When
authorisation has been given for a project to start, it is the contractor (or
the main contractor, if there are several subcontractors) and the project
manager who take over most of the responsibility for success or failure.
Remember that the term ‘contractor’ is used here to mean not only a company
that manages or undertakes a project for an external customer, but it can also
apply to an internal manager or team responsible for a management change, IT or
similar in-house project. Similarly, the term ‘customer’ can mean not only an
external client or customer, but also the executive management of a company
carrying out its own internal project.
Check out London
Business Training & Consulting (LBTC)’s Project
Planning and Management course.
The
success of the contractor and the project manager will usually be judged
according to how well they achieve the three primary objectives of cost,
performance and time.
The Cost Objective
Every
project should be controlled against detailed cost budgets to ensure that the
expenditure authorised in its contract or charter is not exceeded. Strict
attention to cost budgets and financial management is vital. A project might
have to be abandoned altogether if funds run out before completion, in which
case the money and effort already invested become forfeit and must be written
off. In extreme circumstances over-expenditure could even cause the end of the
organisation responsible.
Cost Estimation and
Budgeting is covered in detail on LBTC’s Project Management
courses.
The Performance (or Quality)
Objective
Quality
has often been used as an alternative (but less satisfactory) name for the
performance project objective. General understanding of project or product
quality conjures up several things in our imagination. Perceived quality
characteristics will depend on the nature of the project or product, but here
are a few general examples:
§ performance at least
equal to the specification;
§ reliability and
freedom from malfunction;
§ long useful and
economic life;
§ safe: posing no
unintentional threat of harm to living creatures (the adjective ‘unintentional’
is used here to accommodate, for example, projects carried out by arms
manufacturers, pesticide companies and mouse trap manufacturers);
§ low operating and
maintenance costs;
§ comfort and a pleasant
impact on the human senses (sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing); and
§ environmentally
friendly.
In
the past, quality in manufacturing and other industrial projects was seen
primarily as the responsibility of a quality control department. Great reliance
was placed on inspection and testing to discover faults (called
non-conformances in quality management jargon), and then arranging for these
faults to be rectified. In more recent years organisations in all market
sectors have embraced the concept of total quality management (TQM). In TQM a
‘quality culture’ is created throughout the organisation, with quality built in
to all design and work processes, and with responsibility for quality shared by
all the staff and workforce from top management downwards.
Quality
considerations extend well beyond industrial projects and are regarded as
equally important in the service industries and other businesses. The ISO 9000
series of standards is widely accepted as the base from which to design,
implement and operate an effective quality management system, with the ultimate
objective of creating a quality culture throughout the organisation. The International
Organisation for Standards (ISO) publishes the ISO 9000 series and a full range
of other international standards (http://www.iso.org).
Check out LBTC’s Total Quality
Management training courses.
The Time Objective
Actual
progress has to match or beat planned progress. All significant stages of the
project must finish no later than their scheduled dates. Late completion of a
project will not please the project purchaser or sponsor, to say the least.
Consistently failing to keep delivery promises cannot enhance the contractor’s
market reputation. Further, any project that continues to use resources beyond
its planned finish date can have a knock-on effect and disrupt other projects
that are either in progress or waiting to follow.
A
common risk to projects is failure to start work on time. Very long delays can
be caused by procrastination, legal or planning difficulties, shortage of
information, lack of funds or other resources and a host of other reasons. All
of these factors can place a project manager in a difficult or impossible
position.
All this and more is
covered in extensive detail on LBTC’s Project Management
Training Courses.
Source URL: https://www.lbtc.co.uk/blog/success-factors-project-execution-stage/
Source URL: https://www.lbtc.co.uk/blog/success-factors-project-execution-stage/
Comments
Post a Comment