Management 538: Teams and Projects Session 6: Basics of Project Management

Basic Project Management Four Phases Planning Build-Up Implementation Closeout

Some Potential Project Management Tasks Developing a Charter (from the sponsor) Conduct a premortem: assume ‘patient’ has died and critique what went wrong based on the plan before the project team Prevent project creep: balancing flexibility and being open for improvements and tweaks than create budget, scheduling, quality concerns Keeping the scope clear (boundaries of project)

Monitoring & controlling the project Track project activities, collect performance data, analyze performance, report progress to stakeholders, manage changes to plan Manage people problems Close-out: validate the project team has met goals and objectives and terminate the project

Work Breakdown Identify all tasks and subtasks for assigned project Assign roles and responsibilities of team members to each task Plan beginning point and end point for each task (length of time for each task) Have you included all aspects of planning and design? (i.e., iterative reviews, approvals, prototype testing, production)

PM: Three Key Steps Scope: what is included in the project; boundaries Resources: who is working on the project; finances available Schedule: Desired completed date; deadline

PM: Is Work Breakdown Top Down? Executives identify project needs and the conditions Executives may ramp up a project to be more competitive Create new product? Decide when the new product will be released? Decide what is the new product Decide how much the company can or is willing to spend on the new product

Executives may work backward and foresee the release of a competitor’s new product and plan when their company should release a competitive product Before competitor? Same time as competitor? Slightly after competitor?

Executives make the decision on the level of improvement of the new product Maintain parity? Leap ahead of competitor

Executives review cost analyses If too expensive, hurt profits and stock market will likely punish the company Lower cost leads to better profit margins and higher stock price

PM: Top Down Problem While executives may review concrete evidence and make decisions rationally, they often miss the ‘practicality’ of the project. They see the business needs and less of the practical needs Therefore, the most attractive approach would actually be to leap ahead of a competitor at a lower cost for production – this is also the least feasibile.

PM: Bottom-Up Project staff members decide on the objectives based on their understanding of the work required and desired outcomes. Tensions arise between the top-down and bottom-up approaches Desires vs. realistic Note: adapted from HBS teaching note (slides 6-12)

Lessons learned: Evaluate whether the project delivered on its promised result. Evaluate the project plan Evaluate the project-management methodology Evaluate individual’s performance

Project Management Perspective Planning the project Managing the project Formal structure of the project is laid out to reduce potential problems, such as scale issues Often create checklists “Charts”: Gant, Windows software Potential problem: when the project management plan becomes the goal