Project Management - Elements

From the previous post we encountered the terms, effectiveness and efficiency. These terms may be expressed in terms of the key elements of any project, namely: time, resources, costs which can be related to efficiency and quality, which refers to effectiveness.

Time

The time factor is a key parameter in the project management process. The objectives of the project must specify a target time of project completion or a date by which the system should be fully operational. Dates in between the project starting date and the project completion date may also be specified for completing specific phases of the project development. Failure to specify target dates may have a highly significant direct or indirect impact on the organization organization. Some of these are:

• Reduced operational efficiency and loss of return on investment.
• Resources not utilized effectively – staff recruited but remains idle; hardware, software and other systems resources arriving ahead of schedule, increases an organization’s risk of loss, damage or deterioration.
• The impact of the delayed project on other projects, which were planned to utilize part of the current system project.

Resources

For the purposes of this discussion, the term resources relates to both material and human resources. Material resources are hardware, software, support services, and consumable materials. Since the acquisition and management of material resources is a demanding task, the management of human resources is the key element. The staff involved will for sure have different in job descriptions, skills and depth of experience. It is also very likely that the staff members will have differences in personality and attitudes. The management of resources involves the following:

• Evaluation of alternative suppliers of hardware, software, services, negotiating prices, quality standards and delivery times.
• Planning workloads for each project member, scheduling and coordinating the work of the project team, establishing targets, regular monitoring of each member’s performance.
• Recruitment and training of staff for the project.

Costs

Project costs are the reflection of whatever project concerns the management will prioritize. Expenses incurred related to the budgeted expense are key indicators used by senior management to assess the project during its development phase. Project cost management involves the following: Forecasting and cost estimation of the project in total helps the staff anticipate and establish expenditure for each phase of project development. These costs will be subdivided into sub-headings such as those related to capital and revenue expense, costs associated with staff, and material costs, and overhead costs.Very significant overspending will require the manager and the organization to review either the next stages of the development process or the initial system objectives and performance standards so that they can modify elements needing modification to fit budget constraints.

Quality

Managing quality differs from managing the other three elements of time, resources, and costs because they are concerned with input, process, and output activities involved in system development. Managing quality focuses on the output of the development process as an operational system or simply put, operationally feasible. Quality may be more difficult to measure because it is subjective. To be subjective means that users may have differences in criteria and differences in perception. Alternatively, it also means that the perception of quality differs depending on the role or position of the end user in relation to the information system or on the knowledge and competence of the end user.

To illustrate:

A system designer may think that a system lacks in technical quality because the system in question failed to utilize disk space efficiently however, another user who is not a techie may see the system as of good quality because the human-machine interface design is simple and easy to use.

With that we can safely say that assessing quality relates to the particular system’s ability to meet the end users requirements. Quality management generally involves the following:

• Establishing quality and performance standards for the system at the start of the project brainstorming and to develop methods for measuring these elements.
• Establishing procedures and methods which will help in assuring that the standards set at the start will be achieved in the final system.
• Monitoring the system regularly against the set standards and ensuring that necessary procedures or steps are being keenly observed.