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Part Three
Planning and control
enthusiasm for the project. They invited local people to
attend meetings, explained the vision and took them
to look round the site. Out of these meetings they
met people with knowledge of the history of the
site and sometimes with a personal connection with
the building. A woman in her 90s had worked as
an assistant matron, aged 14, in the 1920s. More
surprisingly, a woman in her 30s had lived there as
recently as the 1970s when her family were homeless.
Finding these links allowed the project team to
re-examine their interpretation of the building and
incorporate real people’s stories into the presentation
of the building’s history.
With the need for so much, often technically difficult,
building work another key group of stakeholders was
the builders. Before work started the curator took all the
building staff on the same tour of the site as they had
taken the various groups of VIPs who provided the
funding. ‘Involving the builders in the project sparked a
real interest in the project and the archaeological history
of the site. Often they would come across something
interesting, tell the foreman who would involve an
archaeologist and so preserve an artefact that might
otherwise have been destroyed. They took a real interest
in their work, they felt involved.’
The project was completed on time and within the
original budget, but Leigh Rix was particularly pleased
with the ‘quality’ of the finished project, ‘It may seem like
a time-consuming and expensive activity to involve all
stakeholders right at the start of a project, particularly
when they seem to have conflicting needs and interests.
Yet, as with many of our projects it is worth the effort.
Looking back, identifying and involving the stakeholders
not only allowed the project to be completed on time and
within budget, it improved the eventual quality in ways
we could not have anticipated.’
Stage 2 – Project definition
Before starting the complex task of planning and executing a project, it is necessary to be
clear about exactly what the project is – its definition. This is not always straightforward,
especially in projects with many stakeholders. Three different elements define a project:
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its objectives: the end state that project management is trying to achieve;
its scope: the exact range of the responsibilities taken on by project management;
its strategy: how project management is going to meet its objectives.
Project objectives
Objectives help to provide a definition of the end point which can be used to monitor
progress and identify when success has been achieved. They can be judged in terms of the
five performance objectives – quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost. However,
flexibility is regarded as a ‘given’ in most projects which, by definition, are to some extent
one-offs, and speed and dependability are compressed to one composite objective – ‘time’.
This results in what are known as the ‘three objectives of project management’ – cost, time
and quality. Figure 16.5 shows the ‘project objectives triangle’ with these three types of
project marked. 6
The relative importance of each objective will differ for different projects. Some aerospace
projects, such as the development of a new aircraft, which impact on passenger safety, will
place a very high emphasis on quality objectives. With other projects, for example a research
project that is being funded by a fixed government grant, cost might predominate. Other
Figure 16.5 The project objectives triangle