A project has some factors such as unique goals, required outcomes, time, designated budget, specialist resources, client, stakeholders, and degree of complexity. The project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, motivating and controlling resources to achieve special goals. Additionally, to manage a project, sometimes people should find the solutions to the problems. And also need to balance time, cost, resources and specification decisions. A project manager is the person who looks into the application of knowledge, tools, skills and techniques to organize and control the project process.Obviously, most people are willing to take on as much more than they can handle.
Actually, nobody can handle everything; there are so many objectives in one project planning. Here are two cases of project management First to be mentioned is the airbus company. This company brought out the Airbus 380 in 2006. The manager Gustau Humbert was running the project in 2006. At the beginning, this new product was favoured by the public. Because the new airplane is larger than airbus before, it will work more efficient.
Airline companies which are the clients of Airbus booked more than a hundred of A380.However, Airbus had problem in skills, they made mistakes on A380. This made them postpone the delivery time over and over. However, with the development of research, designated budget was from 10. 7 billion dollars up to 13 billion dollars.
Due to the delivery time postponed, it made the cost increase 30% overall. Many employees were laid off, factories were shut down. This is the failure case for us. Airbus tries to juggle on everything such as technique, commercial, profit and quality.
They wish to minimize the cost and maximize the profit from the clients but ignore time.The postponed delivery time is the main reason makes them such a loss. However, the opponent of Airbus makes the success of that point. The Boeing Company does well on project Boeing 777. In this case, they clearly have the SMART rules, which mean the specific, the measurable, the attainable, the relevant and the time based.
This widely acknowledged that the project manager has a clear prioritization of objective in term of time. Knowing this, the project is easier to succeed. Otherwise, the manager hopes to balance all the objectives may fail the project.Project will end when company deliver the product to the customers, at the moment the project management ends also. The three prime objectives of project management are time, quality and cost. Manager should overruns in time and cost and underrun in quality.
If a project manager has clear prioritization of objectives in terms of time, the manager will set the earliest possible deadline in the project and properly managed time. The earlier project finished, the less project will cost. As the Airbus Company, they postponed the delivery time that makes cost increase 30 percent.So the time will affect the cost. Longer time leads to a higher cost.
Anyway, when project finishes quickly the manager cannot make sure of the quality of product. That is the limitation of cost. Quality is difficult to define than time and cost. Quality is more of the good things. It is a property than can be experienced without always being able to define it. Greater quantity is not equal to better quality.
For example, Rolls-Royce is better than the Volkswagen. If a project manager has clear prioritization of objectives in term of quantity, better products will be made.The project will have a high satisfaction for the clients that make the company gain considerable fame. This can attract more clients.
A good quality refers that project has a good performance. A good quality may cost higher price and longer time period. However, if the project manager makes this point in prior, it may gain much more profit than before. The last not the least, cost is also a significant factors. When the cost of project is cutting off, the profit will gain more.
Anyway it similar to the time factor and these two will affect each other. With the short period of producing time, the cost is low.There is a case that can support this. Southwest airlines cut off the cost like offering cheap and simple food, have no extra service, and provide service as simple as they can. In this situation, people save money. Cutting off the cost make them have much more customers.
More clients mean more profit. Compare to the other companies, the keep 33 years profitable. Moreover, they try to save time to save cost. The customers don’t need to check seat number when they are having a flight. They sit like in a bus. This case indicates us that make a lower cost first, the company can gain more.
When the project manager have cost factor in prior, the time should also considered in the project planning. But a very low performance standard often results in excessive testing, rework, maintenance. They can gain more than other company but still should resolve some conflicts such as quality. As the giving examples, project managers should concrete analysis of specific issues. Different cases have different factors in prior. If manager wants to consider all the objectives the company may have the same result as the Airbus Company.
Anyway, a project manager should always have a clear mind of prior objectives in planning.
