PROJECT INVENTORY

SHIMNA KS4 MBA

CMS

PROJECT

“A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service”.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project management is the process and activity of planning, organizing, motivating and controlling resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals in scientific or daily problems.

The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all the project goals and objectives while honoring the preconceived constraints.

The primary constraints are scope, time, quality and budget. The secondary and more ambitious challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and integrate them to meet pre-defined objectives.

PROJECT INVENTORY

A project inventory is a list of active projects with information that can include planned start and finish dates, the name of the project leader, project priorities, budget totals, project ID numbers and other key project characteristics.  Follow these steps to build a project inventory.

STEPS TO BUILD A PROJECT INVENTORY

The first step would have been to separate projects from non-projects.

The second step would have been to assure that the projects have clear project titles.

The list of clear, active project titles forms the basis for a project inventory.  This project inventory example, which has been edited to six of a water district's 43 projects, points the way for building any project inventory.  A list of project titles in the second column starts the inventory.  Optionally, each project can have a unique project identification number, as shown in the column on the left.

Project # Project Title

W3-174Depot Road Water Main Replacement

W3-244Central Street Water Main Replacement

W1-168Pumping Station #4 Refurbishment

H2-191-2Computer System Hardware Upgrade

W4-183Westborough Water Storage Capacity Increase

H0-165 Processes Analysis Project

The choice of project numbers is up to the user.  This water district wanted its project numbers to be more than randomly chosen numbers, so those that start with "W" are "water" projects and those that start with "H" are internal "house" projects.  Some projects cross two or more fiscal years.  The last "2" in the fourth project number, H2-191-2, indicates that the Computer System Hardware Upgrade is in its second year.

Any information that the planner sees as relevant can be added in new columns.

Projects need a sense of time, so information like project start, project finish, project duration and status (not started, finished, in progress, or waiting) can provide timelines.  The project's leader, its fiscal year budget and a subtitle under the project title have also been added to the example.  

Project # Project Title Duration(months) Status FY Budget Project Leader

W3-174Depot Road Water Main Replacement   Replace 2.5 km of existing pipe

145d 40% $150k J. Watson

W3-244

Central Street Water Main Replacement   Replace and upgrade 1.0 km of existing pipe

3m 100% $75k V. Patel

W1-168

Pumping Station #4 Refurbishment   Replace pump 4A, rebuild 4b, new electrical

4.5m 70% $140k R. Swenson

H2-191-2Computer System Hardware Upgrade   Terminals, network, servers

15m TBD $95k P. Rinali

W4-183

Westborough Water Storage Capacity Increase   40,000 to 60,000 units. Now waiting on legal.

5m On hold $67k A. Lopez

H0-165Processes Analysis Project   Establishing project definition and scope

6m 0% TBD TBD

How to use a project inventory

Making a project inventory isn't particularly difficult and it does provide considerable information for decision making and determining project status.  It becomes relatively easy to determine tradeoffs between projects such as which projects to keep, which to cut, which need to be redefined, and which need more (or fewer) resources.

Project inventories find uses in project reports, management presentations, and in fending off, or at least placing new projects from over-delegators in perspective.  Most importantly they elevate managing multiple projects to the level of controlling fires rather than running around stamping them out.

Important Characteristics of Real Life Projects Accomplish with shared resources often only available on part-time basisRequire cross-functional team workInvolve uncertainty and are subject to change during executionSubject to specific deadlines and time and resource constraintsProject manager often lacks functional authority over team members

REFERENCE

INTERNET