This presentation is important to all business students for many reasons. First of all, it provides an insightful and informational look into what is involved with being a project manager. The speaker provides personal experience in order to show an interested student what would be expected of them as a project manager and what sorts of tasks they would have to fulfill. It is always best to hear feedback from someone straight from the career field that you are interested in, as they can provide the most applicable real-world details as to what their job entails. This is helpful because it can help you evaluate or even re-evaluate how interested you are in working in that particular field.
Secondly, even if you decide you are not interested in becoming a project manager, the information in this lecture is still very helpful. A business major in any specific field can use the speaker’s advice and experience and apply it to their job. Much of what is entailed in project management as described by the speaker is, overall, a good way to look at approaching the responsibilities at your job, even if it is a different job. Having an organized approach to getting goals accomplished, along with asking for help or clarity with what you are trying to accomplish, are good tools to have. Additionally, setting time goals for yourself by having recurring deadlines for each step or part in the project is an excellent way of completing it on time. Also, learning and improving skills is a good long-term practice to have to make future projects better and easier to accomplish.
There are many goals involved in being a project manager. Obviously, completing a project on time is probably the most important goal, as clients are expecting the project to be completed for them by a certain date. In addition to this point, quality is an important factor. The primary goal should be to get the client their project within the allotted time while also making sure you delivered what they asked for and paid for. Following this main goal comes staying within budget. As project manager, one must keep track of costs and ensure that adjustments are made to stay within the project budget. Next is staying in-scope. The project's scope defines its boundaries. Over the course of the project, stakeholders can influence the scope, such as wanting to add new features and functionality that were not originally planned.
A good project manager has a sound code of ethics that they consistently use in all of their projects. This involves providing a set of guidelines to project members in gray areas that the project may come into conflict with, along with reminding project members of these guidelines. Also, in undertaking this project, the project manager must remember the standards and conduct rules that the company itself has set so that they can adhere to them in their project. This is important because as a project manager, your project and actions are representing the company that you work for, so it’s important to follow the company’s standards as well as adhering to the law in order to best represent your company. Finally, advertising the organizations code of ethics and standards that your organization has set for themselves is important, along with promoting confidence to the public in your project are important.
Question 2. CPM/PERT. Critical Path Concept
PERT is a planning and control tool used for defining and controlling the tasks necessary to complete a project. Critical path is used when you are mostly sure about the duration of each task, while PERT is used in more uncertain situations. Both charts display the total project with all scheduled tasks shown in sequence. The displayed tasks show which ones are in parallel, those tasks that can be performed at the same time. A graphic representation called a network diagram is used to portray the relationships of the activities of a project and to show the order in which the activities must be performed. In order to start PERT planning, the specific activities must be identified, followed by determining the sequence of these activities. A network diagram should then be constructed, using lines and bubbles to represent the milestones.
Next, the estimated time required for each activity is found using optimistic time, most likely time, and pessimistic time. Optimistic time is the shortest time in which the activity can be completed. Most likely time is the completion time having the highest probability. Pessimistic time is the longest time that an activity may take. Finally, the critical path is determined. The critical path is determined by adding the times for the activities in each sequence and determining the longest path in the project. The critical path determines the total time required for the project. Slack time is the amount of time that a non-critical path activity can be delayed without delaying the project. If the critical path cannot be initially or immediately determined, then finding the Earliest Start time (ES), Earliest Finish time (EF), Latest Start time (LS), and Latest Finish time (LF) can be used. The earliest start and finish times of each activity are determined by going through the network and determining the earliest time at which an activity can start and finish. The latest start and finish times are the latest times that an activity can start and finish without delaying the project. LS and LF are found by working backward through the network. The difference in the latest and earliest finish of each activity is that activity's slack. The critical path then is the path through the network in which none of the activities have slack. The variance in the project completion time can be calculated by summing the variances in the completion times of the activities in the critical path.
Critical path management is essential to completing projects on time by focusing on key tasks. It is by far the best and most widely-used method available when it comes to managing a project. One path through all the activities is the fastest way to completing any project. By focusing on the tasks that make up the critical path, the project manager maximizes the chances of completing the project on time. As discussed in question one, completing a project on time is the primary goal of a project manager. CPM fulfills this need by giving the project manager the resources and overview to complete a project on time.
Question 3. Crashing Concept
Project crashing is a method for shortening the project duration by reducing the time of one (or more) of the critical project activities to less than its normal activity time. This reduction in the normal activity time is referred to as crashing. The objective of project crashing is to reduce project duration while minimizing the cost of crashing. Since the project completion time can be shortened only by crashing activities on the critical path, it may turn out that not all activities have to be crashed. However, as activities are crashed, the critical path may change, requiring crashing of previously noncritical activities to reduce the project completion time even further.
The project manager is frequently confronted with having to reduce the scheduled completion time of a project to meet a deadline. In other words, the manager must finish the project sooner than indicated by the CPM/PERT network analysis. Project duration can often be reduced by assigning more labor to project activities, in the form of overtime, and by assigning more resources (material, equipment, and so on). However, additional labor and resources increase the project cost. Thus, the decision to reduce the project duration must be based on an analysis of the trade-off between time and cost.