Five processes of project management and nine areas of knowledge
A project is a one-time effort to complete a unique product or service. According to this definition, the project has the characteristics of target clarity, activity disposable and resource consumption. In other words, activities with the previous three main features can be considered as projects. Real projects can be seen everywhere, such as equipment elimination, conference organization, technical competitions, wedding ceremonies and home decoration, etc. In the implementation of these projects, there are project management issues, but in real life and work, may be more attention to the things themselves, and the good things related to the organization, planning, control and other processes relatively lack of attention, or lack of experience and ability to pay attention to. Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques in project activities to achieve project requirements.
Overall project management has five processes: start-up process, planning process, implementation process, execution process, closing process, etc., including nine areas of knowledge: scope management, time management, cost management, quality management, risk management, human resources management, communication management, procurement management and system management methods and tools. As a project manager to master these nine core areas of knowledge, and focus on the concept of system management, avoid entering a detail, attention in five different stages of the focus.
I. Three constraints on project managementAny project will be constrained in terms of scope, time and cost three, which is the three constraints of project management. Project management is to find a suitable balance between the scope, time and cost by means of scientific methods and tools, so that all stakeholders in the project are as satisfied as possible. Projects are disposable and designed to produce unique products or services, but cannot view and run projects in isolation. This requires the project manager to use the concept of the system to treat the project, to identify the project in the larger environment where the position, so that in considering the scope of the project, time and cost, there will be more appropriate coordination principles.
1. Scope constraints for projectsWhat is the scope of the project to specify the task of the project? As a project manager, you must first understand the core of the project's commercial profits, and clearly grasp what the project sponsors expect from the project to obtain the products or services. For the scope constraints of the project, it is easy to overlook the project's business objectives, while biased towards the technical objectives, resulting in the difference between the project end result and the project stakeholder expectations. Because the scope of the project may change with the progress of the project, resulting in conflicts with constraints such as time and cost, the scope constraints of the project are mainly based on the project's commercial profit core to do the project scope change management. It is necessary to avoid the scope of the non-principled change project, but also according to the time and cost constraints, in the case of obtaining the agreement of the project stakeholders, reasonable change the scope of the project according to the program.
2. Time constraints for projectsThe time constraint of the project is to specify how long the project needs to be completed, how the project's progress should be arranged, the time requirement of the project's activities, and the sequencing of the activities in the schedule. When there is a discrepancy between the schedule and the plan, how to readjust the project's activity duration to ensure that the project is completed on schedule, or by adjusting the project's overall duration to ensure the time and quality of the activity. When considering time constraint, we should study the influence of project scope change on project time, on the other hand, because of the change of project duration and the impact on project cost. and timely follow up the progress of the project, through the actual project progress analysis, provide to the project stakeholders an accurate report.
3. Cost constraints for projectsThe cost constraint of a project is to stipulate how much it will take to complete the project. The measurement of the cost of the project is generally measured by the amount of money spent, but can also be expressed according to the characteristics of the project, using a specific unit of measurement. The key is to make the project stakeholders aware of the project scope and time requirements that can be completed under current cost constraints through cost accounting. When the scope and time of the project changes, how much the cost changes, to decide whether to change the scope of the project, change the progress of the project, or expand the project investment. In many of the projects we have actually completed, most of them focus on the progress of the project rather than on the cost management of the project. Usually only at the end of the project, to the financial or planning management of the budget staff for project settlement. For the internal consumption of resources projects, often do not do project cost estimation and analysis, so that the project stakeholders are not aware of the project caused by the waste of resources. As a result, cost management is also needed for some of the projects carried out internally. Because the project is unique, each project has a lot of uncertainties, there is a competition between the use of project resources, in addition to a very small project, the project is difficult to end exactly according to the expected scope, time and cost three constraints to complete. Because the project stakeholders always expect the lowest cost, the shortest time, to complete the largest project scope. These three expectations are contradictory and mutually restrictive. The expansion of project scope will lead to the extension of project duration or the need for additional overtime resources, which will further increase the cost of the project, and the reduction of project cost will also lead to the limitation of project scope. As the project manager, it is to use nine areas of project management knowledge, in the five process groups of the project, scientific and rational allocation of resources, to achieve the best possible stakeholder expectations, so that they achieve maximum satisfaction.
Ii. Five major process groups for project managementThe life cycle of a project is roughly divided into concepts, development, implementation, and closure processes. In the concept phase, the cost is analyzed, the feasibility of the project is studied, and the result is to come up with a report and get approval and support. In practical work, we just have a new idea and concept, immediately into the development process. In the development phase, there are project proposals, budget costs, and work breakdown plans. When we do things, we may just come up with a simple breakdown of the work and the approximate schedule of the project, and it's over. In the implementation phase, to have the underlying work package and to determine the cost when we do things, we may just come up with a simple work breakdown with an approximate schedule of project plans, and it's over. In the implementation phase, to have the underlying work package and to determine the cost estimate, but we did, to this step, we basically began to lose control, no clear milestone, I we just put a phase as a project. In the closing phase, we often discuss the lessons of each project, but the documentation of the work done is largely not kept up to date, and the handover to the user is not done. Project management of the five process groups: Start, plan, execution, control and closure, throughout the project's life cycle, for the project start-up process, in particular, the organization environment and the project stakeholder analysis; In the latter process, the project manager should grasp the project control, the ideal result of control is the time required, Cost and quality limits within the scope of the completion of both parties are satisfied with the project.
1. The startup process of the projectThe start-up process of a project is the process of identifying and starting a new project. It is important to recognize that a small success in a major project is more meaningful and valuable than a great success in an unimportant project. In this sense, the start-up phase of the project is particularly important, which is a critical stage in deciding whether to invest and what projects to invest in, where the decision-making errors can cause huge losses. Attaching importance to the project initiation process is the first step to ensure the success of the project. Start the field of knowledge involving the project scope, the output of which is the project Charter, the appointment of the project manager, the determination of constraints and assumptions and other conditions. The most important part of the start-up process is the feasibility study and analysis of the project, which is centered on the business objectives rather than technology. Whether it is the focus of the leadership or the purpose of the project, the focus should be on clear business objectives, with a view to achieving a business-expected profit analysis, and to provide scientific and rational evaluation methods for future evaluation.
2. Planning process for a projectThe project planning process is a very important process in the implementation of the project. Through the scope of the project, task decomposition, resource analysis, such as the development of a scientific plan to enable the project team to carry out the work in an orderly manner. Also because of the plan, we in the implementation process, we can have a reference, and through the continuous revision and improvement of the plan, so that the latter plan more in line with the actual, more accurate guidance project work. Previously there was a mistaken notion that the plan should be accurate, so-called accurate, that actual progress must proceed as planned. This is not the case, planning is a means of management, only in this way, so that the resource allocation, time allocation of the project is more scientific and reasonable, and the plan in the actual implementation can be constantly modified. There are different plans in different areas of knowledge of the project, according to the actual project situation, different plans should be prepared, including project plan, scope specification, work breakdown structure, activity list, Network Diagram, schedule, resource plan, cost estimation, quality plan, risk plan, communication plan, purchasing plan, etc. Is the common output of the project planning process, should be focused on and use.
3. The implementation process of the projectThe implementation of the project, generally refers to the main content of the project implementation process, but the implementation of the project, including the preliminary work, so not only in the specific implementation process to pay attention to the scope of change, record project information, encourage the project team members to complete the project, but also in the opening and closing process, emphasizing the implementation of the key content, such as In the project implementation, the important content is the project information communication, namely timely submits the project progress information, by the project report way regularly through the project progress, advantageous carries on the project control, has provided the means to the quality assurance.
4. Control process of the projectProject management Process Control, is to ensure that the project towards the goal of the important process, is to detect deviations in time and take corrective measures to make the project progress towards the target direction. Control can make the actual progress conform to the plan, or modify the plan to make it more relevant to the current situation. The prerequisite for revising the plan is that the project meets the desired objectives. There are several areas of control: scope changes, quality standards, status reports, and risk response. Basically deal with the above four aspects of control, the project control tasks can be completed in general.
5. Project Closure ProcessA project through a formal and effective finishing process, not only for the current project to produce a complete document, the project stakeholders, but also the future project work of an important asset. In many of the projects experienced, more attention to the start and process of the project, ignoring the project closure, so the project management level has not been improved. It is also important to focus on the failure of successful project closure, which is more difficult than the end of a successful project, because the main value of such a project is the lesson of the failure of the project, so that the lessons will be refined through the end-of-process. The project closure includes acceptance of the final product, the creation of project files, lessons learned, etc. In addition, the project stakeholders to make a reasonable arrangement, it is easy to ignore the place, simple to send back is not the best way to deal with the project team members are not responsible. The form of project closure can be decided freely according to the size of the project, can be carried out by convening a conference, commendation, publish performance evaluation, etc., the form is adopted according to the situation, but must be clear, and can achieve the effect. It would be nice to have a close audit of the project, but there are many projects that do not need to be audited.
Iii. Nine areas of knowledge in project managementThe nine areas of knowledge in project management are the nine chunks of important knowledge and abilities that a project manager must possess and master. The core of the four areas of knowledge is the scope, time, cost and quality management. Many management tools and techniques are also involved in these areas of knowledge to help project managers and project team members complete project management. such as: Network Diagram method, critical path method, brainstorming method, earned value method, etc., different tools can help us to accomplish different management work. In addition, there are many project management software, such as: MicrosoftProject, P3, etc., as a tool for project management, can also help us to solve the project in the process of planning, tracking, control and other management processes.
1. Overall project management knowledgeThe overall management of the project, or integrated management is not wrong, it is a comprehensive use of the other eight areas of knowledge, reasonable integration and balance the relationship between the elements to ensure the success of the project to complete the key. The overall management of the project consists of three main processes: Project planning: The collection of the results of various plans and the formation of a harmonized project plan document. Project Plan execution: Implement the plan by executing the activities of the project plan. Overall change control: Control the change of the project. The project manager is responsible for coordinating the personnel, planning and work required to complete a project, leading the team to achieve the project objectives, and responsible for the decision when there is a conflict between the project objectives or the person participating in the project, and is responsible for reporting the progress information of the project to the senior management in a timely manner. In summary, the project manager is responsible for the overall management of the project, which is the key to the success of the project. Review the previously responsible projects, feel that the main problems are: No project sponsors, or project sponsors are not clear, often regard themselves as the project sponsors, the project deliverables are unclear, so that the final closure can not be checked against the plan, lack of organizational structure, the control of the project is not standardized, In particular, the project scope of change control, risk management is not taken seriously, only in the project team to discuss, and stay in the head of the project manager, lack of project stakeholder analysis, no normative progress report, the project progress report is more random. To effectively carry out project management, citing the project management knowledge system and method tools, first leaf out, through the practice, further understanding of these content is necessary.
2. Project Scope Management KnowledgeProject scope uncertainty, will lead to the continuous expansion of project scope, as a project manager, at the beginning of the project, it is necessary for the project scope to take out the scope of the project stakeholders agreed to understand the non-meaning of the document-the project charter. Then, in order to ensure the implementation of the project, clear the responsibility of the project team members, you must also break down the scope of the project, so that it becomes a smaller project task package-the work breakdown structure (WBS). Finally, it is important to realize that the project itself is not isolated, so sometimes the scope changes are necessary, and the key is how to control when the change occurs. Before the above discussion, the most important thing is how to manage the scope when faced with a project, or not knowing exactly what to do. Identification of potential projects has four steps: Determine what kind of project to make, business analysis, identify important business processes, analyze the processes that best benefit from the project, shape the potential benefits of the project, identify scope, benefits, and constraints; Select a scenario and allocate resources. There are four common methods for selecting projects from multiple projects, or selecting scenarios from multiple scenarios: overall needs, classification, NPV, and weighted scoring models.
3. Time management knowledge of the projectThe time management of a project is the process of ensuring that the project is completed on schedule. First of all to develop the project schedule, and then follow the inspection schedule and actual completion of the difference between the timely adjustment of resources, work tasks, to ensure the progress of the project. In the tracking process, to timely communicate with the project stakeholders in order to detect the extent of deviations, and the time and schedule differences, or the project team members intentionally or unconsciously false misrepresentation of the project completion, resulting in a runaway schedule. This includes the following: Activity definition: decomposition from WBS; activity sequencing: Identifying the dependencies between activities; Activity duration Estimation: Estimating the time of each activity can be done by pert method; using tools such as PROJECT2002 to assist project time management; Use Gantt Chart to help track project progress , using network diagrams and critical path analysis to help determine the importance of the completion date or adjust the impact of the duration on the project duration, and to address the focus of attention activities. Need to pay attention to, before learning the project time management tools and methods, thought can achieve the project tracking control, in fact, these tools are through people to take effect, activities are done by people, so the project manager can not put too much attention on the tool, Instead, we learn to use tools to coordinate conflicts between people and resources.
4. Knowledge of project cost managementFor the project manager in the cost management, is to reduce and control costs, to meet the expectations of the project stakeholders. The process includes: resource planning: The development of resource requirements lists, cost estimates: cost estimates for the required resources, cost budgeting: the allocation of overall cost estimates to individual work, the establishment of a cost baseline plan, cost control: Controlling changes in the project budget, correcting cost estimates, updating the budget, correcting the actions of the project team members, Analysis of completion estimation and cost control. In the cost management involves a lot of financial management concepts, terminology, basic theory and the use of methods and tools, as a project manager, to be familiar with these content, in particular, earned value analysis of the relevant terms and abbreviations, such as: BCWS, BCWP, ACWP, CV, SV, CPI, SPI and so on, Not only to understand the meaning of these terms, but also to master their calculation formula.
5. Project Human Resource Management knowledgeThe human resource management of a project is the process of effectively exerting the role of each person involved in the project. The human resources management process of the project includes: Organization plan: Form the organization Chart of the project; Get relevant people: the focus is on business related people, team building: Identify the responsibilities of each project stakeholder, train and improve their skills, and achieve teamwork and communication. Because of the relationship with people, first of all to clarify their respective responsibilities, this plan should be clear, the project management software can help the project manager to improve efficiency, and can timely find out the rationality of task decomposition, and finally form a reasonable task decomposition table. At the same time, through effective incentive methods to help project members to implement the project plan, improve efficiency. The project is achieved through the team work together, attention to give full play to the role of the team, so that team members his ability is the project manager's challenge. In the process, strive to do things wrong, through effective meetings to help the project to achieve communication, inspection and objectives.
6. Quality management knowledge of the projectThe quality of the project, understood as the degree to which the project satisfies the customer's explicit or implied requirements. Note that this includes explicit requirements, as well as implied requirements. For IT projects, how to meet the implicit quality requirements of users may be an important reason for the failure of IT project quality. The system may be developed to meet requirements in the requirements specification, but with the actual user requirements (including implied requirements), the difference is very large, resulting in inconsistencies, resulting in the failure of the IT project. Modern quality management after a development process, has established a relatively perfect quality system, international organizations also have relevant quality documents to review the common production quality, such as ISO2000 series quality standards, the production quality of software, there are also some evaluation models, such as SQFD model, CMM software Maturity model and so on. The CMM maturity model is divided into five levels: spontaneous, simple, organized, managed, and adapted, each identified as a different level. Quality planning is required for project management, and quality assurance tools are applied to ensure the implementation of the quality plan. In the process of quality control, there are many tools and methods available, such as Pareto analysis, statistical sampling and standard deviation. In order to improve the quality of the project, we must form the quality consciousness in the leadership, improve the quality by establishing a good working environment, improve the quality by forming the quality culture, which is one of the key factors to improve the quality management of the project comprehensively. In the past projects, the quality management of the project is basically not paid attention to, the company every year in the QC activities, the purpose of the activity is to improve the quality, but the activities become a science and technology innovation activities, and more projects in the implementation process, how to carry out quality management, but failed to reflect, this is also worth exploring the issue.
7. Communication management knowledge of the projectCommunication management of the project is very important to the project manager, as the front line command needs intelligence management, this is to enable the entire project team to master the project information, the implementation of other management tools, all the control is based on communication. At the beginning of the project, a communication plan is required, including what time, what content, in what format, in what manner, and to whom. In the project communication, may use the written report, the oral report or the informal exchange, various ways advantageous also has the disadvantage, the key to see whether facilitates the communication the effect. The complexity of communication increases rapidly with the increase in the number of objects, so that face-to-head communication is controlled within a certain range through appropriate tools and means to minimize the impact of ineffective communication on project management. In communication, the meeting is one of the effective forms. Many salespeople like to describe the progress of the project and the problems encountered in the project in a simple formalized language, rather than technical charts and documents.
8. Risk management knowledge of the projectWhen the risk of a project is not well managed, it is difficult for the project stakeholders to accept the fact of the risk and the loss caused by the risk, and more time is needed to adjust the mental state in order to restore the implementation of the project. Project risk management is not only in the process of the project, effectively avoid the occurrence of risk, and in the event of risk, help us with the right attitude to face, and not unprepared. Many projects fail because when the risk occurs, the psychological damage to the project, resulting in the loss of subjective judgment ability, and make the wrong decision. In this sense, the project risk planning is mainly to improve the risk awareness of the project stakeholders, as long as there is sufficient risk awareness, risk identification is comprehensive or not, in some projects may not be too obvious importance. Risk identification can be based on brainstorming, empirical rules and other methods, after identifying these risk factors, you can add weight to these factors, and finally can calculate the probability of project success, and can be based on the decision whether the project should be carried out, continued or stopped. Once the risk factors are identified, the risk response is developed. According to the risk occurrence probability, the risk cost and the income, decides the corresponding coping strategy, such as the risk management, the risk acceptance, the risk improvement and so on. In practice, there may be risks identified, but they cannot be handled correctly. The risk is passed on by layers. If the user participation is not enough, resulting in an incorrect demand, the further generation of estimated errors, the result is the deviation of the plan, the final result of the whole project is biased. Therefore, we should pay attention to the risk from the source to prevent the risk of the layer of amplification.
9. Procurement management knowledge of the projectProcurement is the acquisition of products or services from outside. Procurement is becoming increasingly important for IT projects. At present, the vast majority of IT projects are inseparable from procurement management, and many of the main content of the project is equipment procurement or consulting procurement, for enterprises, whether to do a good job procurement management is to ensure the success of the project key content. Effective procurement management includes the following processes: preparation of a reasonable and effective procurement plan: This is an important process of project management, that is, to determine which requirements of the project can be better met through procurement. In the procurement plan, the first is to decide whether to purchase, how to purchase, what to buy, how much, when procurement, etc.; Prepare an inquiry plan: the preparation of quotation invitation RFQ or tender; inquiry: Make a real inquiry; bid opening: Evaluate and select suppliers; management: management of purchasing contracts; Finishing touches: Finishing the purchase contract.
In the whole process, it is easy to overlook the two processes, one is the procurement plan, the second is the contract closure. Procurement planning, procurement management as a whole according to the requirements of the premise, if this step is not good, others are white, and in the procurement contract closure process, the most easy to forget or do not do is the procurement audit. As for the process of supplier selection, in IT projects, it tends to pay too much attention to technology and neglect management and cost. In fact, the management and cost determine whether the contract can be maintained on schedule to meet the premise. In my company's actual situation, the general project to equipment as the main cost, often no longer consider other content, and only as a general equipment procurement, rendezvous equipment Department implementation. Because not only failed to achieve project management, but also did not achieve procurement management, so this kind of project, although also implemented, but the implementation of the quality of the project is always unsatisfactory
Five processes of project management and nine areas of knowledge
