ARMPD- Lecture No. 27 (Project Management)

Project Management

Today's lecture was about Managing the Projects. The lecturer asked us to explained what Project is before moving into project management.

What is a Project?

A Project consist of a particular Time Frame, Budget and  the ultimate objective of a Project is to work towards the goals and achieve it.

What is a Project Management?

Next we discussed what Project Management is. According to mpug :

" Project management is the science (and art) of organizing the components of a project, whether the project is development of a new product, the launch of a new service, a marketing campaign, or a wedding. A project isn't something that's part of normal business operations. It's typically created once, it's temporary, and it's specific.  A project consumes resources (whether people, cash, materials, or time), and it has funding limits".

 In the discussion we found out that Project Management has four processes.

1. Initiation stage
2. Planning Stage
3. Executing  Stage
4. Monitoring and controlling  Stage
5. Closure 

Initiation

In this stage the project manager explains to his/her team what the project is and what the users hope to achieve by undertaking the project. Initiation stage includes project deliverable meaning the outcomes of the project.

Planning Stage

In  the planning stage the project manager lists all activities and task related to the tasks including how the tasks are related, duration of each task will and how each task is tied to a specific deadline.

Executing  Stage

In this stage project manager is aware of how much resources and budget the project has been allocated. He will assign the resources and allocate the budget to various other tasks in the project.

Monitoring and Controlling  Stage

The project manager is the person in charge of updating all the project plans to reflect actual time elapsed for each and every task. The project manager is able to identify how well the project is progressing overall by keeping up with the details of progress.

Closure

In the stage the project manager and business owner combines the project team and those who have an interest in the deliverable of the project(stakeholders)

Project scope and Feasibility was the next topic we discussed in class.

Project scope will clearly identify the boundaries meaning what the project will do and will not do while Feasibility study checks whether the project is worthwhile to pursue. Under Feasibility 

- Operational Feasibility

- Economic Feasibility

- Schedule Feasibility

Defining Goals/Aims

The goals should Consist of SMART factors discussed in the previous lectures.

Once a project has started the PM has to monitor the  changes and check the impact on planned time, cost and quality of the product

The project management Triangle

In the project management Triangle there are 3 main important factors.

- Scope

- Time

- Cost

The project managers have to balance these 3 constraints if they want to get a positive and a quality deliverable out of the project. If u increase scope you might want to adjust the cost and time according to it in order to balance it so that it will not go out of shape.

Then we discussed about how to  manage the projects. Under that we discussed few important point such as 

- identify what activities your going to perform

- Work to series of check points(time to time check quality assurance)

- Control project

- Ensure projects scheduled at earliest possible date with least drain on resources.