PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project Development and Implementation for Strategic Managers

Table of Contents

TASK 13

1.1 Factors that contribute to the process of project selection3

1.2 Project specification for the implementation of new product5

1.3 Specification for an agreed project to implement9

1.4 Project Plan for an agreed project11

1.5 Match appropriate resources for the project13

1.6 Cost all resources required for implementation15

1.7 Agreed timescales for the management and implementation and monitoring of project18

TASK 224

2.1 Introduction24

2.2 Project Implementation24

2.3 Project Implementation Control28

2.4 Project Evaluation Techniques32

2.5 Conclusion36

References38

Project Development and Implementation for Strategic Managers

TASK 1

1.1 Factors that contribute to the process of project selection

Project selection is the first important part of project portfolio management. The responsibility is with the leadership team of the organization. Typically, they establish a steering committee that overlooks the project selection process including project monitoring, and directly reporting to the CEO - if the CEO is not a member of that steering committee already.

We assume that the organization has a strategy in place that covers the next three to ten years, depending on the type of business the organization is in. This strategy identifies areas where the organization

Needs to improve or change in terms of organizational structure, research and development capacity, development of products, office space, manufacturing capacity, etc.

Wants to serve customers in order to earn money.

All these projects need resources partially or fully provided by the organization itself. Since these resources are limited not all of the projects we would like to pursue can be staffed or funded adequately. So, projects in different areas will compete with each other in order to get support of the organization in terms of staffing and funding.

A generic project selection process looks as follows.

The first step of this process, identification, requires a clearly defined and communicated strategy. The best option would be to set up a strategy development process that contains project identification and project selection as an integral part. In fact, we observe that most organizations identify investment projects within their strategy development process, but delegate the identification of customer projects to their key account and sales departments.

Like in strategy development, we find four different ways to identify projects. We categorize them in the following table.

The following examples may illustrate these four basic approaches.

Example 1 (intuitive identification): The family who owns our company wants to add a new product to our portfolio. Therefore, they tell our CEO to start a development project for this new product.

Example 2 (evolutionary identification): Quite a few of our colleagues in our engineering department find it necessary to have a more efficient knowledge management system. In their coffee and tea breaks, they discuss some basic ideas for requirements of such a system, and, some weeks later, propose to start a project to purchase a software package with the necessary functionality and adapt it to our needs.

Example 3 (holistic identification): Following the tradition of periodical meetings, all employees of our division join beginning of this fiscal year again; as usual, one point on the agenda is the session with presentations and Q & A's for new projects which ...