2.

Structure and
Framework
Chapter Overview
 Project Model
 Four Phases of Project Management
 Project Environment
 Complexity of the Project
 Project Organizational structure
 Project Model
 The project is viewed as a conversion or transformation of input
into output, under a set of constraints and utilizing a set of
mechanisms to make the project happen.
 The inputs include some form of want or need which is to be
satisfied through the process.
 The project will take place under a set of controls or constraints
including any assumptions or limitations placed on the project.
 The mechanisms are those resources that make the
transformation process possible.
Project as a Conversion Process
 Inputs
The desire to develop a new bag less
vacuum cleaner was the starting
point for James Dyson’s highly
successful product range. The project
did not start with any formalisation,
just the want to develop a product
that would not suffer from the
drawbacks associated with a paper
bag being the filter for particles
passing through a vacuum cleaner.
 Constraints
The main constraints are: time , cost and quality .
In addition to these three, the following constraints can prove
limiting on the project:
 legal – this may not be explicitly stated but there will be legal

constraints, e.g. a building may not be constructed unless the

planning permission for it has been obtained;
 ethical – a major area for many organisations today, particularly

those where the ethics of their organisational policies has been

questioned in the past (e.g. Nike)
 Constraints…
 environmental – the overflow of environmental legislation that has
been generated by governments has changed the role of
environmental control from a minor issue to one which is at the
forefront of management thinking in many sectors;
 logic – the need for certain activities to have been completed
before a project can start;
 activation – actions to show when a project or activity can begin;
 indirect effects – it is practically impossible for any change to take
place in isolation. There will be ripple effects, which will need to
be taken into account at the outset.
Outputs

The output is a ‘satisfied need’. This will usually be in the

form of:
 converted information, e.g. a set of specifications for a

new product;
 a tangible product, e.g. a building;

 changed people, e.g. through a training project, the

participants have received new knowledge and so are part

of the transformation process as well as being a product of
it.
 Mechanisms

The means or mechanisms by which the output is achieved are as

follows:
 people – those involved both directly and indirectly in the project;

 knowledge and expertise – brought to the project by the

participants and outside recruited help (e.g. consultants) of both

technical specialisms and management processes;
 financial resources;

 tools and techniques – the methods for organising the potential

work with the available resources;

 technology – the available physical assets that will be performing

part or all of the conversion process.

Hedgehog syndrome
As with most small mammals living around humans, cars
pose a great threat to hedgehogs. Many are run over as
they attempt to cross roadways.
In Ireland, hedgehogs are one of the most common
mammalian road fatalities. Between the years of April
2008 and November 2010 and a total of 50,430 km,
there were 133 hedgehog fatalities.
 Why, then, don’t hedgehogs learn from this? The reason is that
there is no feedback to hedgehog-kind of the knowledge that the
road is a dangerous place for them to be, so that they can amend
their behavior accordingly. All too often the same applies to
projects – the same mistakes are repeated again and again.
Unless there is an opportunity to develop the project processes
and provide the feedback to the organization, the knowledge is
lost.
 This is depressingly common in many organisations (particularly
those that use a large proportion of contract staff who leave once
the project is completed) and is termed hedgehog syndrome
Phases/Life Cycle of Project
Management
 Graphical Illustration
Define Design Do Develop Process

Organizing Carrying out the work Closing

Starting
& the
the
Cost & Staffing Level

preparing project
project

Archived
Project Project Accepted Project
Charter Management Deliverables Documents
Plan Time
cumulative expenditure against time
Project Phases/ Life Cycle
Initiation & 1. Conduct feasibility study and define the project scope
Definition

2. Generate activities and tasks

3. Determine roles and responsibilities and develop
estimates
Planning & 4. Define task interdependencies and analyze critical path
Development 5. Develop schedule
6. Perform resource loading and leveling Action
7. Generate project budget s
8. Develop risk management plan
9. Develop procurement plan and contract strategy
Execution &
10. Track and manage project
Control

Closure 11. Perform post-project review

 Project charter or project
brief: A critically high level
document containing
Project Phases/Life Cycle project strategy and
reference to some or all
these deliverables

Initiation & 1. Feasibility report; project definition

Definition documentation
Deliverabl
2. WBS; task description e
3. Responsibility assigned matrix
4. Project network; CPA
Planning & 5. Gantt chart
Development 6. Resource schedule
7. Project budget and s-curve
8. Preventive and contingency plan
9. Procurement documentation

Execution &
10. Status report; action plans, change orders
Control

Closure 11. Project history documentation; evaluation

report
 Project Phases/Life Cycle

Ve w
ry Slo
Hi
gh

Possibility of influencing
project’s outcome
consumption of

H
Cumulative

ig
resources

d
pi
Ra Lo
w

Slow Very L
ow

Time
Characteristics of Project Phases
 Cost and staffing level are low at the start
 It peaks as the work is carried out and drops rapidly as the
project draws to a close
 Stakeholder influences, risk and uncertainty is greatest at
the start
 Ability to change final outcome is maximum in the start &
gradually declines
The 7-S of project management
 Strategy The high-level requirements of the project and
the means to achieve them
 Structure The organizational arrangement that will be used
to carry out the project
 Systems The methods for work to be designed, monitored
and controlled
 Staff The selection, recruitment, management and
leadership of those working on the project
 Skills The managerial and technical tools available to the
project manager and the staff, and how these are
developed
 Style/culture The underlying way of working and inter-
relating within the work team or organization
 Stakeholders Individuals and groups with an interest in the
project process or outcome
 The project environment
 Traditional not-for-profit organizations (including many health
services) are now required to meet performance targets and
individual activities are being subjected to previously unthinkable
commercial constraints.
 Shipbuilding – a predominantly project-based environment – has
faced competition from parts of the world that 20 years ago had
little or no capability in this area.
 Within the expanding European Union and World Trade
Organization, trade barriers have fallen, the number of
international collaborative ventures has increased and
globalization has had a considerable impact on the nature
of work carried out.
 It is more likely then that project work will be undertaken
internationally, possibly involving virtual teams (where the
team members are geographically dispersed). In addition
to this increase in organizational complexity, projects have
become more complex as:
 generally the simplest ideas have been exploited first – it is
becoming more difficult but more vital to be innovative;

 businesses are becoming more complex – it is less likely

for a company to provide a commodity, product or service
but to provide a ‘package’ which meets an entire need
rather than just part of that need

 projects are being delivered through turnkey contracts –

where the end-user does none of the interfacing between
the different parts of the system but deals with a single
supplier in the provision of an entire system, or through
complex financing arrangements (e.g. the financing on
public projects through public private partnerships or
private finance initiative arrangements in the UK).
The effects of the changes on projects and their
managers include the following:

 Time has become a major source of competitive advantage,

 The concept is often heard expressed in the form ‘with
every pair of hands you get a free brain’.
 Rates of change in technology and methods have increased
– not only is the change continuing, but the speed at which
changes are occurring is increasing.
 Organizations are having to become customer focused and
aspire to exceed rather than just meet customer
requirements.
 There is a trend towards integration and openness between
customers and suppliers.
 The most fundamental change in management has occurred
through the investigation of the Toyota production system. Toyota
was seen to have achieved significant competitive advantage in the
automotive market through its management philosophy and the
application of associated tools and techniques. The principles
have been taken and applied in many unrelated business areas
with considerable benefits

 The service sector has been the biggest growth area in most first
world countries in the past ten years.
5 Cs of Project
 Context – the external general influences on the
organization in which the project is taking place;
 Complexity – the level of difficulty or complication of a
piece of work called ‘a project’;
 Completeness – how much of the end requirement a
project will deliver;
 Competitiveness – how many other organizations will be
competing to deliver that work;
 Customer focus – the expectation that customers will have
their needs met by the project.
External Environment Analysis
 PESTLE analysis
 Opportunity analysis
 Threat analysis
POLITICAL
 Environmental protection/legislation
 Consumer protection
 Government’s attitude
 Competition regulation
 Advertising standards
Economic
 Economic growth
 Taxation international trade
 Exchange Rate
 Employment law
 Health and Safety law
 Inflation
 Consumer confidence
 Minimum wage
Social
 Income distribution
 Demographics
 Labour & Social mobility
 Lifestyle changes
 Attitudes to work and leisure
 Education
 Fashion and Fads
 Health & Welfare
 Living conditions
Technological
 Changes in physical sciences
 Internet
 Energy use and costs
 Rates of technological obsolescence
 New discoveries
 Govt and Industry focus on tech
 Govt spending on research
Legal
 Employment law
 Health and Safety
 Taxation both corporate and consumer
 Other regulations
 International trade barriers
 Strength of the rule of law
Environmental
 How people’s perception and reaction to
environmental issues can affect a project.
 Internal Environment
 Project Objectives
◦ objectives already defined so project should be conducted
within defined objectives.
 Constraints/Limitations:
◦ cost limitations, time limitations, resources limitations.
 Structure:
◦ usually temporary and has its own team consisting project team
headed by project manager
 Resources:
◦ has its own human resources, physical resources and budget.
 Stakeholders Analysis
Stakeholders: any person, group or organisation
who can be positively or negatively
impacted by, or cause an impact on,
the actions or activities proposed
Stakeholder “essentials”

Identify
Analyze
Engage
Manage
Key analyses
 Supportive  Decision-maker
 Indifferent  Policy – maker
 Opposed  Access ‘gate-keeper’

Interested or not Supportive or opposed?

interested?
 Accesibility?
 Approachability?  Open-mindedness
 Flexibility?  Willingness to use
 Ability to ‘block” if influence to change
remaining opposed? outcome (+ or - )

Attitude Influence
 Influence

Importance Low High

High
Importance
A: Keep satisfied A B

B : Key player C D

Low
Beware a key player with strong
opposition

C : Keep informed

D : Keep engaged
Be mindful of marginalized groups whose
‘low influence’ may come from poor
opportunity
Stakeholder analysis
 Aim: Identify the stakeholders and assess
how they are likely to be impacted by the
project.

 Goal: develop cooperation between the

stakeholder and the project team and,
ultimately, assuring successful outcomes for
the project.
Book launch

 As one of the few remaining privately owned bookstores, book

launches were a major occasion. David Smith, the owner of the
store, took charge of them personally so that he could
maintain contact with both authors and his regular customers.
Looking ahead to his next launch, he described it as ‘a project
of the utmost importance’. He had started planning this one
six months in advance. He would need to liaise between the
publishers, the author’s agent and his own team to generate
interest in the event and to use it to turn that interest into
much-needed sales.
Scientific research project

 A Nobel prize-winning scientist from a world-renowned

institution, the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, was considering
how he would manage a major new research grant for which he
was the principal investigator. The grant funded a network of
scientists to pursue work that would assist in the understanding
of major diseases, was worth many million euros per year and
involved no less than 24 partners from all over Europe. The legal
agreements between the parties alone ran to hundreds of pages,
and that was before the discussions about the science even
started. Managing groups of academics has been described as
‘like herding feral cats’ and this is before you add in any
international dimensions, or that many will know little or nothing
about managing a project.
Complexity of Project
The MODeST framework
 Mission

◦ Lack of clarity of requirements

◦ Large scale, high value, high importance, high urgency
◦ Large number of constraints – legal, health and safety,
security
◦ High level of interaction and interdependency with other
projects
◦ High level of uncertainty – novelty, implications and side
effects
 Organisation
◦ Multiple time zones project team members operating in
◦ Lack of collocation of project team
◦ Linguistic differences between team members
◦ Lack of appropriate organisational structure used in the project
◦ High level of change that the project produces in the
organization

 Delivery
◦ Lack of common or appropriate project management method
◦ Inappropriate human, financial or other resources
◦ Problematic communications in the project team
◦ Lack of clear or timely decision-making
◦ Lack of flexibility for the project manager to respond to
changes
 Stakeholders
◦ Large number of stakeholders with differing requirements
◦ Lack of commitment to the project by key stakeholders
◦ Interference in the project by key stakeholders
◦ Lack of relationships with key stakeholders
◦ Problematic inter-relations between stakeholders

 Team
◦ Lack of leadership shown by project manager
◦ Cultural and other differences between team members
◦ Low level of motivation of team
◦ Lack of project, technical and business experience in the team
◦ Lack of appropriate training for team members
 On 7 February 2005, Ellen
MacArthur became a phenomenon
in the world of sailing. She beat the
record for sailing single-handed
around the world. Her new record
of 71 days 14 hours 18 minutes
and 33 seconds beat the previous
record by over a day. Amongst the
hazards she and her boat had to
contend with during the voyage
were mountainous seas, icebergs
and galeforce winds, and a near-
miss with a whale on day 63. Behind
the success lay a team led by Mark
Turner, the project manager, with
responsibility for all of the technical
and commercial aspects of the
project.
Principles

 Projects are rarely delivered by individuals but by groups

or teams.

 The arrangement of these groups or teams and their

relationship to the larger organization contributes
significantly to their success or failure.

 A key role of a project manager is managing people.

 The role of teams
 The organization of people into ad hoc groups takes advantage
of bringing together individuals from different specialisms
(marketing, engineering, etc.) as needed for a project task. It is
notable that as organizational size increases, the degree of
specialism of individuals is increased.
 Since the days of Henry Ford, large organizations have been
organized by functional specialism into ‘chimneys’ or ‘silos’
 The notion is that, by grouping all the specialisms together, the
arrangement is very efficient, as when you need that function to
be performed there is an obvious resource to draw on.
 However, one single function will rarely provide a customer’s
entire need or want.

 To do this requires cross-functional activity, i.e. the linking of the

activities of more than one functional area.

 Functional arrangements tend to lead individual managers to

build their own empires by creating work for themselves –
regardless of whether this is value-adding for the organisation as
a whole.

 Departmental head-count is considered to be a measure of the

status of the individual manager and the importance of their
function.
Rescue of Baghdad Zoo

As the political head of steam that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was
building, there was much to consider in this project. One aspect that had
escaped the attention of the invading forces was what would happen to the
600-plus captive animals of the Baghdad Zoo, one of the finest in the region.
Lawrence Anthony is a South African game reserve owner, who left home just
as the US declared ‘the war is over’ in Iraq. His mission was to get into Baghdad
as soon as was humanly possible after the initial push by the invading armies
to see which animals he could rescue. Securing the necessary permission to
attempt the mission was no small achievement, and this level of personal
intervention and commitment was required throughout the mission. Compiling
the necessary equipment to make the journey into Iraq from Kuwait was the
next challenge, as was actually getting to Baghdad without getting killed by the
various forces still engaged in combat. And that was before he even arrived in
Baghdad. This is an unusual project and one that is very different from the type
of activity that project managers usually have to get involved in. There are
lessons to be learned here for anyone associated with PM. Specifically, the
project itself had relatively little structural complexity according to most of the
elements of the MODeST framework. So how come it was so incredibly difficult?
Points for discussion
 Rate this project using the MODeST
framework. Why, then, was it so difficult to
manage?
 What are the characteristics of the kind of

project manager that you need in such an

environment?
 Identify a personal project that you have
completed in the recent past – this may be a piece
of coursework, a DIY (Do It Yourself) project, etc.
Consider the way in which the project was
planned, carried out, the results analysed and then
acted upon. What would you do differently if you
were doing it all over again?

 Guiding question
◦ How project was initiated?
◦ Resources/time/HR used in the project
◦ Planning process used
◦ Output of the project
◦ Lesson learned