A project is a complex, non-routine, one time effort limited by time, Essay

A project is a complex, non-routine, one time effort limited by time, budget, resources and performance specifications designed to meet customer needs Gray CF & Larson EW - Essay Example If there is a defined process, then standardisation is not a problem. In every software project, standard processes are employed and therefore, these can be standardised. For instance, PMI has created global standards of excellence for project management and so has National Competency Standards for Project Management (NCSPM 2007). Most of these standards are produced on an overall requirement and performance of people across the world. These might not be the ones that one might be able to adapt to their companies. Instead, a standard can be created based on the performance of the company's employees for their own internal requirement. This would ensure that the standards are more attainable and the same can be compared later with the global standards set by others. 2. The primary purpose of project management is to ensure that the customer requirements are met within the budgeted time and cost, in addition to the resources and performance specifications. While this is the target that the project manager would try to meet, there could always be issues which have to be countered by him. The time budget is drawn with the requirement of the customer in mind. The plan for the entire project in terms of time required will be drawn only on the basis of the requirements that the customer brings up. May be the customer or the company's management might bring up a time control in the plan which might make the project manager to recast the plan she has drawn. The time control and the requirements of the customer together will decide on the nature of resources that will be required for the company. Based on the resources that the project manager will employ to meet the requirements and the time limits, the costing budget is drawn. The performance specific ations will be the measure to judge how efficiently the team worked to deliver what was expected out of it, which is nothing but the customer requirements. Therefore, the entire requirements of the customer is the starting point and therefore, when the project manager meets her time schedule, resources, budget and the performance specifications, there will not be any issue in meeting the customer requirements. 3. The time, budget, resources and performance specifications are neither complementary nor competing demands. They are interrelated but not necessarily complementing one another. For instance, the planned time for a project and the constraint of time is related to the resources and the budget. When the resources in the project are increased, there will be a reduction in the time required. Not necessarily a standard mathematical relationship. The reduction may not be proportional to the resources that were employed. The same way, an increase in the time keeping the resources constant will escalate the budget. There could clear relationship between the time, resource and the budget. However, the time increase itself could have been the result of reduced resource availability. In case of performance specifications, these are only measures of the rest of the parameters that make up the project. The project performance ratings that are normally done will be calculated out of the time, bu dget, all resources or specific resources, multiple jobs and then