Briefly describe some key events in the history of project management. What role does the Project Management Institute and other professional societies play in helping the profession? Key events: ? Manhattan Project which the U. S. military led to develop the atomic bomb. Costs almost $2 billion in 1946. ? New Los Alamos laboratory 1946,project management was recognized as a distinct discipline requiring people with special skills and the desire to lead project teams. 1917, Henry Gantt developed the famous Gantt Chart as a tool for scheduling work in factories. The profession of project management is growing at very rapid pace. Although people have worked on projects for centuries, most agree that the modern concept of project management began with the Manhattan Project, which is the U. S military led to develop the atomic bomb in World War II. the Manhattan project involved many people with different skills at several different locations. it also clearly separated the overall management og the project’s mission, schedule and budget General Leslie R.
Grovesand technical management of the project under the lead scientist, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer. Many professional societies suffer from declining membership, the project management Institute (PMI), an international professional society for project managers founded in 1069, has continued to attract and retain member. PMI has created specific interest groups (SIGs) that enable members to share ideas about project management in their particular application areas, such as information syatem. professional certification is an important factor in recognizing and ensuring quality in profession.
PMI provides certificatin as a Project Management Professional ( PMP) some one who has documented sufficient project experience and education, agree to follow the PMI code of professional conduct and demonstrated knowledge of the field of project management by passing a comprehensive examination. What is project management? Briefly describe the project management framework, providing examples of stakeholders, knowledge areas, tools and technique and project success factors. Project management is “the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. Stakeholders are the people involved in or affected by project activities and include the project sponsor, project team, support staff, customers, users, suppliers and even opponents of the project. these stakeholders often have very diffrent needs and expectations. for example, building a new house is awell-known example of a project. Project management knowledge areas describe the key competencies that project managers must develop. The four knowledge areas of project management include project scope, time, cost and quality management.
These are core knowledge areas because they lead to specific project objectives? project scope management involves defining and managing all the work required to complete the project successfully? project time management includes estimating how long it will take to complete the work, developing an acceptable poject schedule and easuring timely completion of the project ? project cost management consists preparing and managing the budget for the project ? project quality management ensure that the project will satisfy the states or implied needs for which it was undertaken. Project Management tools and technique assist project managers and their teams in carrying out work in all nine knowledge areas. for example, some popular time management tools and techniques include Grantt charts, project network diagrams and critical path analysis. There are several ways to define project success. the project met scope, time and cost goals. the project satisfied the customer/sponsor. even if the project met initial scope, time ans cost goals, the users of the computers or their managers might not satisfied.
Perhaps the project manager or team member never returned calls or were rude. The result of the project met its main objective such as making or saving a certain amount maney, providing a good return on investement or simply making the sponsors happy. .What is the role of the project manager? What are suggested skills for all project managers and for information technology project managers? Why is leadership so important for project managers? How ids the job market for information technology project managers? The role of project manager divided to few ways. Project Manager job description : a project manager can have many different job description which can vary tremendously based on the organization and the project. For example, Monster. com includes thousands of job listings for project managers. They even have a job category for project/program managers. Project manager for a consulting firm, IT project manager for a financial services firm, IT project manager for a nonprofit consulting firm. Suggested skills for project managers : project managers need to have a wide variety of skills and be able to decide which particular skills are more important in different situations.
Project managers should also possess general management knowledge and skills. They should understand important topics related to financial management, accounting, procurement, sales, marketing, contracts, manufacturing, distribution, logistics, the supply chain, strategic planning, tactical planning, operations management, organizational structure and behavior, personnel administration, compensation, benefits, career paths and health and safety practices. On some projects, it will be critical for the project manager to have a lot of experience in one or several of these general management areas. On other projects, the project manager can delegate detailed responsibility for some of these areas to a team member, support staff or even a supplier. Even so, the project manger must be intelligent and experienced enough to know which of these areas are most important and who is qualified to do the work. He or she must also make and/or take responsibility for all key project decisions. Achieving high performance on projects requires soft skills, otherwise called human relations skills.
Some of these soft skills include effective communication, influencing the organization to get things done, leadership, motivation, negotiation, conflict management and problem solving. manager need good soft skills is that to understand, navigate and meet stakeholders’ needs and expectations, project managers need to lead , communicate, negotiate, solve problems and influence the organization at large. They need to be able to listen actively to what others are saying, help develop new approaches for solving problem and then persuade others to work toward achieving project goals. Project managers must lead their project teams by providing vision delegating work, creating an energetic and positive environment and setting an example of appropriate and effective behavior. Project managers must focus on teamwork skills to employ people effectively. Why is there a new or renewed interest in the field of project management? There is a new or renewed interest in project management today as the number of projects continues to grow and their complexity continues to increase.
New books and articles are being written each year as we discover more about the field of project management, and project management software continues to advance. Because the project management field and the technology industry change rapidly, we cannot assume that what worked even five years ago is still the best approach today.What is a project, and what are its main attributes? How is a project diffrent from what most people do in thier day-to-day jobs? What is the triple constraint? A project is “ a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, services or result. Operation, on the other hand, is work done in organizations to sustain the business. project are different from operations in that they and when their objectives have been reached or the project has been terminated. A project has unique purpose. Every project should have a well-defined objective. A project is temporary. A project has a definite beginning and a definite end. Project is different from what most people do in their day-to-day jobs in that they end when their objectives have been reached or the project has been terminated. The Triple Constraint is limitations are sometimes referredto in project management.
To create a successful project, a project manager must consider scope, time , and cost and balance often –competing goals. ? Time is an important identity in many Project Management calculations, we can’t do anything about Time, it passes at a constant rate and its always now, regardless of the schedule. At least time is reliably predictable ? Perhaps the most important factor for most projects, Money is also the justification for many of them. Money can be effective in overcoming the limits of time, but not always, most projects don’t have enough money to try that approach, anyway. SCOPE: Scope has to with the way things come out: does the end product do what it is supposed to do and did the project succeed in achieving its objectives? Scope is best when it matches requirements closely. 6. What functions can you perform with project management software? What are some popular names of low-end, midrange and high-end project management tools? Project Management software creates a schedule. That’s right, the program computes the schedule. That’s it. Well, it has a spreadsheet setup for the work and the resources and costs, and it has some standard reports built in, and it has a dandy network view, too.
And, yes, it can send and receive reminders and reports for you, and, well, all right, it can track project progress, and prepare schedule and budget forecasts and manage project documentation for you, too, along with some other stuff. That spreadsheet setup does lots of consistent calculations for you. Provided you get the tasks, resources and costs right, it gives you impressive amounts of numbers. Whether or not you actually turn out to be a devotee, learning about the way the software works is a great way to learn about the way Project Management is practiced.
Everybody’s doing it. From ships to sealing wax, everybody is using Project Management software. There are hundreds of project management software tools that provide specific functionality for managing projects. Low-end tool : these tools provide basic project management features and generally cost less than $200 per user. They are often recommended for small projects and single users. Most of these tools allow users to create Gantt charts, which cannot be done easily using current productivity software.
MinuteMan, Project Kickstart, Excel Midrange tools: a step up from low-end tools, midrange tools is designed to handle larger projects, multiple users and multiple projects. All of these tools can produce Gantt charts and network diagrams and can assist in critical path analysis, resource allocation, project tracking, and status reporting and so on. Microsoft Project, Milestone, Copper High-end tools: another category of project management software is high-end tools, sometimes referred to as enterprise project management software.
These tools provide robust capabilities to handle very large projects, dispersed workgroup and enterprise and portfolio management functions that summarize and combine individual project information to provide an enterprise view of all projects. These products are generally licensed on a per-user basis, integrate with enterprise database management software and are accessible via the Internet. Enterprise Project Management software, Microsoft Enterprise Project Management solution, Microsoft Office Project Server 2007, Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007A, VPMi Enterprise Online, Project Management Center Web site, Top Ten Reviews . What is a program? What is project portfolio? Discuss the relationship between projects, programs and portfolio management and the contributions they can each make to enterprise success. A program is “a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually. Infrastricture : An IT department often has a program for IT infrastructure projects. nder this progra, there could be several projects such as providing more wireless Internet access, upgrading hardware and software and developing and maintaining corporate standarts for IT. Applications development : under this program, there could be several project such as updateing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. In many organizations, project managers also support an emerging business strategy of project portfolio management, in which organizations group anad manage projects and programs as a portfolio of investments that contribute to the entire enterprise’s success.
Project portfolio management is when organizations group and manage projects as a portfolio of investments that contribute to the entire enterprise’s success. Portfolio manager’s help their organizations make wise investment decisions by helping to select and analyze projects from a strategic perspective. Portfolio managers may or may not have previous experience as project or program managers. It is most important that they have strong financial and analytical skills and understand how projects and programs can contribute to meeting strategic goals.
