Project Time Management - Research Paper Example

?Running Head: Project Time Management Project Time Management [Institute’s Project Time Management Introduction Although, it has been a few decades since project management has appeared as a field of study, it is not new to human civilization. Project management dates back to the earliest human civilization and examples of the same include The Pyramids of Egypt, The Great Wall of China, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon’s, the Taj Mahal of India and others (Portny, et al., 2007). The world is full of projects and in fact, our definition and view of the world indeed includes many successful projects that continue to define us and influence our lives in many different ways. Henry Gantt deserves the credit of formally introducing project management as a distinct field of study to academicians and researchers. In fact, he is also known as the father of project management. Furthermore, being influenced by the father of Scientific Management, Frederick Winslow Taylor, he developed Gantt chart, which is discussed latter in the paper as well. Much of the latter development in this field came from military organizations during the 1950s and early 1960s (Kerzner, 2009). They were responsible for introducing the Critical Path Method (CPM). It was during the late 1960s that private sector organizations and professionals also stepped on the scene and formed International Project Management Association (IPMA) in 1967 and Project Management Institute (PMI) in the year 1969. The literature regarding project management reveals that three critical success factors define project management and its success. These are time, cost, and performance. This paper is concerned with critical success factor of time, which has emerged as an even more important factor in the past few years (Meredith & Mantel, 2005). This paper is an attempt to briefly explore and understand project time management, its process, background, and importance. Furthermore, the put would also shed some light on critical path method, Gantt chart and project time management processes. Background Out of the many differences between project management in the past and project management today is that time has emerged as highly important and scarce resource. When public sector organizations are undertaking project management, they are feeling the pressure from the governments, policymakers, and public to finalize the project as soon as possible. In case of private organizations, there are both internal and external pressures, which force the project managers to meet deadlines and utilize the resource of time effectiveness (Sen, 2008). Many projects regarding new product development have to use time effectively so that the competitors do not come up with similar innovations before them. Therefore, the bottom line here is that time management has emerged as important determinant of project success in the 21st century. This explains why over the past few decades, great deal of literature has surfaced about project time management and its different processes stressing its importance and need (Lock, 2007; Lewis, 2007). Importance and Development As mentioned earlier that in today’s competitive business world, efficiency is the key a large proportion of this efficiency depends upon time management. Effective time management reduces not only the costs but it may also reduce potential conflicts as well. For example, if the workers are billing you as a project manager at an hour rate, effective management may reduce the costs (Kerzner, 2009). In the same way, if the project manager takes more time than usual and then bills you as the client for greater number of hours then that may create tension and poor word of mouth advertising. The fact is that when it comes to other resources, such as building, cash, human resource, IT, and others, corporations and companies have found a way to store them and utilize them on their terms but the same is not true in case of time. Therefore, project managers have to utilize time without any delay since it would keep on passing by (Kerzner, 2009; Lewis, 2007). As mentioned earlier that Gantt charts were the earliest framework for managing time in projects. Simply put, Gantt charts assist in project scheduling by showing that how much time would be needed for each task. However, over the past few years, Gantt charts have received great deal of criticism based on its limitations (Portny, et al., 2007). For example, Gantt charts may suit small projects but for large projects with more than 30 activities, it may become troublesome to handle. Furthermore, Gantt chart also does not communicate anything about the magnitude of different activities. Gantt charts have also received criticism for their inability to follow the 100 percent rule which the activities divided usually fail to account for 100 percent performance of the actual project either adding more elements or leaving out the existing ones (Meredith & Mantel, 2005). In simple words, critical path method is a time management technique in project management, which allows project managers to understand the shortest and longest time required for the completion of each project. The first step entails specifying all the individual activities concerned with the completion of the project. The second stage has to with determining the sequence of those activities (Sen, 2008). Third, in light of the sequence, at this stage, one would draw a network diagram showing the flow of activities. Fourth, at the same time, taking into account all the overlapping, at this stage, the manager would calculate the total time required for completing each activity. Fifth, the most important step is about identifying the critical path or the longest path (Portny, et al., 2007; Leach, 2005). The same is done by evaluating the four elements about each activity, which are earliest start time, earliest finish time, latest finish time, and latest start time. Sixth, which is more an operational point is the updating of the CPM diagram as the project continues. Quite clearly, critical path method offers certain benefits. First, it provides the observers and stakeholders with a graphical view of the project. Second, it assists in finding the longest and shortest time required to complete a certain project. Third and most importantly, it highlights that which activities are critical and imperative for maintaining the project schedule and which are not thus allowing the project manager to focus on activities accordingly (Portny, et al., 2007; Leach, 2005). Simply put, project time management processes are concerned with the timely completion of the project and following are some of entities included in project time management. First, activity definition refers to the process of identifying what the project has to deliver at the lowest level by looking at work breakdown structure (WBS). This is also called as work package (Lock, 2007). Project work packages then get divided or decomposed into smaller entities named as schedule activities and the prime reasons behind doing the same being the fact that it allows for better and more efficient planning, resourcing, estimating, scheduling, execution, monitoring and controlling. It is understood that these schedule activities also keep in mind the project objectives. Second, activity sequencing is the next process where the manager would try to create logical relationships between the different schedule activities while developing the precedence and realistic time estimates. Third, the next step, which is of activity resource estimating, as the name suggests deals with determining the quantity of each resource, financial, time, human resource, IT and others, would be required for completion of certain activities. Furthermore, the process here also deals with the availability of those resources at the given time. Fourth, activity duration estimating, which is the most important aspect of project time management is when the project manager of the authorized persons sit down to determine the amount of work effort that would be required for certain schedule activities looking at the resources, their quantity and availability (Meredith & Mantel, 2005). Fifth, the process of schedule development takes place when the manager take a broad and all encompassing view of the activities in order to come up with a beginning date and an ending date for the project. At many occasions, at this stage of schedule development, it is highly likely that the resource and time allocation would be revisited to meet the final deadlines. Furthermore, this actually provides a benchmark for the rest of the project management process (Wysocki, 2011). Sixth, schedule control, which is an ongoing process, is about controlling, monitoring and taking effective action regarding the internal and external factors, which are affecting the schedule development. It is not only about tracking and noticing these changes but also managing them according to the need of time (Portny, et al., 2007). Conclusion There are no doubts in the fact that as project management becomes a wider and highlighted field of study, project time management would continue to gain prominence. We are living in a technologically advanced and globalized world where time has become a crucial resource thus further amplifying the importance of project time management. Nevertheless, the tools that are available for the same, such as Critical Path Method and others are far from perfect and there is still more room for much more developments (Lock, 2007). Most of these frameworks only focus on the project management as unique and isolated activity but the fact is that it takes place in an interactive and constantly changing environment where many internal and external factors impact the time management processes. Furthermore, the project time management techniques still focus on themes such as planning, organizing, schedules and deadlines, whereas, the fact is that successful project managers of today place more important over goals and objectives than deadlines (Wysocki, 2011). They also try to maintain a harmony and balance between importance and urgency because one cannot be comprised for the other or else the entire project may come under jeopardy. In addition, the latest addition to project time management literature is the fact that good project management, rather than relying on schedules, deadlines and alarms have a proactive approach and intrinsic sense of motivation, which drives them all the way (Sen, 2008). References Kerzner, H. (2009). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. John Wiley and Sons. Leach, L. P. (2005). Critical Chain Project Management. Artech House, Inc. Lewis, J. P. (2007). Fundamentals of project management. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. Lock, D. (2007). Project management. Gower Publishing, Ltd. Meredith, J. R., & Mantel, S. J. (2005). Project management: a managerial approach. John Wiley. Portny, S. E., et al. (2007). Project management. Wiley. Sen, S. 2008. The Project Management Time Cycle. Cengage Learning. Wysocki, R. K. (2011). Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme. John Wiley & Sons. Read More