Project Definition

A project is a unique, transient endeavor, undertaken to achieve planned objectives, which could be
defined in terms of outputs, outcomes or benefits. A project is usually deemed to be a success if it
achieves the objectives according to their acceptance criteria, within an agreed timescale and budget.
Time, cost and quality are the building blocks of every project.

Planned Projects

A project plan is a series of formal documents that define the execution and control stages of a
project. The plan includes considerations for risk management, resource management and
communications, while also addressing scope, cost and schedule baselines

The Characteristic of a Project

Characteristics of a clearly defined project In order for a project to be useful, effective and achieving its
full objective, it must be clearly defined. Clearly defined projects share the following 5 criteria:

i. Specific. The project must be specific. Being specific includes detailing out the project’s structure,
goals, benefits, milestones and costs. All these requires careful planning and inputs from the project
team members involved and if necessary the external consultants or experts. Detailed reporting and
planning including command structure, personnel list, communication avenues, Gantt chart and the
project’s costing should be drawn up to detail out the project’s responsibilities, timeline, costs and work
to be performed by the respective parties. Periodic project meetings should also be scheduled to discuss
relevant matters pertaining to the project and any issues arising therefrom.

ii. Measurable. A clearly defined project must be measurable in terms of its benefits and achievements.
This should not only be in terms of monetary benefits but also other tangible and intangible benefits
derived from the project’s execution. A clear and precise plan devised during the project’s planning
stage will enable objective measurements be executed to analyses the project’s achievements and if any
shortcomings.

iii. Achievable. A project will only be meaningful if it is achievable. Being too ambitious in planning for
the project will not be helpful and may result in the project being unachievable. This may also lead to
the project team morale being affected. All these unhealthy things may lead to the project’s costs being
overrun and timing of the deliverables being significantly affected.

iv. Relevant. The project needs to bring relevant benefits to the entity concerned. This may be in the
form of reducing its overall production costs, increasing its operational efficiency or other specific
purposes relevant to the entity. If it fails to address this, the project will not be beneficial to the entity
and will ultimately result in a waste of resources to the entity and its stakeholders.
v. Time bound. The final ingredient to ensure that becomes clearly defined is that it should be time
bound. It means that the project should come with a time frame for its completion including its
planning, development, execution, fine tuning before its full run instead of taking forever to be
completed. Any adjustments to this time table should be clearly justified by the parties involved bearing
in mind the costs involved in the project’s execution, opportunity costs and finance costs related to the
project.

Project Management Process

The 5 basic phases in the project management process are:

Project Initiation

Project Planning

Project Execution

Project Monitoring and Controlling

Project Closing

Project Roles and Responsibilities

Successful project requires the project team to participate (at some level) in the planning process, buy-in
to the project plan, and be responsible for completion of assignments. It is important to have a defined
formal structure for the project and for the project team. This provides each individual with a clear
understanding of the authority given and responsibility necessary for the successful accomplishment of
project activities.  This section describes the typical roles and responsibilities for projects.  Roles may be
assigned to one or more individuals.  Conversely, individuals may have one or more roles on a project.

Project Sponsor - The Project Sponsor is the executive (AVC or above) with a demonstrable interest in
the outcome of the project and who is ultimately responsible for securing spending authority and
resources for the project.  The Project Sponsor will:
Oversee high-level project progress

Provide input to and approval of the project charter

Provide and approve project budget and resources.

Approve any project change requests

Champions the project to provide exposure and buy-in from senior management.

Approve the project completion.

Project Manager- The Project Manager is the person assigned by Information Technology Division to
ensure that the project team achieves the project objectives and completes the project.  The Project
Manager develops the project charter and plan with the team and manages the team’s performance of
project related tasks.  The Project Manager also secures acceptance and approval of deliverables from
the project sponsor and stakeholders.  The Project Manager will:

Develop, monitor, and review project management deliverables and activities within the project plan

Communicate to and receive feedback from the project team

Escalate and resolve issues as needed

Initiate project meetings in consultation with project team and sponsor

Develop project and implementation plans

Prepare deliverables for approval by stakeholders

Project Owner- The project owner is typically the head of the business unit that proposed the project or
is the recipient of the project output or product.  The project owner bears the business responsibility for
successful project implementation.  The Project Owner will:

Assist the project manager in providing leadership for and managing the team’s performance of project
activities

Acts as a “champion” for the project, in partnership with the project sponsor.

Assist the project manager in providing leadership towards the completion of project.

Actively encourage buy in from other project stakeholders

PMO Director - The Project Management Office (PMO) Director supports the Information Technology
Division's commitment to a more structured project planning process. The Director helps the IT Division
select the right projects and supports their successful implementation through planning, project work,
and oversight.  The PMO Director ensures that all Information Technology projects are managed in
accordance with approved BSU Project Management Methodology.   

The Project Management Office Director is available for:

General Project Management questions and advice

Facilitation of project planning, project kickoff, reviews, and lessons learned sessions

Project Management training, mentoring, and consulting

Service Now technical support (online Project Portfolio Management (PPM) platform)

Project Portfolio oversight, reporting, and escalation

Functional Director – The Functional Director is responsible for providing resources (both people and
equipment) as needed according to the project plan.  They may also function as a Subject Matter Expert
and provide oversight and guidance for the project.

Service Owner - The Service Owner is accountable for a specific service (Infrastructure, Application or
Professional Service) within the organization regardless of where the technology components or
professional capabilities reside.

Subject Matter Expert (SME) - The Subject Matter Expert is that individual who has a high level of
expertise in performing a specialized job, task, or skill within the organization.  Project Managers need to
work with SMEs in the research and execution phases of a project and should involve them in the
technical validation of project charters and plans.

Project Team - The Project Team has responsibility for conducting project activities. Project Team
members, as necessary, assist the Project Manager in planning the development effort and help
construct commitments to complete the project within established schedule and budget constraints.
The Project Team may include the subject matter experts responsible for implementing the project
solution. Customers and/or Stakeholders should interact with the Project Team to ensure that
requirements are properly understood and implemented.  The Project Team may include both UMass
Boston staff members and external Consultants brought on for the project engagement.
Stakeholders - Stakeholders are persons or organizations that are actively involved in the project, or
whose interests may be positively or negatively impacted by the project.

The Effective project manager – skills and characteristic

1. Command authority naturally. In other words, they don’t need borrowed power to enlist the help of
others – they just know how to do it. They are optimistic leaders who are viewed in a favorable light and
are valued by the organization.

2. Possess quick sifting abilities, knowing what to note and what to ignore. The latter is more important
since there’s almost always too much data, and rarely too little. Ignoring the right things is better than
trying to master extraneous data.

3 Set, observe, and re-evaluate project priorities frequently. They focus and prioritize by handling fewer
emails, attending fewer meetings, and generally limiting their data input. 10 Characteristic of Good
Project Manager

4. Do not use information as a weapon or a means of control. They communicate clearly, completely,
and concisely. All the while giving others real information without fear of what they’ll do with it.

5. Set, observe, and re-evaluate project priorities frequently. They focus and prioritize by handling fewer
emails, attending fewer meetings, and generally limiting their data input.

6. Adhere to predictable communication schedules, recognizing that it’s the only deliverable early in a
project cycle. All this takes place after very thorough pre-execution planning to eliminate as many
variables as possible.

7. Possess domain expertise in project management as applied to a particular field. It’s not just that they
have generic project management skills; they have a deep familiarity with one or multiple fields that
give them a natural authority and solid strategic insight continued.

8. Exercise independent and fair consensus-building skills when conflict arises. But they embrace only as
much conflict as is absolutely necessary, neither avoiding nor seeking grounds for control of a particular
project segment

9. Cultivate and rely on extensive informal networks inside and outside the firm to solve problems that
arise. They identify any critical issues that threaten projects and handle them resolutely (vs. ignoring
them).

10. Look forward to going to work! They believe that project management is an exciting challenge that’s
critical to success. The truly great ones view project management as a career and not a job, and they
treat it like so by seeking additional training and education.
Project Success and Failures

Project failure can be defined as a “project that fails to perform a duty or an expected action, non-
occurrence or non-performance”. Whereas Project success can be defined as the achievement of
something desired, planned or attempted. It is also said that success is an event that accomplishes its
intended purpose. Anything short of that is failure.

Causes of failures

1. Lack of senior management support- happens when “Junior” or “Candidate PMs” are thrown into the
Project and left unattended.

2. Poor communication- causes delay or even failure since team members do not have the information
they needed, issues or changes do not get escalated, project reporting is sluggish

4. Inadequate resources- Task take longer than expected to complete, deadlines and milestones get
missed, and project completion date comes into jeopardy, one end of working more than necessary
(double shift) to get the work done.

5. No one is in control not even the project manager, who is assigned to the project but not given the
free hand to manage the project.

6. Poor definition of Scope- Project changes from its original objective and goals. This can occur due to
additional requirement from the client.

7. Project lacks structure - caused by things such as critical tasks being under rated

8. Inaccurate estimates - A top- down plan cause constraints on the prediction of the cost of the project.

9. Poor risk management - The project planning stages (Stage 1 – 3) is not properly planned.

10. Unrealistic Milestones - it is not possible for a project to succeed if unrealistic timeframes and
milestones are made available for that project

11. Incompetent project management skill - procedures and policies are not adhered to from inception.

Critical success factors and components

1. Identify Project Requirements

- The first thing that any project manager needs to do in order to make a project successful is to build a
strong foundation. For this, you need to identify the project requirements. Get in touch with the
stakeholders to understand the requirements and expectations about the project. Building a solid plan
based on the requirements and resources is the next step. You can rely on different employees and
members in different projects. As per the requirements, create a team that is capable of efficiently
implementing the plan. Here, you will need to define the roles and responsibilities to allocate the tasks,
keeping in mind their strengths, expertise, and weaknesses.

2. Project Management Plan

You certainly don’t want to get caught up in a storm when the project progresses. For that, you need a
proper project management plan that will document all the necessary stuff related to the project. Once
agreed upon the resources and management, document how the changes will be handled like scope,
budget, dates, etc. Have a proper plan in place to deal with various issues like a team member quitting in
the middle of a project or you running out of resources. Include a proper strategy to manage the tight
deadlines and communicate with your team to review the plan as the team members are going to be the
key contributors in delivering a successful project.

3. Define Critical Milestones

The identification of defining moments throughout the project is important and is called critical
milestones. Confused? Let’s say that you are working on a website development project. So, there will
be main phases such as:

Initiation: The requirements gathering phase and understanding the expectations.

Planning: Gathering the project team and discussing the various possibilities of proceeding further,
choosing the best website design and integrations with detailed planning for different pages.

Execution: Working on the decided plan and prioritizing the tasks accordingly to meet the deadlines.

Closure: Closing the project on a positive note where all stakeholders are satisfied with the website your
team developed.

You can perform a check or evaluation test at each stage of the project. From the development part till
the very end, make sure that the website is exceeding expectations at each milestone. This way, you can
easily identify and manage the project risks to shift from failure to success.

4. Practice Open Communication

To effectively manage a project, consistent communication needs to be established between the

stakeholders, clients, and team members. This narrows down the chances of frequent change requests
to ZERO. There will be no “surprise attacks” in the middle of the project. An important thing here for a
project manager is to ensure that communication lines between team members and manager are open
and flexible so that anyone can discuss different stuff related to the project without any second
thoughts. To promote an environment of constant and open communication, you need to manage your
team’s culture and tools. A team’s culture is defined by the members’ values and beliefs relating to their
work and each other. Are they comfortable bringing up issues they need help with? Or are they afraid of
being judged or disrespected? Create an environment that values feedback and transparency to
encourage collaboration and communication.  Insufficient communication generally leads to the failure
of projects. The project status reports are great to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Every
member of the project will be updated with new developments and can provide their inputs
accordingly.

The Time, Cost and Scope of the Target.

Cost is the budget approved for the project including all necessary expenses needed to deliver the
project. Within organizations, project managers have to balance between not running out of money and
not under spending because many projects receive funds or grants that have contract clauses with a
“use it or lose it” approach to project funds. Poorly executed budget plans can result in a last-minute
rush to spend the allocated funds. For virtually all projects, cost is ultimately a limiting constraint; few
projects can go over budget without eventually requiring a corrective action.

Scope is what the project is trying to achieve. It entails all the work involved in delivering the project
outcomes and the processes used to produce them. It is the reason and the purpose of the project.

Quality is a combination of the standards and criteria to which the project’s products must be delivered
for them to perform effectively. The product must perform to provide the functionality expected, solve
the identified problem, and deliver the benefit and value expected. It must also meet other performance
requirements, or service levels, such as availability, reliability, and maintainability, and have acceptable
finish and polish. Quality on a project is controlled through quality assurance (QA), which is the process
of evaluating overall project performance on a regular basis to provide confidence that the project will
satisfy the relevant quality standards.

Risk is defined by potential external events that will have a negative impact on your project if they occur.
Risk refers to the combination of the probability the event will occur and the impact on the project if the
event occurs. If the combination of the probability of the occurrence and the impact on the project is
too high, you should identify the potential event as a risk and put a proactive plan in place to manage
the risk.

Resources are required to carry out the project tasks. They can be people, equipment, facilities, funding,
or anything else capable of definition (usually other than labor) required for the completion of a project
activity.
Time is defined as the time to complete the project. Time is often the most frequent project oversight in
developing projects. This is reflected in missed deadlines and incomplete deliverables. Proper control of
the schedule requires the careful identification of tasks to be performed and accurate estimations of
their durations, the sequence in which they are going to be done, and how people and other resources
are to be allocated. Any schedule should take into account vacations and holidays.