2.3 Interdependency of systems The control system approach to project control provides a simple overview of the process of planning, measuring against the plan and taking action to bring things back into line if necessary. This suggests that events will move in a fairly linear way. Life is messier than this, however, and every time that something happens it will have an impact on everything else around it – so the interdependency of systems is important to consider. 1.2 Defining team responsibilities Depending on the size of a project, responsibility for each key stage may need to be allocated to a member of the project team. Clear allocation of roles and responsibilities for tasks and key stages ensures that each piece of work is ‘owned’ by a particular person, and that overall responsibility for the work is spread appropriately between members of the team. Establishing clear lines of accountability for each team member is important to give them: 3.3 Outputs The principal outputs of a doctor's surgery are cured patients; the outputs of a nuclear reprocessing plant include reprocessed fuel and nuclear waste. Many transformation processes produce both goods and services. For example, a restaurant provides a service, but also produces goods such as food and drinks. Transformation processes may result in some undesirable outputs (such as nuclear waste in the example above) as well as the goods and services they are designed to deliver. An impor 4.1 Introduction Greenley and Foxall (1998) emphasise that the marketing literature typically focuses on only two stakeholder groups (consumers and competitors), arguing that this should be extended to include other key stakeholders. Freeman (1984) highlights the interdependence of organisations and their stakeholders, i.e. ‘any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organisation's objectives’ (p. 46). This definition emphasises the wide range of individuals, groups an 3.3 The importance of understanding motivation Personal characteristics in Figure 1 combine both psychological and personal factors. Two important factors which drive behaviour are motivation and attitudes. MacFadyen et al. (1998) (see Author(s): 3.2 Maturity The maturity of an investment is the date when the investor is contractually entitled to demand repayment of the investment and the associated return. Some investments (such as company shares, as discussed in Section 3.1) actually have no contractual maturity. Others – such as demand deposits at banks – are subject to contractual repayment 7.2 Revenues Projects vary in how they are eventually financed. They can be purely commercial projects from which the products are sold at market prices, and so eventually the revenues they generate are expected to cover the costs and provide an operating profit. In the meantime, development costs and working capital have to be financed from share and loan capital raised by the organisation, the cost of which will be met from the profit the project makes. At the other extreme there are projects, in both f 3.2 The project plan Although there are many approaches to planning a project, there are seven elements that are normally included in a project plan: a work breakdown structure to show separate tasks and activities; the team structure and responsibilities of key people; an estimate of effort and duration for each task; a schedule to show the sequence and timing of activities; details of resources to be al 1 The planning phase Once the project brief has been agreed by the project sponsors and approved by the main stakeholders, you can move into the detailed planning phase. The project plan can become a working tool that helps to keep the project team focused on the project's tasks and activities and points them towards completion. It enables managers to keep track of resources, time and progress towards achieving objectives. All projects are different and the planning for each will be different. The difficult 4.2 P is for Presentation By presentation, we mean, the way in which the information is communicated. You might want to ask yourself: Is the language clear and easy to understand? Is the information clearly laid out so that it is easy to read? Are the fonts large enough and clear? Are the colours effective? (e.g. white or yellow on black can be difficult to read) If there are graphics or photos, do they help 3.10 Summary There is a lot of information available on business and management via the internet. Try the activity below to start exploring what is available. Use the Author(s): Learning outcomes At the end of this unit you should be able to: identify why managing people is an essential part of project management; establish which people and groups of people are important for the success of a project and why; explain what issues are at stake in managing them; evaluate how particular groups of people involved in a project might best be handled; recognise which skills are most important for managing people in proje Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence The unit has been adapted for OpenLearn by The Open University Business School from The Open University course B713: Fundamentals of 9 Summary The project brief is a summary of previous discussions and research. If there is earlier documentation, the project brief can refer to these documents and summarise the key points rather than repeat everything. For example, there may have been previous documentation outlining the business case for the project so that commitment could be gained in earlier stages of the decision-making process. Similarly, there may be documentation that outlines the background to the project and the reasons for 8 A basis for action and the project brief Once the initial discussions about the purpose and feasibility of the project have confirmed that the project is worth carrying out, it is essential to establish the basic agreement as a document. The document will provide the reference point for all future work on the project and will be the basis for all judgements about whether the project is finally successful or not. This document is sometimes called the terms of reference, but usually incorporates some additional information in the form 7.3 Risk and contingency planning Risk in projects may be defined as ‘an event or situation … which can endanger all or part of the project’ (Nickson and Siddons, 1997). Risk management is fundamental to project management and has an impact on estimates of time and effort required for the project. It is concerned with assessing the kinds of risk associated with trying to make something happen, for example the possibil 7.1 Consider the purpose A project that meets an important need for your organisation will contribute towards meeting wider organisational targets. Consider the purpose – what will the project contribute that will further the goals of the organisation? It is often useful to discuss this with the project sponsor and to align the project objectives with the strategic objectives of the organisation. If the ‘fit’ of the project with the organisational direction is considered at an early stage, it might be possible 4 Project inputs and outputs A project involves the transformation of inputs into an output or product. For example, people's mental and physical efforts, bricks and mortar, equipment or materials might be transformed into a new road, a municipal park or an advertising campaign. Or perhaps transformed into a stream of outputs or products, for example, attendances at a conference or exhibition, state school places or data from a new in-house costing system. The output or outputs might be used within the organisation Learning outcomes By the end of this unit, you should be able to: identify your objectives; assess what you have to offer; balance these against a practical framework of your personal circumstances; explore a range of reference sources to select what is most relevant; prepare an action plan, including evaluation of achievements; produce ongoing strategies to develop your voluntary work; understand employersâ 1.5.4 Summary The Euro has become an important currency of denomination for government and corporate bonds. There is now emerging a two-currency world, made up of the US dollar and the EU Euro. The advantages to countries of being able to borrow internationally in their own currencies have not been lost to them, so there will be an incentive for the east-Asian countries to develop their own ‘regional’ financial markets.
Activity
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