Event Details

Engineers have always managed projects in their profession ranging from simple to complex projects that impact on the wellbeing of all stakeholders involved. The APM Body of Knowledge 7th Edition defines Project management as the application of processes, methods, skills, knowledge and experience to achieve specific project objectives according to the project acceptance criteria within agreed parameters. Engineers understand that for each project they undertake, the final deliverables are constrained to a finite timescale and budget, an aspect of project management that makes it unique and different from “Management.” Due to this, professionals engaged in project management require a wide range of skills including technical skills, and certainly people management skills and good business awareness. Over the years, project management has evolved from Traditional Project Management (TPM) to Agile Project management and Extreme Project Management. TPM is firmly rooted in the 1950s and has been around longer than any other approach to project management. Initially, TPM was referred to as Process Control System (PCS) which involved sequencing of phases such as define, plan, execute, and close with tasks identified within each phase within a project. PCS depended heavily on crude programs that generated Gantt charts based on dependency relationships among tasks that the project manager defined from a functional specification. Estimates of duration allowed a schedule to be calculated and the critical path identified. TPM relied more on Linear Project Management Life Cycle model which is the simplest and most intuitive of the five major models in the project management landscape. It assumes that Engineers have as nearly perfect information about the project goal and solution as can reasonably be expected. The Linear PMLC model is based on that assumption and does not easily accommodate any deviations. Deviations such as scope change requests can cause major upheavals in the project schedule. Agile Project Management (APM) on the other hand is based on continual learning and discovery of the project solution. It is critical to note that APM is not a methodology, but an approach that can utilize a variety of methodologies. APM uses organizational models based on people, collaboration, and shared values. The APM Manifesto outlines the primary tenets of the agile philosophy. It uses rolling wave planning, iterative and incremental delivery, rapid and flexible response to change, and open communication between teams, stakeholders, and customers. Finally, according to Doug DeCarlo, extreme project management (XPM) is the art and science of facilitating and managing the flow of thoughts, emotions, and interactions in a way that produces valued outcomes under turbulent and complex conditions: those that feature high speed, high change, high uncertainty, and high stress.” The main focus of XPM is on managing project stakeholders and the human interactions, rather than managing stringent schedule and plan with heavy formalism. While TPM is fully plan driven, manages the known, stable and predictable, achieves planned result, is efficient and process driven, XPM is Fully adaptive with short cycles of development, Manages the unknown, Chaotic and ever changing, Self-correcting leading to right result, effective and people and result driven. The anticipated value of projects to stakeholders is now an important factor in determining whether a project will be allowed to proceed after the initiation and planning phase. Earned value management (EVM) has become one of the methods that are used to evaluate and monitor project implementation. EVM integrates project scope, time and cost through periodic measurements of actual cost and work completion. It views project progress in terms of cost as a function of time against a firm baseline set up at the start of the project. When the project is originally planned, it is divided into Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and further sub-divided into work packages. Using EVM, Engineers managing projects are able to evaluate three very important project performance indicators that include Planned Value (PV), Actual Costs (AC), and Earned Value (EV). Using these three project indicators, Engineers are able to effectively and efficiently manage projects within the three constraints of scope, time and cost. The two-day workshop on Earned Value Management for Project Performance Management is designed to equip Project Engineers with knowledge on determining project PV as they relate to WBS, master schedule and cost budgets that form project baseline, represented as a graph of planned costs over time. Engineers will also be taken through the process of determining project AC as they execute the projects. It is important for Engineers to correctly estimate and pro-rate work completion to equivalent monetary value based on the budgetary costs for the work packages completed which produces the third indicator EV. Using case studies for each of the three project performance indicators, the workshop is also designed to provide practical examples that Engineers can customize to other projects to reap the full benefit of using Earned Value Management for Project Performance Management to effectively compute cost and time variances, as well as extrapolate how much cost and time would be required for project completion and other ratios for project control that will include: Cost Performance Index (CPI), Schedule Performance Index (SPI), and Cost Estimate at Completion (CEAC). By giving historical and forward information about the project, EVM becomes a tool for monitoring and course corrections whether the Engineer is using the Traditional project management, Agile project management or extreme project management methods in executing their projects to meet stakeholder demands.