CPM & PERT - Project Management

1. Project management

a) Project planning

• Planning is the most important phase of project management. Planning involves defining objectives of the project, listing of tasks or jobs that must be performed, determining gross requirements for material, equipment and manpower and preparing estimates of costs and durations for the various jobs or activities to bring about the satisfactory completion of the project.

b) Scheduling 

• Scheduling is the allocation of resources, these resources, in conceptual sense, are time and energy, but in practical sense are time, space, equipment and effort applied to material. 

• More specifically, scheduling is the mechanical process of formalizing the planned functions, assigning the starting and completion dates to each part of the work in such a manner that the whole work proceeds in a logical sequence and in an orderly and systematic manner. 

• In other words, scheduling is the laying out of the actual activities of the project in time order in which they are to be performed, and calculating the manpower and material requirements needed at each stage of production, along with the expected completion time of each of the activity.

c) Controlling

• The planning and scheduling phases of a project are undertaken before the actual project starts while the controlling phase is undertaken during the actual project operations. 

• Controlling consists of reviewing the difference between the schedule and actual performance once the project has begun.

• Project control is the formal mechanism established to determine deviations from the basic plan, and to determine the precise effect of these deviations on the plan, and to re-plan and reschedule to compensate for the deviations.

d) Type of project organization

• Functional organization: 

1. Every department is headed by a specialist, therefore technically and technologically it is very strong. 
2. It is the most stable form of organization, it is also called bureaucratic or classical organization. 
3. It has large manpower base and strong lines of vertical communication, but it suffers from lack of coordination as a result, project planning and implementation suffer and is disorganized.
4. It fails in case of product diversification and geographical expansion. 
5. Lead time in approval are long and customer request cannot easily be accommodated. 

• Product organization:

1. Every product line is headed by a project manager. 
2. This organization is also called pure project or projectized organization. 
3. Project manager has the highest authority in this type of organization, its response time is very fast. 
4. Lead time in approval is small and customer request can be easily be accommodated. 
5. Resources can’t be easily shared between different product lines. It is a very expensive organization. 
6. Since each product line also needs functional manager under the project manager. 
7. Workers are under highest jeopardy of losing their jobs in this type of organization. They mostly earn their revenue from other organization.

• Matrix organization:

1. It is also called hybrid organization as it combines the good features of both functional and product organization.
2. In this structure both the functional and project manager draws their powers directly from the general manager.
3. Functional managers are responsible for functional responsibilities like resource allocation, training and technical matters.
4. Project manager are responsible for project responsibilities like policy coordination acceptance criteria and timely completion of the project. 
5. It is very expensive form of organization and staff suffers from role ambiguity syndrome as they report to multiple managers.
6. Strong matrix: when the command of technology is with project manager, project manager is either called programmed manager. 
7. Weak matrix: when the project management is with functional manager. The matrix structure comes close to functional organization.
8. Balanced matrix: when both project manager and functional manger has balanced influence on workers.
9. When a company desires a strong matrix, the project manager is generally promoted from within the organization and may have had assignments in several line functions throughout the organization.

e) Work break down structure (WBS)

• In a construction project, the various activities that make up the project have to be clearly identified. The process if breaking the project into easily identifiable major systems, their sub-systems and discrete activities is called work breakdown structure (WBS).

• In other words, WBS is a hierarchical tress structure, obtained through decomposition of the project into phases and tasks.

• It is a framework for planning, scheduling, estimating, budgeting, monitoring and controlling the project.

Click here - Estimating & Costing - Basic Measurement