Project Management - Difficulties

An organization is a set of resources ordered by a mission driven towards a set of predefined objectives through a set of operations. Management is the profession of directing resources towards objectives through pragmatic decision-making.

Management seeks to impose uniformity of decisions and collective binding on the decisions across the organization, because output of organization is collective effort of different individuals. The most accepted method of management in this regard is the systems approach of management. This approach attempts to formulate a systematic procedure for a majority of routine works in the organization. Contingencies are situations that are not covered by the system, and discretion during contingency updates the existing system.

Operations are of various types. It may be continuous as in line production, intermittent but repetitive in batch production. An operation that has a distinct life span is called a project. A project that transforms the quality of geographical space is called a construction project.

The basic distinction of Project management is that mission, objectives, organization and operations of a project are transient. This throws many challenges on project management:

1. Definition of projects and their objectives are one-time events. Hence, they tend to be incomplete (causes scope-creep), optimistic (causes over-run), non-comprehensive (causing conflict in various operations within the project) and ineffectively communicated (causing conflict among team). When projects are technical, as in construction, they also tend to be complex and procrastinated for detailed technical designs.
2. Processes in a project are short lived; documentation & data-capture are non-routine. Identification of suitable system, training project personnel on the system, real-time implementation and adaptation for contingencies – all may be individually or collectively longer than process duration. Hence, project personnel tend to work without a proper management system; projects (or processes thereof) close with unsatisfactory completion or gross failure. In construction projects, projects are subdivided into activities that are even more short-lived than the project and each activity may need a technical system for proper control.
3. Project organizations are ad-hoc. They are assembled specifically for the project and are hence subject to considerable inertia. Introduction of a project is itself a perturbation on existing system. In construction projects, project organization involves different firms with different objectives. Ad-hoc assembly of different organizations are governed by documented contracts. Limitations in project definition and system usually make contract documents non-transparent and ambiguous. Technical assessment and/or value engineering by contractors at pre-tendering stages is skipped.