project management

Examples of project management in the following topics:

• Project Management Audits

  • Project management audits are used to determine and control the quality, completion, and timing of a project.
  • This usually refers to audits in accounting, but similar concepts also exist in project management and quality management, as the auditing of steps and processes in a project systematically or randomly to insure that the project is meeting estimated completion and quality standards.
  • Like a project management audit, a quality audit is an external verification that a project is compliant with regulations and standard.
  • Project managers benefit from periodic auditing in two broad ways.
  • When auditing a project, the project manager needs to be clear that the project team does not become suspicious or feel threatened by it.

• Ratio Analysis

  • In project management, a ratio analysis may be related to the efficiency of a project and how well the project managers are controlling resources.
  • Other efficiency ratios that the project management team may consider include staff productivity levels, the number of activities completed in a set period, and expenses in relation to productivity.
  • All of these ratios give the project manager a better sense of the health of the project.
  • Project managers should consider these ratios in relation to past, present, and future projects, making sure that they are investing in a project that will produce the best value for their dollar.
  • Project managers must justify their projects in this context to appease managerial concerns and considerations; thus ratio analysis is also useful in ensuring the viability and likelihood of renewal for a given project.

• CPM and PERT Charts

  • Project managers can glean a lot of information about the timing of the project by following the pathways created in the CPM diagram between the different steps.
  • The critical path also tells the project manager the shortest possible time period in which the project can be completed since the timing of the project will be dependent on the completion of critical path tasks.
  • This helps project managers organize tasks and ensure that time is managed appropriately at each stage of the project.
  • This makes it easier for the project manager to effectively add value by reducing lead times.
  • Outline business processes within project management utilizing the critical path method (CPM) as a control function and diagram projects within project management using the program evaluation review technique (PERT) chart

• Financial and Budgetary Controls

  • Determining the cost of a project is one of the most important initial steps for a project manager.
  • If a project manager cannot stay within a controlled budget, they may not have the funds to complete the project.
  • These tools are critically important for project managers who need to control resources to ensure project completion.
  • Variances can be computed for both costs and revenues to show a project manager whether they are adhering to the project budget.
  • Both payback period and NPV can be used in project management in order to determine how much profit a project will bring in and when.

• Gantt Charts

  • Gantt charts display the duration of steps in a project and are used by project managers to track the time and sequence of each step.
  • Gantt charts are especially useful for management professionals because they display multiple steps and active components simultaneously.
  • Gantt charts enable real-time tracking of each phase of a given project (or series of projects), and allow managers to quickly update and communicate broad arrays of information chronologically.
  • Gantt charts also help communicate the goals and objectives of projects, their timeline, and the expectations project managers have for completion rates for the project.
  • Because Gantt charts focus primarily on schedule management, they represent only one of the triple constraints for project management (cost, time, and scope–Gantt charts show only time).

• Planning a Project

  • Implementing a framework for generating a project-planning cycle, complete with strategic objectives, implementation methods, and assessment, is a primary responsibility of strategic managers.
  • Closing: The project-management cycle ends with the determination that the project no longer captures value and should be harvested or divested.
  • Therefore, the project cycle is closed.
  • This step-by-step process highlights each feasible stage in the project-management cycle.
  • As shown in the figure, there are five basic strategic management steps in the planning cycle.

• Working with Management

  • Senior management is generally a team of individuals at the highest level of organizational management who have the day-to-day responsibility of managing a company.
  • Senior management works on a very tight schedule and would prefer to focus only on the most important details of a project or process.
  • However, every manager is different and priorities may vary based on the project.
  • The employee should learn how a manger prefers to approach a project, and then attempt to present issues in a way that makes the manager comfortable.
  • This can lead to more efficiently run projects and management having more trust in their employees.

• The GLOBE Project

  • The GLOBE Research Project is an international group of social scientists and management scholars who study cross-cultural leadership.
  • Under the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) Research Project, an international group of social scientists and management scholars studied cross-cultural leadership.
  • House founded the project at the University of Pennsylvania.
  • This international team collected data from 17,300 middle managers in 951 organizations.
  • Outline the nine cultural competences found by the GLOBE project using the six GLOBE dimensions and describe how the project pertains to leadership

• Types of Teams

  • Depending on its needs and goals, a company can use a project team, a virtual team, or a cross-functional team.
  • Still other projects depend on people with a broad and diverse range of knowledge and expertise.
  • Project teams are created for a defined period of time to achieve a specific goal.
  • Members of a project team often belong to different functional groups and are chosen to participate in the team based on specific skills they can contribute to the project.
  • Software development is most commonly done by project teams.

• Functional vs. General Management

  • General managers focus on the entire business, while functional managers specialize in a particular unit or department.
  • Functional management and general management represent two differing responsibility sets with an organization.
  • Functional managers have ongoing responsibilities and are not usually directly affiliated with project teams, other than ensuring that goals and objectives are aligned with the organization's overall strategy and vision.
  • Each functional manager is in control of a particular area of expertise—e.g., operations or policy and planning—and the general manager supervises all the functional managers.
  • Differentiate between functional management and general management from a business perspective