External forces effecting projects

Project

Organisation Sponsoring the project

External market forces World events

Local and national government

Regulative bodies

Financial market

Mergers & take-overs

Trade embargos

Technicalinnovations

Environmental issues

Projects and Organisations

External forces effecting projects

• External risk factors are circumstances over which project management cannot exert a controlling influence.

• These factors include such elements as externally imposed deadlines,

• Internal risk factors are circumstances that project management can control.

• These factors include such elements as the allocation of adequate resources and the reliability of cost estimates.

• Both internal and external risk factors should always be considered in the overall risk assessment.

• Internal risk factors may be more tangible and their impacts on cost estimated with a greater degree of confidence.

External forces effecting projects

• The project group to be managed will eventually consist of consultants, contractors and specialists, as well as the owner's staff of advisors and the project control team itself.

• From this it can be seen that each group or person involved in the project has two allegiances or "bosses". That is to say, project responsibilities ultimately to the project manager, and "professional" responsibilities to his or her "home" department or firm.

• This dual reporting relationship is often referred to as a "matrix" structure and accounts for much of the complexity and difficulties of managing a project, particularly a large one.

External forces effecting projects

• Similarly, the project manager will also have a dual responsibility.

• On the one hand under the "project mandate", he or she will be responsible for the project to the project's "Executive" or "Sponsor", i.e. the person that has the authority to approve further project funding.

• On the other hand, the project manager will be responsible for personal and professional performance to his or her own home department or company.

External forces effecting projects

• This external environment represents a complex set of relationships, which constantly react with the project as it is brought into reality.

• Conversely, most projects are intended to impact the environment in one way or another, and this is particularly true of infrastructure projects. Therefore, for the project to be ultimately successful, these relationships must be taken into account.

• Even more important, the factors noted above have a habit of changing during the life of the project, especially if the project takes a number of years to complete.

• This translates into a high degree of uncertainty or risk surrounding the project, as a result of its external environment.

Programme/Project Organisational structure

Projects:• Deliver a specific change • Focus on tactical delivery• Have a precise objective• Are defined with a specific timeline and budget• Try to avoid change to the defined scope in order to ensure

delivery• Require management communication primarily at an

operational level concerning operational details• Produce specific pre-defined deliverables• Require a manager who pays attention to detail, has good

team leadership, plans in detail, follows a disciplined approach, and delivers the goods.

Programme/Project Organisational structure

Programmes • Address the entire business • Change Focus on strategic• Goals May have imprecise definition• May have uncertain timing• Evolve over a period of time to derive optimum benefit for the organisation• Require much senior management attention, often including strategic and

political debate across organisational boundaries• Produce an overall improvement in the business that may be multi-faceted

and not fully defined at the outset of the programme• Require a manager who is high-powered, high-level, visionary, strategic,

political, sales-oriented, and works with people at the top and across the organisation

Programme/Project Organisational structure

Programmedirector

Senior businessmanagement

Sponsoring group/programme board

Business Change

managersProgramme Manager

Programmesupportoffice

Projectsupportoffice

Seniorsupplier

Projectexecutive

Senioruser

Projectmanager

Project BoardProjectmanagement

Programmemanagement

“Software Project Management”Bob Hughes & Mike Cotterell

Team members

Identified project

Team manager

Programme/Project Organisational structure

• Programme Management is a vital component in the delivery of change; whether change to public or customer services, or change within organisation

• The lifecycle of a programme is not as distinct as that of a project.

• The key ingredients often happen before any identifiable programme has commenced.

• Much of the early thinking will be more in the nature of senior management discussions about business strategy.

• At some time, those ideas will condense to the extent that a change programme can be defined.

Programme FrameworkProgramme

DefinitionProgramme

Definition Programme ManagementProgramme Management

ProjectProject

ProjectProject

ProjectProject

ProjectProject

ProjectProject

Change ManagementChange Management

Programme Model

Vision

Objectives

Scope

Architecture

Approach

Resourcing

Responsibilities

Dependencies

Organisation and Project Acceptance

Establish sponsor

Plan the define phase

Establish initiation team

Scope the proposed project

Plan proposed project

Quantify business benefits Sponsor review

Establish project manager

Establish userrequirements

Prepare PID

Project board review

Proceed to design phase

Notify sponsor and project manager

Initial idea

Address throughnormal businessprocess

Project? No

Yes

Risk review

AcceptReject/Defer

“The definitive guide to project management” Nokes and Greenwood

Basic organisational structureProject executive who will direct the project and undertake the responsibilities of the project Board

Project Manager , responsible for the day to day running of the project.

Service Provider , responsible for doing the WORK

Organisational roles• Sponsor• Project Assurance• Quality Management• Project manager• Team members• Project board• Project support office• Suppliers/Senior Suppliers• End users• Special advisors• Stake holders

Organisational roles• Sponsor

– The person who saw a need for change and had the authority to make something happen. There may be several sponsors who collectively have this role.

• Project Assurance– Project Assurance involves the assessment of a Project's processes,

procedures and management – Provides an independent view of the effectiveness of the work being carried out – Assurance covers all interests of a project, including business, user and

supplier– Has to be independent of the Project Manager– Assurance responsibilities can be shared amongst the Project Board

• Quality Management– A simple layman's definition is to make sure whatever is delivered is within the

quality expectations of the organisation– Was the project completed on time?– Was the project completed within budget?– Did the system meet my needs when it was delivered?– Is the system well engineered so that it is robust and maintainable?

Organisational roles• Project manager

– The person with day-to-day responsibility for the conduct and success of the project. The Project Manager would normally have control over all project resources.

• Team members– The people tasked with doing the work

• Project board– The group of people charged with regular oversight of the project. – Collectively they should represent all significant areas of participation in the

project and they should have authority to take decisions on behalf of those areas.

– Members would typically be departmental heads, Vice Presidents, or Directors, along with external representatives.

– The Project Manager would normally report to a Steering Committee

• Project support office– Facilitates the organization's ability to manage its collection of projects – serves as a single source of information on project activity.

Organisational roles• Suppliers

– Represents the interests of those designing, developing, facilitating, procuring, implementing and possibly operating and maintaining the project products.

– Is accountable for the quality of products delivered by the supplier(s

• End user– Is responsible for the specification of the needs of all those who will

use the final product(s), in terms of quality, functionality and ease of use.

• Special advisors– A Network and Telecommunications specialist in the design and

construction of networking and telecommunications. – They would deal with internal and external networking issues, such as

architecture, hardware, capacity/bandwidth, etc

• Stake holders

– Everyone Involved

Large Project Structure

ExecutiveSenior

SupplierSenior User

Project Manager

Team Manager

Team Members

Support Staff

Project Board

Common Project Team Types

There are two main structural dimensions to the project team:– what type of resource? – what are they delivering?

Common Project Team Types

• Functional teams• Project or single team• Matrix• Contract

Basic rules on how to structure the teams:

• People working together in a team usually see their team-mates as "being on their side".

• They will normally work together and help each other to achieve their collective goals.

• Aim to create a collaborative team, where individuals share knowledge.

• Interaction between team members is the best way to get a balanced view of all perspectives, eg business needs, practicality, technical feasibility, efficiency, performance.

• People working in other teams are often viewed as a nuisance - they interfere with our team's progress.

Common Project Team TypesFunctional Teams

A functional team is one where the hierarchical structure divides people into groups with the same or similar functions. In organisations with a relatively rigid functional division the project work may be handed from one functional group to another. In manufacturing for example:

R & D Production design Manufacturing The project manager must take responsibility for the

smooth handover of work from one functional group to the next

Functional Teams

Common Project Team TypesProject or single team

Consists of a group of people who will all work in the same organisational unit on a project or projects led by a project manager. This is particularly common where an organisation engages repeatedly in projects of a broadly similar nature. The success of this type of team is to continually develop the team capabilities

“People issues” can be dominant in a single team structure, also this type of team can easily become introspective and too closely involved with the project to share information with other people within the organisation

Project or single team

Common Project Team TypesMatrix teams

In this structure staff report to different managers for different aspects of their work.

A member of staff will report to the project

manager for their work on a project, but to a different line manager for things like staff appraisals, career development and “routine tasks”.

An example of this is very often the members of the “user group” associated with a large IT project. In this type of structure staff are often “loaned” or “seconded” to the project on a full or part time basis

Resources Required

Objectives

Common Project Team TypesContract teams

This team is brought in from outside in order to solve a particular problem.

The responsibility to deliver the project element for a given contract still rests very firmly with the project manager.

The project manager may have to regularly visit “contract team” sites to keep such teams on track if the contract team is a so-called “outsourced supply team”.

If each contract team was to supply a member to the Project Board it would be very easy for suppliers to dominate meetings by sheer weight of numbers.

Common Project Team Types Many project have “mixed teams” from the types

mentioned, staff working on projects maybe:

Full time and fully responsible to the project manager

Part time, responsible to the project manager for their time on the project

In a matrix arrangement, their project work is overseen by the project manager, but they are ultimately the responsibility of their line manager

Common Project Team Types Many projects have “mixed teams” from the types

mentioned, staff working on projects may be:

In a functional arrangement, undertaking work on the project under their line manager’s supervision, but negotiated with the project manager

Brought in from one or more external organisations,

they may also be based at one or more external locations