مقاله **مقاله هاي لاتين درباره Project Management**

[Cinderella 9,897]

Project management in the modern sense began in the early 1960s, although it has its roots much further back in the latter years of the 19th century. The need for project management was driven by businesses that realised the benefits of organising work around projects and the critical need to communicate and co-ordinate work across departments and professions. One of the first major uses of project management as we know it today was to manage the United States space programme. The government, military and corporate world have now adopted this practice. Here is the main definition of what project management is:

1. Project management is no small task.
2. Project management has a definite beginning and end. It is not a continuous process.
3. Project management uses various tools to measure accomplishments and track project tasks. These include Work Breakdown Structures, Gantt charts and PERT charts.
4. Projects frequently need resources on an ad-hoc basis as opposed to organisations that have only dedicated full-time positions.
5. Project management reduces risk and increases the chance of success.
   

Project management is often summarised in a triangle. The three most important factors are time, cost and scope, commonly called the triple constraint. These form the vertices with quality as a central theme.

1. Projects must be delivered on time.
2. Projects must be within cost.
3. Projects must be within scope.
4. Projects must meet customer quality requirements.
   

More recently, this has given way to a project management diamond, with time, cost, scope and quality the four vertices and customer expectations as a central theme. No two customers' expectations are the same so you must ask what their expectations are.



A project goes through six phases during its life:

1. Project Definition: Defining the goals, objectives and critical success factors for the project.
2. Project Initiation: Everything that is needed to set-up the project before work can start.
3. Project Planning: Detailed plans of how the work will be carried out including time, cost and resource estimates.
4. Project Execution: Doing the work to deliver the product, service or desired outcome.
5. Project Monitoring & Control: Ensuring that a project stays on track and taking corrective action to ensure it does.
6. Project Closure: Formal acceptance of the deliverables and disbanding of all the elements that were required to run the project.
   

The role of the project manager is one of great responsibility. It is the project manager's job to direct, supervise and control the project from beginning to end. Project managers should not carryout project work, managing the project is enough. Here are some of the activities that must be undertaken:

1. The project manager must define the project, reduce it to a set of manageable tasks, obtain appropriate resources and build a team to perform the work.
2. The project manager must set the final goal for the project and motivate his/her team to complete the project on time.
3. The project manager must inform all stakeholders of progress on a regular basis.
4. The project manager must assess and monitor risks to the project and mitigate them.
5. No project ever goes exactly as planned, so project managers must learn to adapt to and manage change.
   

A project manager must have a range of skills including:

• Leadership
• People management (customers, suppliers, functional managers and project team)
• Effective Communication (verbal and written)
• Influencing
• Negotiation
• Conflict Management
• Planning
• Contract management
• Estimating
• Problem solving
• Creative thinking
• Time Management
  

"Project managers bear ultimate responsibility for making things happen. Traditionally, they have carried out this role as mere implementers. To do their jobs they needed to have basic administrative and technical competencies. Today they play a far broader role. In addition to the traditional skills, they need to have business skills, customer relations skills, and political skills. Psychologically, they must be results-oriented self-starters with a high tolerance for ambiguity, because little is clear-cut in today's tumultuous business environment. Shortcomings in any of these areas can lead to project failure." - J. Davidson Frame
Many things can go wrong in project management. These things are often called barriers. Here are some possible barriers:

1. Poor communication
2. Disagreement
3. Misunderstandings
4. Bad weather
5. Union strikes
6. Personality conflicts
7. Poor management
8. Poorly defined goals and objectives
   

A good project management discipline will not eliminate all risks, issues and surprises, but will provide standard processes and procedures to deal with them and help prevent the following:

1. Projects finishing late, exceeding budget or not meeting customer expectations.
2. Inconsistency between the processes and procedures used by projects managers, leading to some being favoured more than others.
3. Successful projects, despite a lack of planning, achieved through high stress levels, goodwill and significant amounts of overtime.
4. Project management seen as not adding value and as a waste of time and money.
5. Unforeseen internal and/or external events impacting the project.
   

Project management is about creating an environment and conditions in which a defined goal or objective can be achieved in a controlled manner by a team of people.

[Cinderella 9,897]

"I need a project plan by tomorrow morning." As project managers, that's what we hear. But we know that what the boss usually means is that s/he wants a project schedule. There is a problem though, how can you come up with a schedule without having the "real" project plan first?
The project plan, or project management plan as defined by PMI (for simplicity, we'll call it project plan in this article), is completely different from a project schedule and is the result of the planning processes. A change in the project plan can affect the project schedule. The project plan describes how the project work will be performed. It is the primary source of information for how the project will be planned, executed, monitored, controlled and closed.
The development of the project plan is an iterative process in itself. It is composed of a single document or a master document with a series of subsidiary documents, each defining one or several areas of the project management process.
The project plan content varies based on the project scope and complexity of the project. PMI says that the plan includes:

• The project management processes selected by the project management team.
• The level of implementation of each selected process.
• The descriptions of the tools and techniques to be used for accomplishing those processes.
• How the selected processes will be used to manage the specific project, including the dependencies and interactions among those processes, and the essential inputs and outputs.
• How work will be executed to accomplish the project objectives.
• How changes will be monitored and controlled.
• How configuration management will be performed.
• How integrity of the performance measurement baselines will be determined and used.
• The need and techniques for communicating among stakeholders.
• The selected project life cycle and, for multi-phase projects, the associated project phases.
• Key management reviews for content, extent, and timing to facilitate addressing open issues and pending decisions.
  

A subsidiary plan may include but is not limited to:

• Project scope management plan.
• Schedule management plan.
• Cost management plan.
• Quality management plan.
• Process improvement plan.
• Staffing management plan.
• Communication management plan.
• Risk management plan.
• Procurement management plan.
  

The plan may include these other components, once they are known, in a subsequent iteration, but is not limited to:

• A milestone list.
• A resource calendar.
• A schedule baseline.
• A cost baseline.
• A quality baseline.
• A risk register.
  

A project plan is not a one-time deliverable that remains static throughout the project. Updates arising from approved changes during project execution may significantly impact parts of the plan. The project plan must be kept in sync with approved changes and this is an iterative and ongoing process called rolling wave planning and the results of these iterations are documented as updates to the project plan.
Now that we know what a "real" project plan is, it is time your boss does too. Don't you think so...? Well, I do.

[Cinderella 9,897]

The knowledge area of Scope Management is all about making sure that the project includes only the work required to complete the project successfully. To be effective at scope management, you must learn to control what is and what is not in the scope of the project. Below are some of the best practices for successful scope management.

1. Collect Project Requirements
2. Define the Scope
3. Create a Work Breakdown Structure
4. Verify the Scope and Get Feedback
5. Monitor and Control the Scope
   

1. Collect Project Requirements

The ability to define and then effectively control the scope of a project depends a lot on the goals and requirements of the project. For this reason, you need to gather the necessary information up front, before you ever start the project. By clearly understanding the needs of the stakeholders and the capabilities and constraints of your resources, you have a higher chance to succeed.
The easiest way to collect the project requirements is to perform interviews with the key stakeholders. Ask questions about their views of the finished product, the deliverables they expect to receive, and the schedule of the project. Once you have the information you need, you may want to create a Scope Management Plan to define the processes that will be followed in defining scope, documenting scope, verifying and accepting scope, and managing change requests.
2. Define the Scope

The scope of a project typically consists of a set of deliverables, an assigned budget, and an expected closure time. The previously collected project requirements will help you define the scope. Be sure to write down exactly what the project will entail and what it will not entail. Any amount of variation in the scope of the project can affect the project schedule, budget, and ultimately the success of the project. Getting a clear and concise definition of the scope will help you manage changes as they occur. With a clear scope definition, you can simply ask the question, "Does this change fall within the scope of the project?" If the answer is yes, then vet and approve the change. If the answer is no, then put a pin it and save it for another time or project.
3. Create a Work Breakdown Structure

A work breakdown structure or WBS is a graphical representation of the hierarchy of the project. The WBS forces the project team to think through all levels of the project and identify the major tasks that need to be performed for the project to be completed on time. By starting with the end objective and then successively subdividing it into manageable steps or components in terms of size, duration, and responsibility, the WBS provides a high level view of the entire project. Furthermore, the framework makes planning and controlling the scope of the project much easier since you have a graphical chart to reference point for the tasks and subtasks needed for each phase of the project. As a general rule of thumb, no task within the WBS should be less than 8 hours or more than 80 hours.
4. Verify the Scope and Get Feedback

Because projects are expected to meet strict deadlines, verifying the scope of the project is critical before and during the project cycle. Scope verification can be done after each major task or phase is completed or if it is a smaller project, after the project has been completed. To verify the scope, meet with the project customer or stakeholder and get him/her to formally accept the project deliverables. This includes getting a written acceptance of the deliverables and requesting feedback on the work performed.
Getting feedback from the customer is an excellent way for you to improve processes and make sure the customer is happy with your work and the status of the project. The most important thing here is to communicate well and often. Verifying the scope and getting feedback will help you focus on customer acceptance, quality control, and verifying that work performed meets the definition of the scope of the project.
5. Monitor and Control the Scope

Now that the Scope has been clearly defined, a work breakdown structure has been organised, and the customer has formally accepted the scope of the project, it is time to actually manage and control the scope to avoid scope creep. Scope creep refers to the incremental expansion of the scope of the project, which may include and introduce more requirements that may not have been a part of the initial planning phases, but add costs and time to the original project.
To effectively monitor and control the scope of the project, make sure you have an established process for managing change requests. Any and all requests should be vetted and approved before they get introduced into the project. The budget and schedule of the project should also be altered to reflect the new changes. These changes should get a formal sign-off from the customer or key stakeholder before proceeding. It is important that you closely monitor and control the scope to avoid disgruntled customers, higher than expected costs, and projects that aren't completed on time.