BUS605: Strategic Project Management

The PMBOK Guide® defines a process as "a set of interrelated actions and activities that are performed to achieve a pre-specified set of products, results, or services". In other words, a process is something you do to achieve a result. It may involve some kind of input as well as directions, tools, or techniques to change the input to the desired output or result. For example, if you wanted to bake a cake, you would need specific inputs (ingredients such as flour, eggs, etc.), tools (oven, mixing bowls, mixer, etc.), and directions (a recipe). This whole process could be subdivided into subprocesses such as a mixing process, baking process, measuring process, and decorating process. If this was the first time you had baked a cake, you might follow the recipe directions to the letter in terms of mixing the ingredients and baking time. However, with experience you may experiment with the ingredients to produce a cake that is more to your liking and learn when the cake should come out of the oven - a little early or when it needs just another minute or two.

Quick Thinking - Creating a Project Management Culture

In many organizations, the project manager is held visibly accountable for ensuring that the project is delivered on time and within budget. In many cases, however, the project manager is not given any real authority over the project's resources. For example, many of the resources needed by the project manager may be controlled by several departments or business functions that will be released to the project on an as-needed basis. Without any formal authority, the project manager's power over these resources becomes de facto. The project manager's authority becomes pushed to the limit when the project team is distributed over multiple geographic locations. Many outsourcing projects face the same challenge.

In such cases, the project manager must rely on negotiation, persuasion, and team building, as well as the occasional use of threats or intimidation to make sure things get done. Supervisors or sponsors can fail to meet their project commitments and promises, but the project manager often is held accountable. This can be a challenge for even the most seasoned project managers. Inexperienced project managers often don't stand a chance.

These challenges require a cultural commitment to quality project management and delivery excellence. A project management culture is an environment where all of the project stakeholders share a commitment to the project's success and exhibit a healthy respect for the time and dollars spent on a project. Keane, Inc. developed six principles of productivity management for managing projects, regardless of project size or complexity. The six principles include:

1. Define the job in detail - The project manager must be able to draw a boundary around the project in order to define the personnel needed and their roles and responsibilities.
2. Get the right people involved - Project managers rarely get all the right people they need. Often the assignment of people to a project team is not a matter of their skill sets, but their availability. To overcome this issue, a project team must understand their responsibilities and assigned roles, but, more importantly, they must believe that the success of the project is in their best interests.
3. Estimate the time and costs - In many projects, someone provides a short description of the project and then asks, How much will it cost? And how long will it take? These questions are often answered without really understanding what the project is all about or what resources are available. Therefore, dialog is important for setting realistic expectations that include various risks that can impact the project's estimates.
4. Break the job down - The project can be broken down into smaller jobs, with each job defining an area of difficulty, uncertainty, or opportunity in a document called the statement of work (SOW). The SOW then becomes a critical component of the project management culture as it functions as a contract between the project sponsor and project manager that specifies all promises and commitments.
5. Establish a change procedure - This should include rules and guidelines for managing and funding changes. This principle also holds people accountable for changes made when promises documented in the SOW are not kept.
6. Agree on acceptance criteria - This principle focuses on rules and guidelines for accepting work products or deliverables throughout the project. This can help avoid unpleasant surprises along the way, and the final acceptance of a finished and successful project becomes straightforward.

1. How do the six principles help establish a project management culture in an organization?
2. How can a project charter help define a project manager's authority over resources not under his or her direct control?

Similarly, processes are an integral component of project management. They support all of the activities necessary to plan, create, and manage all of the project activities. Project management processes help initiate, plan, execute, monitor and control, and close a project as well as interact with the project management knowledge areas. In Chapter 2, for example, you were introduced to a project management process for developing a business case and another for developing a project's MOV. If you were a caterer hired to bake a wedding cake, project management processes would be needed to define, plan, estimate the cost, and deliver a cake that meets your customer's expectations, budget, and needs while being profitable for you.

On the other hand, product-oriented processes can be thought of as development processes that focus on the tangible results of the project. For an IT project, this would be all of the processes required to design, build, test, document, and implement an application system. Just like baking a cake, product-oriented processes require specific domain knowledge, tools, and techniques to complete the work. Otherwise, this could result in a poor cake or an information system that is a technical failure.

An emphasis or sole focus on project management processes does not provide an ability to develop a quality product, regardless of whether it is a cake or information system. However, focusing on the product-oriented processes may not provide the management or controls to ensure that the delivered cake or information system meets the expectations or needs of the intended customer or user. There must be a balance or harmony between project management processes and product-oriented processes in order to complete a project successfully. As one's experience grows, processes may not have to be applied the same way on all projects. The situation at hand will dictate the appropriateness of how each process should be applied.