KNOWLEDGE REPOSITORY _
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"The project has not only been completed on time but fully met the defined objectives within the planned budget." This is how a speech on a project closing dinner would sound in ideal world. In real life, however, things often turn out differently.
Throughout history, people have always carried out tasks in their work, whether simple or complex. The phenomenon of project work was always there, but the terms ‘project’ and ‘project management,’ in this sense, are relatively new concepts in human history. A project is a one-time, complex task with clear goals, budget, and deadline. This is the “Holy Trinity” or project management, a "magic triangle" which you will encounter during project work. This triangle is something we extended in DLM.
The 'Manhattan Project' - building a nuclear bomb - was the first major example, where extremely large tasks were organized and the term „project” was used. The word “project” comes from Latin and means “to throw forward.” Later, management science recognized project management as an independent discipline. From the 1950s onward, project methodologies helped achieve goals such as the development of color television, the Apollo-program, or the construction of Airbus aircraft.
Project management tools date back to the time of Ford. Henry Gantt, who worked on time-based planning for mass production, is associated with the creation of the Gantt chart. Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of scientific management, developed the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). In military industry, construction, and mass production, these tools revolutionized production and task organization. In the 1950s, further scientific methods complemented existing methodologies, including PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) and Critical Path Method (CPM). Both aim to show tasks and their relationships, and to help identify critical activities.
Until the 1960s, the United States primarily dominated management science, but later Europe also emerged strongly. In 1969, the PMI (Project Management Institute) was established in the USA, while in Europe the IPMA (International Project Management Association) was founded as its counterpart. Both organizations aim to popularize project management science and spread its methodologies.
The project triangle represents three constraints: scope, time, and cost. It also shows that one constraint cannot be changed without affecting the others.
In business planning, the SMART model is often used, meaning that goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
A project’s duration is generally calculated by summing the time requirements of individual tasks. Breaking work down in this way is called the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). During scheduling, it is essential to determine the critical path, the sequence of activities where delays cannot occur, otherwise the project deadline will slip.
A project budget consists of different types of cost elements. There are fixed and variable costs, which are relatively easy to plan and monitor, as well as implicit costs, such as the project team’s resource allocation from the organization. Project management software, once properly configured, provides significant support in planning and tracking project costs.
Defining the scope in as much detail as possible is the most important task. Based on this, time and cost planning become possible. Scope refers to the results and deliverables the project aims to achieve. Objectives should be defined as precisely and measurably as possible, as only then can project performance be accurately assessed.
The classic triangle of project management is familiar to everyone who has ever participated in a project or project management training. However, in practice, we see that this triangle is actually a pentagon: it is supplemented by two additional factors without which a project cannot be successful.
One – and perhaps the most important – is the satisfaction of those affected by the project: whether it is customers, decision-makers, colleagues working on the project or the entire organization that has to accept the change. Assessing their expectations should be a focus during the planning phase. Without proper management of the stakeholders during the project implementation, the project cannot bring real results, so the project must also pay special attention to change management.
The other key element is quality. If we don’t keep it in focus, it can easily fall victim to time or budget pressures. With every redesign, the question to ask is: how does this affect the quality of the deliverables? If we reduce the scope to meet the deadline, will the expected level be compromised? And is there a better solution that preserves all of the goals?
During the different phases of a project, so-called project deliverables are created. These are activities and documents that define the tasks and expectations how the given activity is to be performed. The most important documents, without claiming completeness, are the following:
This document, most often referred to as the business case, aims to present the need and alternatives, often including several options and their costs. Such documents typically include the scorecard, which is a decision-support tool based on objective data.
This is the “constitution” of the project. It details the operating framework, expectations, scope, deadlines, and the project team.
Depending on the nature of the project, a document may be required that describes in detail the goals to be achieved. These are often prepared with the support of external consulting firms.
This document describes the process for handling events and related new requirements that cause deviations from the originally approved scope. Beyond defining the escalation process, it also clarifies the principles for managing potential changes — in other words, what is still considered part of the original project’s scope and what is not.
This document outlines the methodology for managing risks. It presents the ways risks are evaluated, as well as the different roles and areas of responsibility. In practice this tool becomes an inventory of all identified risks, a detailed plan for mitigating those and follow-up of the related actions.
The change management plan summarizes the activities and deliverables required for actually implementing the change. One of the most important of these is the communication plan, which summarizes the communication strategy with the project's external and internal stakeholders. Who do we communicate with, about what, how often, and through what channels?
The project plan includes tasks, their deadlines, responsibilities, and dependencies between different tasks. Most often, this is created with some kind of target software and managed throughout the entire duration of the project. The PMO documents are related to the project plan, in which we manage the tasks and their status, risks, dependencies, and resource requirements in more detail.
At the end of the project, this document summarizes the results of the efforts. Just as a project cannot begin without a project charter, it cannot be closed without a project closure document. It presents whether the objectives were achieved, in what quality, if it was completed in time and for the satisfcation of all stakeholder organizations.
Each project provides numerous new lessons. The lessons learned database is a knowledge base in which the project manager records these lessons, methods, and solutions discovered during the project by the team.
In most cases, projects are managed according to some form of methodology. As in many areas of life, there are no absolute truths here either. The key question is who is prepared for what and what type of project is being executed. Large companies, universities, and consulting firms usually have their own methodologies, which largely overlap, with the main differences being in emphasis.
However, there are significant differences between various project management approaches. The most important ones are worth introducing briefly.
In this approach, there are four main project phases, plus project control. The four stages are project initiation, planning, execution, and finally closure. This method is not always effective for projects with a high degree of uncertainty.
RUP (Rational Unified Process) was developed to address the uncertainties in projects . This methodology is a product of Rational Software Corporation, an IBM subsidiary. Its essence is that after an initial system design and approval, development proceeds through regular, incremental development cycles, producing different versions. Work continues in these steps with continuous client feedback.
The oldest method still in use, originally developed for the U.S. Department of Defense to manage complex projects. The focus is on tasks and their interdependencies. In the classic PERT method, deadlines are estimated using three values: pessimistic, normal, and optimistic, and the average of these is used for planning.
In this approach, the focus is on resources. In multiproject environments, the challenge is how to allocate resources optimally across different projects. This requires greater flexibility, as a single resource may work on several tasks sequentially.
This methodology is relatively young, originally developed for software development, and is truly agile. The emphasis is on iteration, openness, and collaboration throughout the entire project phase. The client is represented by a dedicated person who, at the end of each rapid development cycle, reviews and accepts the product through continuous evaluation and iteration.
The key is to break the project into the smallest possible functional units. In this way, scope becomes more precise during the process. Instead of heavy documentation, the focus is on personal communication.
The Extreme Project Management method also belongs to the family of agile project management approaches.
From this short overview, it is clear that project management has grown into an independent field of study. There is no single best solution; in each situation, different approaches may work best, and elements of several methods can be combined.
