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How to Avoid Problems in Projects

Project Management in the Modern Business Environment

Aug 15, 2008 Paul Carcone

The primary purpose of project management is to predict negative potential outcomes in a business venture and to implant effective mitigation.

The omnipresent nature of uncertainty in every business model means that events and tasks leading to a project’s completion can never simply be unfolded with unequivocal predictive accuracy. Moreover, for some innovative, groundbreaking and complex projects, even the possibility of successful conclusion is by no means a certainty.

The discipline of project management has developed in order to plan, co-ordinate and control the complex and diverse activities of modern industrial and commercial projects and thus remove as much of the controllable risk from the business system. As a management discipline, it also underpins it is anticipated that specific projects account for almost a quarter of a developed nation’s total GDP. In industries such as pharmaceuticals, software, aerospace, and defence projects drive a much larger proportion of the business and, as such, the discipline’s importance is absolutely paramount.

Project management’s importance has it roots grounded in the way in which it secures the venture’s desired outcomes, usually in the form of SMART objectives. These can be set under three generic headings:

Performance and Quality

Project management will ensure that the end result equates to the purpose for which it was intended. Previously, quality was seen solely as the responsibility of a quality control department, but, with the advent of the project management concept of Total Quality Management that has come increasingly into vogue, this has shifted the responsibility of quality upwards to the Strategic Apex, as well as the Operating Core.

Budget

Across all industries, margins are steadily decreasing and the need to bring in projects on, or under, budget is becoming a sine qua non in every business undertaking. Financial sources are never an inexhaustible resource and projects often end up abandoned when the allocated funds are used before the project is completed. Poor project management in this area precipitates significant waste in both money and effort, as well as bringing some severe criticism of the project’s SRO. In some extreme cases, the project contractor could find their public standing and reputation ruined beyond repair.

Time to Completion

With ever shortening business cycles and the rapid pace at which business takes place, successful project management is important to ensure that all delays are identified early and mitigating action put in place to ensure that the project is brought back on track. All significant stages of the project must often be complete by the specified dates as failure to do so can delay milestone payments or incur significant financial penalties. Additionally, late completion of projects can also damage the contractor’s overall reputation and may make repeat business harder to come by in the future.

Conclusion

Project management has become on of the most important skills that any company, or contractor should have as an integral part of their overall service. It an be argued that effective project management is equally as important as the technical ability or level of service provision as allowing the failures highlighted in this article to materialise can have significant negative consequences for the SRO and contractor, and, indeed, the economy as a whole.

The copyright of the article How to Avoid Problems in Projects in Business Management is owned by Paul Carcone. Permission to republish How to Avoid Problems in Projects in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.