Introduction to Project Management

1. Why do you think that projects need to be managed differently than non-projects?

2. What do you think are some additional or special considerations necessary for managing projects?

3. Think of a successful project and an unsuccessful project with which you are familiar. What distinguishes the two, both in terms of the process used to develop them and their outcomes?


1. Why do you think that projects need to be managed differently than non-projects?

Projects are unique, temporary endeavours having a start, middle and end time. Non-projects have no set time frame (no finite lifetime).

Projects need to be managed differently from non-projects because of the distinctiveness of their characteristics as itemized below

a. Projects are carried out with a definite result in mind.

b. A project is a unique one-time activity that is never repeated in the same manner again.

c. Project is temporal. Once the result is attained, the project is closed.

d. When a project is initiated, it is likely that skills and expertise is utilised from various disciplines, departments and organizations.

e. Projects involve some degree of risks. This is so because of the unfamiliar nature of projects.

f. Failure to successfully complete a projects may threaten the Project Managers portfolio and in turn jeopardize the company’s goal

g. A project passes through phases, people, tasks, resources as it moves from one phase to the other in achieving its goal.


2. What do you think are some additional or special considerations necessary for managing projects?

Some consideration necessary for managing projects are

a. What is the size of the project ?

b. How much will it cost ?

c. How long will it take ?

d. What are the factors that militate against it ?


3. Think of a successful project and an unsuccessful project with which you are familiar. What distinguishes the two, both in terms of the process used to develop them and their outcomes?


One successful project that readily comes to my mind is the Murtala Muhammed Airport 2, Lagos, Nigeria fondly called MMA2.

An unsuccessful project would be the Ajaokua Steel Company, Kogi, Nigeria

The MMA2 project was driven by private sector investment under a Public-Private Partnership Scheme. The Federal Government of Nigeria awarded the contract to Bi-Courtney Limited, to design, build and operate the Murtala Muhammed Airport in 2003. This Build, Operate, Transfer (BOT) arrangement also transferred the risks to Bi-Courtney Limited.

Interestingly, the company had to expand its scope to include the Terminal that eventually exceeded the expectations of the Federal Government.

Money which was an initial problem for the completion of the project was later resolved when in March 2007, some major banks in Nigeria agreed to arrange N20 billion part-financing for the completion of MMA Terminal 2.

Here the project was successfully completed.

The Ajaokuta steel company on the other hand has not seen the light of the day. It has turned out to be a white elephant project that has guzzled up billions of naira with little or no positive result to show for it, Today little or nothing is heard of Ajaokuta but millions of dollars must have ended up in private pockets.

There was no working capital provided outside of the commissioning materials. The plant started dwindling because there was no fund to bring in raw materials to run the mills, so capacity declined significantly when it became impossible to operate.


References:

NICHOLAS, J.M and STEYN, N.2008. Project management for business, engineering, and technology: principles and practice. 3rd ed.Oxford: Elsevier.
http://www.mma2lagos.com/about.asp accessed on 16th October 2009