.
COST BASELINE:
The tools and techniques of the Control Costs process are as follows:
We’ll look at each of these next with the exception of project cost
management software. This output has been discussed previously, but you
should know that in this process it can help automate and calculate the
formulas we’re going to examine next. It can also display the results in
graphical form for status reporting purposes.
FORECASTING:
Forecasting uses the information you’ve gathered to date and estimates the
future conditions or performance of the project based on what you know
when the calculation is performed. Forecasts are based on work performance
information (an output from the Executing process group) and your
predictions of future performance.
The calculated CV, SV, CPI, SPI, TCPI, and VAC values for WBS components, in
particular the work packages and control accounts, are documented and
communicated to stakeholders.
COST FORECASTS
CHANGE REQUESTS
Elements of the project management plan that may be updated include, but
are not limited to; Changes to the cost baseline are incorporated in response
to approved changes in scope, activity resources, or cost estimates. Changes
to the cost management plan, such as changes to control thresholds or
specified levels of accuracy.
Project cost management documents that may be updated include, but are
not limited to: Cost estimates, and Basis of estimates.
Functional.
Projectized.
Matrix.
We’ll now take a look at each of these types of organizations individually to
better understand how the project management role works in each one.
Functional Organizations:
Here, all authority, budget allocation, and decision making power stays with
the functional manager. A project manager has no role in this type of
structure. Even if he exists, his role will be very limited and he has to ask the
functional manager for his requirements. Here, a project manager may have
the title of a coordinator or an expediter.
The employee may become lazy due to repeating the same type of work.
Conflicts may arise due to the promotion of another employee.
The functional manager pays attention to only his department; he usually
doesn’t care for other teams or sections.
Poor communications and poor inter-department coordination.
Delays in decision making due to bureaucratic hierarchy.
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Effective project management requires that the project manager possess the
following competencies:
Project managers accomplish work through the project team and other
stakeholders. Effective project managers require a balance of ethical,
interpersonal, and conceptual skills that help them analyze situations and
interact appropriately. Some highly desirable interpersonal skills of a project
manager are:
Leadership.
Team building.
Motivation.
Communication.
Influencing.
Decision making.
Political and cultural awareness.
Negotiation.
Trust building.
Conflict management, and
Coaching.
Project managers must lead their project teams by providing vision, delegating
work, creating an energetic and positive environment, and setting an example
of appropriate and effective behavior. Project managers must focus on
teamwork skills in order to use their people effectively. They need to be able
to motivate different types of people and develop esprit de corps within the
project team and with other project stakeholders.
Envision.
Speculate.
Explore.
Adapt.
Close.
In the traditional waterfall methodology the requirements for the project
would be documented up front. Then the design of the whole solution would
be completed. Followed by the development, testing and finally,
implementation of the product. If this whole process takes a year to complete,
the business does not see any tangible value until the very end of that project.
Waterfall Methodology
The waterfall model is the oldest and mostly widely used model in the field of
software development. This model had many advantages like being a linear
model. It is very simple to implement. The amount of resources required to
implement this model are minimal. Documentation is produced at every stage
of the software’s development. This makes understanding the product
designing procedure similar but ironically it has many disadvantages. One of
the biggest disadvantages being client is not very clear on what exactly they
want from the software.
Agile Methodology
While Traditional methodologies require the user to provide a detailed idea of
the exact requirements with respect to the intended software, Agile
developers, who truly understand that what is agile project management, are
more flexible through their iterative style of work. With Agile Development,
the user is constantly in the loop suggesting improvements and reviewing
every phase. This increased customer involvement works on two levels. One is
that it makes reflective changes easy as opposed to Traditional Development
where chunks of system might have to be dismantled to improve a small part
and the second being that it increase the customer satisfaction drastically. To
sum it up, we now know the difference between Traditional and Agile, to truly
understand What is Agile Project Management?.
Agile Scrum
Scrum is an Agile way to manage a project. Scrum is often perceived as a
methodology but rather than viewing scrum as methodology, think of it as a
framework for managing a process. Scrum provides a small set of rules that
create just enough structure for teams to be able to focus their innovation on
solving what might otherwise be an insurmountable challenge. Scrum occurs
in small pieces with each piece building upon previous created pieces. Scrum
emphasizes empirical feedback, team self management and strives to build
properly tested product increments within short iterations. This emphasis on
an ongoing assessment of completed work is largely responsible for its
popularity with managers and developers alike, but what allows the scrum
methodology to really work is a set of roles, responsibilities and meetings that
never change. If scrum’s capacity for adaption and flexibility makes it an
appealing option the stability of its practices give teams something to lean on
when development gets chaotic. Scrum provides structure to allow teams to
deal with that difficulty. However, the fundamental process is incredibly simple
and at its core is governed by three primary roles. Product owners determine
what needs to be built in the next 30 days or less. Development team build,
who have a good understanding of what is agile project management, and
what is needed in 30 days or less and then demonstrate what they have built.
Based on this demonstration, the product owner determines what to build
next. Scrum masters ensure this process happens as smoothly as possible and
continually help improve the process, the team and the product being created.
The scrum model cease daily stand ups as a way to synchronize the work of
team members as they discuss the work of the sprint. At the end of the sprint,
the team conducts a sprint review during which the team demonstrates the
new functionality to the PO or any other stakeholder who wishes to provide
feedback that could influence the next sprint. This feedback loop within scrum
software development may result in changes to the freshly delivered
functionality but it may just as likely result in revising or adding items to the
product Backlog. Another activity in scrum project management is the Sprint
Retrospective at the end of each sprint. The whole team participates in this
meeting including the scrum master and PO. The meeting is an opportunity to
reflect on the sprint that has ended and identify opportunities to improve.
Scrum Values
Courage
The SM needs the courage to protect and guide the team, standing up to the
PO and stakeholders at the right time, really takes guts. The PO must have the
courage to entrust the sprint Backlog to the team, a giant leap of faith as it is
the PO who answers to the stakeholders at the end of the sprint. Finally the
team must have the courage to aggressively commit to as much work as they
think they can do in each sprint.
Respect
In scrum, the limits and boundaries of the scrum roles really need to be
transparent and respected. Everyone on a scrum project needs to be aware
that the PO is in-charge of what the team works on but not how they do their
work and that the team is responsible for getting the work done but not
questioning what work gets done.
Feedback
Get feedback quickly and often to undercover defects early. Many Agile
Development Practices focus on decreasing the time taken to get feedback.
This helps eliminate waste build quality in.
Communications:
They are small teams. The optimal size for effective collaboration is 5 to 9
people, not too large, so that the communication becomes an issue and not
too small that the overhead is excessive. Effective communications reduce the
amount of noise between communication parties.
Simplicity:
Agile Lean
The core idea is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Simply
lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources. A Lean
Organization understands customer value and focuses its key processes on
continuously increasing it. The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the
customer through a perfect value creation process that has zero waste. To
accomplish this Lean thinking changes the focus of management from
optimizing separate technologies assets and vertical departments to
optimizing the flow of products and services through entire value streams that
flow horizontally across technologies, assets and departments to customers.
Eliminating waste along entire value streams instead of at isolated points
creates processes that need less human effort, less space, less capital and less
time to make products and services at far less costs and with much fewer
defects compared with traditional business systems. Companies are able to
respond to changing customer desires with high variety, high quality, low cost
and with very fast throughput times. Also information management becomes
much simpler and more accurate. Lean is a translation of Lean manufacturing
to the software development domain adapted from Toyota Production System
and focuses on seven principles.
Elimination of Waste:
Amplify Learning:
The best approach for improving a software development environment is to
amplify learning. The learning process is sped up by usage of short iteration
cycles. Each one is coupled with refactoring and integration testing, increasing
feedback via short feedback sessions with customers helps when determining
the current phase of development and the adjusting efforts for future
improvements.
It is not the biggest that survives but the fastest. The sooner the end product
is delivered without major defects the sooner feedback can be received and
incorporated into the next iteration.
The business might drive the need for a project, customers might demand
changes to products, or legal requirements might create the need for a new
project. According to the PMBOK® Guide, projects come about as a result of
one of seven needs or demands. Once those needs and demands are
identified, the next logical step might include performing a feasibility study to
determine the viability of the project.
Market Demand.
Strategic Opportunity/Business Need.
Customer Request.
Technological Advance.
Legal Requirement.
Ecological Impact.
Social Need.
Market Demand:
The demands of the marketplace can drive the need for a project. For example,
project initiation in a bank to offer customers the ability to apply for mortgage
loans over the Internet because of a drop in interest rates and an increase in
demand for refinancing and new home loans.
Strategic opportunity/Business Need:
Customer Request:
Customer requests run the gamut. Generally speaking, most companies have
customers, and their requests can drive new projects. Customers can be
internal or external to the organization.
Technological Advance:
Legal Requirement:
Ecological Impacts:
Social Need:
Some organizations require that a feasibility study take place prior to making a
final decision about starting a project. Feasibility studies may be conducted as
separate projects, subprojects, or as the first phase of a project.
Mathematical Models
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Scoring Models
Weighted scoring models are quite simple. The project selection committee
decides on the criteria that will be used on the scoring model—for example,
profit potential, marketability of the product or service, ability of the company
to quickly and easily produce the product or service, and so on. Each of these
criteria is assigned a weight depending on its importance to the project
committee. More important criteria should carry a higher weight than less
important criteria.
Then each project is rated on a scale from 1 to 5 (or some such assignment),
with the higher number being the more desirable outcome to the company
and the lower number having the opposite effect. This rating is then multiplied
by the weight of the criteria factor and added to other weighted criteria scores
for a total weighted score. The project with the highest overall weighted score
is the best choice.
Define Activities.
Sequence Activities.
Estimate Activity Resources.
Estimate Activity Durations.
Develop Schedule.
Control Schedule.
Define Activities
The tools and techniques of the Define Activities process are as follows:
Decomposition:
Expert Judgement:
Expert judgement, in the form of project team members with prior experience
developing project scope statements and WBSs, can help you define activities.
Activity list
Activity attributes
Milestone list
Activity List:
One primary output of the Define Activities process is an activity list. The
activity list should contain all the schedule activities that will be performed for
the project, with a scope of work description of each activity and an identifier
(such as a code or number) so that team members understand what the work
is and how it is to be completed.
Activity Attributes:
Milestone List:
Milestones are typically major accomplishments of the project and mark the
completion of major deliverables or some other key event in the project. For
example, approval and sign-off on project charter might be considered as
milestone. The milestone list records these accomplishments and documents
whether the milestone is mandatory or optional. Milestones are similar to
regular schedule activities, with the same structure and attributes, but they
have zero duration because milestones represent a moment in time.
Sequence Activities:
Now that you’ve identified the schedule activities, you need to sequence them
in a logical order and find out whether dependencies exist among the
activities. During Sequence Activities, you will use a host of inputs and tools
and techniques to produce the primary output, project schedule network
diagrams.
Sequence Activities: Inputs
Activity List.
Activity Attributes.
Milestone List.
Project Scope Statement.
You’ve already seen all the inputs to this process. They are activity list, activity
attributes, milestone list, project scope statement, and organizational process
assets. We’ll look at several new tools and techniques next.
Dependency determination.
Precedence diagramming method (PDM).
Applying leads and lags.
Dependency Determination
Consider a classic example. Let’s say you’re going to paint your house, but
unfortunately, it’s fallen into a little disrepair. The old paint is peeling and
chipping and will need to be scraped before a coat of primer can be sprayed
on the house. After the primer dries, the painting can commence. In this
example, the primer activity depends on the scraping. You can’t prime the
house before scraping off the peeling paint. The painting activity depends on
the primer activity in the same way. You really shouldn’t start painting until the
primer has dried.
Discretionary dependencies:
External dependencies:
External dependencies are, well, external to the project. This might seem
obvious, but the PMBOK® Guide points out that even though the dependency
is external to the project (and therefore a non-project activity), it impacts
project activities. For example, perhaps your project is researching and
marketing a new drug. The FDA must approve the drug before your company
can market it. This is not a project activity, but the project cannot move
forward until approval occurs. That means FDA approval is an external
dependency.
Once you’ve identified the dependencies and assembled all the other inputs
for the Sequence Activities process in project time management, you’ll take
this information and produce a diagram—or schematic display—of the project
activities. The project schedule network diagram shows the dependencies—or
logical relationships—that exist among the activities. You can use one of the
other tools and techniques of this process to produce this output. You’ll now
examine each in detail.
What is Project Quality Management?
Quality is the degree to which the project fulfils requirements. Let us now
understand What is Project Quality Management? Project Quality
Management is the process for ensuring that all project activities necessary to
design, plan and implement a project are effective and efficient with respect to
the purpose of the objective and its performance. Project Quality Management
(QM) is not a separate, independent process that occurs at the end of an
activity to measure the level of quality of the output. Quality Management in
project management includes creating and following policies and procedures
in order to ensure that a project meets the defined needs it was intended to
meet from the customer’s perspective.
Customer Satisfaction:
Quality is all about meeting the expectations and requirements of the
customer and stakeholders and creating a product that fulfil those needs and
is fit for its intended use.
Management Responsibility:
It’s up to the project team to ensure the success of quality efforts but it is up
to organizational management to provide the financial resources needed for
quality efforts to succeed.
Continuous Improvement:
Quality management and process improvement relies on the ongoing plan-
do-check-act cycle. This can be done using quality management improvement
initiatives e.g. TQM, 6 sigma and using process improvement models; e.g.
OPM3, CMMI, Malcolm Baldrige.
Grade:
Grade can be defined as “the category assigned to products or services having
the same functional use but different technical characteristics.”
Many people get confused with these two terms and assume that they are
similar; however, they are not the same. There is a big difference between the
Quality and the Grade. A product can be a high grade (high-end) or a low
grade (low-end). It is perfectly acceptable for a product to be a low grade as
long as it fulfil its stated requirements. On the other hand, a low quality
product is always a problem. Every product must be of high quality regardless
of its grade. A low quality product is never desired.
Accuracy:
It is an assessment of correctness. Accuracy means the measured values are
very close to the true value. If somebody says that measurements are accurate,
then you should know that those measurements are very near the target, or
true value. Scatter doesn’t have any significant role here. The scatter of
accurate measurements may, or may not be dense.
Precision:
It is a measure of exactness. Precision in project quality management means
the values of repeated measurements are clustered and have little scatter.
Precision doesn’t mean that the measurements are close to the target value –
it means that the measurements are close to one another. They may or may
not be near the target value. Precision is about how the measured values are
close to one another. If the scatter is lesser, measurements are said to have a
high precision.
Control Quality:
(2) validating that project deliverables and work meet the requirements
specified by key stakeholders necessary for final acceptance.
Cause-and-effect diagrams:
Flow Charts:
Check Sheets:
It is also known as tally sheets and may be used as a checklist when gathering
data. Checksheets are used to organize facts in a manner that will facilitate the
effective collection of useful data about a potential quality problem. In project
quality management, they are especially useful for gathering attributes data
while performing inspections to identify defects. For example, data about the
frequencies or consequences of defects collected in check-sheets are often
displayed using Pareto diagrams.
Control Charts:
Control charts measure the results of processes over time and display the
results in graph form. Control charts are a way to measure variances to
determine whether process variances are in control or out of control. A control
chart is based on sample variance measurements. From the samples chosen
and measured, the mean and standard deviation are determined. In control
chart, there is a centre line called the mean or goal which is surrounded by
other lines called limits. These lines are the upper control limit and lower
control limit (UCL and LCL). These lines are again surrounded by two another
lines known as the upper specification limit and lower specification limit.
Upper and lower specification limits are provided in the contract and you
cannot cross them. This is your final limit. The upper and lower control limit
are determined by the project manager so that specific limits are not crossed,
and if the process goes above this limit, a corrective action must be taken. If
the 99.73% (3-sigma) of all the points fall between the upper and lower
control limits, you will say that the process is under control.
Pareto Chart:
Pareto charts are used to identify and prioritize problems to be solved. They
are actually histograms aided by the 80/20 rule introduced by Vilfredo Pareto.
The 80/20 rule as it applies to quality says that a small number of causes (20
percent) create the majority of the problems (80 percent). His theory is that
you get the most benefit if you spend the majority of your time fixing the
most important problems. Pareto charts are displayed as histograms that rank-
order the most important factors—such as delays, costs, and defects, for
example—by their frequency over time.
Histograms:
It is a special form of bar chart and are used to describe the central tendency,
dispersion, and shape of a statistical distribution. A histogram is a bar graph
that shows frequency data. Histograms provide the easiest way to evaluate the
distribution of data. Histograms can be used to determine distribution of
errors.
Scatter diagrams:
Scatter diagrams in project quality management use two variables, one called
an independent variable, which is an input, and one called a dependent
variable, which is an output. Scatter diagrams display the relationship between
these two elements as points on a graph. This relationship is typically analyzed
to prove or disprove cause-and-effect relationships. As an example, maybe
your scatter diagram plots the ability of your employees to perform a certain
task. The length of time (in months) they have performed this task is plotted as
the independent variable on the X axis, and the accuracy they achieve in
performing this task, which is expressed as a score—the dependent variable—
is plotted on the Y axis. The scatter diagram can then help you determine
whether cause-and-effect (in this case, increased experience over time versus
accuracy) can be proved. Scatter diagrams can also help you look for and
analyze root causes of problems. The important point to remember about
scatter diagrams is that they plot the dependent and independent variables,
and the closer the points resemble a diagonal line, the closer these variables
are related.