Project Management: Deliver On Scope, On Time, On Budget with Quality

When you are managing a project, regardless of the discipline, there are expectations. These expectations are part of project management standards. These standards help you in ensuring the project is delivered as promised, with an on-time delivery, on budget and most importantly with quality.

Project managers use the standards as created and agreed upon by the Project Management Institute as their guide. There are many misunderstandings on what true project management is. According to the Project Management Institute,  project management is the discipline of  planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. It is sometimes conflated with program management: however, technically that is actually a higher level construction: a group of related and somehow interdependent projects.

A project is a temporary endeavor, having a defined beginning and end (usually constrained by date, but can be by funding or deliverables) undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, usually to bring about beneficial change or added value. The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast to business as usual (or operations), which are repetitive, permanent, or semi-permanent functional work to produce products or services. In practice, the management of these two systems is often found to be quite different, and as such requires the development of distinct technical skills and the adoption of separate management.

The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while honoring the preconceived project constraints. Typical constraints are scope, time, and budget. The secondary—and more ambitious—challenge is to optimize the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet predefined objectives.

The goal of the workshop at the Red Diamond Congress is to have open discussions on the topic of project management and in particular, look at the elements of (1) delivering on scope, (2) delivering on time, and (3) delivering on budget with quality.

About the Author

Rick Rinderle CMP, CME/H,  is Senior Manager Shared Business Solutions, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Vice Chair TSEA Board of Directors and Chair – CME Committee