Project Management Concepts

Overview

In the proceeding articles, you will explore the methodology of Project Management and define the different phases that exist within each project. You will also discover the significance of Project Management in business today, and how a Project differs from other management tasks.

What is a Project?

A project is a collection of scheduled activities, that when combined, have a specific goal. Typical business projects would include:

• Product Launch
• Software Implementation or Upgrade
• New Product Development
• Office Move
• Preparing a Presentation
• Year-end Closing

Project Management

Project Management is the term given to the defining, planning, scheduling, monitoring, and analysis of the activities, costs and people involved with a project.

Projects may be affected by time constraints, financial limitations, or by the number of people available to work on the various activities.

This is a pivotal position, and the level of success or failure often depends upon the project manager’s communication, organizational and negotiating skills.

Phases of a Project

When using the Job Costing application, your job/project will go through three stages:

• The Estimate Phase – Use this phase to determine estimated costs.
• Budget/Budget – Lock the estimated costs and effort to create the project budget.
• Tracking Actual – Track actual costs against the budget costs, either through the use of the time tracking application, or by directly updating the project.

Estimate Phase – Details

In order to create a project estimate, you create the project and in the process perform the following tasks:

• Define the project manager, program manager, quality control manager, billing currency, hours per day, anticipated start and end date.
• Add the tasks to the project.
• Specify the billing amount, anticipated start and end date.
• Estimated costs are created from applying the resources to the tasks.
• Add the resources to each task.
• For each resource you specify the currency, quantity (actual resource or “generic” resources) and work/effort.
• You can change the cost of a resource for a specific assignment.
• Once complete the overall effort and margins are calculated. Both direct and indirect costs are included in the calculation.

Budget Phase – Details

The budget is locked into the version of the job estimate. Once you set the budget, it cannot be changed without the budget being reset.

• Tasks, estimate costs, effort, and duration are locked for the job, and for each task in the job.
• The original estimate can be altered, and will not impact the project unless you re-budget.
• The original estimate can also be copied to create a new estimate.

Tracking Phase – Details

You can update the project by either updating the effort and percentage complete for each task, or by using the Time Tracking application and updating the project through a timesheet.

The variance is tracked by comparing the actual effort and cost to the budget.