Introduction to Project Management, Terms and Concepts

Project management is the discipline of managing a series of tasks within a given amount of time and within a budget. Project management plays a large role in the development of a wide range of organizational requirements, e.g. government, construction, engineering, medicine, and especially, in computing and information technology. This article is intended to provide readers with the pre-requisite knowledge and skills required to conduct and manage a project. Readers should acquire knowledge about the fundamental issues and problems of project management, as well as gain skills in the use of project management techniques. Wikipedia has a comprehensive Introduction to Project Management .

In this first section we consider the terminology and definitions used in Project Management, and introduce the issues involved in the managing of projects, as distinct from the issues of conventional management. You should become familiar with relevant terminology and make use of it in describing project management. Before we start looking at project management in detail it’s worth defining some of the basic terms and concepts. Over the next few pages we’ll look at the following:


Definition of a Project

A clear and accurate project definition is critical to the success of a project. The definition process consists of setting clearly defined objectives, determining the key success criteria and evaluating the risks involved. The final outcome should be a Project Definition document, sometimes referred to as a Project Charter. The Project Definition should include a statement of the business need that the project aims to address and a description of the product, service or other deliverables that will be its output. It can be constructed by asking a series of questions:

• What is the purpose, or project mission, i.e. the reason for doing the project?
• What are the goals, ie what targets does the project aim to achieve.
• What is the scope of the project, i.e. how will the organization gain?
• What are the quality standards and performance criteria?
• What are the measurable objectives of the project?
• What are the key success criteria?
• What are the project deliverable/s?
• What are the project constraints, e.g. time, resources, performance criteria?
• What risks are involved?

You can find a more detailed explanation of Project Definition on Spottydog’s Project Management Website.

The project definition process produces the information needed to begin constructing a Project Plan.


Task
A task is an activity that needs to be accomplished within a defined period of time. Tasks are generally pieces of work that require effort and resources and have a concrete outcome or deliverable. In theory a task can be of any size. Indeed, a project could be regarded as a very large task. However, the term task is normally used to refer a smaller piece of work. Tasks take place over a period of time and usually consume resources. Projects are made up of tasks, sometimes grouped together into work packages. In practice, the term task can be applied to almost any project activity. Task durations can be long or short and there can be huge variations in costs and resource requirements. The deliverables from many small tasks may be combined together to create the deliverable for a larger task. For example, a project manager may be allocated the task of producing a project plan. This task may involve obtaining information from a number of people. Each meeting could be regarded as a task in its own right. Some of the people the project manager meets with may also have to carry out tasks themselves in order to provide the required information.

Resource

Resources can be defined as the personnel, equipment, materials and services required to complete tasks in a project.

• Personnel are the people employed to the organisation to work on a project or task.
• Equipment is the machinery allocated to the project, whether mechanical or electronic, eg engineering machines, computers.
• Materials are the property that may be included in or attached to a deliverable or consumed or expended in performing a task. They include assemblies, components, parts, fuels and lubricants, raw and processed materials, and small tools and supplies.
• Services are areas where labour is expended without producing a tangible commodity, eg accounting, secretarial or legal services.

Schedule
A schedule is a timeline of events and activities which can be used as an operating timetable. It can be presented on a calendar framework or on an elapsed time scale and specifies the occurrence, times of events and the relative start and finish times of activities. The schedule specifies the timing and sequence of tasks within a project, as well as the project duration. It consists mainly of tasks, dependencies among tasks, durations, constraints and time-oriented project information. 
A display of project time allocation, in the form of milestones, deliverables, activities or Gantt charts, is often referred to as the project schedule. You can read a more about Schedules on Wikipedia.


Risk Analysis and Risk Management
A risk is an event, which is uncertain and has a negative impact on some activity.
Risk analysis is the process of quantitatively or qualitatively assessing risks. It involves estimating both the uncertainty of the risk and its impact.
Risk management is the use of risk analysis to devise management strategies to reduce risk.
In project management, these techniques are used to address the following questions:

• Will the project go over schedule? (Schedule Risk)
• Will the project overrun its budget? (Cost Risk)
• Will the output of the project fail to satisfy the goals? (Performance Risk)

At the beginning of a project and throughout its duration, the answers to these questions are unknown, but a 'yes' answer to any of them is obviously undesirable. Each of these elements should therefore be subjected to a risk analysis, to help project managers decide whether the project is in danger of failing to meet its commitments and whether or not anything can be done to improve the project's chances of success.