What is Project Management ?????
- When cooking a meal of roast lamp, peas and beans, the lamb goes in the oven first, the bean goes into the boiling water or steamer some time later, and the peas last of all. That way all food is ready at once, and the meal works. Start cooking lamp, the beans, and peas at the same time, and they will be ready at different times. That is the heart of project management: doing different things at right times so that end result is what is wanted. This means knowing what is wanted , what inputs we need to get there, what processes must be performed, and in what order. Some risk management is also good idea: what if the lamb cooks faster or slower than expected? We check the lamb time to time to see whether it is progressing as expected, and bring forward or delay the start of cooking the beans and peas.
- It is exactly the same in project management: we determine what is likely to vary from our plan, we monitor progress to check for variance, and we take steps and change things to ensure that despite variances we end up with what we wanted.
(Sebastian Nokes & Sean Kelly)
- Classical view point
- Originated at the start of 20th century
- Established formal principles for planning, organizing, leading, controlling
- Behavioral view point
- Originated in 1930’s
- Emphasis shifted from work principles to human and social aspects of organizations.
- The contribution is that it highlighted the importance of leadership style, group dynamics, social environment,
- System approach
- Originated during world war II
- This acknowledges the complexity and casual relationships
- Contingency
- Current view point
- Recognizes that none of the above alone can guide the manager in all aspects of the job in every situation
- Includes ideas like situational leadership, and contingency approaches to management
- Project management
- Pay attention to goal-oriented systems, subsystems – systems approach
- Rely heavily on elements of classical and behavioral view points
- In fact it is a good example of contingency approach, because it is a management philosophy and methodology oriented toward effective accomplishment of just one type of undertaking – the project
Forces fostering project management
- First
- The expansion of knowledge allows an increasing number of academic disciplines to be used in solving problems associated with the development, production, and distribution of goods
(Meredith and Mantel , 2004)
- Second
- Satisfying the continuing demand for more complex and customized products and services depends on our ability to make product design an integrated and inherent part of our production and distribution systems.
(Meredith and Mantel , 2004)
- Third
- Worldwide market force us to include cultural and environmental differences in our managerial decisions about what, where, when, and how to produce and distribute output (Meredith and Mantel , 2004)
The intense competition among institutions, both profit and non-for-profit, fostered by our economic system.
(Meredith and Mantel , 2004)
Finally
The project we undertake are becoming larger and larger.
Appropriateness of Project Management- Five Criteria
- Cleland and King suggest criteria to decide when to use project management techniques and organization;
- Unfamiliarity
- Magnitude of the effort
- Changing environment
- Interrelatedness – if functional areas need joint effort
- Reputation of the organization – the risk of undertaking
NEXT:Different forms of Project Management
