Project Management Methodologies - Essay Example

? Project Management Methodologies CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORKS Two project management standards are currently beingutilized for implementation of successful projects known as a Project Management Professional (PMP) and Project in Controlled Environment 2 (PRINCE2). In order to implement one of the project management standards in an organization, it is pertinent to critically review and evaluate both standards. The document presents an introduction to the project management standards, similarities and differences between the processes and knowledge areas being used by the project management standards. Moreover, the project management standards utilize themes, tools and techniques for managing and monitoring of the projects, the document contains a discussion and comparison of these tools and techniques. In the end, the document recommends the project management standard for appraising, planning and executing successful projects in the organization. Introduction The Project Management Institute (PMI) provides a well recognized project management standard known as Project Management Professionals (PMP). The project managers usually get a certification of PMP for learning the ethical behaviour with the project team and knowing responsibilities for taking informed decisions regarding the project. The PMP provides a set of five (5) processes, nine (9) knowledge areas along with a code of ethics for managing a project successfully. The five (5) processes include: the initiation, planning, executing, monitoring and control, and project closure. It is required for the project manager to follow the prescribed processes of the PMP (as per the policy of the organization) by managing the project activities from the project appraisal (initiation) till project closure. The PMP enhances the skills of the project manager to make decisions, providing directions to the project team and executing projects in a professional manner. The nine (9) knowledge areas of the PMP include: the Project integration Management, Scope Management, Time, Cost, Quality, Human Resources, Communication, Risk and Project Procurement Management. Keeping in view the knowledge areas, the project manager is responsible for developing a project plan, risk management plan, communication plan, and quality plan of the project. The project manager is responsible for allocating the resources (hardware, human, financial) and managing the project scheduling. The project manager would be responsible to manage the scope of the project (scope management). The PMP recommends the project manager to respect others and establishing a close working relationship with the team members by effective communication (Project Management Institute Inc., 2004). PRINCE2 (Project IN Controlled Environment) is a project management standard used in more than 150 countries for successfully managing a project. PRINCE2 consists of a several themes, set of principals, and a project management lifecycle. There are seven (7) themes of the PRINCE2 include: Risk, Change, Progress, Business Case, Organization, Quality and Plans. These themes of the PRINCE2 explain the significant project management aspects which need to be managed and handled during the execution of the project lifecycle. In PRINCE2 a plan is not just about the cost management, schedule management and resources management, however, plans are set of documents explaining what to be achieved, how to be achieved and when to be achieved by whom the goals of a project. The PRINCE2 utilizes product planning technique for creating diverse types of plans. The product-based planning is used by the PRINCE2 which is one of the most powerful techniques for project managers to manage a project. The PRINCE2 recommends and uses different levels of the plan involve diverse human resources for managing the project successfully. These plans include: the project plan, stage plan(s) and team plan(s). As the PRINCE2 utilizes product-based planning having seven steps for creating or developing plans include: the design the plan, define and analyse the products, identify activities and dependencies, prepare estimates, prepare schedules and document the plan. In parallel to these steps the PRINCE2 always recommends reviewing the steps (for developing the plans) in order to identify the risks in the product, activities, estimates and schedule (Hinde, 2012). Product Based Technique The Product-Based technique describes the Project Product Description, Product Breakdown Structure, and Product Flow Diagram. The Project Product Description entitles the products to be developed in the project including the customer requirements having quality expectations as well as the project acceptance criteria. The Product Flow Diagram shows the association between the products to be developed in the project. The Product Breakdown Structure categorises the diverse types of the products to be developed in the project. The Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) is specifically used in PRINCE2 project management standard PRINCE2 and it is a graphical representation tool used to define the clear and precise deliverables or outcomes of a project. In PBS, the whole project has to be a breakdown in a tree structure to define the products and the tasks that are required to develop a product. It is pertinent to mention here that the term ‘product’ can be an intermediate document, requirement specification document, user accepting testing documentation and so on. The PBS starts with a representation of the top level products of the project, sub-deliverables along with their components required to achieve the product and sub-divided into smaller project units. The PBS is specifically used for large projects having a huge number of products or project deliverables so that any deliverable of the project could not be ignored along with the activities required to achieve the deliverable. By utilizing the Product-Based technique, the PRINCE2 develops three levels of plans include: the project plan, stage plan and team plan. The project plan is developed as a deliverable of the ‘Initiating a Project’ process. The Lifecycle of the project plan revolves around all the phase / processes of the PRINCE2 recommend updating the project plan at each stage. The project plan is updated as per the progress of the project and provides information regarding the stage and subsequent stages. The stage plan focuses on managing the particular stage of the PRINCE2. It entitles the tasks and activities as well as the human resources required to complete the stage. The information contained by each work package involved in the particular stage include: the products to be produced and development of products. Work Breakdown Structure In comparison to the PRINCE2 technique, a Gantt chart is one of the imperative project management tools and has become an industry standard to determine the schedule of the project by showing phases, milestones, activities and resources (equipment, human, financial, etc.). There are four characteristics of the Gantt chart include: the activities have to organize from top to bottom, time is placed / determined from left to right, the relationship between the activities (start to start, start to finish, finish to start, finish to finish), and one of important elements is the identification of the critical path. The activities included in the critical path are said to be critical activities and if one of these activity delays, the whole duration of the project would be impacted accordingly. The critical activities are highlighted (usually with red color) and representing the longest path of the project. Microsoft Project (MSP) is usually used to develop the Gantt chart (Gardiner, 2005, 252). Moreover, the work breakdown structure (WBS) is a hierarchical decomposition of the work that is required to be completed by the project team in order to achieve the project objectives. There are various benefits of using the WBS by the project manager that include but not limited to determining the scope of the project, the assigning human resources to the deliverables, monitoring of the project deliverables, it allows managing accurately the cost, time and risks of the project. Furthermore, while developing WBS it should be kept in mind that the micro-level work packages should not be represented as it would be difficult to manage for the project manager, it is required to only mention the deliverables rather activities and the WBS cannot replace the Gantt chart (Mathis, 2011). The logic network project management tool emphasizes on sequencing the activities of the project to determine the project duration. The project manager needs to identify the activities, the predecessors and successor relationship of the activities, the duration of each activity, the forward and backward pass, the activity float (or slack) and ultimately determining the critical path of the project by identifying the longest project path. The major difference between the Gantt chart and logic network diagrams that the Gantt chart highlights the project timeline and suitable for assigning the resources, whereas, the logic network diagrams accentuate the activities’ relationship and determining the float and suitable for project crashing (in order to reduce the project duration by assigning more human resources). The activities having zero (0) float are said to be critical activities which cannot be delayed in order to complete the project within specified duration (Gardiner, 2005). Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) chart is a project management tool that lays emphasis on the project schedule and manages project activities and milestones. The PERT chart is the graphical illustration of the critical path method or analysis (CPM or CPA). There are three (3) basic elements of the PERT chart that include: the events or milestones (completion of any or set of considerable activities – for example forms, templates, questionnaire etc.), the activities require achieving the milestones and/or objectives, and non-activities that are dependent on other activities (usually represented by dotted lines in the diagram). There are several advantages of using PERT chart that includes: easy to review the sequence of project events, project’s critical path, earliest start and finish time of each activity. Business Case PRINCE2 Theme In PRINCE2, the business case is developed while initiating a project and kept all the way through the lifecycle of the project. The project board (project higher management) reviews and refers to the business case while taking each and every decision of the project. The business case is a document that presents the entire scope of the project / product under development. The business case contains rationales and justifications for undertaking the project, moreover, these reasons are provided based on the estimated schedule (time of completion) along with cost and benefit analysis. The objectives and goals of the project have to be stated in the business case in a way that the progress of the project could be measured throughout the project lifecycle. It is pertinent to mention here that the business case has to be developed as per the organizational standards (Hinde, 2012, pp 103-118). The PRINCE2 business case is read and supported by diverse other PRINCE2 documents include: the risk log, project plan, daily log, quality log, etc. There are different formats of the business case document; however, generally there are seven sections of the business case as given below (Office of Government Commerce, 2011, pp 197-201): Reasons The section contains an explanation and answers the question: why the project / product are required? Business Options The section provides a description of the diverse options (at least three) have been considered in delivering the project outcome. Moreover, the section contains the justification (cost, schedule, quality) for the selected option (Bentley, 2010, pp 121-122). Expected Benefits In this section of the business case, the owner (an Executive in PRINCE2) of the business case has to write regarding each and every anticipated benefit to be received after the completion of the project. It is worthwhile that the expected benefits should be quantifiable so that these can be measured after the completion of the project. Risks The section contains an outline of the critical risks that could be rose during the execution of the project. Moreover, the details of the risk management should be written in the risk log. Estimated Schedule and Cost It is important to write down the estimated cost (development and operations / maintenance cost) and a time line of the project in this section of the business case, however, the details can be viewed in the project plan document of the project. Investment Appraisal The section compares aggregated advantages (benefits) of the project with disadvantages raised due to the occurrence of risks along with the costs of the project. Evaluation The last section of the business case should be the evaluation which can done using multiple techniques. For example, sensitivity analysis can be used to evaluate the business case, moreover, AS-IS and GAP analysis usually exposes the strength of the document. Project Charter The project charter is a formal internal document of an organization that facilitates to specify higher level planning of the project. Moreover, the document provides authority to the project manager to execute the project by utilizing the resources of the organization. The document contains information of the project including project scope, objectives of the project, stakeholders, deliverables and assumptions for the problem statement to be solved by the project. It is the responsibility of the project manager to develop the project charter document while consulting with the business manager of the company (Maylor, 2010, pp 142-144). The Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge recommends using the project charter. As per the PMBOK a project charter can be defined as “A document issued by the project initiator or sponsor that formally authorizes the existence of a project, and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities” (Project Management Institute Inc., 2004, pp 77-99). The contents of the project charter include but are not limited to the description of the business requirements, the requirements of the customer, the rationale for undertaking the project and the description of the authority of the project manager towards the project. Moreover, the project charter suggested certain techniques to be followed for estimating costs, schedule and profits. Some of these techniques include: the Net Present Value, Return on Investment, Net Profit, Payback Period and Net Profit (Lock, 2007, pp 285-288). The techniques are applied to the numeric values of the project for getting diverse useful outcomes. For example, the Net Profit (NP) value is calculated by subtracting the total expenditures of the project from the total revenue incurred. It is essential to calculate a Payback Period (PP) of the project to be executed which can be calculated by dividing the initial investment of the project and the annual operating savings. The outcome of the Payback Period is the number of years in which the investment of the project would be returned to the organization. The term Return on Investment (ROI) analysis facilitates to assess the profitability of an organization after investing in information technology. The ROI analysis informs the organizations whether to invest in the project or not while considering either the project would be profitable to the organizations. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is one of the financial statements facilitating the organization's higher management to identify the direct and indirect costs of the project to be developed. The TCO is one of the most relevant techniques to identify the capital investment and operational expenses, therefore, the organizations can easily calculate the profitability of the projects (Meredith and Mantel, 2008, pp 47-90). Comparison It is pertinent to compare the deliverables of the both project management standards. Each of the deliverables has its own contents and techniques which differentiates them from each other. Moreover, each deliverable has its own advantages and disadvantages based on the techniques used to complete the deliverables. There are a few drawbacks of the business case theme of the PRINCE2 project management. One of the drawbacks of the PRINCE2 is that the project management standard tends to recommend more on documentation; moreover, it recommends governing the projects using a series of produced documentaries. Therefore, some authors have resulted that sometimes it becomes difficult for the project board / project manager to follow the several documents simultaneously. The business case theme is itself a document; moreover, it is based on several documents as well. Furthermore, comparatively the PRINCE2 does not guide on the techniques to provide justification of the project like the Net Present Value (NPV), TCO, ROI, etc. However, the PMP suggests such techniques to be utilized for developing the project charter (Wideman, 2002). The business case theme of the PRINCE2 is one of the main differentiators between the project management standards. In PRINCE2, the business case is used to update after each stage to ensure accurate data is included with correct estimates. The decisions of the project board depend on the business case and it is the only document that survives till the completion of the project. Moreover, once the benefits mentioned in the business case have been achieved by the respective organization, the business case would be updated (Rankins, 2009). The business case provides facility to the project manager to focus the project more sophisticated, as the business case is the base document contains the core information about the project (Siegelaub, 2009). Conclusion Comparatively, the principals, techniques and processes of the PRINCE2 for developing diverse plans are comprehensive. Whereas, the Project Management Professional or other project management tools for planning the project provides the similar functionalities but using different techniques. The planning process of the PRINCE2 has structured approach leads to comprehensive steps and plans are produced keeping in view the dependencies of the activities. On the other hand, the PMBOK concentrates on the network diagrams, critical path management, conditional diagramming methods, etc. for developing plans to execute the project successfully. PRINCE2 follows ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches for project and stage plans respectively. However, the tools adopted by the PMBOK for time and cost management are comprehensively described by utilizing the Program Analysis and Review Technique (PERT), Cost of Quality (COQ) analysis, etc. As far as the scheduling is concerned, the PMP provides two techniques for tackling the project under abnormal condition (when the project is behind schedule) and these techniques include: the project crashing and fast-tracking. Whereas, the PRINCE2 by utilizing the product-based planning provides unambiguous and clear roles and responsibilities for each team member involved in the execution of the project. The stage plan utilizes best practices for planning even the minute level of activities including the work packages of a product. Keeping in view the strengths and weaknesses it can be stated that the product-based technique of planning of PRINCE2 is far better than the other project management techniques (Sunohara, n.d). Reference List Bentley, C., 2010. The essence of PRINCE2 project management method – 5th ed. England: The Glad Waterlooville, Hants – imaq-v library Hinde, D., 2012. PRINCE2 Study Guide. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, Incorporation – online book, imam access Lock, D., 2007. Project Management – 9th ed. Aldershot: Gower Publishing Company Limited Gardiner, P. D., 2005. Project Management – A Strategic Planning Approach. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp 244 – 283 Mathis, M., 2011. Work Breakdown Structure: Purpose, Process and Pitfalls. [online] Available at: [Accessed 26 November 2013] Maylor, H., 2010. Project Management – 4th ed. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall Meredith, J. R., and Mantel, S. J., 2008. Project Management: A Managerial Approach. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, Inc Office of Government Commerce., 2011. Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2. London: The Stationary Office – imaq-v library Project Management Institute Inc., 2004. A guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK guide). Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute Incorporation Rankins, G. J., 2009. Comparing PMBok and PRINCE2 in 2009. OGC Conference, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia Siegelaub, J. M., 2009. How PRINCE2® can Compliment the PMBoK® Guide and your PMP®. Sunohara, D., n.d. PRINCE2 vs PMBOK: Comparing Apples and Oranges. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 1st December 2013] Wideman, R. M., 2002. Comparing PRINCE2 with PMBoK®. Vancouver, BC Canada: AEW Services Read More