A typical project showing the main planning tools

1. A typical project showing the main planning tools Project Management John Potter Plymouth Business School University of Plymouth

2. Back to basics • The project environment • Project definition • Project objectives • Project scope • Specification • Project strategy • The importance of project milestones

3. Project planning • The project planning is a key part of the process • It determines cost and duration, level of resources and duration of the project, the allocation of work and resources, the ability to monitor progress and assess the impact of changes • The process may be shown as five stages: • Identify activities • Estimate times and resources • Identify relationships and dependencies • Identify schedule restraints • Create the schedule • Effective project working is more about the human aspects than the technical aspects as computer software can today handle most of the planning activity

4. Monitoring tools which are appropriate to the particular project Maintaining commitment of all stakeholders Discussion, planning, doing and reviewing cycles as a continuous process Using targets and milestones effectively Achievement graphs Creating a high performing team The superteam charter Project control

5. The superteam charter • Obsessive in the pursuit of success • High expectations of ourselves and others • Demonstrating respect for all stakeholders • Giving early warning of possible problems • Working hard to keep each other up to date with progress • Moving from blame frame to outcome frame when things go wrong • Representing the project and its team positively both inside and outside the organisation • Valuing, involving and being open with invisible team members • Understanding how our own roles fit in with others • Being open when performance does not match aspiration and ensuring that we take the appropriate action to get things back on track

6. A complex process Identifying all tasks and estimates Being aware of restrictions on start and completion dates Identifying parallel activity Identifying the critical path Taking into account resource issues Network planning

7. This identifies the shortest time for project completion An excellent example is shown on page 84 of project leadership by Briner, Geddes and Hastings. This network diagram shows the key issues of events numbers, earliest start and latest finish times The critical path is clearly defined Another excellent description with examples of critical path method is shown in ‘Operations Management’ by Slack, Chambers and Johnson pages 536 to 539 and includes a section on calculating float, which relates to the ability to change the timings of activities in various parts of the project to accommodate resource and other issues. CPM – critical path method

8. Time estimates • Many types of estimate - ball park, worst case, best case etc • PERT gave us a mathematical approach which gives optimistic, a most likely and a pessimistic estimate • Using basic statistics one approach to estimates is based on the formula te = t0 + 4tl +tp 6 Where te is the expected time, tl is the most likely time Where t0 is the optimistic time, tp is the pessimistic time Page 542 of ‘Operations Management’ shows how this beta probability distribution can be developed into comprehensive analysis of means and variances throughout a network

9. Project Finance • Project leader is not an accountant • Awareness of financial issues is very useful • Capital • PFI (Private Finance Initiative) • Cashflow • Monitoring

10. Handling resource constraints • A benefit of network analysis is the identification of resource constraints • Rescheduling may reduce the pressure on resources simply by rescheduling some activities • Operations Management gives some useful and clear examples • In particular the process of ‘crashing networks’ is discussed which a process of reducing time spans on critical path activities so that the project is completed in less than the planned time. (See Operations Management Page 545). ‘Operations Management’ by Nigel Slack, Stuart Chambers and Robert Johnson (2001) Prentice Hall

11. References Slack. N., Chambers. S. & Johnson, Right. (2001) Operations Management. Prentice Hall Briner. W., Geddes. M. & Hastings .C. (1990) Project Leadership. Gower: Aldershot, England. Project Management Institute (2009) A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: PMBOK Guide. Pretorius. F., Lejot. P., McInnnis. A., Arner. D. & Hsu, B.F.C (2008) Project Finance for Construction and Infrastructure: Principles and Case Studies. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.

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