Tag: Environment

Organizational Project Management

The term Organizational Project Management (OPM) was coined by John Schlichter in May 1998 in a meeting of the Standards Committee of the Project Management Institute. OPM was defined as the execution of an organization’s strategies through projects by combining the systems of portfolio management, program management, and project management. This definition was approved by a team of hundreds of professionals from 35 countries and was published as part of PMI’s Organizational Project Management Maturity Model standard in 2003 and updated later to a second edition in 2008 when it also became an ANSI standard. The standard was updated to a third edition in 2013. The term “Organizational Project Management” should be capitalized because the term is a conventional designation for exactly the systems of processes elaborated in ANSI/PMI 08-004-2008, because it is a proper name for that system and that system is definitive and regimented in its application, and because it does not denote generically any project management that is done in organizations.

According to PMI (2003, 2008, 2013)

Organizational Project Management is the systematic management of projects, programs, and portfolios in alignment with the achievement of strategic goals. The concept of organizational project management is based on the idea that there is a correlation between an organization’s capabilities in project management, program management, and portfolio management and the organization’s effectiveness in implementing strategy.

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Project Sponsorship

Project sponsorship is the ownership of projects on behalf of the client organization.

There are two main differences between project sponsorship and project management. Firstly project sponsorship includes the identification and definition of the project whereas project management is concerned with delivering a project that is already defined, if only quite loosely.
Secondly the project sponsor is responsible for the project’s business case and should not hesitate to recommend cancellation of the project if the business case no longer justifies the project.

Project sponsors can encourage separation of decision making responsibilities between project manager and project sponsor, accountability for the realisation of project benefits, oversight of the project management function and can carry out senior stakeholder management.

The project sponsor or executive sponsor needs a range of skill sets, or at least access to skill sets which include appreciation of corporate strategy; ability to prepare a business case and profound knowledge of the organization’s operations. The project sponsor also needs to know his or her way around the organization and command respect within it. The project sponsor and project manager should form an effective partnership with the project manager orchestrating all players involved in delivering the project e.g. designers, manufacturers and contractors, whilst the project sponsor coordinates all departments of the client organization and associated stakeholders so as to integrate the delivered project into the client organization and take full benefits from it such that the business case is fulfilled.

Because the project sponsor is the ‘owner’ of the project from conception to commissioning and operation it is particularly important to achieve continuity of sponsor throughout the project yet correspondingly difficult to achieve because of the extended duration of sponsorship compared to project management.

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Project Plan Document

The Project Management Plan Document also known as Project Plan Document or simply Project Plan is a document that contains the strategy for managing the project and the processes related to all areas of the project (scope, cost, schedule, quality, etc.) which are known as Knowledge Areas according to PMI. There are lots of project management processes mentioned in PMBOK® Guide, but determining what processes need to be used based on the needs of the project which is called Tailoring is part of developing the project management plan

The project plan document may include the following sections:

A High level overview of the project

The roles and authority of team members. It represents the executive summary of the Project Management Plan

The scope statement from the Project charter should be used as a starting point with more details about what the project includes and what it does not include (In-Scope and Out-Of-Scope)

A list of the project Milestones (the stop points that helps evaluating the progress of the project). This list includes the milestone name, a description about the milestone, and the date expected.

WBS which consists of Work Packages and WBS Dictionary, which defines these work packages, as well as Schedule Baseline, which is the reference point for managing project progress, are included here.

This section contains all management plans of all project aspects

Identify key resources needed for the project and their times and durations of need.

This section includes the budgeted total of each phase of the project and comments about the cost.

Acceptable levels of quality.

Some space for the project sponsor to sign off the document

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Project Stakeholder

According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), the term project stakeholder refers to, “an individual, group, or organization, who may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project” (Project Management Institute, 2013). ISO 21500 uses a similar definition.

Project stakeholders are entities that have an interest in a given project. These stakeholders may be inside or outside an organization which:

The following are examples of project stakeholders:

Rather than focusing on one subset of stakeholders, Lynda Bourne advocates prioritizing all stakeholders and focusing your attention on the “most important” at this point in time. Her view of importance encompasses an assessment of the power, proximity and urgency associated with each stakeholder. She calls her methodology a “Stakeholder Circle”.

The rationale for this emphasis on decision makers is part of project stakeholder management and a key component in affecting change in an organization. John Kotter describes stakeholder analysis and stakeholder management as essential components of change management.

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Management System

A management system is a set of policies, processes and procedures used by an organization to ensure that it can fulfill the tasks required to achieve its objectives. These objectives cover many aspects of the organization’s operations (including financial success, safe operation, product quality, client relationships, legislative and regulatory conformance and worker management). For instance, an environmental management system enables organizations to improve their environmental performance and an occupational health and safety management system (OHSMS) enables an organization to control its occupational health and safety risks, etc.

Many parts of the management system are common to a range of objectives, but others may be more specific.

A simplification of the main aspects of a management system is the 4-element “Plan, Do, Check, Act” approach. A complete management system covers every aspect of management and focuses on supporting the performance management to achieve the objectives. The management system should be subject to continuous improvement as the organization learns.

Elements may include:

Examples of management system standards include: