Project Management in Practice

Offering streamlined coverage with an applied approach, Project Management in Practice, 6th Edition focuses on the essentials of project management. This concise, hands-on text is ideal for a one semester project management course, or as a module on project management. This textbook is organized around the project management life cycle, and provides students with essential project management concepts while addressing an important area of industry growth: the use of projects to achieve the strategic goals of organizations.

Table of Contents:
1 THE WORLD OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT 1 1.1 What Is a Project? 1 Trends in Project Management 3 1.2 Project Management vs. General Management 4 Major Differences 4 Negotiation 5 1.3 What Is Managed? The Three Goals of a Project 7 1.4 The Life Cycles of Projects 10 1.5 Selecting Projects To Meet Organizational Objectives 11 Nonnumeric Selection Methods 12 Numeric Selection Methods 13 1.6 The Project Portfolio Process 21 1.7 The Materials in this Text 25 Review Questions 27 Discussion Questions 27 Exercises 28 Incident for Discussion 28 Case: Friendly Assisted Living Facility—1 29 Case: Handstar Inc. 30 Bibliography 32 2 THE MANAGER, THE ORGANIZATION, AND THE TEAM 33 2.1 The PM’s Roles 34 Facilitator 34 Communicator 36 Virtual Project Manager 39 Meetings, Convener and Chair 40 2.2 The PM’s Responsibilities to the Project 41 Acquiring Resources 41 Fighting Fires and Obstacles 42 Leadership 42 Negotiation, Conflict Resolution, and Persuasion 44 2.3 Selection of a Project Manager 46 Credibility 47 Sensitivity 47 Leadership, Style, Ethics 47 Ability to Handle Stress 48 2.4 Project Management as a Profession 50 2.5 F itting Projects into the Parent Organization 51 Pure Project Organization 52 Functional Project Organization 53 Matrix Project Organization 54 Mixed Organizational Systems 57 The Project Management Office and Project Maturity 57 2.6 The Project Team 59 Matrix Team Problems 61 Intrateam Conflict 62 Integration Management 64 Review Questions 66 Discussion Questions 66 Incidents for Discussion 67 Case: Friendly Assisted Living Facility—2 68 Case: The Quantum Bank 68 Case: Southern Care Hospital 69 Bibliography 71 3 PROJECT ACTIVITY AND RISK PLANNING 74 3.1 From the Project Charter to the Project Plan 74 3.2 The Planning Process—Overview 76 3.3 The Planning Process—Nuts and Bolts 77 The Launch Meeting—and Subsequent Meetings 77 Sorting Out the Project—The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) 80 Extensions of the Everyday WBS 83 3.4 More on the Work Breakdown Structure and Other Aids 86 The RACI Matrix 86 A Whole‐Brain Approach to Project Planning 88 The Design Structure Matrix 91 Agile Project Management 92 3.5 Risk Management 94 Review Questions 101 Discussion Questions 101 Exercises 102 Incidents for Discussion 103 Case: Friendly Assisted Living Facility—3 104 Case: John Wiley & Sons 105 Case: Samson University 106 Bibliography 107 4 BUDGETING THE PROJECT 109 4.1 Methods of Budgeting 110 Top‐Down Budgeting 112 Bottom‐Up Budgeting 113 4.2 Cost Estimating 113 Work Element Costing 114 The Impact of Budget Cuts 114 An Aside 116 Activity versus Program Budgeting 118 4.3 Improving Cost Estimates 119 Forms 119 Learning Curves 119 Other Factors 123 4.4 Budget Uncertainty and Project Risk Management 125 Budget Uncertainty 125 Project Budgeting in Practice 128 4.5 Project Risk Simulation with Crystal Ball® 129 Considering Disaster 136 Review Questions 137 Discussion Questions 137 Exercises 138 Incidents For Discussion 139 Case: Friendly Assisted Living Facility Project Budget Development—4 140 Case: Photstat Inc. 142 Case: Building the Geddy’s dream house 143 Bibliography 144 5 SCHEDULING THE PROJECT 145 5.1 Pert and CPM Networks 146 The Language of PERT/CPM 146 Building the Network 147 Finding the Critical Path and Critical Time 149 Calculating Activity Slack 151 Doing It the Easy Way—Microsoft Project (MSP) 152 5.2 Project Uncertainty and Risk Management 155 Calculating Probabilistic Activity Times 155 The Probabilistic Network, an Example 156 Once More the Easy Way 158 The Probability of Completing the Project on Time 159 Selecting Risk and Finding D 162 The Case of the Unreasonable Boss 162 A Potential Problem: Path Mergers 163 5.3 Simulation 164 Incorporating Costs into the Simulation Analysis 166 Traditional Statistics versus Simulation 167 5.4 The Gantt Chart 170 The Chart 170 5.5 Extensions to PERT/CPM 172 Precedence Diagramming 173 Final Thoughts on the Use of These Tools 174 Review Questions 175 Discussion Questions 176 Exercises 176 Discussion Exercise 179 Incidents for Discussion 179 Case: Friendly Assisted Living Facility Program Plan—5 180 Case: NutriStar 182 Case: Launching E‐Collar 184 Bibliography 185 6 ALLOCATING RESOURCES TO THE PROJECT 186 6.1 Expediting a Project 187 The Critical Path Method 187 Crashing a Project with Excel 191 Fast‐Tracking a Project 195 Project Expediting in Practice 195 6.2 Resource Loading 196 The Charismatic VP 202 6.3 Resource Leveling 202 Resource Loading/Leveling and Uncertainty 209 6.4 Allocating Scarce Resources to Projects 211 Some Comments about Constrained Resources 211 Some Priority Rules 211 6.5 Allocating Scarce Resources to Several Projects 213 Criteria of Priority Rules 214 The Basic Approach 215 Resource Allocation and the Project Life Cycle 215 6.6 Goldratt’s Critical Chain 216 Estimating Task Times 219 The Effect of Not Reporting Early Activity Completion 220 Multitasking 221 Common Chain of Events 223 The Critical Chain 224 Review Questions 225 Discussion Questions 226 Exercises 226 Incidents for Discussion 228 Case: Friendly Assisted Living Facility Resource Usage—6 229 Case: Charter Financial Bank 231 Case: Rand Contractors 232 Bibliography 233 7 MONITORING AND CONTROLLING THE PROJECT 234 7.1 The Plan‐Monitor‐Control Cycle 234 Designing the Monitoring System 236 7.2 Data Collection and Reporting 237 Data Analysis 237 Reporting and Report Types 238 Meetings 240 Virtual Meetings, Reports, and Project Management 241 7.3 Earned Value 242 7.4 Project Control 249 Purposes of Control 249 7.5 Designing the Control System 251 Types of Control Systems 252 Tools for Control 254 Burnup and Burndown Charts 257 7.6 Scope Creep and Change Control 257 Review Questions 259 Discussion Questions 260 Exercises 260 Incidents for Discussion 261 Case: Friendly Assisted Living Facility Case—7 263 Friendly Assisted Living Facility Construction coordination meeting 4/11/X8 ACTION ITEM LIST 265 Case: Palmstar Enterprises, Inc. 266 Case: Peak Lighting, Inc. 266 Bibliography 267 8 EVALUATING AND CLOSING THE PROJECT 269 8.1 Evaluation 269 Evaluation Criteria 270 Measurement 271 8.2 Project Auditing 272 The Audit Process 272 The Audit Report 274 8.3 Project Closure 277 When to Close a Project 277 Types of Project Closure 278 The Closure Process 279 The Project Final Report 281 Review Questions 283 Discussion Questions 283 Incidents for Discussion 284 Case: Friendly Assisted Living Facility Case—8 284 Case: Datatech 287 Case: Ivory Tower Systems 288 Bibliography 290 APPENDIX: PROBABILITY AND STATISTIC 291 A.1 Probability 291 Subjective Probability 292 Logical Probability 292 Experimental Probability 292 A.2 Event Relationships and Probability Laws 292 The Multiplication Rule 293 The Addition Rule 294 A.3 Statistics 294 Descriptive versus Inferential Statistics 295 Measures of Central Tendency 296 Measures of Dispersion 297 Inferential Statistics 298 Standard Probability Distributions 299 Bibliography 300 Index 301