Talk:Project management/Archive 1

Defintions

CMMI should be in this list beside PMBOK and Prince2. CMMI is now a big actor in the Project Management landscape and it has some interesting complementary features such as the integration of PM in the whole life cycle including engineering and support areas and among organisational processes - on this point, close to PMI OPM3 that should also be presented in this article in an "Advanced PM" section - (the CMMI focus on IT projects is not an issue since most of its practices are quite generic). CMMI has another advantage, unlike PMBOK or Prince2 documentation, its full description is free and downloadable from www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi. For all these reasons, I think CMMI deserves to be more present in this article (... I let native English speaking writers to possibly do this (I'm not one of them, you certainly noticed...)). Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.144.21.72 (talk) 19:42, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

case studies

we need some non-military case studies. it's entirely overkill to have them all be so similar. Aaronbrick 00:10, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

There is no description (and no implicit plausible reason) why these case studies have anything at all to do with the concepts of project management. In fact one could just as easily argue that had the heavy-handed approach of project management would have caused these projects to fail. Examples need to show how they are examples.

Case studies from different arenas would be excellent.

I found some case studies off of a company website... What should I do get their inclusion to the page considered? The website is http://www.esi-intl.com/Public/esiadvantage/clienttestimonials.asp

Kpapadopoulos 21:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Project Management Steps

Theses are not PM steps - these are steps in a Project Lifecycle. Any objections before I remove (or at least change) this section?

Gibsocol 10:40, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with your point. The article should likely change in tone to include more "Management" activities versus Project Lifecycle activities. May I suggest some traditional management activities such as: Planning, Estimating, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Controlling, Reporting?

ThreePD 23:15, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Just a thought about this, wouldn't #6 be the Project Review? It's something we do to look at what went right/wrong and why and how we could improve in the future. I don't know if it's something that is generally accepted so I didn't just add it in . JohnCub 14:09, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

clarification - I was talking about "The traditional approach" sorry about my abiguity. JohnCub 14:12, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

it is a mess at the moment, especially in The Traditional Approach. (Whose tradition? Since when?). The lifecycle should be distinguished from the main processes. There are many models one could use for these two aspects. As it stands, Monitoring and Controlling are two (related) processes, and don't belong in a lifecycle view, even if that is a Traditional one. Matt Whyndham 16:10, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

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John - a phase within any good methodology or framework is to include PIR or PCR - Post Implementation Review and then Post Completion Review (called slightly different in each methodology). The idea is to identify areas where process's can be improved upon if at all. Do they work. Well they may be open to a little scepitism depending on who is involved in each project!

It seems to me that this article is far too focused on software development. Two of the three project management methodologies have the word "software" in the name. I think we should break out an additional section in this article called Formal Project Management Methodologies. Chadloder 21:07 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

I added a section on Project Management Standards and Professional Certifications. Feel free to convert it to an article when you think appropriate. Although I wouldn' use the word "formal" in the title. user:Mkoval

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Would anybody be interested to develop a GNU Free Documentation License Project Management Standard (just like the Project Management Institute Body of Knowledge, but possibly better)? user:Mkoval

Among project management heads, the project management model used by Open Source projects is refered to as "The Bazaar Model" (go figure), perhaps there is written analysises of this model. -- User:Nixdorf

This is what I found on the Bazaar Model. This is not exactly what I meant, but the concept in itself is interesting. user:Mkoval

~

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Is this article just about project management in software engineering or is it about general project management (e.g. for example in civil engineering)? --Hirzel 21:46 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It is about general project management. My advice is to just start adding to the current page. Any specific points relating to software development could go in a separate section. At a later time, refactoring the article could lead to a number of articles on project management as it relates to a number of disciplines. -- Ap Jul 11 06:23:07 UTC 2003

Project Management

Paragraph listing four parts of Project Management, in my opinion should be changed slightly. "Savety" is actually a subset of "quality"; what is mising is "project scope". I believe the four parts should be (10)Scope; (2) Quality; (3)Time; and (4) Cost.

The inter-relationships here are such that no one of these areas can be changed without changing at least two of the others. Realization of this relationship can help head off unrealistic changes to a project.

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I agree to this opinion and changed "safety" to "scope". What's project management without scope?

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I agree this section is too software-centric. I added some examples of projects in other domains to try to generalize it somewhat. And I also added an external reference to PMI, which if used will generalize it even more.

In addition the history is wrong in that Dupont developed the critical path method in the era of world war two, much before Sputnik and the development of PERT. Maybe I'll get around to looking up the date later.

Also a paragraph or two on resource management (resource leveling) is needed as this is what is actually used today, not "the critical chain" technique which is interesting from a theoretical point of view only. I'll try to do this soon. wgoetsch 05:14, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Why do you think Critical Chain is of theoretical interest only? Mkoval 19:30, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Is there any Design PM?

It seems to me that this section is far too focused on Project Management in certain areas. As a student of Business and Design Studies I will like to find some material related to the role of a Project Manager in Design, which is an interesting career. Is there anyone which know anything about this subject? I am lost...

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the paragraph is so difficult:

It is the experience of companies that use these models that the creation of a set of defined processes detailing what the company actually does has enabled them to achieve consistency across project teams and project. They have also found that, when it is defined, their ability to track and monitor performance with a view to improvement is far more successful.

can someone help me to understand it?--202.99.60.155 05:04, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Overly software oriented

I am a computer engineer and I though this article was way too oriented towards project management in the context of software.

This article should be generalized.

Pascal D.

I'm in the construction industry where we also use the concept of project management (on several levels actually) and this all reads just fine for my industry. I think it might be general enough. Well it is for my tastes and I consider myself to be overly average. :P JohnCub 01:04, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Spam?

What's with the self-serving refs to 'PMBOK®' ? --216.237.179.238 01:25, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

While I concur that the PMBrOKe and the equally silly PMI are a bane on the working world, this is a well balanced and overall informative article and serves as a good introduction to the concepts and the controversy.

Significant edits to reorder for priority and context

Hopefully these fairly straight forward edits will improve the article to satisfy some of the valid comments above. ThreePD 03:36, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Project Management Standards

This section still needs work. The standards list that claims to be exhaustive is not, but rather is limited to management maturity models (and those are mostly software project oriented). Also while there is surprisingly little standardization surrounding Project Management (despite some very common historical practices and the fairly recent PM BOK) the claim that there is no Project Management standard effort is incorrect. Although I'm not part of one I found at least this one in a simple search. http://www.pmforum.org/standards/general.htm However I will do some more research in this area before attempting an edit. ThreePD 03:50, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

A couple more notes: "There is a proposed Project Management XML Schema." This link is broken, but I can't seem to find where it went. I'm not deleting it, but if someone knows where it went, please fix it. Also, I added another project management standard that is in exposure draft. Once it is adopted as an ANSI standard, I'll update this text as well. Kcone 16:14, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Improvement Drive

Time management is currently a candidate on WP:IDRIVE. Support it with your vote if you want to see this article improved to featured status.--Fenice 07:51, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

This is heavy reading. I hope it can be rewritten so that busy executives can quickly absorb the ideas that are propounded.

Auditing material

As part of merging various pages related to Software development process I've moved some material on Auditing here. As with some of the existing material it is more software centric than it should be; I've made some minimal edits towards generalizing it, but it still needs more work. I hope to have time to help with that, but for now my focus is on the collection of SDP articles. --David.alex.lamb 21:21, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Removed "Memetic Approach" section

I have removed the section on the “Memetic Approach.” I enjoy using the concept of memes to understand things, but this section suffers from two significant problems, either one of which is enough to remove it. First, it is so completely abstract that you could substitute almost any term for “project management” and it would make as much sense. Try reading it and mentally replacing “project management”: with such terms as “business,” ”the theater,” “sociology,” or “government.” In general, anything which applies to everything ends up saying nothing. Second, only a miniscule number of people involved with project management have ever heard of a mimetic approach. A quick googling of “project management” and “memetic approach” reveals only a handful of pages, with most of them referring to a single paper which was published in 2005. I am highly suspicious that either the author of that paper, Jon Whitty, or someone close to him added this section to the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia is not a place for promoting a minority viewpoint on a major topic, even if you find it personally valuable or interesting. Any book or paper on Project Management (besides the 2005 paper) does not mention the “memetic approach.” - JimGleaves

I pasted this on. I'm not the author, neither do I know him. However, once you read this paper, and I mean really sit down and read it, and turn your brain on for a bit, you might start to realize how significant this theory is. The approach certainly needs to be included somewhere on this page and not censored by the obviously threatened Jim Gleaves.

216.99.38.138 (talk)

maybe the memetic approach just needs it's own wiki page, and just a small mention or link from this one. just a thought... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.99.38.138 (talk) 03:21, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment on Auditing material

The auditing material (now Project systems), while appropriate, was long, so it dominated the article. Plus it remained software centric. I edited it, trying to set it into the PM context. SteveMc 19:54, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

External Links

There seems to be some back and forth (Howardjp) with the external links section. Two days ago, I merely updated the URL for pmhq.org and shortly thereafter it was removed. This is not a commercial site, and there are no fees for the information it contains; which is more than I can say for some of the external links provided. In fact, this was already discussed here with GraemeL:

The guidelines state "objectionable amounts of advertising", which is subjective. In my opinion, both of the other sites provide enough useful information to offset the amount of advertising they contain. --GraemeL

That being said, I have even removed the advertising from the site while I decide which direction I'm going to go with it. I plan on building it into a larger site with resources for specific types of project management in different industries such as Information Technology/Services, Consulting, Construction, etc. If anybody wishes to contribute and/or provide information links to other resources, please do so to drshields "at" gmail.com. Drshields 01:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

If the site is of real value, there is content on there suitable for referencing. Otherwise, [[WP:ISNOT|Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of links. And in the end, what differentiates your site from the thousands of others out there about project management? -James Howard (talk/web) 01:51, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Made an attempt at cleanup and organization of the links. --Ronz 19:26, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Low value sections removed

I removed the Corporate "Standards" section since it was more advertising than signficant value to the article. Every large corporation probably has some form of project management process, guidance, or standard and it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to determine any one to be any more significant than any other without exposing some substantial corporate secrets on the method's effectiveness. The "Case Study" section was removed as it did not seem particularly relevent to the large topic of Project Management. If there are some very typical and open source case studies, these might be a valuable contribution. ThreePD 02:17, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Critical Chain

The reference to Critical Chain describes it as an extension of the critical path method, when in fact it is much more that this. Indeed Critical Chain questions many of the fundamental ideas generally held true among project managers, e.g. estimate task durations generously, plan and publish a schedule showing dates for up-coming tasks.

There's a good summary at Critical Chain & Project Management the TOC Way. Can someone put some time into investigating and improving this section? User:DaveWFarthing 16 January 2007

For reference, here is the current text of the "Critical Chain" section:

Critical chain is an extension to the traditional critical path method.

In critical studies of project management, it has been noted that several of these fundamentally PERT-based models are not well suited for the multi-project company environment of today. Most of them are aimed at very large-scale, one-time, non-routine projects, and nowadays all kinds of management are expressed in terms of projects. Using complex models for "projects" (or rather "tasks") spanning a few weeks has been proven to cause unnecessary costs and low maneuverability in several cases. Instead, project management experts try to identify different "lightweight" models, such as Extreme Programming for software development and Scrum techniques. The generalization of Extreme Programming to other kinds of projects is extreme project management, which may be used in combination with the process modeling and management principles of human interaction management.

This seems rather confusing, dedicating a single sentence to Critical Chain and a paragraph to more general discussion of alternatives to the PERT- or critical chain-based approaches to project management.

Perhaps a better approach would be to break the longer paragraph out into its own section ("Non-Critical Chain Approaches"), then use this section to discuss Critical Chain, specifically.

I would like to propose something like the following:

=== Critical Chain ===

Critical Chain is an alternative to critical path for planning projects and monitoring their progress. Based on an application of the Theory of Constraints to the domain of project management, its main tenant is that there is a bottleneck in the execution of projects, and further identifies that bottleneck as resources (generally people or departments). The goal in planning for Critical Chain then becomes the identification and elevation of the bottleneck, which is the resource in greatest demand.

Various case studies have reported reductions in project durations in the neighborhood of 50%, with improvements to on-time completions to near 100%.

==== Planning ====

To accomplish this, a project plan is created in much the same fashion as with critical path. The plan is worked backward from a completion date with each task starting as late as possible. Two durations are entered for each task: a "best guess," or 50% probability duration, and a "safe" duration, which should have higher probability of completion (perhaps 90% or 95%, depending on the amount of risk that the organization can accept).

Resources are then assigned to each task, and the plan is resource leveled using the 50% estimates. The longest sequence of resource-leveled tasks that lead from beginning to end of the project is then identified as the critical chain. The justification for using the 50% estimates is that half of the tasks will finish early and half will finish late, so that the variance over the course of the project should be zero.

Recognizing that tasks are more likely to take more rather than less time due to Parkinson's Law, Student's Syndrome, or other reasons, "buffers" are used to establish dates for deliverables and for monitoring project schedule and financial performance. The "extra" duration of each task on the critical chain—the difference between the "safe" durations and the 50% durations—is gathered together in a buffer at the end of the project. In the same way, buffers are gathered at the end of each sequence of tasks that feed into the critical chain.

Finally, a baseline is established, which enables financial monitoring of the project.

==== Execution ====

When the plan is complete and the project ready to kick off, the tasks are changed to start as soon as possible, critical dates (e.g. milestones) are pinned and the buffers are locked (they may not be changed during the project, because they are used to monitor project schedule and financial performance).

With no slack in the duration of individual tasks, the resources on the critical chain need to be elevated; they need to work on the critical chain task and nothing else. An analogy is drawn in the literature with a relay race. The critical chain is the race, and the resources on the critical chain are the runners. When they are running their "leg" of the project, they should be focused on completing the assigned task as quickly as possible, with no distractions or multitasking. In some case studies, actual batons are reportedly hung by the desks of people when they are working on critical chain tasks so that others know not to interrupt. The goal, here, is to overcome the tendency to delay work or to do extra work when there seems to be time.

==== Monitoring ====

Monitoring is, in some ways, the greatest advantage of the Critical Chain method. Because individual tasks will vary in duration from the 50% estimate, there is no point in trying to force every task to complete "on time;" estimates can never be perfect. Instead, we monitor the buffers that were created during the planning stage. A fever chart or similar graph can be easily created and posted to show the consumption of buffer as a function of project completion. If the rate of buffer consumption is low, the project is on target. If the rate of consumption is such that there is likely to be little or no buffer at the end of the project, then corrective actions or alternative plans must be developed to recover the loss. When the buffer consumption rate exceeds some critical value (roughly: the rate where all of the buffer may be expected to be consumed before the end of the project), then those alternative plans need to be implemented.

Or is this too much detail? Maybe we just pull out the salient points: resource constraints; buffers; proper handling of variation; critical chain-as-relay race?

Of course, references can be added. The Theory of Constraints Center, Goldratt Institute and Advanced Projects, Inc. are all good sources of additional information.

Thopper 21:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Project Triangle

The main page says, "It has been suggested that Project triangle be merged into this article or section." (No indication of WHO suggested this.

I believe the project triangle is a useful thinking tool. Whether it should be merged into here or simply linked from here seem unimportant to me. However, I have a problem with that page's assertion that you may "Pick any Two". The project manager's job is to meet time, cost and quality targets. While it may be difficult to get customers/paymasters to agree to reasonable targets, when they are agreed we must aim for all three. DaveWFarthing 14:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Oppose mergers of various articles into Project Management. Project Planning for example is a completely separate discipline with several books dedicated to the subject. --Addhoc 12:57, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Regarding "pick any two," I think that the point has to do with planning and change management: it is not possible to arbitrarily constrain the scope, cost and schedule of any project. These may be expressed as a function: scope = cost * schedule. For example, if the scope and schedule (deliverables) are rigidly constrained, then cost (resources) must be adjusted to meet the needs of the other two. In planning or change management, therefore, it should be recognized that you can constrain ("pick") any two, but at least one of the three factors will need to float so that the work can be completed to the constraints.

Personally, while I find the project triangle (or "iron triangle") a useful thinking tool, I prefer a more realistic approach, in which there are multiple interacting limiting factors. These may be expressed on a spider chart or other device.

Thopper 21:13, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I have just added a section, and a tag, questioning the diagram which I consider inappropriate. I have always seen a different diagram (like the first contributor to this discussion section, actually) and I think the different position of the term quality is not just something stylish (otherwise the whole thing should be discarded) but very significant - for that reason I added that section already to the main article rather than raising a discussion first, I really think the previous presentation is very misleading and confusing facts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Towopedia (talk • contribs) 15:03, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Adding 'beneficial change' to the defintion of Project Management

Good morning PM Friends!

I have taken the liberty of adding the words 'beneficial change' to the definition of project management. Far too often I come across organisations running someone's 'pet project' which consumes an enormous amount of resources and ultimately does not derive value for the organisation. In fact, in may instances, such projects may actually destroy value!

Most recently our organisation spent close on ZAR80m to determine the most optimum way to structure our IT shop (approximately 1600 people), the net result of which a few senior management positions were altered and a handful of positions were made redundant. During this 8 month intervention, as the business, we continue conducting projects in a very difficult atmosphere where the IT guys are wondering if they are going to lose their jobs, and a bunch of slick external consultants are consuming valuable time of employees conducting interviews that staff are generally afraid to go to!

Although we have a strict governance in place for the release of funds in our organisation, we nevertheless spend volumous amounts of money and resources on non-value adding projects.

The subsequent result is that projects, by their nature, being to have a tarnished reputation, making it more and more difficult for us as PM's to run projects effectively. Projects are difficult and complex enough in their own right; so why make the running of them even more complex as a result of the nature of project's reputation being darkened.

So, fellow PM's, let's run value adding beneficial projects for our organisations and clients, and let's stop with projects that destroy value. Each of us has an obligation to our project sponsors and/or project owners to inform them of the lack of value add a project may be delivering. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by The Led (talk • contribs) 06:41, 3 February 2007 (UTC).

What is PM?

I came to this page looking for kind of an explanation of project management. What is it? Where is it used? Give me examples, that sort of thing. The thing I am invariably left with after reading this article is that it is written by PM people FOR PM people. I have no problem with the detail it gets into, but frankly I think it needs some dumbing down (because I am completely not versed in this topic). Either it is not easily definable, in which case I would question the scope of this discipline or nobody has bothered to do it. I hope this doesn't offend anybody, I just feel like there's a whole lot of detail in there without a big picture explanation for somebody who doesn't know it well.

The short answer: Project management is summed up by the two words that describe it. It's basically management of a particular project, in contrast to management in general. I'm guessing it evolved as a term and a job title when companies realized that they didn't have to have a single manager or hierarchy of managers to handle every separate project that the company takes on one at a time. I don't know if there is a methodology used by "project managers" that isn't used by managers in general. That's the real question here. Oicumayberight 21:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks ociumayberight. THat was a pretty good response. My point was that your response and the way it is worded I think should be more in the article because as it is, it seems too technical. I reserve the right to be completely wrong in this perception though :) --Tomwchow 22:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

PMBOK acronym

Just a small note that the PMBOK is actually refered in the Risk section before the wiki actually defines the Project Management Book of Know-how.

"According to some definitions (including PMBOK Third Edition)" appears before the spelled out version, thus a person would have to know what the PMBOK is before learning what the PMBOK is.

Project are "Product based" NOT "Work" or "Activity" based

I am a bit worried that this whole page is going on the wrong tangent. I do not have my PRINCE2 or RUP manuals to hand but surely the modern view is that the goal of projects is to produce "products".

Indeed as a professional project manager I spend all day every day trying to get team members to concentrate on product creation - not just being busy. 212.159.107.39 20:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC) James

Although product-based planning is a valid approach, it's not the only one. Although it's the approach I prefer, many managers stil prefer task-based planning in many situations. Perhaps a discussion on the two approaches is needed, but I'd not describe is as going on the wrong tangent. DaveWFarthing 13:59, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Project Triangle & Various

I thought the project management triangle was composed of "quality", "time" and "resources".

The triple constraints are indeed "scope", "cost" and "time" - but that is something different. I've also seen the Project Triangle article goes with "fast", "good" and "cheap". Strange.

Holding scope constant, you are correct that the constraints of the so called 'iron-triangle' are quality, time, and resources... the fast, good, & cheap trinity refer to the desirable outcomes of those three constraints (quality = good, time = fast, and resources = cheap)

holding quality constant, the three constraints would become scope, cost/resources, and time, so the second trinity mentioned is just a different view of the first... hope that clarifies things <JB>

I am wondering if we don't have clear agreement on it, whether it should be in there. It seems subjective.

--Gibbo1 98 09:51, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Managing "People" should be Managing "Services"

Here and in other project management discourse, there is entertained the illusion that project managers manage "people". In fact, along with physical resources of various kinds, capable project managers instead manage "services", which may be reduced to "outcomes". Of course, services are provided by people, and the day-to-day practices of a project manager involves them interacting more or less intensively with people. But that interaction is in the interest of securing services (outcomes) of one type or another, hopefully measurable ones that can be shown to contribute to the objectives of the project. The human resources available to your project ought to be measured by the valuable services they can contribute to it rather than the net weight of the titles they bring to bear.

128.107.248.220 Steve Canny —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.107.248.220 (talk) 10:42, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Cornwall —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.226.1.234 (talk) 17:50, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Well put.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS

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Project management is a technical skill used by a professional to manage the resources in and out of the work atmosphere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.88.242.89 (talk) 06:06, 16 October 2007 (UTC)