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1. What is a project
A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.
Projects can be roughly divided into three categories
(1) R&D projects : The purpose is to develop new products, such as research and development of mobile phones, cars, games, and medicines.
(2) Delivery projects : services provided to meet customer needs, such as building construction, software customization development, and advertising planning.
(3) Change projects : changes in business processes, systems, and organizational structures, such as informatization, agile transformation, and mergers and acquisitions.
Features of the project
- Uniqueness : unique, there are no two projects that are exactly the same, and it is impossible to simply repeat the past practices.
- Temporary : also known as one-time, phased, the project always has a beginning and an end, it is a "temporary" job.
- Uncertainty : Projects are constantly responding to changes, and risks follow everywhere, and can only be gradually detailed.
For example, the development of a WeChat applet is a unique project. It is created to meet certain specific needs. There is no exactly the same code that can be copied (uniqueness); it may be completed in a few days or it may take a few weeks. In short, it can be completed. Therefore, this is a temporary job, and the project team is also formed temporarily.
Even if you have thought about the functions of the applet and how to implement it, and have made a strict time plan, when you actually start implementing it, you will still encounter a lot of trouble. For example, underestimating the difficulty of certain technologies, overestimating the abilities of some teammates, some requirements need to be modified, users do not buy the functions you provide, etc. (uncertainty). You have to be able to cope with these uncertainties, and constantly adjust the plan until the goal of "developing a valuable WeChat Mini Program" is achieved.
2. The past and present of project management
Ever since there were human activities, there has been Xiangri. For example, primitive man has already been able to fight alone, and it is easier to catch prey by division of labor and cooperation.
Until today, human beings need to cooperate with people with different specialties, different strengths and different resources to achieve their goals together. Division of labor and collaboration is the original driving force for project management.
In 1910, American mechanical engineer and management scientist Henry L. Gantt invented the bar chart.
In 1956, DuPont and Remington Rand discovered that the overall project duration could be shortened simply by shortening the duration of activities on the longest route. The emergence of Critical Path Method is an important milestone in the development of project management.
In 1958, the U.S. Navy developed the Program Review Technology (PERT) during the implementation of the Polaris missile program. It used the "three-value weighting" method to estimate the construction period, which greatly improved the efficiency of planning.
In 1960, Professor Hua Luogeng introduced project management to China. The "project management" at that time was called the overall planning method and the optimization method.
In 1965, the International Project Management Association (IPMA ) was formed.
In 1969, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was founded.
3. The relationship between project management and strategy
Enterprise Management Pyramid
The top layer of the corporate management pyramid is "mission, vision, core values"
mission
The mission is the reason for the existence of the organization, such as the organization's program, ideology, purpose, business principles and company beliefs.
For example, the mission of Starbucks is to inspire and conceive the human spirit, and the mission of Alibaba is to make business easy to do in the world.
vision
Kahn said, "Vision is an imagination based on insight and foresight. It reveals possibilities and practical constraints, and describes the most desired future state of the organization."
For example, Amazon’s vision is to become the world’s most customer-centric company, an online marketplace where people can find anything they want to buy.
core value
Kahn said, "Core values are the principles that individuals or organizations emotionally choose to stick to."
For example, "Don't be evil" is Google's core value. It is this sentence that has inspired a large number of top talents to gather at Google and create one great product after another. When Google's AI technology was used in a US military project (possibly for war), it was boycotted by more than 4,000 employees.
Strategy
Decomposing the corporate vision into phased goals is strategy. When Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) discovered that biotechnology might create opportunities for cancer treatment, BMS shifted its technological capabilities from its traditional strengths in organic chemistry to biotechnology.
Strategic management
Strategic management refers to the decision-making and management art made by managers on the overall situation, long-term development direction, goals, tasks and policies of an enterprise or organization in a certain period of time, as well as resource allocation. Strategic management also includes a series of judgments made by the company on uncertain factors when accomplishing specific goals. The company should assess the situation and formulate strategies based on the environment.
In short, strategic management is all about doing the right thing!
project management
To put it simply, a project is the unit of corporate strategy implementation, and project management is to do things right!
American scholar David Cleland (David Cleland) said: "Strategic management and project management will play a key role in coping with global market changes."
The role of project management
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Projects bring strategy to life
- The reasons why the project can make the corporate strategy come true are as follows
- The project is the unit of corporate strategy implementation
- Projects are the source of corporate profits
- Project is the carrier of cross-departmental collaboration
- The reasons why the project can make the corporate strategy come true are as follows
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Project management creates business value
Project management can turn wonderful ideas into products and satisfy customers' needs. The iPhone created by Jobs redefined the mobile phone, WeChat developed by Zhang Xiaolong's team opened a new era of instant messaging, and Musk's SpaceX project realized rocket recovery and received an order from NASA. These great products not only create huge commercial value for the company, but also change the world, making the company the most influential company in the world.
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Project Management Drives Change
Organizations need to constantly change their organizational structure, management model and process system to adapt to changes in the external environment and the needs of internal innovation. Change itself is also a project, and project management can drive the organization to change in the right direction. For example, many companies have learned from Google and LinkedIn, and realized the transformation from key performance indicators (KPI) to objectives and key results (OKR) through transformation projects. There are also many companies, like Alibaba, which have realized the integration of capabilities such as data middle platform and business middle platform through transformation projects.
4. Transformation and upgrading of organizational management model
traditional business management
- Divide departments by function
- tree structure
- Hierarchical
- vertical management model
In the traditional corporate management model, there are often many levels between the company CEO and ordinary employees, such as business department directors, department managers, and supervisors. The more layers there are, the lower the communication efficiency of uploading and releasing, and the slower the project decision-making will be. This is called management gap.
Departments are divided by function (profession), and there is a departmental barrier between departments, that is, departmental walls. Each department has a very detailed division of labor (such as the finance department, procurement department, legal department, etc.), and they seem to perform their duties. Professional differences make it difficult for each department to understand the needs and concerns of other departments. Therefore, communication costs are high and collaboration efficiency is low. Moreover, functional department managers only focus on completing their own department's key performance indicators (KPIs).
If management barriers and departmental barriers exist at the same time, management islands will be formed within the enterprise. Although it seems that every department is busy and everyone is working hard, but the projects are always not done well, and the company gradually loses its competitiveness.
In the traditional management model, this kind of organizational structure belongs to functional organization, also known as "bureaucratic organization". The problems exposed by bureaucratic organization in project management are obvious, but why are they common?
This is determined by the natural laws of organizational evolution. From its establishment, an enterprise will inevitably evolve into a bureaucratic organization with gradually subdivided functions and continuously increased levels as the number of people continues to increase. Bureaucratic organization is the mainstream management model in the industrial age, which once created unparalleled efficiency. The reason is that in the industrial age, manufacturing companies adopted a "linear process", that is, assembly line production. Each process only connected with the previous process and the next process. This connection was implemented in accordance with standards and specifications, and there was no need for large-scale and high-frequency inter-professional, inter-departmental, or even inter-organizational communication.
However, we have already entered the information age from the industrial age. The information age is characterized by projects, requiring enterprises to be able to collaborate efficiently across disciplines, departments, and organizations, so as to optimize resources and create value for customers. Under the background of this era, the bureaucratic organization is out of date, and the former advantage has now become an obstacle to the success of the project and the development of the enterprise.
Where is the direction of enterprise transformation? Some enterprises have bravely carried out transformation practices, that is, transforming to platform-based organizations and flat management methods.
For example, Haier split the company into more than 3,000 small companies, which operate independently on the Haier platform. Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, said: "Currently, the war of enterprises is based on the unit of the squad leader!" The core of enterprise transformation is to use projects as units, organize resources flexibly and efficiently, focus on customers, and deliver value.
Refined management based on project
The characteristics of the refined management model with the project as the unit are as follows:
- Configure resources by project
- Platform organization, flat management
- Oriented to strategy, delivering value
- Focus on growth and pursue a win-win situation
5. The power to popularize project management
The forces driving the popularity of project management include increased competition among businesses, thinner margins, and the generalization of customer responsiveness.
