By James A. Baker
Founder
Baker Communications
Project management sometimes seems like juggling, with a number of balls that must be kept in the air during any project. The project manager has many concerns: controlling scope creep, maintaining quality, staying under budget and on schedule, measuring progress. Your resources, time, and money must all be managed effectively.
Keeping all these “balls” in the air without dropping them can become overwhelming, as you worry about several seemingly separate things simultaneously. It can be helpful to understand how different aspects of a project affect each other. These considerations are not separate objects to juggle, but parts of a solid structure that can support your project management success.
Project Management 101
The point of project management, in essence, is to achieve the project’s goals and objectives within set constraints. The traditional “project management triangle” assumes these constraints are time - your schedule; cost or resources - which includes your budget; and scope - the size of the project’s goal. None of these factors may be changed without affecting the others: an increase in scope, for example, entails an increase in time and cost, while a decrease in the available budget or a tighter deadline may limit the scope of the project.
The Project Pyramid
The “project management triangle” can be extended into a pyramid or tripod, with performance or “quality” at the top. The supporting sides or legs - resources, time, and scope - are the factors which determine how high the summit of the pyramid reaches, and whether it is stable. The more ambitious your goal, and the more resources and time you have to reach it, the greater your performance may be. However, if one of the three supports is modified without adjusting the others appropriately, the pyramid slumps, and may even collapse. Cutting the budget without altering the scope, for example, or increasing the scope without allowing more time for completion, will cause issues with quality performance.
Your job, as a project manager, is to ensure that your Project Pyramid is a solid, stable construction that you can cap with a high-quality end result.
Managing Resources
Managing the budget is a critical element of most projects. Often a project manager is evaluated based on his or her ability to complete a project within budget.
Every project task will have a cost; in preparing the project budget, each of these costs is estimated and then totaled. Some estimates will be more accurate than others. The project budget may include an allowance for variations in cost, or contingency allowances for unforeseen delays or problems. The project manager's job is to keep the actual cost at or below the estimated cost, using as little of the contingency funds as possible.
Besides a monetary budget, your resources may also include people, equipment, and materials, depending on the nature of your industry and the type of project.
Managing people means making sure you have the right number of the right people with the right skills and tools doing the right jobs in the right way at the right time. People management is one of the most challenging aspects of any project. Not only must you must ensure that the people involved know what needs to be done, when to do it, and how to do it, but you must also make sure they stay invested, motivated, and cooperative.
The project manager may also need to manage equipment, project materials, or supplies. If your project involves use of equipment or supplies, you must ensure that you have the right equipment in the right place at the right time, that it is functioning properly, and that any necessary supplies are available for use when needed.
Managing Time
Time management is another side of the Project Pyramid, a critical factor in successful project management.
A project can be broken down into a number of tasks that have to be performed. To prepare the project schedule, you must determine what the tasks are, estimate how long they will take, assess what resources they will require, and plan the order in which they should be done. Tasks must often be executed simultaneously by different people or groups within the project.
Any flexibility in the schedule is called float. Some tasks have zero float; a line through all the tasks with zero float determines a critical path. All tasks on this path must be completed on time if the project is to be completed on time. The Project Manager's key time management task is to manage the critical path (or paths, if there are more than one).
Managing Scope Changes
Scope changes often occur in the form of "scope creep," the aggregation of small changes. These changes may be insignificant by themselves, but taken together they can become problematic. Ensure that any change in scope, no matter how small, is accompanied by approval for a corresponding change in budget and/or schedule as necessary.
Building the Pyramid
The schedule, resources, and scope of a project all affect each other. The most common cause of blown budgets, for example, is blown schedules. You cannot effectively manage the resources, time and money in a project unless you manage the project’s scope. Project managers who succeed in meeting their project schedule and control scope changes have a much better chance of staying within their project budget. Those who adjust their budget and schedule to accommodate any scope creep will still turn out quality work. Each factor has an effect on the total structure.
When planning and executing any project, don’t think of your budget, time and goals as separate issues. Each side of the Project Pyramid is dependent on the other two for support; if there is poor management of time, resources, or scope, the pyramid will not stand. Build your pyramid with an awareness of how any changes affect the entire structure, and you will create a lasting monument to your project management success.
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