Introduction to Project Management

Technology integration project involves so many players that it requires an effective project management to achieve a successful integration of a technology to business. As a program/project manager, you are aware of the significant impact of your project on the entire corporation even in a proof-of-concept or a pilot project. You want to ensure the success of the project and move forward for further rollout. You would use your past knowledge and experience of project management and in addition, you may refer to helpful references on successful project management. It would be a good idea to take a project management class and obtain a certification of project management professional (PMP) accredited by project management institute (PMI). PMI is “one of the world’s largest professional membership associations, with half a million members and credential holders in more than 180 countries. It is a not-for-profit organization that advances the project management profession through globally recognized standards and certifications, collaborative communities, an extensive research program, and professional development opportunities (http://www.pmi.org).” This would enhance recognition and acknowledgement of your expertise as a program/project manager. The project management planning and execution steps presented in this chapter is primarily based on the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK®) published by PMI, focusing on technology integration project. PMBOK is a collection of processes and knowledge areas generally accepted as best practices within the project management discipline.KeywordsTeam MemberProject ManagerProject TeamTechnology IntegrationProject ScheduleThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Introduction One of the challenges faced by students that are involved in the acquisition of an academic degree, as Higher Education or a PhD., are related to the difficulties of development of a Academic Research Project. Such challenges are surrounded by incorrect determination of the research scope and complexity, the erroneous estimatives for the research conclusion (or even the time demand due to problems occurring during the research development) or even finishing with poor quality as something that were not expected by the advisor and other evaluators. These elements culminates in the application of Project Management Theory that is being studied by institutions such as the Project Management Institute--PMI (PMSURVEY.ORG, 2010) over the years and which aims to improve the process of project development in general, including academic projects aimed at scientific research in the university accordingly to MUSTARO & ROSSI, 2013. PMI is responsible for developing guidelines for project management as defined on the Project Management Body of Knowledge--PMBoK (PMI, 2008). From the presented scenario, the general objective of this paper is to establish link between academic research projects with the Project Management Theory. As specific objectives, this paper considers: 1) present the types of academic research projects that can be treated according to the precepts of the project, 2) provide project management theoretical foundations, and 3) present part of the process groups of PMBoK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), a framework widely used in over a hundred countries, linking these process groups to the academic research projects. To develop the proposed objectives and present the research results this paper is organized as follows: initially is described the Project Management Principles, then the processes involved in Initiating and Planning Process Groups are detailed based on PMBoK as well their relation with Academic Research Project. For each process group, their relation with the Knowledge Areas from PMBoK are detailed, and specific templates, as an Academic Research Project Plan Template, are presented. Finally, the conclusions are related and future works are suggested. Project Management Principles It is considered that the man have been using actions that turns to practices of project management since long time ago. It is also considered that some important monuments created throughout the history of modern man were built under the precepts of project management although these were not formalized at the time. Valle et al. (2010) show historical analyses that consider the concept of project management can be older than it looks. According to the authors, the construction of the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China and the Coliseum in Rome represent examples of man's efforts that must have been regimented by principles of project management. In the contemporary era is verified, as Valle et al. (2010), that several works were done under management of big monetary amounts and the work force of thousands of workers, which generated the need to implement project management practices. According to the authors, Taylor (1911) was a pioneer in the science of Project Management and Gantt (1919) was another student of these sciences. Both contributed greatly to the practices of modern project management. Although great events of the past suggested the theories of project management, it was only in the early twentieth century that the theories, methodologies and frameworks aimed at project management were in fact established. A timeline, according to Carvalho & Rabechini Jr. (2011), present great landmarks of project management from the twentieth century. This is able to present the evolution of project management practices and represents milestones in this setting, as shown in Table 1. In general, project management practices bring many benefits. …

Project management plays an important role in the competitive scenario, and achieved in the 1990s the status of methodology (Carvalho & Rabechini, Jr., 2005). Nowadays, there are more than 100,000 practitioners that earned the Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI). This indicator highlights the increasing interest in project management area, especially in the IT companies, which are one of the top five industries in PMI’s membership numbers (PMI, 2005). The widely spread framework proposed by PMI called Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK), now in the third edition (PMBoK, 1996, 2000, 2004), has been adopted by several kinds of project-driven organization (PMI, 2004). PMBoK clusters the main project management best practices in nine key areas. Nevertheless, a research carried out by Standish Group (2003) showed high failure level in IT project in North America. The research involved about 13.522 projects, of which only 34% can be considered a success. The main causes for IT projects failure were related to user’s commitment, manager support and requirement definition. It is important to emphasize that, regarding the project success measure in historical perspective, the success rate improved if compared to the first similar research carried out in 1999, which was just 16%. Based on this scenario, this chapter presents the main organizational project management models in order to help companies to upgrade project performance.

Status and scope of project management in the hospitality industry

The article is devoted to the issues of combination of the most important components of the theory of sustainable development and the principles of project management. The current state of the problem has been analyzed, the lack of knowledge on the corresponding issues in national literature and practice has been indicated, the rare use of sustainable development elements in project management has been identified. The prerequisites for the involvement of sustainable development objectives in the components of project management have been examined. Achieving the defined purpose is possible through the implementation of projects that aim to take into account the interests of sustainable development, as well as through the implementation of other projects that include the objectives of sustainable development. Critical inconsistencies in methodological approaches to the accomplishment of the objectives of sustainable development and project management have been identified. Thus, a more profound specification of the project's priorities and objectives, as well as the elaboration of time scheduling and scope of work are needed. The objectives for minimization of the identified inconsistencies as well as for rationale for the principles of corporate social responsibility provision have been defined. The assessment of the current regulatory documents in the field of project management with the focus on the involvement of sustainable development objectives has been conducted. It is pointed out that the corresponding aspects are poorly elaborated in the most well-known regulatory documents, namely, Individual Competence Baselinet (ICB), International Project Management Association (IPMA), Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), Project Management Institute (PMI), A Guidebook of Project and Program Management for Enterprise Innovation (P2M), etc. Methodological approach to the integration of management decisions into the project management, the main components of which must be the integration of the regulations of PM into the main stages of SD, the broadening of time and geography of the project indicators, the identification of the correlations between the life-cycle of the project and product, as well as the expenses on the implementation of these projects and products and significant extension of the requirements of the project manager.

Enterprise environmental factors (EEF) and organisational process assets (OPAs) are important inputs for most of the processes in all project management knowledge areas. This study assesses the effect of three important EEF and OPA input factors, project organisational support, project control and contingency planning, and project management processes, on project baseline and planning management. In addition, this study also investigates how much of an influence that effective project baseline and planning management has on company performance. Data were collected from 93 certified project management professionals (PMPs) registered with the Project Management Institute (PMI) in China. Our findings showed that firms that develop company-wide organisational support systems and company-wide procedures and processes for managing projects within an operations organisation do better in their overall performance.

The construction industry has made significant improvements in adopting and integrating emerging technologies. One example is the wide use of Building Information Modeling (BIM), which offers numerous benefits to the construction industry. BIM assists project teams in achieving better quality with lower risk, shorter timeframes, and reduced costs. Meanwhile, the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) defines the required discipline to meet stakeholders' needs. PMBOK aims to facilitate the achievement of predefined project deliverables and improve project goals through effective communication and decision-making processes. This paper presents a questionnaire-based investigation to measure whether BIM implementation enhances the PMBOK in projects and whether BIM positively affects Project Management Knowledge Areas (PMKAs) on a global scale. The questionnaire consisted of 7 general questions, 37 PMBOK-oriented questions, and 4 questions targeting BIM advantages and obstacles. 95 experts participated in the survey based on the LinkedIn search and survey invitation. The results showed that BIM dramatically influences the quality of execution of PMKAs, specifically in Project Integration Management. Additionally, the study examined the effect of BIM on the product lifecycle that BIM improves project coordination and discovers clashes during the engineering phase. In the construction phase, BIM facilitates as-built drawings and enhances communication, and during the post-construction phase, BIM enhances facility and components’ lifecycle management. The research also found that the most significant obstacles to implementing BIM are the lack of experts, value propositions, and efficient training.

Project management skills and professional certification are quickly developing into required core practice (Hammond et al., 2006). Peter Shears, CEO of the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM), stated at a April, 2006, conference, that there was increased demand for skilled project managers within all organizations across all industry sectors (Hammond et al., 2006). AIPM is an Australian Project Management Web portal offering certifications of AIPM’s Registered Project Management (RegPM). As a supporter of the project management profession, the Project Management Institute (PMI) also plays an enormous role. The PMI Web portal encourages a standard with the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide describing what should be done to manage a project. PMI’s Project Management Professional (PMP®) credential program is also available from the PMI Web portal recognizing and approving skills (Project Management Institute, Inc., 2006).

When a $145 million IT project failure pushes Los Angeles to the edge of financial meltdown, the County CEO asks Max McLellan, a harried IT project manager, aka The Integrator, for help. The County Board gives Max 30 days to identify the problem and find a solution. At first Max finds the usual missteps, but something bigger and darker beckons, an explosive source of project failure. He must do something different, rattling ghosts of previous County IT failures, uncloaking crookedness, and exposing truths that shatter careers. With some people rooting for his failure, Max battles to fit all the pieces together with the County team, applying his proven framework to define the problem, plan a solution and execute it successfully. It’s common knowledge that barely 50% of IT projects succeed, per a 2017 Project Management Institute report. Equally well-known, approximately 70% of large-scale change management initiatives fail according to a 2017 McKinsey & Co. report. Given the challenge to overcome these low success rates, The Integrator offers a proven narrative on the organizational change framework for achieving Agile IT project management success based on the author’s 45+ year client experiences and published research. The Integrator defines change management as the single overarching methodology integrating Agile IT and project management. It does this because all projects are about change – significant organizational and personal change. The people involved – their participation in and understanding and support of these changes – ultimately determine IT projects success or failure. In fact, while all IT projects are about change, successful projects change human behavior. The methodologies included in the framework, described in The Integrator, include: • Change management as defined by AIM (Accelerating Implementation Methodology). • Project management as defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI) Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) standard. • IT management as derived from the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEEE) Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) standard. • Agile as defined by the Agile Alliance’s Agile Manifesto. Written by a certified Project Management Professional and accredited change management practitioner, The Integrator chronicles the challenges involved in applying this framework in a real-world setting to achieve successful project implementation.

Professional Competency is an important aspect of tertiary education. The term implies not just theoretical knowledge but practical know-how and ability to perform in the workplace. This chapter describes an approach to building professional competency in the field of project management developed in a postgraduate Project Management course at RMIT University, Australia. The course involves an extended twelve-week project simulation in which all phases of the Project Management Life-Cycle are exercised. The aim of the simulation is to build professional competency in the management of projects with particular emphasis on the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) project management framework. The simulation uses various techniques to provide a realistic experience for students. Some the techniques involve electronic simulation tools, including electronic communication media and animations. Student evaluation of the use of the simulation tools is presented and discussed.

A major challenge in Information Systems and Information Technology is to improve the ability to conceptualize, design, develop and deliver information systems that meet customer requirements. Project management is often adopted to create solutions that work and meet customer needs. The principles of project management as defined by the Project Management Institute, can improve project success rates. Researchers in the project management need to help practitioners understanding the impact of different principles on the success of IS development. This study undertakes a survey of project management experts on the state of practice and research to examine the need for improving project management, and suggest areas that can be improved. Research may be the most effective means of defining opportunities for enhancing project success rates by tapping the wealth of literature and complementing it with the expertise of project management practitioners. INTRODUCTION Software development applications require frequent changes and updates in order to support enterprise systems. These frequent changes to IS/IT comprise a large volume of software development efforts. These efforts, undertaken as projects, are generally complex and take place in a dynamic environment where business conditions and technologies change frequently during the life of the project (Chen, et. al., 2004). The factors of project success include user involvement and project size, management and planning (Schmidt, et al., 2001). A fully operational project management system in enterprise offers the best opportunity for project success through the implementation of methods and tools for planning, organizing, and managing team-based activities to accomplish specific directives (Jurison, 1999). Project management is widely adopted in Corporate America embraces project management to implement system changes (Muriithi & Crawford, 2003; Park & Pena-Mora, 2003; Yilmaz & Phillips, 2007), which are even considered as too significant to outsource (Fish & Seydel, 2006) or having high risk of leading to undesirable consequences (Wei & Peach, 2006). However, many projects fail, even when performed using project management techniques. Such project failure reduces the capability of technology components. The 2004 Chaos report by the Standish Group found that only 28% of IT projects were successful, down from 34% in earlier report; The proportion of IT projects canceled before completion increased to 18% (from 15%), and a further 51% of IT projects were considered challenged as they are seriously late, over budget and missing expected features (The Standish Group, 2004; The Standish Group, 2007). Possible causes for these findings are the size and expense of large projects, a return to traditional development practices on large projects (Boddy, 1993), the absence of user involvement (Turner & Cochrane, 1993; Akbulut & Motwani, 2005), and lack of executive support (Munns & Bjeirmi, 1996). Thus, scope management is regarded as a key area of successful project management in practice (Hayes, 2004). Although some project failures are because of technical reasons, most are directly related to the failure of stakeholders to embrace the principles of good project management (Jurison, 1999). As part of the project management process, project teams must understand the standards to which their projects are being held in order to ensure that project performance is emphasized appropriately (Crawford, 2005). The Field Guide to Project Management (Cleland, 2004) suggests that project management should be an easy sell to organizations because it enhances business performance and increases revenue. An organization can manage project effectively by identifying its goals in applying project management principles (Aladwani, 2002). For most organizations, these goals are to apply a proven practice, optimize resources, serve customer needs and save time and money (Turner & Cochrane, 1993). …

One of the factors in achieving project success is influenced by the role of a project manager. Project managers (PM) as project leaders are required to have and fulfill the competencies needed to ensure the realization of project management, so that the project is said to be successful. The competency of a project manager according to the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) Sixth Edition (2017) can be measured by three aspects known as The PMI Talent Triangle which consists of Technical Project Management, Leadership Skills, and Strategic and Business Management. This research aims to identify the competence of a project manager whose dominant influence on the success of the project and determine the magnitude of the effect of the application of project manager competencies on the success of construction project. Data were collected through a survey using a questionnaire which was distributed to a total of 30 respondents who are employees of the project. Data analysis was performed by multivariate regression analysis. From the results of the analysis, the regression coefficient values for the Technical Project Management, Leadership Skill and Strategic and Business Management variables were 0.423, 0.097, and 0.437. From the results of the coefficient of determination test, it was found that the influence of project manager competencies on the success of building construction projects was 44%. Keywords: Competency, Construction, Project Manager, Success.

The purpose of this research was to plan an approach to a project framework that integrated a model for sustainability and CSR, with the process groups of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) standard, in its application to the training of a group of students in Project Design, Management, and Evaluation. The integration was justified by the scarce explicit references to sustainability and CSR found in traditional project management guidelines, norms, and standards. The new framework was used to structure a Sustainability Management Plan, which made it possible to incorporate sustainability criteria throughout the life cycle of the training project. The training proposal in Project Design, Management, and Evaluation was chosen, among several alternatives, by a multi-criteria selection process (fuzzy AHP) in the context of project scope management. The results reveal a great heterogeneity among the models and the lack of a base of key indicators in sustainability and CSR measurement tools as well as of explicit references to sustainability in project management standards. It is therefore necessary to develop a Sustainability Management Plan that can be introduced in the Project Management Plan and thus influence the strategic and operational guidelines of the Institution.

This multinational study of the contribution of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) to the success of construction engineering projects was performed to reveal cross-country similarities and differences. A survey questionnaire of professional engineers in the construction industry (project managers, stakeholders, and team members) was performed in Taiwan, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Structural equation modeling was used to determine the effects of PMBOK techniques/tools/skills (TTSs) on project success (PS). The contributions to the PMBOK include (1) a novel PS index (PSI) framework adapted from the American Customer Satisfaction Index and an importance-performance analysis (IPA) for prioritizing PMBOK TTS predictors of PS, (2) an IPA technique for identifying PMBOK TTS items that help construction practitioners improve PS by implementing effective managerial strategies, enhancing project performance, and improving the efficient use of management resources, and (3) guidance in the current use of PMBOK TTSs by practitioners and educators in the construction engineering field. Empirical data obtained in a cross-country comparison confirm that effective use of PMBOK TTSs substantially increases the probability of PS. Moreover, construction practitioners can develop management knowledge needed to increase the likelihood of PS based on TTS that this study identified as essential for project performance.

: This article describes the risk management defense extensions to the 2000 Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (2000 PMBOK(trademark) Guide). The Department of Defense (DoD) Draft Extension was developed to provide recommended tailoring of the 2000 PMBOK(trademark) Guide to Department of Defense-specific applications. The focus of this article is on Department of Defense-specific tailoring associated with risk management information that appears in Chapter 11 of the 2000 PMBOK(trademark) Guide including key supplemental information and enhancements.