In this module, we will discuss the language, tools and techniques and the best practices of project management. The module is composed of several lectures. Each lecture deal with a different area of project management. According to the project management body of knowledge, published by the Project Management Institute or PMI, "A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result." Due to the non-repetitive nature of projects, the ability to collect information, and to use it to plan future projects is limited. Therefore, most projects and especially new product development projects are performed under uncertainty and consequently, risk is presented. The Cambridge Dictionary's Online definition is, "A project is a piece of planned work or an activity that is finished over a period of time and intended to achieve a particular purpose." This definition also emphasizes that the project is finished over a period of time thus, it has a limited time span. The non-repetitive nature of projects and their limited lifespan minimizes learning by repetition. Since learning by repetition is limited, other forms of learning are needed. And simulation-based training or SBT is becoming a popular way of teaching project management. Project success was traditionally measured by three parameters, time, cost, and quality of the project deliverables. This is known as the triangle of time, cost, quality, and scope. The assumption is that the required value of time, cost, scope, and quality are set by the stakeholders and are known to the project manager and his team. A successful project is one that is finished on time, within budget, and deliver the scope as a predefined quality. Project management, according to the PMI project management body of knowledge, is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities, in order to meet or exceed stakeholders' needs and expectations from the project. Here is an important aspect of project management, a new definition and a new way to measure the success of a project. The new way to measure project success is by the ability of the project team to meet or exceed stakeholder's needs and expectations or, in other words, to create value for the stakeholders. Project management deals with many aspects that must be integrated in order to ensure project success. The PMI project management body of knowledge suggests that there are 10 knowledge areas dealing with the management of project integration, scope management, time management, cost management, quality management, human resources management, communication management, risk management, procurement management, and the management of stakeholders. In each knowledge area, there are different tools and techniques designed to help the project manager and his team plan and perform the project successfully. We will introduce some commonly used tools and techniques, and we will provide an opportunity to integrate these tools and techniques in a simulated environment to gain some hands-on experience in using them. The need to learn the tools and techniques of project management is obvious when we look at the statistics of project success. Different groups collect data about success rates of projects. According to the 2013 study by KPMG, only 33 percent of projects were delivered on budget, only 29 percent were delivered on time, and only 35 percent delivered the required scope and quality. PricewaterhouseCoopers found in a survey of 10,640 projects of 200 companies from 30 countries in various industries that only 2.5 percent of the companies successfully completed 100 percent of their projects. The Standish Group has been examining project success rates for about 20 years. They define a challenged project as a project that is over time, over budget, or does not deliver the defined deliverables. A failed project is a project that was terminated before being completed. According to their research in 2013, less than one third of all projects were completed successfully. The percentage of failed and challenged project constantly high throughout the years. An interesting observation based on the Standish group data is that while on average, a large percentage of projects are late, over budget, and do not deliver the planned scope and quality, there is a substantial difference between small projects and large ones. The probability of success of small projects is much higher than the probability of success of large projects. One conclusion is that whenever possible, project managers should strive to divide large projects into several small projects, and implement an integration process to ensure that these small projects together are finished on time, within budget, and deliver the benefits of the whole original project. As I mentioned earlier, a modern definition of project success is based on the observation that some stakeholder's needs and expectations are not limited to the traditional triangle of time, budget, scope, and quality. For example, some projects are performed to increase the market share of the organization, to improve it's reputation, et cetera. A broader definition of project success is therefore, to meet or exceed stakeholders' needs and expectations from the project. A key question is, what should one do to achieve project success? Or what are the critical success factors? Some of the studies I mentioned earlier trying to find an answer to this question, by asking participants in the study, what in their opinion are the most important critical success factors that contribute to project success? Participants frequently answered that among the 10 most important critical success factors are user involvement and executive management support. In some studies, a related question that was asked was, what are the main causes for project failure? It turned out that the main reason for project failure is uncertainty, resulting in bad estimates of time, cost, and benefit, changes in the scope during the project and change in the environment that could not be forecast during the project initiation and planning. An important concept in project management is the project life cycle, the set of phases or stages that the project has to go through from initiation to completion. A very simple set of phases or stages is a linear or sequential life cycle. The phases of the project are performed one at a time in a predefined order. In a typical sequential life cycle, the project starts in a conceptual or initiation phase, where the stakeholders are identified and their needs and expectations are assessed. The most important decision in this phase is the go or no-go decision, i.e., to start a new project or not. If a decision is a go, to start a new project, then a configuration and a basic project plan is approved and the planning phase starts. In this phase, the project plans in the 10 knowledge areas are prepared, including an integrated plan that integrates all knowledge areas into project baseline plan. When the project baseline plan is approved, the execution phase starts. Resources perform project activities, while management monitors and controls the actual progress of the project. The last phase in the project termination, when deliverables are delivered and resources are released. In reality, due to uncertainty, the project life cycle is not linear or sequential. In many cases, due to uncertainty, the project team working on a project phase realizes that there are changes required in the work done in previous phases. They have to go back and fix or change what was already done. This is known as cycles. And the number of cycles may be very substantial when the level of uncertainty is high. The sequential nature of project, coupled with the cycling effect, causes major delays in project. Consequently, the project takes longer than planned and misses due dates. Time-based competition forced companies to try and reduce time to market and encourage many companies to look for ways to reduce project duration. In the 80s, the spiral model was introduced. The idea is to develop a minimum viable product or MVP. A product that has the minimum functionality, users needs to use it. By minimizing the scope in the first iteration, development time was drastically reduced. Once the first version is on the market, information from users is used to decide on the additional functionality that will be developed in the second iteration and so on. From iteration to iteration, more functionality and more value are added to the product. Harlan Mills came up with new ideas regarding software development projects. He said that, "Software development should be done incrementally in stages with continuous user participation, so that at every step, each intermediate system can be verified to be correct." These ideas are now implemented in the form of agile software development. Development is achieved through a series of short iterations. Each of which produces a usable enhancement to the system. And through a series of delivered increments to the system, each of which produces a fully developed, fully tested and certified extra feature or component of the system. As the system grows in size, the requirements are continually updated and are continually emergent during the development period. Agile software development is part of the philosophy of lean project management. According to this philosophy, the task of project manager and his team, is to maximize value by satisfying the needs and expectations of the stakeholders, while minimizing waste in the form of cost, labor hours and time or extended project duration. To summarize, in this module, we introduced an important concept in project management, the project life cycle, a set of phases or stages that the project has to go through from initiation to completion. A very simple set of phases or stages is the linear or sequential life cycle. The phases of the project are performed one at that time in a predefined order. In a typical sequential life cycle, the project starts in a conceptual or initiation phase, where the stakeholders are identified and their needs and expectations are assessed. The most important decision in this phase is the go or no-go decision. If a decision is go, to start a new project, then a configuration and a basic project plan is approved and the planning phase starts. In this phase, the project plans in the different knowledge areas are prepared, along with an integrated plan that integrates all knowledge areas into a project baseline plan. When the project baseline plan is approved, the execution phase starts. Resources perform project activities, while management monitors and controls the actual progress of the project. The last phase is the project termination, when deliverables are delivered and resources are released.
