Job Project Management

Managing jobs in isolation rarely results in an efficient system.

For the organization to manage its resource requirements as a whole, it must sufficiently understand the requirements of each and every project.

Managing jobs involves planning and executing the work in the most efficient manner, so there are time and cost inputs to the management activity.

Job management starts with planning and strives to answer five questions:

• What activities is the project composed of?
• What are the dependencies of the activities?
• What resources does each activity require?
• When are these resources required?
• How long are these required for?

The critical path is derived from the answers to these questions.

The critical path is the path of dependent activities with the longest timeline. Dependent activities are the ones that cannot be performed in parallel, because one must follow the other, as shown below. They are added together and the total is the minimum time in which the project may be completed. Hence this chain of activities is called critical path.

Any delay to any task on the critical path will result in a delay to the entire project.

The organization's objectives in project management are to allocate resources so as to:

• Minimize work in process
• Minimize operational expense
• Maximize throughput.

It is critical to accurately identify resources for projects. There are some resources that are in higher demand than others. The highest demand resources may dictate project execution due to oversubscription. Just as projects have dependencies between activities, so are projects dependent on other projects. These dependencies must be accurately known in order to reschedule projects based on resource allocation clashes.

Job project management also needs to include quality plans and risk analysis, to take into account the project drivers.

Cost management for projects includes:

• Cost estimating - approximating cost of the resources needed to fully complete the activities of the project
• Cost budgeting - allocating the overall cost estimate to individual work items
• Cost control - controlling budgetary changes for the project.

The job management processes need to be documented and the quality control system used to ensure the procedures are followed.