Project management manual harvard pdf free download

See quantity pricing. Product : Pages: Related Topics: Project management , Leading teams ,. Newsletter Promo Summaries and excerpts of the latest books, special offers, and more from Harvard Business Review Press. Sign up. This Product Also Appears In. By Harvard Business Review ,. Contrast win-lose negotiation, lose-lose negotiation and win-win negotiation and explain why the latter is so important in project management.

Win-lose negotiation is like a zero-sum game. Anything one side wins is a loss for the other side. In win-win negotiation, the outcome is such that both parties gain something from the interchange. Win-lose negotiating is dangerous for project managers who will have to deal with the same parties over and over again. The project manager who forces a functional manager to lose will have created a permanent enemy.

Identify the three goals of a project. On time, 2. On budget, and 3. To specification i. An overdetermined project is one that has a fixed budget, fixed delivery time, and fixed specifications i. In reality, projects must have some flexibility to allow for chance events. In the case of an overdetermined project, there is no allowance for any such events. Contrast the two types of project life cycle and discuss why it is important to know which type the current project is following.

The traditional project life cycle the S-shaped curve is concave to the baseline during the last stages in the project life i. Some projects, however, have a life cycle curve that is convex to the baseline at the end of the project life i. This is known as a J-shaped curve. The main reason one should understand the difference is that resource allocation for the two types is quite different.

Chapters 4 and 6. How does the weighted scoring approach avoid the drawbacks of the NPV approach? Can the two approaches be combined? What weights would be appropriate if they were combined? The weighted scoring model allows the introduction of nonmonetary and even qualitative elements into the selection criteria. It also allows long-run benefits and risks to be considered. The two approaches can be combined by including NPV as a criterion in the scoring model. Why is it suggested that factors with less than 2 percent or 3 percent impact not be considered in this approach?

Draw a distinction between a project and a program. Why is the distinction important? A program is a large generalized effort consisting of a coherent, often integrated set of projects.

The distinction is important because to accomplish a program, it is critical to manage its constituent projects so that they make an optimum contribution to the overall program.

Contrast the three types of nonnumeric project selection methods. Could any specific case combine two of them, such as the sacred cow and the operating necessity, or the comparative benefits and the competitive necessity? The three types of non-numeric selection models are quite similar in that they have set a single criterion for choice. They differ in that the criteria are different. An example of using a combination of the sacred cow and the competitive necessity criteria might be a case where a project is set up to find a new and more effective advertising campaign to improve sales for a product suggested by the CEO.

A combination of comparative benefits and the competitive necessity models might be used to choose the appropriate extensions for an application software program that seems too limited in its current level of development to maintain its place in the market. Management can then control the number and direction of each of the types as well as the types as a set or portfolio.

The representation might not just be limited to the number of projects but also the resource size of the projects, or their timing. You are the project manager of a team of software specialists working on a project to produce a piece of application software in the field of project management. Give some examples of things that might go wrong on such a project and the sorts of trade-offs you might have to make. In Figure 1- 5, what distribution of large and small circles and squares across the four boxes would characterize a strong, well-positioned product development business?

A weak business? A weak and poorly-positioned product development business is generally characterized by too large a proportion of simple derivative projects and a mix of projects that are weakly linked to its overall business strategy.

Give several examples of projects found in your city, region, or country — avoiding those used as examples in the chapter. Some projects which might be given as examples include: 1. By: H. Kent Bowen. A descriptive manual for how to manage the process of project management.

Major sections are: 1 define and organize the project, 2 plan the project, and 3 track and manage the project. Get access to this material, plus much more with a free Educator Account:. Requirements analysis prevents scope creep. Requirements analysis serves as concrete evidence in contractual disputes. Requirements analysis keeps projects on time and on budget. Requirements analysis find out weakness and give suggestion.

Weakness in planning process or reason for failure of project: Project managers are entering difficult situations every day. So many variables go into each project, so many outside entities can affect the success or failure of any given project, and unknowns can enter the picture at any time making risk planning something that is often too overlooked — a very necessary piece to the early project planning puzzle.

Keen project management skills are required to prepare for, plan for, and react to each of these and these are merely the tip of the iceberg of things that can kill a project.

Scope Creep Scope is everything that you are going to do and conversely, not going to do. So planned changes via a change control board are ok, since then the PM can issue a new schedule, risk and budget plan as needed.

Otherwise, you will surely miss your target and make both the management and customer unhappy. Over allocated Resources Often there are too few resources working on too many projects at the same time.

Team members are left to figure out for themselves what projects they should be working on and when. Better is for managers to meet weekly to discuss resource usage perhaps using a spreadsheet to track.

Bad Stakeholder Management Stakeholders have a vested interest in the project for the good or sometimes to the detriment of the project. A communication management plan helps here. Unreliable Estimates Estimates are very often just guesstimates by team members who are trying to calculate duration of tasks based on how long it took them last time.

This may turn out to be totally accurate or may be completely wrong. And if wrong, leads to a flawed schedule and increased risk. Historical records kept between projects helps solve this. No Risk Management Every project is unique and hence, has uncertainty. When we try to qualify and quantify that uncertainty, we call it risk. It is incumbent upon the project manager to proactively anticipate things that might go wrong.

Once he has identified risks, then he and the team can decide on how to respond to e. Unsupported Project Culture I was once asked to consult for a company and discovered that a complex project was being handled by an untrained secretary using 20 Excel spreadsheets. In this case, management clearly did not fully understand what it took to manage a project either in tools or using trained personnel. This is not easily solvable because it requires education of management and a cultural shift.

The Accidental Project Manager This is similar to but not exactly the same as the unsupported project culture. In this instance, what typically happens is that a technical person software developer, chemist, etc. Based on that, gets promoted to project manager and is asked to manage the types of projects they just came from. And so they flounder and often fail despite previous successes.

Lack of Team Planning Sessions There is no more effective way to kick off a meeting than to have the entire team come together for a planning session. This enables everyone to not only work together on project artifacts schedule, WBS but also to bond as a team and buy into the project. Monitoring and Controlling Many project managers will create a schedule and never or rarely update it.

Better if they record actuals such as date started, work accomplished and estimate of remaining work. Corruption Corruption is one of the cause for project fail in Bangladesh.

Every sector have corrupted that have a great influence of project fail in Bangladesh. Incomplete requirements Incomplete requirements of any project is not complete within time and budget and project goal cannot meet properly. Poor communication Communication is job one for the project manager. So if communication with the customer is not going well — for whatever reason — it can be disastrous for the project. Irregular meeting schedules Part of the downfall in the communication category is irregular meeting schedules.

I had one project that I took over from another project manager in the very late stages of the engagement. I thought we were just really in a roll-out mode so I tended not to put too much emphasis on adhering to the meeting schedule, and status reporting schedules So catch it early! By managing the budget weekly, applying actuals to it weekly, and reforecasting it weekly.

Accountability How a good PM handles the accountability problem: Good project managers let team members know, up front, who is responsible for what — and clearly lay out expectations Lack of communication, or hostility, among team members. How a good PM heads off potential hostilities: A good project manager checks in regularly with team members, either by phone or in person, to see how things are going — and if there are any professional or personal issues that could affect the project.

Planning discipline with expertise A well functioning planning discipline with consolidated experience and expertise should have been firmly established within government. But this has not happened. Inadequate numbers of officers and facilities Inadequate numbers of officers and facilities including logistics and staff support have led to different types of problems, so causing weaknesses not only in the planning process but also in the entire development administration of the country.

Complexity of approval The complexity of project approval process is pin-pointed by and large as one of the root causes in Bangladesh. Critical chain project management The most complex part involves engineering professionals of different fields civil,electrical,mechanical cte. And for every one mentioned, there are several more.

The buck stops with you, so it is in your interest to make sure relevant tools and techniques are used to make this happen. Many of the reasons include subjects that could justify the use of a project management tool. Define the Scope: The first, and most important, step in any project is defining the scope of the project.

What is it you are supposed to accomplish or create? What is the project objective?