Chapter Six

Project Implementation
Introduction
• Implementation is a process whereby “project inputs are converted to
project outputs”.
• May be looked at as:
• Putting in action the activities of the project
• Putting into practice what was proposed in the project document (i.e.
transforming the project proposal into the actual project.)
• Management of the project or executing the project intentions.
• Implementation include project activation and project operation
• Project activation -making arrangements to have the project started
• It involves coordination and allocation of resources to make project
operational
• Project operation is practical management of a project- where inputs are
transformed into outputs to achieve immediate objectives
Introduction
• If project implementation plan (PIP) not carried out during the project
design process and embodied in the project documents, it is carried
out at the project activation stage
• The PIP include implementation schedule, the role of implementing
agency, beneficiary participation, organizational structure, financial
management, reporting system etc.
• The project implementation schedule is concerned with the following
questions
• What activities can produce expected project outputs?
• What is the sequence of these activities?
• What is the time frame for these activities?
• Who will be responsible for carrying out each activity?
Introduction
• Common methods that may be used to answer the above questions:
• Gantt chart
• Critical Path Method (CPM) or Net work analysis
• Project Evaluation and Review Techniques (PERT)
• Important activities in project implementation are
1. Leadership
2. Team building, conflict and negotiation
3. Risk management
4. Project control
5. Project evaluation and termination
Gantt chart
Network analysis
Finding a critical path of a
project
Introduction
• Factors that affect project implementation
• Political commitment
• Nature of design, preparation and scheduling of projects activities
• The project management
• Involvement of beneficiaries/community
• Misallocation of funds
• Lack of accountability and transparency
• Bureaucracy in decision-making
• Weak monitoring systems
• Lack of team work
Leadership
• Leadership is often recognized by its accomplishments
• Most leaders are quick to reject the idea that they were, by themselves,
responsible for the successes attained or the important changes undertaken
within their organizations
• For them, leadership involves an awareness of a partnership, an active
collaboration between the leader and the team.
• In project management, successful team leaders are often those who were
best able to create the partnership attitude between themselves and their
teams.
• The wide range of duties that a project manager is expected to take on
covers everything from direct supervision to indirect influence, from
managing “hard” technical details to controlling “soft” people issues, from
developing detailed project plans and budgets to adjudicating team member
quarrels and smoothing stakeholder concerns.
Leadership
• How does the manager lead?
1. Acquiring project resources
• Project resources refer to all personnel and material resources
necessary to successfully accomplish project objectives
2. Motivating and building teams
• The process of molding a diverse group of functional experts into a
cohesive and collaborative team is not a challenge to be undertaken
lightly.
• Team building and motivation present enormously complex hurdles,
and dealing comfortably with human processes is not part of every
manager’s background.
Leadership
3. Having a vision and fighting fires
• Successful project managers must operate on different boundaries.
• Boundaries between technical and behavioral problems; being strategic
visionary and fire fighting are some examples
• Project managers work with conceptual plans, develop the project
scope in line with organizational directives, and understand how their
project is expected to fit into the company’s project portfolio (the big
picture)
• In addition, they are expected to keep their eyes firmly fixed on the
ultimate prize- the completed project( handling day to day crises)
• The balance between strategic vision and firefighting represents a key
boundary that successful project managers must become comfortable
occupying.
Leadership
4. Communication
• Project managers require the same facility of communication.
• All stakeholders must be identified and a strong contact must be
maintained with them throughout the project period as the saying goes
“If they know nothing of what you are doing, they assume you are doing
nothing.”
• Negotiating is another crucial form of communicating.
• It is important to recognize that project leaders must become adept at
negotiating with a wide variety of stakeholders
• Project Leaders negotiate with clients over critical project specifications;
they negotiate with key organizational members, such as department
heads, for resources or budget money; they negotiate with suppliers for
prices and delivery dates for materials.
Leadership
• To sum up the characteristics of an effective project manager are:-
a) Leads by example
b) Visionary
c) Technically competent
d) Decisive
e) A good communicator
f) A good motivator
g) Stands up to the top management when necessary
h) Supports team members
i) Encourages new ideas
Project team building, conflict and negotiation
• Team building and conflict management are two of the most important
people skills that project managers can cultivate, but they are also two of
the most difficult undertakings
• Some of the key behavioral tasks facing project managers are staffing a
project team, building a sense of common purpose and shared
commitment, encouraging cross-functional cooperation among team
members, and recognizing the causes of and resolving conflicts among all
project stakeholders
• Effective project teams do not happen by accident.
• Great deal of careful work and preparation goes into the steps necessary to
first staff and then develop project team members to the point where they
begin to function jointly and the project reaps positive dividends from their
collective performance
• Creating unified team is a must
Project team building, conflict and negotiation
• Regardless of the circumstances, the project manager is faced with the
challenge of creating from a set of diverse individuals a high
performing, cohesive project team
• Effective project team have clear sense mission, productive
interdependence, cohesiveness, trust enthusiasm and result orientation
• Because the challenges involved in creating high-performing project
teams are so profound, it is not surprising that project teams fail to
perform to their potential in many circumstances
• Some of the reasons for team to perform at less optimal level are
poorly developed or unclear goals, poorly defined project team roles
and interdependencies, lack of project team motivation, poor
communication or leadership, turnover among team members, and
dysfunctional behavior
Project team building, conflict and negotiation
• Conflict is unavoidable in project management
• Conflicts could take the following forms
• Goal-oriented conflict is associated with disagreements regarding results,
project scope outcomes, performance specifications and criteria, and project
priorities and objectives
• It often result from multiple perceptions of the project and are fueled by
vague or incomplete goals that allow project team members to make their
own interpretations
• Administrative conflict arises through management hierarchy, organizational
structure, or company philosophy
• Interpersonal conflict occurs with personality differences between project
team members and important project stakeholders. Interpersonal conflict
sources include different work ethics, behavioral styles, egos, and
personalities of project team members
Project team building, conflict and negotiation
• Some of the most common sources include the competition for scarce
resources, violations of group or organizational norms, disagreements
over goals or the means to achieve those goals, personal slights and
threats to job security, long held biases and prejudices, and so forth
• Methods of resolving conflict are:
• Mediating- diffusion or confrontation tactics in negotiating a solution.
• Arbitrating-impose a judgment on the warring parties
• Controlling – limiting interaction between two parties and do nothing.
• Avoidance -In some situations, it is necessary, for the good of the
• project, to transfer a team member or make other changes
Project team building, conflict and negotiation
• Negotiation is a process that is predicated on a manager’s ability to use his
influence productively.
• Negotiation skills are so important because much of a project manager’s
life is taken up in bargaining sessions of one type or another.
• Project managers negotiate for additional time and money, to prevent
excessive interference and specification changes from clients, the loan or
assignment to the team of important project team personnel with
functional managers etc.
• Negotiation represents the art of influence taken to its highest level.
• Because effective negotiation is an imperative for successful project
management, it is vital that project managers understand the role
negotiation plays in their projects, how to become better negotiators and
some of the important elements in negotiation
Risk management
• Projects operate in an environment composed of uncertainty.
• There is uncertainty regarding project funding, the availability of
necessary resources, changing client expectations, potential technical
problems—the list is seemingly endless.
• This uncertainty forms the basis for project risk and the need to
engage in risk management
• Risk management, which recognizes the capacity of any project to
run into trouble, is defined as the art and science of identifying,
analyzing, and responding to risk factors throughout the life of a
project and in the best interests of its objectives
• In one respect, the difference between projects that fail and those
that are ultimately successful is risk management
Risk management
• Risk management consists of anticipating, at the beginning of the
project, unexpected situations that may arise that are beyond the
project manager’s control
• Broadly speaking, the process of risk management includes asking the
following questions:
• What is likely to happen (the probability and impact)?
• What can be done to minimize the probability or impact of these
events?
• What cues will signal the need for such action (i.e., what clues should
I actively look for)?
• What are the likely outcomes of these problems and my anticipated
reactions?
Project control
• Project monitoring and control are the principal mechanisms that allow the
project team to stay on top of a project’s evolving status as it moves
through the various lifecycle stages toward completion
• The execution of the project is carried out primarily by the project team
members, and the control of the project is carried out primarily by the
project manager.
• PMI defines the controlling processes as those processes that ensure that
project objectives are met by monitoring and measuring progress regularly
to identify variances from plan so that corrective action can be taken, if
necessary
• A great project contract and plan is of little consequence without constant
monitoring and control
• Once the project is planned & underway, the project manager cannot
assume that everything will go according to plan
Project control
• To insure success, many project matters need to be monitored; if a
matter deviates from the plan, then some form of control must be
exerted to bring the situation back in line with the plan
• Project control consists of the information systems and the
management procedures that allow us to answer questions such as
• Are we on track?
• Are we on budget?
• Are we on schedule?
• Are we delivering what we said we would?
• Are we meeting quality and performance standards?
• Are we meeting stakeholder expectations?
Project control
• What have we accomplished?
• Will the project objectives be met?
• What deviations/variances exist?
• What corrective actions are we taking?
• What caused these variances?
• What risks are we monitoring?
• What issues do we need to resolve?
• Steps in the control process
Preventing ;The best way to keep your project on track is to prevent (or
at least minimize) variances from occurring.
Project control
• Detection; For this aspect of project control, think “radar system” or
“early warning system.”
• Project control should provide early detection of variances.
• The sooner we can act on a variance, the more likely we are to get the
success factor back on track
• Action - the detection of a variance must be able to trigger an
appropriate and timely response
• Once we detect significant deviations from the project plan, it
becomes necessary to engage in some form of corrective action to
minimize or remove the deviation
• After corrective action, the monitoring and control cycle begins again.
Project evaluation and termination
• A project evaluation appraises the progress and performance relative
to the project’s initial or revised plan.
• Also appraises project against goals and objectives set for it during
selection process.
• Projects should be evaluated at a number of crucial points.
• Purpose is to improve process of carrying out project
• Evaluation criteria are: original criteria for selecting and funding
project; success to date; business/direct success; future potential;
contribution to organization’s goals
• Finally, auditing the project from A to Z is an essential step.
• General, technical or detailed audit can be done and a report needs to
be prepared and distributed
Project evaluation and termination
• Project termination is the last activity of the project life cycle.
• Project termination consists of all activities consistent with closing
out the project
• This phase includes closing all administrative activities and
documenting lessons learned.
• The commencement of this phase is determined by the completion of
all project objectives and acceptance of the end product by the
customer or the project team fails to achieve the objectives for a
number of reasons
• It is a process that provides for acceptance of the project by the
project’s sponsor, completion of various project records, final revision
and issue of documentation to reflect its final condition, and the
retention of essential project documentation.
Project evaluation and termination
• In short, although the best alternative is to be able to approach
project termination as the culmination of a task well done, in reality
many projects end up being terminated short of realizing their goals.
• These two alternatives are sometimes referred to as natural
termination, in which the project has achieved its goals and is moving
toward its logical conclusion, and unnatural termination, in which a
shift in political, economic, customer, or technological conditions has
rendered the project without purpose.
• Types of termination are:-
• Termination by extinction- is stopped due to either a successful or an
unsuccessful conclusion
• Termination by addition-concludes a project by institutionalizing it as
a formal part of the parent organization
Project evaluation and termination
• Termination by integration-project’s resources, including the project
team, are reintegrated within the organization’s existing structure
following the conclusion of the project
• Termination by starvation- is not an outright act of termination at all,
but rather a willful form of neglect in which the project budget is
slowly decreased to the point at which the project cannot possibly
remain viable
• The termination process include finishing the work; handing over the
project; gaining acceptance for the project; harvesting the benefits;
reviewing how it all went; documentation and disband the team.