successful project management - Commonwealth of Learning

Chapter 7
Project Baseline and Aspects of Management
Scope and Time,
Cost and Performance,
Team and Communication,
Risk and procurement,
The management baseline
Learning Outcomes
After working through this chapter, you should be able to:
• define project baseline and justify its significance in project management;
• list the areas of knowledge associated with project management, and show
how these areas are interrelated; and
• demonstrate an understanding of the different aspects of management –
stakeholder, risk, cost, and change management – and illustrate how they
intersect with project management in practice.
Introduction
In Chapter 6 we examined the issue of teamwork in project management, and
demonstrated that a team is different from a group. A team has unity of purpose, and
is consciously developed by the project manager. We now examine the idea of a
project baseline in conjunction with aspects of management that the enterprising
manager is expected to manage. These are: change, stakeholder, risk, and cost
management. It is necessary to clarify what each involves if only to ensure that the
ideas we have already shared, namely, the evolution of project management, the
definition of a project, planning and scheduling the project are placed into clearer
perspective.
Recapitulation
What are the highlights of what we have covered so far? Firstly, a project is
distinguished from the routine operations of an organisation. Obviously, within the
project are operations to be carried out, but they would be regarded not as projects
per se, but as operations. Here is the distinction.
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