Project Management Plan

When I started learning and reading about the PMP certification, this was one of the most confusing topics for me. Actually its not the topic that is confusing, its the title. In our daily routine as team members or new project managers, we consider the simple project schedule (mostly the Gantt Chart from MS Project) to be the project management plan. At least I did the same and consequently was lost when I studied the process of ‘Develop Project Management Plan’ in the PMBOK guide. Let me explain to you in much simpler words that what does the PMI actually mean when it refers to the project management plan.

As the name suggests, it is a plan with which one can manage the project as a whole, not just the milestones or activities schedules. Whole project means that this is much more than a mere schedule. You have to remember that this plan is part of the integration management of the project which means that it integrates all the aspects of the project and continuously evolves during the project duration. This plan is not just one document, rather the following individual documents are put together to form the project management plan:

Project baseline

1. Schedule baseline
2. Cost performance baseline
3. Scope baseline

Plans from each knowledge area

1. Scope management plan
2. Time/Schedule management plan
3. Cost management plan
4. Quality management plan
5. Human resource plan
6. Communications management plan
7. Risk management plan
8. Procurement management plan

Other management plans

1. Requirements management plan
2. Change management plan
3. Configuration management plan
4. Process improvement plan

Often the three baselines are put together under one document generally called project performance baseline against which the project’s integrated performance is measured. The purpose of putting these plans under different headings is to make it easier to remember the names which could be otherwise difficult to remember if listed under a single heading. These individual plans will be explained in their respective topics and areas later on.

The conclusion is that the key to understand this topic is to remember that the project management plan is part of the integration management knowledge area; which means that there are always more than just one plan to integrate.

 

Project Charter

Project Charter is the basic document that officially kicks off the project by giving the authority to the project manager to go ahead with the project. Technically speaking, the project sponsoring authorities prepare this document and a project manager is assigned during this phase . But, in most cases, since the project manager is already a part of the organization, so this document is also prepared by him. It does not really matters that who prepared the project charter, the most important aspect of project initiation is that this document exists. It is, however, recommended that the project manager participates in the development of the project charter. Project charter for a project is as important and imperative as a graduation degree for your professional career. Project charter is generally a 2-10 pages document but can vary according to the requirement and size of the project. It consists of the following important information:

1. Project Title and Description: As per the heading, this is simply the name of the project along with its brief description as what to do, its objectives, etc.
2. Project Manager and Authority Level: This section names the project manager assigned for the project and his level of authority in the project. This authority level depends a lot on the type of organization this project is worked upon in. For example, Mr. ABC is the project manager for this project. He can hire any team members he deem appropriate for this project. He has the signing authority up to USD 10,000. He will assisted by Ms. XYZ as assistant project manager.
3. Statement of Work (SOW): The SOW is created by the sponsoring agency and describes their needs (macro level requirements) and project’s scope (what to do and what not to do). In a contracts situation, the contract document may contain the high level scope and thus becomes the part of the project charter under this section.
4. Business Case: This section defines the need (business need) of this project. Now, this is a very important part and one can assess the importance of a project by looking at this section. If a project is more aligned with the organization’s business objectives, then this is likely to get a lot of support and importance from the management thus increasing the chances of successful completion and implementation and vice versa. This section also defines the basis of which this project is selected over other projects. This is called project selection criteria, mostly justified by conducting cost-benefit analysis of all the suggested projects. There are several methods available to perform this analysis including but not limited to Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Benefit-Cost Ration, Economic Value Added (EVA), etc.
5. Project Resources: This section describes the high level resource requirements to complete this project. Number of team members, their high level skills set, hardware, logistics, etc. are listed in this section. We need to understand here that all these lists are prepared on the basis of expert judgement or from lessons learnt from other similar projects but do not limit a project manager in case he needs more. The purpose of including sections like this and SOW, etc. in project charter is to give an overall picture of the project in one document.
6. Stakeholders and Their Needs: Anyone who takes part in the project or is effected by the result of this project is called a stakeholder. The project team is the subset of stakeholders. This differentiation is made for the purpose of communications management. For example, the customers of any product, being developed in a project, are stakeholders but we do not send them our project’s status reports, etc. This sections also enlists the high level requirements gathered from the stakeholders by conducting surveys, interviews and other methods of requirements gathering.
7. Project Constraints and Potential Risks: This section describes the project constraints like deadline, budget and other high level limitations. Besides constraints, high level potential threats and opportunities are also mentioned in this section.
8. Signatures: Last but not the least, never forget to get the project charter signed by the sponsoring authorities. The signatures are the seal of approval by the management and make it an official document.

These are the most common sections listed in a project charter, but a project charter can have other sections like project objectives, deliverable, etc. depending upon the need. Even the titles of the sections can vary depending upon the organizations’ standards or templates. A larger project charter document with more sections would be required for a large size project and vice versa.

You can view a very detailed sample project-charter prepared for a multi-million US dollars project.

Project Integration Management

Imagine a computerized and automated soda bottle manufacturing plant. There are different components of this plant including bottle cleaning/washing, soda drink preparation, liquid and gas mixing, bottles sealing and packaging, etc. One can imagine the amount of synchronization required in all these processes in order to run the plant smoothly. The bottles filling process needs the bottles to be cleaned and ready before it could take place. The bottles sealing process needs the bottles to be filled with the soda before they could be sealed. Similarly, all processes are running on their own but need an input from some other process to start. As this is a computerized and automated plant, each process is done through machines and robots monitored and controlled by a computer in that particular process domain. Similarly, all these computers transfer their domain data to a central computer which monitors and controls the overall plant. This monitoring/controlling and synchronizing all the processes together to ensure the smooth running of the plant is called Integration. The person responsible for integration in a project, plays his role just like the central computer and is known as the project manager.

In project management terms, integration is making sure that all the processes in a project are running smoothly by providing required information/data to each other in a proper sequence and at the right time. These processes are, as per PMI’s PMBOK 4th edition, divided in knowledge areas namely scope, time, cost, quality, human resource, communication, risk and procurement. For example, in order to complete a delayed project in time, a new resource is added to the project team. Now, adding this resource will have an impact, at least, upon the cost plan of the project. The project manager will be making changes to the cost plan by calculating the impact and thus is integrating the processes of project management in this or any other situations in the project.

Life Cycle

Life cycle is a generic term used to describe progression through the stages/phases during the development of anything. For example, a human life cycle could be defined as birth, childhood, teenage…marriage, kids…. and finally death. Similarly, almost everything we see and experience in our daily lives, has a life cycle. In terms of the project management, we have to know about the product and project life cycles.

Product Life Cycle

This life cycle starts from the conception of the product till its withdrawal/end of life. Every product goes through the stages of conception, design, manufacturing, marketing, sale and at the end, withdrawal. May it be a monochrome or CRT monitors replaced by LCD/LED or steam engines used in railways now replaced by diesel/electrical engines, etc., they all have a specific life cycle and this life cycle remains the same, most of the times, during different version/model releases. The question arises is that what does a product life cycle has to do with the project management? Answer to this question is that a product is always a result of one or more projects. A simple web site can be done as one project whereas a CRM development may require multiple projects. There may be separate projects for the requirement analysis and designing phase, for the development and testing phase, for the marketing and sales phase, etc.

Project Life Cycle

As per the basic definition of a project we learnt in ‘Project – A definition!‘, a project’s life cycle is from the inception (the start) of the project till the result is delivered or the project is, for some reason, terminated (the end). For a project to be done, you need to know two things;  a) what is to be done to get the result (technically called project life cycle) and b) how to do it or which SOPs to adopt to do it the best way (technically called project management methodology). For example, Agile is a methodology mostly adopted for engineering or IT related projects.

The selection of  project life cycle depends upon the industry you are doing the project for.  It helps you to understand the basic steps required to do the task for that particular industry in a standard way. For example, project life cycle for a software development project will include phases like design, coding, testing, installation and support. Similarly, project life cycle for a construction industry will have steps like feasibility report, planning, design, construction and maintenance work. If the size of a project is very large, even these steps of life cycle can be divided into smaller individual projects.

Organizational Structures

It is very important for a project manager to understand the type of organization, he is going to work in, before he starts planning for the project. This is so much emphasized upon as organizational structure/type can have a significant impact on the project planning and execution. There are following three types of organizations:

1. Functional: This is the most commonly found structure in organizations. such organizations are grouped in different departments based on their functionality, for example, accounts, logistics, administration, human resource, sales, marketing, etc. Projects in such organizations are done in a ‘silo’. What this means is that project manager and the team are all from the same department and the information about the project remains within the boundaries of the department. The team works on the project along with the normal departmental work. If help or information from another department is needed then a request is sent to the head of the department who communicates the request to the other department head. Project managers have little or almost no authority in such organizations as the project team reports to related  supervisors, hence, not many chances to prove your skills as a project manager, so no career path in project management. Since the project team has to work on their normal departmental work as well, so their interest in the project is not up to the mark which results in very less interest in the project.
2. Projectized: As the name suggests, this organization is grouped by projects headed by the project managers and their teams. The team reports to the project manager directly so the project manager is most authoritative in this kind of an organization. Most of the vendors selling services are projectized organizations. Since the team members are hired and assigned on the basis of projects, their loyalty with the projects is maximum. Unlike functional organizations, the teams have ‘no home’ to return to after the project completion. Besides its advantages, less efficient use of resources and duplication of facilities and job functions are among the top disadvantages. This means that each project, for example, might have a separate accountant to work only on that particular project, thus duplicating the job function and facility in every project individually. Since his idle time cannot be allocated to any other project, this results in less efficient use of resources.
3. Matrix: This is an attempt to combine the best features of both functional and projectized organizations thus enhancing the strength of an organization working. Here, there are project managers and functional managers. The resources are under the functional managers which are allocated to a project before its start, only for that particular duration. This results in having two bosses of the team; the project manager & the functional manager. Communication and reporting goes from team members to both the bosses. Because of the two bosses, the project management becomes complex and requires properly implemented policies and procedures to run the things smoothly. The resources are maximum utilized as compared to projectized organizations. Since there is a lot of coordination between the project and functional managers, there is more support for the project from functional areas. The matrix can be strong or weak depending upon the authority and role of the project manager. Power rests with the project manager in strong matrix. In weak matrix, functional manager has the overall authority and the project manager is merely a coordinator or expediter. Expediter is primarily like an assistant for coordination and cannot make or enforce decisions. Coordinator is similar to the expediter but with an exception of having some power to make certain level decisions and have some authority. Merging strong and weak matrix, results in a balanced matrix where the power is shared between the functional and the project managers.

What is Project Management?

Now that you have learnt what a project is, the next logical question would be ‘what is meant by managing a project?’. If project can be considered a problem and its result is a solution to the problem then managing it is to adopt the best suitable way, out of many, to reach the solution by addressing the problem. In the simplest possible words, the project management is knowing all your options and choosing the best as per your limitations (environmental, financial, logistical, etc.) to solve your problems. These limitation are called ‘constraints’ in project management terms.

Project management is an art and a science at the same time. It has both professional and social aspects, that is why people with better social skills become better project managers. There is no doubt about technical knowledge of project management being the prerequisite for a project manager but the equal importance of social skills can be judged by that fact that during a project’s life cycle, the project manager spends 90% of his time in managing communications and dealing with the project team, management, customers, cross functional departments, end users, etc. collectively known as stakeholders. So I believe that the basic skill that you need to build, before learning the project management professionally, is social skill and that’s the very essence of project management.

Project – A definition!

The first thing is to know what is a project, before learning to manage one. The way I like to define a project is “a set of activities having a definite BEGINNING and END with a UNIQUE RESULT”.

If a project is repeated regularly by keeping most of the attributes same, it becomes an operation. An example can be a setup of a soda drink plant for the first time is a project. The manufacturing of the first batch of soda drinks is also a project. But after that, everyday’s production becomes an operation that has a similar result every time it is performed. So, even an operation when performed for the first time is a project.

The project is ‘Temporary’ in nature as it has a start and an end in a specified time period. Project being temporary doesn’t mean that it is of a short duration. The duration of a project can be as short as a week, for example, and as long as multiple years. Constructing a new room in the house is a project which could be completed in a week or so depending upon the planning, budget, resources, etc., whereas, construction of a 50 stories high rise building could take years. An important thing to understand here is that a construction company involved in the construction of different buildings considers them as individual projects as they result in a different product every time after a specific start and end. The company’s internal departments like procurement, debris disposal, logistics, etc. however are running similar operations just on different sites.

So a project is anything with a start and an end which makes it temporary and it has a unique result which can be a product or a service.