5 characteristics to differentiate projects from daily work?
- Defined life span
- Well-defined objective
- Typically involves people from several disciplines
- Project life cycle
- Specific time, cost, and performance requirements
Environmental forces that changed the way projects are managed? (6)
Product life cycle Knowledge growth Global competition Organization downsizing Technology changes Time-to-market
Effects of environmental forces? (8)
- More projects per organization
- Project teams responsible for implementation
- Accountability
- Changing org structures
- Need for rapid completion of projects
- Link projects to org strategy and customers
- Prioritize projects to conserve resources
- Alliances with external organizations
How are strategic plans primarily implemented?
Through projects
Who is key person responsible for completing project on time, on budget, and within specifications?
Project manager
What is an integrative approach to project management? What benefit does it cause for organizations?
All parts are correlated.
Gives organizations competitive advantage.
Two parts included in an integrative approach?
- Projects have strong link to organization’s strategic plan.
- Provides integrated system for actual implementation of the projects.
Is it possible to find stories related to projects in the newspaper?
Always
Stages of project life cycle? (4)
Defining
Planning
Executing
Closure
Sociocultural dimension attributes (6)
- Leadership
- Problem solving
- Teamwork
- Negotiation
- Politics
- Customer expectations
Technical dimension attributes? (6)
- Scope
- WBS
- Schedules
- Resource allocation
- Baseline budgets
- Status reports
Benefits of strategic management? (2)
- Every project linked to strategy.
2. Provides theme and focus of firm’s future direction
Activities of strategic management process? (4)
- Review and define org mission
- Set long-range goals and objectives
- Analyze and formulate strategies
- Implement strategies through projects
Implementation gap?
Lack of understanding and consensus on strategy among top management and middle level managers who individually implement the strategy
Organization politics?
Project selection is based on persuasiveness and power of people advocating the projects
Resource conflicts and multitasking?
Multi project environment creates interdependency relationships of shared resources which results in the starting, stopping, and restarting projects
3 project types?
Compliance
Strategic
Operational
Selection criteria for projects (2)
Financial - payback, net present value, internal rate of return
Non-financial - projects of strategic importance to the firm
Multi-weighted scoring models?
Uses several weighted selection criteria to evaluate project proposals
Payback model, what does it emphasize? and its limitations (3)?
Measures time project will take to recover project investment.
Emphasizes cash flows.
- Ignores time value of money
- Assumes cash inflows for investment period
- Doesn’t consider profitability
Net present value model? How are projects evaluated with this model (2 options for outcomes)
Uses management’s minimum desired rate of return to compute the present value of all net cash inflows.
- Positive NPV project meets minimum desired rate of return, eligible for further consideration
- Negative NPV, project rejected
Multi-criteria selection models (2)
- Checklist model - uses list of questions to review potential projects and determine their acceptance or rejection. Fails to answer importance or value of potential project and doesn’t allow for comparison.
- Multi-weighted scoring model - uses several weighted qualitative and/or quantitative selection criteria to evaluate project proposals. Allows for comparison of projects with other potential projects
Project classification?
Deciding how well a strategic or operations project fits the org’s strategy
Senior management input? (2)
1 Provides guidance in selecting criteria that’s aligned with org’s goals
2 Decide how to balance resources
