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Project

Eventhough project have been completed by humans for hundereds and even thousands of years, the exact word is quite a recent piece of terminology that relates mainly to the birth of modern project management in 60s of the last century. You will learn more about the recent history of project management in the section xxx. However, these days we may see projects all around us. Very often this word is used in a inappropriate way - being confused with processes, operations, innovations or planning in general. All these terms are however in close relationship to "projects" and in a way they also overlap. Lets have a look at it more closely:

Project definition

Project is a unique and temporary endeavour, that has a specific goal, allocated resources and definied timeframe. Temporary means that project has a definite beginning and an end. Unique  means that the final product or services is different from other products and services in a particular organisation that are created on a regular basis (see Processes below).

Specification, resources and time are the three factors that are often visualized together as a "project triangle". 

Please note, that "Resources" may be not only human resources, but also financial, material or any other resources that are needed for a successful completion of a project.

Projects that are more complex may be divided to subprojects that all together contribute to a successful completion of the overall project goal. Similarly, projects may be grouped together to create large programmes with extensive and diverse programme goals. In any case, the structure in which project is organised has to enable a succesful completion of the definied goals within a logical and comprehensible framework.

Processes

Projects are not to be confused with organisation processes. By processes we understand ongoing and repetitive operations of an organisation that lead to products and services that are commonly provided by the organisation as means of fulfillement of its vision. 

What is project management?

According to APM, "project management is the application of processes, methods, skills, knowledge and experience to achieve specific project objectives according to the project acceptance criteria within agreed parameters. Project management has final deliverables that are constrained to a finite timescale and budget.

A key factor that distinguishes project management from just 'management' is that it has this final deliverable and a finite timespan, unlike management which is an ongoing process. Because of this a project professional needs a wide range of skills; often technical skills, and certainly people management skills and good business awareness." (Source: https://www.apm.org.uk/resources/what-is-project-management/) 

Project management evolution

Modern project management methodologies may be traced back to the 60s of the 20th century, when two major lines of innovations evoked a need for complex project management approach. The two major innovative streams were:

1. the first complex projects in information technology

2. the space conquest (reaching the orbit, sending a man to the space, moon landing) etc. in the midst of a cold-war between the two political bloks of that time period

These two types of projects were by far too complex to just rely on the major (and indisputadly up to today the crutial) tool of any project manager - common sense. More tools and methods were urgently need to achieve those  challenging goals.  Still today, we may see many of the approaches that were orginally developed by NASA, Department of Defence or pioneer IT companies to be frequently and commonly used by project managers across different industries and specialisations.

Project management approaches

There are two major distinct approaches to project management:

1. waterfall approach

2. agile approach

Waterfall project management approach

In waterfall approach, there is a pre-defined sequence of steps and stages followed in the process of project completion. With some small overlap, each stage starts after the prior one is completed.

The typical stages of waterfall project management are: 

• Requirements: This is the stage in which the manager analyzes and gathers all the requirements and documentation for the project.
• System design: During this phase, the manager designs the workflow model for the project.
• Implementation: The system is put into practice in this phase; this is the stage where things get built.
• Testing: During this phase, each element is tested to ensure they work as expected and fulfill the necessary requirements.
• Deployment (in the case of a service) or delivery (in the case of a product): The service or product is officially launched in this phase.
• Maintenance: In this final, ongoing stage, the team performs upkeep and maintenance on the resulting product or service. (Source: https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/what-is-waterfall-project-management/)

Agile approach to project management

APM defines agile approach as "Agile project management is an iterative approach to delivering a project throughout its life cycle.

Iterative or agile life cycles are composed of several iterations or incremental steps towards the completion of a project. Iterative approaches are frequently used in software development projects to promote velocity and adaptability since the benefit of iteration is that you can adjust as you go along rather than following a linear path. One of the aims of an agile or iterative approach is to release benefits throughout the process rather than only at the end. At the core, agile projects should exhibit central values and behaviours of trust, flexibility, empowerment and collaboration." (Source: https://www.apm.org.uk/resources/find-a-resource/agile-project-management/) 

Whereas agile project management are gaining a lot of attention recently, the waterfall project management approach keeps being a valid and powerful tool to be used in certain types of projects, environments and circumstances. Certainly, a good knowledge of the classical waterfall approach is helpful to understand concept of project life-cycle and grasp the overall project complexity. In the following modules, we will concentrate primarily on the waterfall approach. However, one specific module will be devoted to SCRUM as a typical example of agile project management approach.

Organisational structures

Projects are integral part of the process of inovation and improvement in organisations with various management structures (process, agile, matrix etc.). 

Implementing project management methodologies may lead to a change from a classical functional organisational structure (with stricktly defined line management hierarchy and related division of power, reponsibility and communication flow) to a matrix structure. In matrix structure, project management teams are created on a horizontal axis - crossing boarders of line management divisions on the vertical axis. In this way, more empowerment is given to project team members as representatives of the vertical lines and thus more flexibility in communication, negotiating, problem solving and decision making is achieved.

TEST: Try to define in your words the interelatedness between projects and processes.

TEST: Try to define when and under which circumstances may be a project declared as succesful.

Project life-cycle

Project life-cycle defines a phase sequence of a project. For each phase, the project life-cycle should define: 

- what technical work should be completed

- who should be involved in each phase

- what inputs are needed

- how outputs should look like etc.

Deliverables from the preceeding phase should be usually approved before the next phase is started, however, in real life situations the phases have a tendency to overlap.  

Project life-cycle should be always distinguished from product life-cycle!

Project life-cycle (PMBoK, 2000)