Project Management | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

To understand project management, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of what a project is. A project exists to achieve some goal and oncethat goal has been achieved the project is finished. Projects do not carry on indefinitely; they have a start, a life-time, and an end. Projects can range from such challenging undertakings as sending a person to the Moon to more everyday tasks such as building a house. A complex project may involve thousands of people working over a number of years to achieve a goal; a simple project may involve only a single person working for a short time.

Project management involves organizing the actions needed to achieve the project goal. The two primary aspects of project management are project planning and project tracking. Project planning involves defining how you will achieve the goal, including listing the specific tasks required. Project tracking means looking at how the project is progressing and comparing that to the plan that describes how you expected things to happen.

The first step in project planning is to define very clearly what the goal of the project is. A clear goal is necessary so that everybody involved can agree on what constitutes a finished project. For example, the goal of a project to build a house could be that the house has everything necessary for living in it except for the furniture. This implies that the house includes plumbing, electricity, and decorations. Exactly what is required to meet the goal must then be spelled out in detail.

Once the project has a clear goal, the next step in project planning is to define the tasks that need to be completed to achieve this goal. For example, the project to build a house includes the following general tasks:

1. Lay the foundation
2. Build the structure (walls, floors etc.)
3. Put on the roof
4. Install plumbing
5. Install electricity
6. Decorate the house.

Ideally, a project plan would include these general categories, plus the sub-tasks that must be accomplished within each category to constitute a finished task. Without a detailed list of the necessary tasks and sub-tasks, it is very difficult to plan a project accurately.

Once tasks are identified, they must be organized to reflect the dependencies between them. Some tasks depend on the output of others. For example, decorating the house cannot be started until the structure has been built and the roof has been put on. In our example we have defined six tasks but a complex project may have hundreds of interdependent tasks. To help manage this complexity, a technique called Program Evaluation and Revue Technique (PERT) was developed by the U.S. Navy for its Polaris missile project. Project planning using PERT involves drawing a diagram, called a PERT chart, to show the dependencies between the tasks. On a PERT chart, the tasks are represented as arrows and events are represented as circles. One event that will appear on all PERT charts is the end of the project. The time order of the tasks on a PERT chart is from left to right, so the end of the project event will be the rightmost, however, the PERT chartdoes not say anything about the actual duration of the tasks. Figure 1 shows a PERT chart for our build-a-house project. Event A is the start of the project and event E is the end of the project. This PERT chart shows the dependencies between the six general tasks we have defined.

As well as identifying the tasks to be performed, it is necessary to estimate how much work it will take to complete the task. Table 1 shows estimates for how long each of the house building tasks will take.

Based on the time estimates for the tasks and the list of dependencies between tasks, a schedule can be created. The schedule maps the project tasks to time, indicating when individual tasks will be completed and ultimately when the complete project will be finished. Just as the PERT chart is a good way to identify and track dependencies between tasks, Gantt charts are useful for representing project schedules in a graphic format. The Gantt chart displays a list of tasks. For each task, it shows when in time it will be performed. Figure 2 shows a Gantt chart for the build-a-house project. As shown on the PERT chart, tasks 1, 2 and 3 are scheduled sequentially, due to dependencies among them, while tasks 4, 5, and 6 are scheduled simultaneously, because there are no dependencies between them.

While the project is underway, the project manager must focus on tracking the progress of the project. Project tracking involves comparing the actual progress of the project against the plan for the project. While the project is running, the project manager may modify the plan to take account of unexpected events that happen during the project.

Many software tools are available to support project management. These tools typically support a number of graphical descriptions of the project including PERT and Gantt charts. The software tools will check that the various representations of the project are consistent, highlighting any inconsistencies. Although software tools can be very helpful in managing a

Task Number	Task Name	Estimate (in weeks)
1	Lay the foundation	8 weeks
2	Build the structure (walls, floors etc.)	6 weeks
3	Put on the roof	3 weeks
4	Install plumbing	2 weeks
5	Install electricity	4 weeks
6	Decorate the house	3 weeks

project, it is important to remember that the software will not manage the project for you. The project manager must do the project planning and tracking; the software is only a tool to support the project manager.

Project management is about organizing actions to achieve some goal. The principles of project management are the same no matter what the goal of the project is. The example we have used is of building a house but the same principles apply to other types of projects including the development of computer hardware and software.

Decision Support Systems; Information Systems; Office Automation Systems.

O'Connell, Fergus. How to Run Successful Projects II: The Silver Bullet. New York: Prentice Hall, 1996.

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