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Fundamentals of Project Management

Notes not certain. Customers may expect to receive a product, while the project team assumes that it
is building a prototype. Such situations are particularly likely to manifest themselves in the
follow-up phase. Consider the case of a software project to test a very new concept.
There was some anxiety concerning whether any results would be produced at all. The project
eventually produced good results. The team delivered a piece of software that worked well, at
least within the testing context. The customer, who did not know much about IT, thought that he
had received a working product. After all, it had worked on his office computer. The software
did indeed work, but when it was installed on the computers of fifty employees, the prototype
began to have problems, and it was sometimes instable.

Notes Initiation is the first phase of the Project Management Life Cycle. In the initiate
phase you define the project objectives, purpose, scope and deliverables, and get people
and other resources for your project.

1.9 Project Environment

Today, there is a growing awareness and concern for the impact of infrastructure and facility
construction on the physical environment. Fortunately, today’s technological disciplines
responsible for such work are becoming attuned to the idea of mitigating the adverse impacts of
their projects. Certainly the project manager needs to be similarly concerned about the project’s
technology, and manage accordingly. This applies to both the implementation and shorter term
practical construction impacts of the project as well as its conceptual development and consequent
long term impacts. However, today’s project manager also needs to be attuned to the cultural,
organizational and social environments of the project. Understanding this environment includes
identifying the project stakeholders and their ability to affect its successful outcome. This means
working with people to achieve the best results, especially in the highly technical and complex
environments such as those involving modern day construction projects. Therefore, it is essential
that the project manager and his or her project team are comfortable with, and sympathetic
towards, their cultural, organizational and social surroundings.
This leads to the possibility of influencing the project environment in a positive way, for the
better reception of the change which the project is designed to introduce.

Example: Peoples’ typical resistance to change will no doubt be evident amongst some
of the stakeholders. Others may have vested interests or personal or group agendas which are
only indirectly related to the project. If these can be identified in good time, they may be dealt
with proactively and in such a way that the corresponding risks, which are otherwise likely to
undermine the success of the project, can be significantly reduced. Failure to take such an approach
will inevitably lead to a less than optimum project outcome.

Dimensions of the Project Environment

For convenience, and working outwards, the project environment may be thought of in terms of
the project time environment, the internal project culture, the original corporate culture, and the
external social surroundings. For those who have not had experience of a construction project
“in the trenches” so to speak, it is sometimes difficult to capture the feeling of pressure, stress
and ultimate satisfaction of a project well.

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