Importance Of Project Management Methodologies For Organizations

The Five Phases of Project Management

Project management is the art of creating the right set of structured plans and making informed decisions that would amount towards the collective goal, which must be achieved to determine the success of the project endeavours (Berkun 2005). A successful project is the outcome of five specific phases that must be implemented to close the project. The project is first defined and then a plan is created that would cover all the aspects of the project including a contingency setup. This plan is then executed by managing the participants of the project. The project is thus closed after achieving the required outcome. This entire process is managed using specific methodologies that provide a suitable structure to the project. The project manager is responsible for the choice of the methodology, which directly impacts all the stakeholders of the project.

Organizations undertake different project and strive to deliver the best solution possible to their clients. Since the birth of structured organizations, they started using the process of management for their projects. Project management ensured on time delivery while maintaining the quality of the project outcome (Project Management Institute 1987). Increase in productivity was also achieved using adequate project management. However, the projects that were managed by each organization was low in number and less complex than the projects that are handled these days. Organizations take on the maximum number of projects possible to maximize their profit. This laid a lot of pressure on the project managers who tried to manage every project as precisely as possible. Thus, the project management methodologies came into existence that aided by giving project management a proper structure to follow. These methodologies increased productivity and quality. Several methodologies were developed to evaluate and execute the different types of projects that were available to the organizations. These methodologies ranged from waterfall to agile (Špundak 2014). The choice of the methodology depended on the nature of the project it was applied on. Thus, organizations adopted these well-structured methodologies to execute and close their projects. 

Extensive study into the history of project management proved that these methodologies were utilized to get structured outcomes from the commenced projects. Several literatures have been read to identify and analyse the need for project management methodologies. In 1917, Henry L. Gantt created the Gannt Chart that was used to visually depict the structure of the project plan (Sharon and Dori 2017). Gannt Chart is still used for providing project timelines to effectively manage projects. Harold Kerzner in his literature clearly elaborated on the different project management methodologies that can be used for different types of project management (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). These project management methodologies gained their importance and success once the organizations started to maximise their profits using these methods of project management. Further analysing these methods, I have come to understand that the project manager is responsible for selecting the most suitable methodology to utilize to fulfil the purposes of project management. Organizations undertake extensive training methods to select the most qualified project managers (JOSEPH. PHILLIPS, CBAP and PMP 2018). An extensive and scrutinizing procedure is used for recruiting the managers and their respective project teams. This process ensures that the teams would consist of the necessary team dynamics to work towards achieving the common goals and objectives of the organization (Layton and Ostermiller 2017). Thus, they would be able to implement the correct project management methodologies selected by the organization for successful project closure.

Evolution of Project Management Methodologies

The stakeholders of a project are every person who can benefit directly from the completion of the project. The list of stakeholders of a project range from the project manager and to the client and everyone lying in between. The different project management methodologies have a direct impact on the stakeholders of a project. Each methodology has a different impact on the stakeholders (Li, Hao and Ren 2015). Methodologies that are inflexible in nature provide the stakeholders with a predictive outcome. Every stakeholder desires a predictive or forecasted outcome. However, such methodologies do not provide any flexibility during the execution phase. Every step is a result of the preceding step. The former steps cannot be revisited for any modification. An enormous amount of time is lost and a huge amount of cost is incurred in the event of any change if required. Such changes create huge stress on the project team as now they must revisit the previous stages of a project and that is going to consume a huge amount of resources. Risk management is also not optimum in these methodologies (McNeil, Frey and Embrechts 2015), further integration takes a lot of time and effort after the planning phase is over. On the other hand, the stakeholders are oblivious to the outcome of the project in the event of adaptive and agile methodologies (Bonner et al. 2016). These methodologies are used when the scope of the project or some of the requirements of the project are changed during the execution phase of the project. To respond to these changes, such methodologies are appropriate. However, the stakeholders cannot predict the nature of the consequence and the time it would take to close the project. However, risk management is very efficient in these methodologies.

The learning outcome from the literature shows that the stakeholders are directly impacted from the choice of the project management methodologies. The most fitting methodology must be selected depending on the scenario of the project and the stakeholders directly associated to the project. The inflexible methods can be chosen if the client is entirely sure of his or her requirements and he or she expects from the outcome of the project. Extensive planning is involved in these methods as after this phase is over, no further changes can be made to the scope and the objectives of the project (Velayudhan and Thomas 2016). However, if the client is unsure of the requirements and his or her expectations, the flexible approach is mandatory. Such cases happen primarily in IT projects, where the client is conveying the wrong sets of requirements to the project team. Thus, the methodologies required for managing a project poses a direct impact on the stakeholders who are affiliated to the project.  

Impact of Methodologies on Stakeholders

There are three primary needs of an organization. The first need is increased productivity. Every organization has a limited amount of resources. These resources must be efficiently managed to achieve the best productivity possible (Heagney 2016). Resource management is inherent in these methodologies. Implementing any methodology directly affects the resource management to be implemented in a project. However, some methodologies such as the waterfall methodology designates a fixed amount of resources required for the project during the project-planning phase. On the other hand, the flexible methodologies such as the adaptive method allocates more resources to the project when required to handle any abrupt situation. Thus, organizations use resource management to minimize the amount of resources required by implementing resource planning. The second need is increases profitability. With the implementation of an efficient resource planning, organizations would incur less cost due to proper resource allocation. Profit is also maximised by minimising the amount of waste materials especially in the production related projects where controlling waste generation is a big necessity. Using the right methodology will meet the need to maximise the profit of an organization. The third need is client satisfaction. The recent market structure is centred on satisfying the client. Success and business flow is measured on the satisfaction level of the client. Thus, a constant pipeline of business is maintained. This is however crucial as more business is the goal of any organization. More business would mean more revenue generation. The right methodology would mean that the client would be satisfied with the outcome of the project as they can request many changes depending on the gravity and the viability of the changes.

Various literature supports the case of organizational needs being met by project management methodologies. Selecting the right methodology is necessary for determining whether one or all three needs of the organization are met. Minimizing waste and maximising profit is coveted by every organization (Stark 2015). However, such needs might not be met in the expected magnitude due to unforeseen events and lack of risk management procedures to handle those events. It is important to analyse every situation and the corresponding methodology. The selection of the correct methodology is thus vital for increased customer satisfaction, maximum productivity and profitability.

Throughout 12 weeks of learning about project management methodologies, I have understood the fundamental knowledge of project management and the various complexities involved with it. I have studied different literature and analysed them to understand various activities related to project management. Project management is a necessity to achieve successful project closures (Fleming and Koppelman 2016). Following specific methodologies are imperative to assert the importance of the projects and their respective life cycles. However, organizations must select the best employees possible who are qualified to take on the projects for their organizations and achieve the designated common goal for all. The project manager must be selected after proper scrutiny so that the manager’s knowledge and skills are compliant with the needs of the project. After this procedure is complete, the senior management assumes the responsibility of the project. The project executive is responsible for determining the project scope by communicating with the client. I have learnt that this scope must remain unchanged. Scope creep must be eliminated through proper scope management (Madhuri, Suma and Mokashi 2018). However, there are certain times when this scope must be changed due to some miscommunication or due to a change in the requirement of the client. A change in the project scope would change the objectives and the goals of the project. The project manager is responsible for managing the project, the team and oversees that the objectives of the project is met. I have conducted extensive study to understand the importance of a work breakdown structure in project management. Certain tasks can be complicated to perform. Therefore, such tasks must be decomposed into smaller and simpler tasks so that they can be completed easily. The deliverables of the project must be properly conveyed to the client to prevent any miscommunication about the outcome of the project. The project manager thus creates the necessary plans required for project execution and closure. These plans include strategic planning, tactical planning and operational planning (Turner 2016). However, there is also one more kind of planning that is required for successfully handling any situation, it is contingency planning. Every project manager is responsible for creating the best planning possible for his or her project. However, the best project manager will undoubtedly develop a contingency plan including every scenario possible, which might be disadvantageous for the project.

Thus, I can conclude that project management is an art that can be performed by all but only some are able master it.

References

Berkun, S., 2005. The art of project management (pp. I-XII). O’reilly.

Bonner, N.A., Kulangara, N., Nerur, S. and Teng, J.T., 2016. An Empirical Investigation of the Perceived Benefits of Agile Methodologies Using an Innovation-Theoretical model. Journal of Database Management (JDM), 27(3), pp.38-63.

Fleming, Q.W. and Koppelman, J.M., 2016, December. Earned value project management. Project Management Institute.

Heagney, J., 2016. Fundamentals of project management. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.

JOSEPH. PHILLIPS, P.M.P., CBAP, I. and PMP, C., 2018. PMP PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONAL STUDY GUIDE. McGraw-Hill Education.

Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Layton, M.C. and Ostermiller, S.J., 2017. Agile project management for dummies. John Wiley & Sons.

Li, Y., Hao, S. and Ren, X., 2015. Research on the Conflict Management of Stakeholders in a Construction Project. In ICCREM 2015 (pp. 733-740).

Madhuri, K.L., Suma, V. and Mokashi, U.M., 2018. A triangular perception of scope creep influencing the project success. International Journal of Business Information Systems, 27(1), pp.69-85.

McNeil, A.J., Frey, R. and Embrechts, P., 2015. Quantitative risk management: Concepts, techniques and tools. Princeton university press.

Project Management Institute, 1987. Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). Project Management Institute.

Sharon, A. and Dori, D., 2017. Model?Based Project?Product Lifecycle Management and Gantt Chart Models: A Comparative Study. Systems Engineering, 20(5), pp.447-466.

Špundak, M., 2014. Mixed agile/traditional project management methodology–reality or illusion?. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 119, pp.939-948.

Stark, J., 2015. Product lifecycle management. In Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 1) (pp. 1-29). Springer, Cham.

Turner, R., 2016. Gower handbook of project management. Routledge.

Velayudhan, D.P. and Thomas, S., 2016. Measuring Project Success: Emergence of Dimensions. The International Journal of Business & Management, 4(4), p.48.