Project Management tools - Assignment Example

Quantitative measures are most commonly accepted because of ease of measurement. Surprisingly, Clements and Gido (2010) make no mention of KPIs, although they mention the project objective which should be clarified at the outset and may be defined in terms of scope, schedule and cost (p.115). Cox et al’s (2003, p.148) six significant indicators are quality control; on-time completion; cost; safety; cost (in dollars) per unit placement and units completed/placed per man-hour worked. Of these, only safety is qualitative (p.144). Yuan et al (2009) investigated KPI selection in public-private partnership projects and identified the top five priorities for different stakeholders: STAKEHOLDER GROUP Academia Private Sector Public Sector General Public OBJECTIVE RANKING 1 Acceptable quality of project Acceptable quality of project Acceptable quality of project Acceptable quality of project 2 Quality public service Life cycle cost reduction Within budget or saving money in construction and operation Quality public service 3 Within budget or saving money in construction and operation On-time or earlier project completion Solving the problem of public sector budget restraint Provide timelier and more convenient service for society 4 On-time or earlier project completion Within budget or saving money in construction and operation Transferring risk to private sector Satisfying the need for public facilities 5 Satisfying the need for public facilities Quality public service Quality public service On-time or earlier project completion Table 1: Top Five Objectives in Different Stakeholder Groups (Source: Yuan et al 2009 p.263) These findings confirm those of Cox et al (2003) in terms of quality, cost and on-time completion, but safety, cost per unit placement and units completed/placed per man-hour worked are missing.

In so doing, these findings also confirm the importance of the perception from which the judgment of KPI utilised is made. (250 words, excluding table) Flexible Work Breakdown Structure for Integrated Cost and Schedule Control Youngsoo Jung and Sungkwon Woo Jung and Woo (2004) introduce the concept of a flexible work breakdown structure (WBS) with standard classification codes to reduce the amount of data requiring control. Their argument is that “integrating cost and schedule control functions provides an effective tool for monitoring the construction process” (ibid, p.616) The implication of their approach is they are using a task-driven planning process.

PRINCE2 (OGC 2009) takes a product-based approach, focusing on what needs to be done, rather than the individual tasks that need to be done. The argument is that “the set of agreed products defined the scope of a project and provides the basis for planning and control” (ibid, p.14). The product-based approach is used by Rad and Cioffi (2004) in proposing the use of both work and resource breakdown structures to enable more accurate costing with task durations and activity estimates. They identify the WBS as a roadmap for such things including work definition, cost estimates and expenditures and time estimates and scheduling.

The ultimate goal of the WBS, for their purposes, is to “highlight[s] a logical organisation of products, parts or modules . associated with each element of the WBS”