1.3.1.1 Lesson 1: Introduction to Project Management

Project Management (imporatnt)

has become increasingly important in today’s society, especially for projects involving information technology (it).

Worldwide IT

spending was $3.8 trillion in 2014, with Telecom services accounting for 45% spending.

Project Management Institute

it estimates demand for 15.7 million project management jobs from 2010 to 2020, with 6.2 million of those jobs in the United States.

$108,000

The average salary in U.S. dollars for someone in the project management profession per year in 2013, with 80% having the Project Management Professional (PMP) credential.

Top skill employers look for in new college graduates are?

team-work, decision-making, problem solving, and verbal communications

Project

a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.

Operations

is work done in organizations to sustain the business.

Difference of project from operations

operations end when objectives have been reached or if the project has been terminated

A project has a unique purpose

Every project should have a well-defined objective.

A project is temporary

A project has a definite beginning and end.

A project is developed using progressive elaboration

Projects are often defined broadly when they begin, and as time passes, the specific details of the project become clearer. Therefore, projects should be developed in increments. A project team should develop initial plans and then update them with more detail based on new information. 

A project requires resources, often from various areas

Resources include people, hardware, software, and other assets. Many projects cross departmental or other boundaries to achieve their unique purposes. For the IT collaboration project, people from IT, marketing, sales, distribution, and other areas of the company would need to work together to develop ideas. The company might also hire outside consultants to provide input. Once the collaboration project team has selected key projects for implementation, each of those will probably require additional resources. 

A project should have a primary customer or sponsor

Most projects have many interested parties or stakeholders, but for a project to succeed someone must take the primary role of sponsorship. The project sponsor usually provides the direction and funding for the project. Executive support is crucial to project success, as described in later chapters. 

A project involves uncertainty

Because every project is unique, it is sometimes difficult to define its objectives clearly, estimate how long it will take to complete, or determine how much it will cost. External factors also cause uncertainty, such as a supplier going out of business or a project team member needing unplanned time off. This uncertainty is one of the main reasons project management is so challenging, especially on projects involving new technologies.

Project Management (used)

is a technique used by companies, governments, and nonprofit organizations to develop skills to become good project team members and project managers.

IT Projects

involve using hardware, software, and networks to create a product, service, or result.

Which is NOT an example of IT Projects?

none of the above

Gartner

identified the top 10 strategic technologies for 2015, including computing everywhere, the Internet of things, 3D printing, advanced, pervasive, and invisible analytics, and project attributes.

Computing Everywhere

The needs of mobile users in diverse contexts and environments will continue to drive companies to develop new products and services.

The Internet of Things

Expanding digitization and connectivity will continue to enable companies to combine information from people,
places, and things to extend services, improve how assets or machines operate, or create new sources of revenue. One example, according to Gartner, is that “the pay-per-use model can be applied to assets (such as . . . equipment), services (such as pay-as-you-drive insurance), people (such as movers), places (such as parking spots), and systems (such as cloud services).”

3D Printing

Worldwide shipments of __ are expected to nearly double in 2015 compared to 2014 and double again in 2016. New applications continue to be found for producing items at lower costs through improved designs, streamlined prototyping, and short-run manufacturing.

Advanced, pervasive, and invisible analytics

Analytics continues to grow in importance as the volume of data generated by embedded systems increases. The challenge is analyzing data to provide “the right information to the right person at the right time.

Project Constraints

are constrained by their scope, time, and cost goals.

Known as the triple constraints

scope, time, and cost goals

To create a successful project…

a project manager must balance the three constraints.

Projects involve uncertainty and limited resources, that’s why it is…

often more realistic to set a range for goals

Managing the triple constraint

involves making trade-offs between scope, time, and cost goals for a project.

Experienced Project Managers

must decide which aspect of the triple constraint is most important, and adjust scope and cost goals to meet the schedule.

Quality

is often a key factor in projects, as is customer or sponsor satisfaction. Other factors, such as resources and risk, can also affect major project decisions. 

Project Management (application)

is “the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.”13 Project managers must strive not only to meet specific scope, time, cost, and quality goals of projects, they must also facilitate the entire process to meet the needs and expectations of people involved in project activities or affected by them.

Stakeholders

are the people involved in or affected by project activities, and include the project sponsor, project team, support staff, customers, users, suppliers, and even opponents of the project.

Program

is “a group of related projects, subprograms, and program activities managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually.”

Common Programs in IT field

infrastructure, applications development, user support

Program Manager

provides leadership and direction for the project managers heading the projects within a program.

Program Managers (benefits)

also coordinate the efforts of project teams, functional groups, suppliers, and operations staff supporting the projects to ensure that products and processes are implemented to maximize benefits.

Program Managers

are responsible for more than the delivery of project results; they are change agents responsible for the success of products and processes developed by those projects.

Which question is part of the Portfolio Management?

Are we investing in the right areas?

Which is not a career for IT Project Managers?

non-collaborative sole operator

seven skills project managers need

highly organized, take charge and know how to lead, effective communicator, how and when to negotiate, detail-oriented, recognize and solve problems quickly, necessary technical skills

Project Management (history)

has been around since 2550 B.C.E.31

Manhattan Project

Although people have worked on projects for centuries, most agree that

the modern concept of project management began with the ___ which the U.S. military led to develop the atomic bomb in World War II.

1917

long before the Manhattan project, Henry Gantt developed the famous Gantt chart for scheduling work in factories.

Gantt Chart

Today's project managers still use the __ as the primary tool to communicate project schedule information, but with the aid of computers, it is no longer necessary to draw the charts by hand, and they are easier to share and disseminate to project stakeholders.