Management of Engineering Projects

History
It has been said that project management has existed since before the days of the great pyramids. The surge in popularity is witnessed in the beginning of 1960. The complexity of problems faced by the organizations led to the rapid growth of project managers. The Project Management Institute (PMI) was established in 1969. By 1990 the PMI had 7500 members, five years later, it had grown to over 17000 members and by the end of 1998 it had exploded to 370000 by the end of 2010.This exponential growth is indicative of the rapid growth in the use of project management.
The use of project and project management continues to grow in our society and its organizations. We can achieve goals through project organization that could be achieved only with greatest difficulty if organized in traditional ways

WHAT IS A PROJECT
A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. A project is sequence of unique, complex and connected activities having one goal or purpose that must be completed by a specific time, within budget, and according to specification.
Performance, Cost, Time, and Project Targets

PURPOSE OF A PROJECT
A project is usually a one time activity with a well defined set of desired end results. It can be divided into sub tasks that must be accomplished in order to achieve the project goal. The project is usually complex enough that the sub tasks require careful coordination and control in terms of timing, precedence, cost and performance.
Project Management Statistics
The U.S. spends $2.3 trillion on projects every year, an amount equal to one-quarter of the nation’s gross domestic product.
The world as a whole spends nearly $10 trillion of its $40.7 trillion gross product on projects of all kinds.
More than sixteen million people regard project management as their profession; on average, a project manager earns more than $82,000 per year.*

More than half a million new information technology (IT) application development projects were initiated during 2001, up from 300,000 in 2000.*
Famous business authors and consultants are stressing the importance of project management. As Tom Peters writes in his book, Reinventing Work: the Project 50, “To win today you must master the art of the project!”
IT projects have a terrible track record A 1995 Standish Group study (CHAOS) found that only16.2% of IT projects were successful and over 31% were canceled before completion, costing over $81 B in the U.S. alone The need for IT projects keeps increasing In 2000, there were 300,000 new IT projects In 2001, over 500,000 new IT projects were started

Reasons for Project Failure
Poor project and program management discipline
Lack of executive-level support
No linkage to the business strategy
Wrong team members
No measures for evaluating the success of the project
No risk management
Inability to manage change
Project Success Criteria
On time
On budget
Meeting the goals that have been agreed upon

Project Life Cycle
INITIATION
PROJECT IMPLEMETATION
PROJECT TERMINATION

Project Management
A project can be considered to be any series of activities and tasks:
Have a specific objective to be completed with certain specifications
Have definite start and end dates
Have funding limits
Consume human and non human resources (money, people, equipment)
Are multifunctional (cut across several functional lines)

Project management involves project planning and project monitoring.

Project Planning
Definition of work requirements
Definition of quantity and quality of work
Definition of resources needed

Project Monitoring
Tracking the progress
Comparing actual outcome to predicted outcome
Analyzing impact
Making adjustments
Successful projects can now be defined as having achieved the project objectives:

Within time
Within cost
At the desired performance level
while utilizing the assigned resources effectively and  efficiently
Accepted by customer

Benefits from project management:
Identification of functional responsibilities to ensure that all activities are accounted for, regardless of personnel turnover.
Minimizing the need for continuous reporting
Identification of time limits for scheduling
Identification of methodology for trade off analysis.
Measurement of accomplishments against plans
Early identification of problems so that corrective action may follow.
Improved estimating capability for future planning
Knowing when objectives cannot be met or will be exceeded
Benefits cannot be achieved without overcoming the obstacles:
Project complexity
Customer special requirement and scope changes
Organizational restructuring
Project risks
Changes in technology
Forward planning and pricing
Basic Terminology
Projects
Subprojects
Programmes
Portfolios
Processes
Project Management
Subprojects
Subprojects are smaller, more manageable components of larger, more complex projects Subprojects have their own goals and outputs or deliverables which together constitute the final deliverable. Subprojects have, analogous to the main project in which they are integrated, their own scope, schedules, costs, human resources, risks etc.
Subprojects are comprised of project team members and are headed by subproject managers who, similar to the project manager, must have excellent decision-making, communication and other requisite skills, and be in a position to manage the implementation of the subproject work effectively and efficiently
ProgrammeProgramme
A programme is basically a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually