Before you start with this section, please read from the textbook

• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2.

The following text will highlight some of the key issues of the textbook, but mainly provides additional information.

Projects

What is a project? Wikipedia provides the following definition: “A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service.” This definition is taken from the so called Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK), a standard for project management. Beside this standard, there are other existing, like Prince2 from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC). Every standard has a different focus, some a more focusing on methods, others on organisation. For this course, we will concentrate mainly on the definition of the PMBoK.

Before you proceed, please read the entire Wikipedia article about “project” (Wikipedia (2011). Definition Project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project).

Key terms are “temporary” and “unique”. Each project has defined dates for starting and ending (the latter, especially, is neglected too often). And the goal and results of a project are unique. In reverse, that means that all projects are different from each other. Project teams, organization, and resources will never be the same in another project.

Projects have to be performed with certain constraints. Wysocki (2009) defines five constraints, but they might be summarized to three:

• Time
• Cost (including resources)
• Scope (including quality).

Time:

Time is a major constraint for the project as a whole as well as for project components. Time is consumed, no matter if it is used effectively or just passing by, e.g., a project partner waits for the deliverable of another project partner as an input for own activities. Time is the prime resource for keeping a project on schedule and is inversely related to costs.

Cost:

Primarily, costs are a matter of money – a customer is willing to pay a certain price for a certain project result. In the end, all resources can be backtracked to costs: Each project budget includes the costs for employees (which is related to time), materials, equipment, location, other costs, and, last but not least, profit.

Scope:

Scope focuses on the specification of the end result of a project. Therefore, the quality of the desired project result is a major component of scope. Especially in larger projects, the scope will change during the project. The targeted quality has a major impact on time and cost and the other way around.

Project management

“Project management is the discipline of organizing and managing resources in such a way that these resources deliver all the work required to complete a project within defined scope, time, and cost constraints.” (Wikipedia 2006).

Before you proceed, please read the entire Wikipedia article about “project management” (Wikipedia (2011). Definition Project Management: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management Based on the Traditional Project Management (TPM) approach, other types of project management evolved. Wysocki (2009) uses the additional management categories "Agile Project Management", "Extreme Project Management" and "Emertxe Project Management".

This course focuses on traditional project management for two reasons:

1. Mostly, GI projects are complex, requiring a complex management approach.
2. This course is for beginners in project management and, therefore, limited to the basics.

There are several definitions of the phases of a project, but they are rather similar. Wikipedia (2011) describes the following project phases:

• Initiation
• Planning and design
• Production or execution
• Closing and maintenance (whereas maintenace is considered as an ongoing process).

Wysocki (2009) defines five project phases:

• Defining
• Planning
• Executing
• Controlling
• Closing.

If you compare both definitions, the difference is in “maintenance” and “controlling”. In a broader sense, “maintenance” is a meta-phase, covering all project phases. In a very narrow sense, “controlling” is to monitor the activities during the execution phase. A definition in between is that controlling starts in the planning phase, which defines the measures and mechanisms for being able to control the project execution.

In Wysocki (2009), “controlling” varies a bit in its meaning. First, “controlling” is one of the project phases. Then, “monitor/control project progress” is a phase of the Traditional Project Management, addressing the execution phase.

More important than agreeing about the definition is being complete. Therefore, Wysocki’s (2009) five phases of the TPM life cycle can be considered an appropriate approach:

• Scope the project
• Develop the project plan
• Launch the plan
• Monitor/control project progress
• Close out the project.

Please re-read the exact meanings and contents of these five phases, which form the basis of the textbook and this course.

The textbook (Wysocki 2009) emphasizes more management areas, which go along with Traditional Project Management:

1. Quality management addresses two targets: quality of the project deliverables and quality of the project management itself.
2. Communications managements addresses project stakeholders and their information and communication needs.
3. Risk management is not only essential for a project, but you will need it for each business plan, e.g., if you are planning to create your own company. The first step is to identify potential risks: What might go wrong? What happens, if it goes wrong? What is the probability for it going wrong? The second step is to have plans and options for the case that  happens. The third step is to deal with it, if  had happened.
4. Procurement management addresses two issues: As an input for your project, products have to be bought or products have to be made. In the first case, bad management leads to increased costs. In the second case, it can also lead to a delay: The required product can not only be much more expensive than planned, but can completely derail the schedule, because the project staff or a sub-contractor needs much more time than expected.