What is Project Management?

Managing a set of activities in your project to meet specified deadlines. This is the area which ensures completion of projects on time, eliminating road blocks and resolving critical path.

How is it done?

When any project is finalized, all activities are first identified by respective parties.

Then its all put on a big sheet of paper, where number of days are specified. The predecessors and successors are identified and recorded. Then those activities that can happen independently and dependent activities are separated as well.

The project charter should be a prerequisite to creating the Project Management.

Why create project charter? What does Project charter contain?

The advantages of creating a project charter is


    * To avoid creep in the scope of the project

    * Make sure you clearly spell out your goals. This is necessary to measure your results.

    * Your objectives will be clearly defined to make sure people understand inscope and out of scope. It clearly rules out assumptions.

 
Explanation of Project Charter as shown in the above template.

1) Team for the project: Identify the team members to be associated with the project. This could be based on their area of specialization and availability of personal to work on the project.

2) Business case/ Background:

In this place of the document, describe the following:

a) Give out details specifying the need of this project. The reason, which could be the current issue in design or integration with other system. If there is a project for the need of new Engine in the current vehicle, describe the reason why there is a need. The need could be to lower the pollution. It could be either the company is going green looking at the Ozone layer or could be because of existing issues in the engine leading to higher warranty cost.

b) Clearly highlight the advantages of undertaking such a project. These benefits could be in terms of both monetary and market standing. Make sure that you specify the target you want your project to hit. The target would be the final outcome, your management would like to see.

3) Business Reason for the project: In this statement be specific about the issues, what specific instances/ failure you are experiencing, what is happening that is not supposed to occur. The pattern of occurrences (how, when and where) are observed. If you notice there will always be a sequence, when the failure occur.
Example: You may experience cough after smoking. This is a indication of why, when and how severe you are coughing.
There might be a gear damage after high rimpull.

4) Project Objective/ Purpose: These are technical objectives your project team has to work to resolve.

5) Project Scope: There are two parts in this section; In Scope and Out of Scope.
Scope is the strict imaginary boundary, which classify the deliverables within or outside the project area. Those project deliverables that has been agreed upon by the team members and customer is called In scope. Those deliverables which does have a impact on the project, but for some reason agreed by team members to not work on it or if other tea is working on these deliverables in their Project as In-scope, you will consider it as Out of Scope.

6) Key Deliverables: These are the key activities agreed upon to be worked in the Project. These will be activities that has to be achieved as your likely activities enroute to achieving final goals. These can be activities that happen in sequence or can happen simaltanously.


7) Milestone dates: The dates by which each of the deliverables be completed to be on time to achieve your project Goals.

8) Key Issues: Most of the time, we know before the start of the project, the hurdles and pitfalls we need to be aware of. These are likely issues to be worked on for smooth project performance.

9) Goals: You wander in the dark for ages if you do not have goals for a project. This is as important as defining the scope of your Project. Goals are identifiable targets to achieve at the completion of project. There are other things as important as your goals; Measuring goals. We specify goals, but how do we make sure we have really hit out goal.
Example: You specify the completion of a six sigma project, but unless you measure the non failure at 100% on field, its not a success. The field measurement is the yard of measurement of goals for our six sigma project.


10) Sign Off: The Team needs to sign this by the management after the sucessful measurement of goals.

What should be included in the Project Management?
The structure of the project should be as shown in the attachments below:
Tools used in Project Management.
Who should lead the Project Management Meetings? How frequently should the team meet?
Critical Factors in Project Management: