According to the UK Association of Project Management (APM) quoted in Atkinson (1999), it has produced a UK Body of Knowledge (BoK) which provides a broad definition for project management as:
“The planning, organisation, monitoring and control of all aspects of a project and the motivation of all involved to achieve the project objectives safely and within agreed time, cost and performance criteria.”
The planning of the project firstly consists of identifying and clarifying the tasks and necessary resources required for completing the project; the organisation phase or scheduling then allocates how much time is needed to complete each task, and finally the monitoring tracks progress and analyses performance and quality (Spinner, 1997).
Time and cost management are both the most commonly used and important project management functions and are strongly linked with the level of success of the project. These are predicted during the planning phase of the latter; time, cost and quality are so closely linked that they form what is called the “Iron Triangle” (Atkinson, 1999).
This assignment will thus first shed light on the Fourth Bridge and Bath Thermae Spa case studies respectively, and will then be structured around three primary skill and managerial elements contained within the Project Management Body of Knowledge.
According to Cramb (2008), renovating the bridge located near Edinburgh is a “never-ending job” due to its length, given that as soon as maintenance crews have finished renovating it, it is time to start again.
In 2002, civil engineering company Balfour Beatty signed a maintenance contract of £10 million per annum for Network Rail till the estimated end of contract in 2009 (Forth Bridges Visitor Centre Trus...
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...rison, F. and Lock, D. (2004) Advanced Project Management: A Structured Approach. 4th edition. Aldershot: Gower Publishing
Hendrickson, C. and Au, T. (1989) Project Management for Construction: Fundamental Concept for Owners, Engineers, Architects and Builders. 1st edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall
McManus, J. (2010) ‘Keeping projects under cost control’, The Chartered Institute for IT [Online]. Available at: http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.5912 (Accessed 01 December 2010)
Spinner, M. P. (1997) Project Management: Principles and Practices. London: Prentice Hall International
Thermae Bath Spa (2010) Project History. Available at: http://www.thermaebathspa.com/newsandinfo/projecthistory/ (Accessed: 30 November 2010)
Wikipedia (2010) Forth Bridge [Online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge#Maintenance (Accessed: 24 November 2010)
Spokane Industries has contracted Franklin Electronics for an 18 month product development contract. Franklin Electronics is new to using project management methodologies and have not been exposed to earned value management methodologies. Even though Franklin and Spokane have worked together in the past, they have mainly used fixed price contracts with little to no stipulations. For this project Spokane Industries is requiring Franklin Electronics to use formalized project management methodologies, earned value cost schedules, and schedules for reports and meetings. Since Franklin Electronics had had no experience with earned value management, the cost accounting group was trained in the methodology in order to bid for the project. Franklin Electronics won the contract because they had the lowest price. They developed a work breakdown structure that consisted of 45 work packages with 4 of the work packages being delivered in the first 4 months. They also developed a simple status report consisting of the work packages due, budgeted cost for work scheduled, budgeted cost for work performed, actual cost for work performed, cost variance and price variance. When they deliver the first status report, the Franklin Electronics project manager is called into an emergency meeting because Spokane Industries vice president is unhappy with the progress. In this paper, we will discuss Six Sigma process improvement for tracking time and cost, recommendations on how Franklin Electronics can use project management principles to meet their goal of improving efficiency and empowering management to make better and informed decisions through the use of Earned Value Management, how an effective Earned Value Management System contributes ...
At first should the terminology be defined. A project is "a unique set of coordinated activities, with a definite start and finishing point, undertaken by an individual or organisation to meet specific objectives within defined, scheduled costs and performance parameters" (BS 6079-1,200:2, Material of Sunderland 2005, page 5). The individual who undertakes the organisa-tion is usually the project manager. This person plays a special role and is supported by his team.
Gray, Clifford F.; Larson, Erik W., Project Management – The Managerial Process, Copyright © 2001 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Harvard Business Review Press (2012). HBR Guide to Project Management. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. P123-124
Kezner, H. Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. 6th. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc, 1998. Print.
Project Management Institute . (2008). A Guide to the Project Management body Of Knowledge. Newton Square, PA: Project Management Institute, Inc.
Ramroth, Jr., William G., 2006, Project Management for Design Professionals, . Chicago, Illinois : AEC Education.
PMBOK, (2013). A guide to the project management body of knowledge : (PMBOK guide). 5th ed. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute, Inc..
Gray, Larson. (2005). Project management: The managerial process. [University of Phoenix Custom Edition e-text]. Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill Companies. Retrieved February 5, 2007, from University of Phoenix, rEsource, MGT 573Project Management in the Business Environment Web site.
Project management is said to be completed within time when it completed within the “triple constraints”: cost, time and quality. And in a lot of causes, one them is sacrificed so as to meet the other two. Project managers prioritize which ones are the most important.
Good project management strategies allow work to be accomplished in less time, at lower cost, with fewer resources and without any sacrifice in quality (Kerzner, 2001).
Everyone who has been involved in a project will agree that making a project succeed requires hard work. The difficulties are countless: delays, excessive budget over-runs, inadequate results, dissatisfied end-beneficiaries, high stress among the project team and other undesirable outcomes. Therefore, the purpose of the project manager is to help you to organize, plan and control your projects to make sure you do not encounter such difficulties. Projects are characterized by five features: a project manager, a group of people, a goal, limited time and money and a certain level of uncertainty related to whether the goals will be achieved or no. Project managers are responsible of these aspects, which makes supervising and directing projects a very hard task. Following these lines will help the project manager maximize the potential of the project’s success by helping them address each element of the project at the right time and to the right level of detail for its size and complexity.
PMBOK guide defines TM as the “Use of available time and your own productivity along with the appropriate planning and management of the project schedule” highlighting the link between Time Management and productivity and its closely knit relationship to scope and cost areas. Max Wideman presents a wider definition for TM as the “function required to maintain appropriate allocation of time to the overall conduct of the project through the successive stages of its natural life-cycle, by means of the processes of time planning, time estimating, time scheduling, and schedule control.” Ultimately at it’s core however, TM is about time, its planning and control during all stages of the project. A further look into Wideman’s definition of TM by means of identifying its importance throughout the entire project life-cycle (Initiation, planning, execution, controlling and close-out) is required. It is hoped that by analysing how TM tools and techniques can positively and negatively effect the different stages of the Project life cycle a better understanding of productivity, TM and project success will result.
When planning a new project, how the project will be managed is one of the most important factors. The importance of a managers will determine the success of the project. The success of the project will be determined by how well it is managed. Project management is referred to as the discipline that entails the processes of carefully planning, organizing, controlling, and motivating the organization resources so as to foster and facilitate the achievement of specific established and desired goals and meet the specific criteria of success required in the organization (Larson, 2014). Over the course of this paper I will be discussing and analyzing the importance of project management.
“Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to organisational and project activities to achieve the aims of an organisation through projects” (PMI, 2003).