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International Journal of Business and Management August, 2008
3
Projects and Their Management: A Literature Review
Guru Prakash Prabhakar
Bristol Business School
University of the West of England
Coldharbour Lane, Frenchay Campus
Bristol- BS16 1QY, UK
Tel: 44-117-328-3461 E-mail: guru[email protected]
Abstract
Over the years and more importantly in the recent past projects have been used as a delivery mechanism to do
business and accomplish objectives. No wonder it has become one of the fastest growing professions in the world.
Although the understanding of what constitutes a project and what doesn’t continues to be a topic of debate. This
paper attempts to provide literature search on what is a project, its classification, characteristics, its life cycle, phases,
tools etc.
Keywords: Projects, Project Management
Every one of us is a manager of projects! From a house wife to a production employee to financial analyst, from
banker to physician, from engineer to administrator, from teacher to student, we all work on various tasks with
deadlines. Regardless of our occupation, discipline, or location in an organization, we all work on tasks that are
unique and involve people who do not usually work together. The project may have a simple objective that does not
require many people or a great deal of money, or it may be quite complex, calling for diverse skills and many
resources. But the bottom line is that every one of us manages projects!
1. What is a Project?
While there are several definitions of projects in the literature, one of the best has been offered by Tuman (1983),
who states:
“A project is an organization of people dedicated to a specific purpose or objective. Projects generally involve large,
expensive, unique, or high risk undertakings which have to be completed by a certain date, for a certain amount of
money, with some expected level of performance. At a minimum, all projects need to have well defined objectives
and sufficient resources to carry out all the required tasks.”
In lines of the definition provided by Pinto & Slevin (1988), and accepted for the purpose of this research, a project
can be defined as possessing the following characteristics:
(1) A defined beginning and end (specified time to completion)
(2) A specific, preordained goal or set of goals (performance expectations)
(3) A series of complex or interrelated activities
(4) A limited budget
Diallo & Thuillier (2003) reviewed the project management literature outlined a set of evaluation dimensions which
appear regularly although not with the same occurrence:
(1) Respect to the three traditional constraints
(2) Satisfaction of the client
(3) Satisfaction of the objectives as outlined in the logical framework
(4) Project impacts
(5) Institutional or organizational capacity built in the organization by the project
(6) Financial returns (in the case of productive projects) or the economic or social benefits (in the case of public
sector projects), and
(7) Project innovative features (outputs, management or design)