Project Management Planning, Essay Example

Project Management Planning :  There are three main elements to the concept of Project Management. These are Planning, Organization and Control.  In the Planning context we are concerned about a hierarchical structure of planned events.  There are normally two types of planning modes, that of Product based planning: where the focus is mainly on deliverables and is widely adopted in Europe by the method PRINCE2  and that of Activity Based Planning: More associated with North America and adopted within the PMI (Project Management Institute) Body of Knowledge (BOK).  It is the latter which we will focus upon for the purpose of this presentation.   The most common form of illustration is via a GANTT Chart with a hierarchical structure, for example:

Phase: A project may have one or more phases associated with it. For example in an IT Project you may have a phase called development. [ Tier 1 ]

Activity:  A project may have a number of activities associated with it. These are activities contained within the PHASE of development. For example in the IT project:  Initiation, Analysis, Design, Construction, Implementation.  [ Tier 2 ]

Tasks:  These are work events contained within an activity which are assigned a time and resource effort for completion.  These are measurable and can be tracked in terms of utilized time, manpower effort and cost to complete  [ Tier 3 ]

Milestones:  Essentially stand alone and are zero time events that illustrate a planned deliverable or important review point in the project.

[2] Scenario Planning:  More associated with strategic planning than project management. Original concept based on making simulations for military planners. Herman Kahn was one of the earliest theorists of scenario based planning ” founder of scenario planning techniques on the basis of a thermonuclear war and thinking the unthinkable ”  (Wack, 2007)

Scenario planning is normally conducted at Executive Level as part of a strategic planning exercise, as contrasted to Project Management which is normally carried out at an operational level and the results reported to a Project Board that in turn reports to the Executive.  Scenario planning is stated to have the following advantages:

1. Managers forced to think out of the box and take a more holistic approach
2. Decision makers have better comprehension of early stage scenarios
3. Managers understand sources of disagreements better when examining different scenarios.

[3] The Most Accepted Method: Both techniques have a place in modern business practice. All businesses should have a vision and an underpinning strategy that articulates how the visions to be achieved.  A business without a strategy is like a ship without a rudder.  It has no place to navigate or chart its voyage.  Project Management is essential to all business practices.  You need proper planning, organization and control to implement business projects.  Without this you run the risk of projects not being delivered on time, out of scope and exceeding cost limitations.

Strategic Planning can be accomplished, to a point, without adoption of scenario planning techniques i.e. conducting future state assessment, determining future state assessment and producing gap analysis.  Project Management, in some guise, is essential for all business operations and structured project planning is now often supported by sophisticated software applications like Clarity and Microsoft Project.  Our business is not considered big enough to need scenario planning, normally associated with larger business operations.