Support Unity For Project Management (Part 1)

Project Management 

 "Operations keeps the lights on, strategy provides a light at the end of the tunnel, but project management is the train engine that moves the organization forward."

Includes Processes that Encompass Following Steps:

• Requirements definition
• Task definition
• Staffing and resource allocation
• Material selection and equipment specification
• Equipment staging and shipment
• Design
• Development
• Site preparation and compliance with any regulatory or environmental requirements
• Customer support
• On-going maintenance

Requirement Definition:

In product development and process optimization, a requirement is a singular documented physical and functional need that a particular design, product or process must be able to perform. It is most commonly used in a formal sense in systems engineering, software engineering, or enterprise engineering. It is a statement that identifies a necessary attribute, capability, characteristic, or quality of a system for it to have value and utility to a customer, organisation, internal user, or other stakeholder.

Task definition:

Task is an activity that needs to be accomplished within a defined period of time or by a deadline to work towards work-related goals. A task can be broken down into assignments which should also have a defined start and end date or a deadline for completion. One or more assignments on a task puts the task under execution. Completion of all assignments on a specific task normally renders the task completed. Tasks can be linked together to create dependencies.

Tasks completion generally requires the coordination of others. Coordinated human interaction takes on the role of combining the integration of time, energy, effort, ability, and resources of multiple individuals to meet a common goal. Coordination can also be thought of as the critical mechanism that links or ties together the efforts on the singular level to that of the larger task being completed by multiple members. Coordination allows for the successful completion of the otherwise larger tasks that one might encounter.

Staffing And Resource Allocation

"In both organizations, the primary management issue revolved around resources. The portfolio management was overwhelmed issues concerning prioritization of projects and, distribution of personnel from one project to another, and the search for slack resources. However, there were no resources available. Furthermore, when resources were redistributed it often produced negative effects on other projects of the portfolio. This forced the management to continuous fire fighting, resulting in reactive behavior and short-term problem solving. However, the primary lever for portfolio management to affect an ongoing project in trouble was resource re-allocation"

In many organizations, employee workloads consist of a mix of project and operational assignments.  Due to endemic shortfalls in staffing, such folks – particularly those who have key skills and knowledge – generally have little or no spare capacity to take on more work.   However, soon comes along another “important” project in urgent need of staffing and the rest, as they say, is tragedy:  folks who are up to their necks in work are assigned to work on the new project. 

Watch out for the concluding part soon.