Project Management

4. List the seven main characteristics of a project and briefly describe the important features of each.

* Importance. The project must be really important enough to set up a special organizational unit, if the rest of the organization senses or suspects the importance of this project, this project is generally doomed to fail.

* Scope. A project is usually a one-time activity with a well-defined set of desired end results.

* Life Cycle with a Finite Due Date. Projects have life cycles, from beginning to the end.

* Interdependencies. Projects often interact with other projects being carried out simultaneously by their parent organization. Different functional departments are involved in different phases of the project and the PM must keep all these interaction clear and maintain the appropriate interrelationships with all external groups.

* Uniqueness. Every project is unique, so there may be some unique exceptions, the PM need to find and manage them.

* Resources. Projects have limited budgets, both for personnel as well as other resources, and it is implied.

* Conflict. Project management is full of conflicts, and these conflicts come from many places, such as different functional departments, different projects, and different bosses.

5. Name and briefly describe the three primary goals of a project.

Three primary goals of a project is also called the “Triple Constraint”, which are Time, Cost, and Scope.

* Time means all projects should meet time constraints, there is a due date, should complete before this time.

* Cost means all projects should meet cost boundaries based on the budget of the project.

* Scope means all projects should meet the desired quality criteria.

7. How do projects, programs, tasks and work packages differ?

The military generally uses the term program to refer to an exceptionally large, long-range objective that is broken down into a set of projects. These projects are divided further...