Change Location. Managing Complex Technical Projects. By author s: R. Ian Faulconbridge , Michael Ryan. Description Contents Author Reviews This unique resource delivers complete, easy-to-understand coverage of the management of complex technical projects through systems engineering. Written for a wide spectrum of readers, from novices to experienced practitioners, the book holds the solution to delivering projects on time and within budget, avoiding the failures and inefficiencies of past efforts.
It provides you with a framework that encapsulates all areas of systems engineering, clearly showing you where the multitude of systems engineering activities fit within the overall effort. You get a top-down approach that introduces you to the philosophical aspects of this discipline, and offers you a cohesive understanding of a plethora of important terms, standards and practices that have been developed independently. Moreover, the authors present key systems engineering issues in a manner that promotes individual thinking and unique approaches to the varied projects you encounter in the field.
Introduction to Systems Engineering - What is a System? System Lifecycle. What is Systems Engineering? Systems Engineering Relevance. Systems Engineering Benefits. Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation.
A Systems Engineering Framework. Identify Stakeholder Requirements. System Feasibility Analysis. Have questions? Through lectures, exercises, interactive discussions, and teamwork, participants in the program Managing Complex Technical Projects learn how to: Map existing product development processes using DSM Identify ways to facilitate planned iterations and reduce unplanned iterations Manage technical complexity Model system decomposition and architecture using DSM Find patterns of modularity and integration in systems Restructure development organizations based on system architecture Understand team-based agile development and scrum methods Select the most appropriate agile tools for specific projects Scale planning and coordination in larger agile applications Hear from a past participant:.
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First Name. Last Name. The program has been excellent. Eppinger has been able to provide us, in a very short time, the key information on how to manage complex products, processes and organizations using the DSM approach, including several application examples. Wonderful class! Enroll Now. Add to Cart. The Design Structure Matrix: A Tool for Managing Complexity How do you ensure the flow of information among people and teams in a large organization without information overload?
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Watch Now. You have already enrolled in this course. Would you like to enroll again? How the project will evolve over time—This is referred to as the project life cycle and is the chronological sequence of activities that need to happen in order to deliver the project. Whatever their differences, all projects will by deinition share a similar life cycle; they will all have a beginning, middle, and an end.
How does the project fit into the organization? How will it evolve over time? What skills are needed to successfully manage the project?
This might sound unnecessarily complicated, but looking at a project from each of these three viewpoints will give you a much better understanding of the whole process than using any one of them individually. To use an analogy: Imagine that a ship is travelling from London to New York. The organizational perspective would be concerned with which members of the crew were responsible for doing what and how they communicated and interacted with each other.
The life cycle of the voyage would be concerned with where the ship was and what it was doing at any point from the beginning to the end of the journey. The functional areas would be things like navigation, collision avoidance, routine maintenance, etc. Even though these activities would be taking place continuously and interdependently, it is still possible to think about them as discrete areas of knowledge. KEy POINtS 4 Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling resources to achieve speciic goals.
Their management structure is designed to support projects and everyone working in the organization is assigned to one or more projects. Examples include: Construction companies, Consulting organizations, Software developers, and Advertising agencies. Process Focused The day-to-day work of these organizations predominantly involves continually delivering products or services for external customers.
Their management structure is designed to support the process required to deliver the product or service to the end customer.
In reality, even the most process-focused organizations will run occasional projects and some may have parts of the organization that are dedicated to project-based working. The vast majority of the staff in public utilities electricity, gas, and water will be employed to provide an ongoing service to their customer base. But there will be some areas of the business concerned with physical or management infrastructure that are wholly project driven.
For example: Staff responsible for the development of new information systems and those responsible for the construction of new physical infrastructure, like electrical substations and water treatment plants.
The extent to which your organization has the necessary assets and processes to conduct successful projects will play a signiicant role in your project costs and level of risk. The less experience it has, the higher your project costs will be and the greater degree of risk compared to a project-driven organization. Every organization is unique and these classiications are only useful in that they illustrate the fact that project management is likely to present more of a challenge in process- focused organizations than in those that are project focused.
It is better to think of organizational structures existing on a continuum as described below. This is not only more realistic but it allows us to begin thinking about how exactly the organizational structure will impact a project in practical terms. Each division is completely independent of the others and there is no mechanism to allow communication across divisions other than by going up the hierarchy to senior management who would then have to pass the decision down to the other divisions.
This type of structure makes producing a limited amount of products or services eficient and predictable, but would make it almost impossible to run a project that cut across divisional boundaries. A reinement of this structure is shown below and is referred to as a weak matrix.
This is because although each division operates independently, they no longer have direct control over support functions like IT, inance, and human resources. This type of structure makes sense because these support functions do not need to be duplicated and can be shared between the divisions.
This saves money and enables the support departments to be bigger and employ more specialist staff. Therefore, each individual may have to work under several managers whilst performing their role. For example, Someone who is working in Department C and who is assigned part-time to projects X and Z will ind themselves reporting to three different managers, all of whom will have some degree of authority over them. This enhances overall productivity because it facilitates quick decision-making.
For example, Individuals from the customer support and production departments may confer with one another to ix problems as soon as they appear. Rather than the production department remaining unaware that there is a problem until it surfaces months later in a management report or memo. The matrix structure also encourages a democratic leadership style that incorporates the input of team members before managers make decisions.
The ability to contribute valuable information before decisions are made leads to employee satisfaction and increased motivation. A disadvantage of the matrix structure is that it is a recipe for disagreement between the line manager and the project managers. There can also be disagreements about resource allocation and prioritization. This occurs because project managers tend to view their own project as the most important activity and forget that the line manager may have other commitments that his department is expected to meet.
Secondly, projects in progress may be subject to changes, following the agreement and commitment of the line resources required. This may result from a failure to achieve the expected progress in any area of work and is likely to have a knock-on effect on the ability of the line manager to supply the resources they are committed to.
As a line manager, you may also have to accommodate unexpected resource shortages due to absenteeism and staff turnover. All of these factors mean that conlict is unavoidable in organizations that are structured in this way and many of these issues described may be complicated further if staff are working on more than one project at a time.
Another feature of the matrix structure is that it can lead to staff members becoming concerned about the extent to which the efforts they expend on project-related work will be recognized and rewarded inancially. This problem may be compounded if they feel their project-related work will not be recognized within their own department and no matter how hard they work on the project it will not affect their chances of advancement.
This concern is primarily an issue with staff seconded to projects on a full-time basis as they may feel increasingly isolated and left behind in relation to their long-time colleagues and the departmental practices with which they are familiar.
Also, individuals involved with long-term projects may have worries about what happens to them at the end of the project. Their fear could be that their department has learnt to cope without them, or developed new procedures whilst they were assigned to the project. Projects are all about utilizing existing resources and expertise in an eficient and effective way to get things done. The downside of this, from a staff perspective, may be that projects are not seen as training-oriented environments in which to develop personal skills.
In this case, the project management staff will need to coordinate the required project work through the line managers. In practice a combination of these approaches is often found to be the best solution, and is by far the most common method. However, this organizational framework risks breaking one of the tenets of good management—that of matching responsibility with authority. The project manager will be responsible for performance on the project but may lack suficient authority where contributors report to their own line managers.
All of these factors mean that unless your organization is completely project focused then you can expect conlict, disagreement, and compromise to be an integral part of organizing a project.
Different organizations may use different names for these roles but the responsibilities of each one will be the same. Sponsor Stakeholders Manager Essential Project Roles It is important that you understand the rationale for each of the roles in the project along with their responsibilities as these are used extensively throughout the Project Management Skills eBooks series. Stakeholders are anyone who will gain or lose from the project.
In this context, stakeholders are managers who have the organizational authority to allocate resources people, money, services and set priorities for their own organizations in support of a change. One of the keys to a successful project is successfully managing the relationships between everyone involved—the stakeholders.
It analyzes and documents their interests in and inluence on the project. A stakeholder is deined as anyone with an interest in the project, irrespective of whether that interest is positive or negative. They may be individuals or organizations that are actively involved in the project, or whose interests may be affected by the execution or completion of the project. In addition to those on the project team potential stakeholders include those shown in the diagram.
Stakeholders can be internal to the organization or external. In many projects the public at large will become a stakeholder to be considered during the project. The challenge for the project manager when the public is a stakeholder will be to act while considering public needs. Often there is no direct representative of the public to be consulted during project planning and execution.
Stakeholder analysis is so important that a wide variety of experts are consulted to help analyze the actual level and the desired level of engagement level of the various stakeholders.
It details how you communicate with stakeholders and ensures appropriate engagement levels. If you intend to manage a project then you will need a detailed knowledge of these roles and their responsibilities. However, in order to understand the basic principles of project management there are only two roles that you need to know about in any detail, the project sponsor and the project manager. KEy POINtS 4 Irrespective of how the organization is structured, there are certain roles and responsibilities that are required in all projects.
Even though this implies that the project sponsor can be a group of people, it is usually far better if there is one named individual who has been given this role. An effective sponsor will be someone with the authority and personal drive to overcome major obstacles to completing the project.
It can be helpful to think about this in terms of the project manager working for the sponsor who is in turn working for the organization. The project sponsor may be either internal or external to the organization that will be undertaking the project work. Many different permutations are possible—for example, an internal sponsor may commission a project that will call only on resources within the organization.
Alternatively, the entire project may be outsourced to a third party. The project sponsor should appoint a project manager to take on the responsibility for delivering the project in accordance with its objectives. There are two main differences between project sponsorship and project management. Firstly, project sponsorship includes the identiication and deinition of the project, whereas project management is concerned with delivering a project that is already deined, if only quite loosely.
They have the authority to use cash and other resources up to the limit set in the project charter. You should also be aware of some of the issues that are raised when assigning people to projects, particularly if they have continuing duties in their own department, and you can bring attention to potential issues before they arise. Finally, with the knowledge of the speciic roles and responsibilities of the project sponsor and the project manager you can ensure that others within your organization are aware of these requirements when developing a project.
The project manager should be appointed, by the project owner, to assume day-to-day management of the project. The project manager should be responsible for planning at the project and sub-project level, exercising control, ensuring product delivery and for management and motivation of staff working on the project.
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