Basic Principles of Project Management

The project management is a typical application of knowledge, tools, skills and techniques are used for meeting the requirements of a project (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). A project management plan generally has some basic steps of execution. These steps are the initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and lastly closing. The project management technique is used for focusing on a particular area of the project which are the goals of the project, the resources of the project and the time scheduling of the project. In this essay, a project management technique will be discussed for organizing the 2018 FIFA World Cup. To organize the FIFA world cup the project manager needs to determine various types of parameters related with the FIFA world cup event. To deliver such type of important sports event successfully the project manager needs to evaluate the importance of these parameters which are Voice of the Customer, Critical to Customer Requirements and Critical to Quality parameters. This essay will elaborate on all of the parameters which are mentioned above. Also, how the lean project management can be implemented for this event will be discussed. Further, the supportive factors of the lean project management will be discussed which are the PMBOK, PRIENCE2, Lean Six Sigma and the Organizational Project Management Agile Practices. Therefore, from the discussion part, a short conclusion will be drawn which will restate the whole scenario in a different manner.

In this part of the essay, some parameters related to the project management will be evaluated thoroughly. The first discussed parameter is the Voice of the Customers. The Voice of the Customers is a usual term which is used in project management cases and in business cases. This term describes that it is a process of evaluating the expectations, aversions and preferences of a customer (Carulli, Bordegoni & Cugini, 2013). More specifically, this is a type of research on the market which produces a result of needs and wants of the customers. These outcomes of the market analysis are organized in a hierarchical structure. The hierarchical structure is set accordingly to the satisfaction and needs of the customers. In this case of the FIFA World Cup, the Voice of the Customer is a very much essential part. In this scenario, the customers are the spectators of the matches of the FIFA World Cup tournament. So to ensure that the FIFA World Cup is meeting all the amendments of the spectators the project manager needs to determine the Voice of the Customers. 

Parameters Related to Project Management

The next important parameter was the Critical to Customer Requirements. The Critical to Customer Requirements defines that it is the expectation of a customer regarding the service quality of a product (Nahm, Ishikawa & Inoue, 2013). The service given by the product or the organization is very much important in the aspect of how successful is the product. The project manager needs to know how to decode the critical customer requirements to make to proper decisions for the business. To ensure that the best service is given to the customers the project manager needs to focus on the four areas which are the cost, quality, features and availability. For the case of FIFA World Cup tournament, this four areas can relate easily. For the first case which is cost, the project manager needs to ensure that the cost of services is not too high. Means, the project manager should set the ticket price of the matches of the FIFA World Cup at a reasonable price. The second factor is the quality factor. In this case, the project manager should maintain the stadiums and the playing field properly for a better quality match. In the next case which is features, the project manager of the FIFA World Cup should arrange various types of feature for the spectators. This features can include a disaster response team, enhanced security, HD video halo board for instant replays, Wi-Fi connections and many more other features. The last case is the availability of the product. In the case of the availability, it is the availability of the seats in the stadium or the availability of live telecast in different areas of the world. To give all the spectators a proper service the project manager needs to ensure the availability of the matches to every spectator.

Another parameter related to the FIFA World Cup tournament is critical to quality. This is a major parameter of the internal critical quality. This critical to quality factor analyses the need and wanting of the customers but this is not actually same as the critical to customer requirements (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). The critical to customer requirements define the important things to the customer while the critical to quality defines the importance of the service quality or the processes quality to ensure that the final product will highly satisfy the customer. The critical to quality is not a thing which the customers will directly able to see, but this has a huge role to fulfil the customer needs (Siu Zhang & Yau, 2013). This critical to quality can be related with the FIFA World Cup tournament in the case of spectators satisfaction. To ensure the satisfaction of most of the customers the project manager needs to improve some internal quality of the tournament. The project manager can improve the internal qualities of the FIFA World Cup tournament by partnering with more TV channels to provide the live telecast of the tournament to the maximum peoples in the world. Providing the tournament to the maximum peoples will eventually increase the popularity of the tournament which is actually satisfying the customer requirements.

Lean Project Management

In this part of the essay, what is a lean project management and how the lean project management can be integrated with the FIFA World Cup tournament will be discussed. The lean project management is a type of application which includes the lean concepts which are lean manufacturing, lean construction and lean thinking into the project management (Leach, 2014). The lean project management also has the same principles as of the traditional project management. The lean is a typical method of eliminating or removing the waste from a manufacturing process. The lean mainly consider the things as a waste which is created because of the overburden in the manufacturing process and the things which are created due to unevenness workloads (Arunagiri & Gnanavelbabu, 2014). The lean basically eliminate everything which does not provide any value to the customers. There are some lean principles which need to be followed for a perfect implementation of the lean project management. These lean principles are eliminating waste, focusing on the customer, coordination of the peoples or the customers and the continuous improvement.

 To evaluate the waste in a production system, a critical analysis is required (Center, 2015). From the evaluation, it will be easy to determine the waste which is causing the problems with the production system. As discussed above a waste in a production system is something which does not provide any value to the customers. In this case of the football tournament, various types of waste can arise. The venue of the football tournament can be a waste to the system if it does not provide any value to the spectators. The venue can be a waste in such cases where the venue becomes unsuitable for hosting a football tournament. This can happen for various reasons including the natural disaster. To prevent the occurrence of these type of situation the project manager needs to prepare a proper plan and by eliminating those situation, the project management team can provide better value of the tournament to the spectators which is the main target of lean project management.

Another principle of the lean project management is the customer satisfaction (Gothelf, 2013). This principle describes that to extract the best value from a product the customer satisfaction of that product must be high. In this scenario, the main customers are the spectators. That means to make the tournament successful the spectator’s satisfaction must be a high priority. To ensure the spectator satisfaction, the project manager must ensure that the matches of the football tournament are visible at every point of the stadium or the venue. Besides that, the project manager also needs to find a way to live telecast the matches of the tournament. Live telecasting the matches can increase the popularity of the tournament. To satisfy the spectators, ensuring the optimal match conditions is not the only solution but the project manager should cautious about the security of the spectators. The project manager needs to implement high security in the venue area. A minor security flaw can drop the popularity of the tournament in a huge margin. 

Supportive Factors of Lean Project Management

The coordination of the customers is the most needed part of succeeding. In this football tournament case, the spectators can be considered as the customers. So, the coordination of the spectators is highly needed. Without the spectators, there will be no excitement about the tournament, which will actually drop the popularity of the tournament (Edensor, 2015). This is the main reason why the coordination of the spectators is required. The organization never explained the value of the project to the spectators. Still, the spectators may come to enjoy the tournament which will help the project manager to succeed in the project.

Lastly, the continuous improvement is endless part towards perfection. The project manager can always evaluate the values of each activity which has been done to improve the same activities (Clark, Silvester & Knowles, 2013). This can be implemented in the FIFA World Cup tournament by asking the spectators about the services given by the project management authority. They can give a better idea of how the services can be improved and also can give the recommendation for implementing new ideas. In this way, the FIFA World Cup tournament can head towards its perfection in the aspect of the management system.

To support the project with the lean implementation, various types of lean process can be used such as the PMBOK process, Organizational Project Management, Agile Practices, PRINCE2 and the Lean Six Sigma. In this following section, a brief about this lean implementations will be discussed.

The Project Management Body of Knowledge or the PMBOK is the group of some type of guidelines which is used in project management (Larson & Gray, 2015). The whole PMBOK is the total set of 49 processes. All the processes belong to the five basic processes. The five basic processes are the initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and the closing (Drob & Zichil, 2013). In the initiating part, a new project is defined, or a new phase of the existing project is defined to the higher authorities to get the permission to start the project. The next part is the planning part, in this part the scope of the project is established. To establish the project scope various objective need to be fulfilled. These objectives can be fulfilled by defining the action course which needs to be implemented. In the executing part, the project specifications are satisfied. To satisfy the project specification, the instructions defined in the project management plan need to be followed or executed. Next process is the monitoring and controlling. In the monitor part performance and progress of the project are tracked, reviewed and regulated. After evaluating the performance and progress, a control part is executed. In this controlling part, some changes are being made according to the requirements (Aliverdi, Naeni & Salehipour, 2013). Lastly, in the closing process, all the final activities are performed which are needed for closing the corresponding project. These activities can be a group of processes. That means the PMBOK process helps to execute project management plan by diving it into some basic steps which are easy to follow. All the above PMBOK processes can be implemented for the FIFA World Cup tournament. The initiating part can help the tournament by gathering all the information about the present situation and by taking help from the past incidents of this tournament. The planning can help the tournament by taking some appropriate decisions, and in the execution part, all the decision which have been taken during the planning part will be executed.

The PRINCE2 or the Projects In Controlled Environment is a method based project management system mainly used by the UK Government (Saad et al., 2013). This is also very famous in the private sector. The PRINCE2 has some key features which can help the project manager. These features are the focus on business justification, defined organization structure, an approach to planning which is based on the product, dividing the projects into smaller parts and flexibility which can be used at any stage of project execution (Karaman & Kurt, 2015). The PRINCE2 process can help the project managers individually and can also benefit the whole organization. The PRINCE2 process helps the project managers to control the resources available in the project. Also, this helps the project managers to determine the risks and manage the business more effectively. In the case of an organization, it is totally focused on the project deliverables. It can help to deliver the project of the organization by a consistent and common approach, an organized start, reviewing the progress regularly and by assuring the project with business justification (Saad et al., 2014). The PRINCE2 can be useful for the FIFA World Cup tournament because it is compatible with the likes of agile and for its adaptability. Also, the above discussed features of PRINCE2 can help the FIFA tournament to implement the lean approach. 

The organizational project management or the OPM is a process of executing the predetermined strategies of an organization (Hornstein, 2015). This execution is achieved by the combination of the program management, portfolio management and project management. Actually, the OPM is a management technique which manages portfolio, projects and programs systematically to achieve the strategic goals of the organization. The lean process can help the organizational project management by enabling the flow. In the case of FIFA World Cup, the enabling flow technique can help the project manager to deliver the whole project on time. The flow measures the efficiency of the work and how the work is performed in a team. The main motto of the enabling flow technique is that it helps to create a better understanding among the team and project manages.

The agile project management is a type of iterative process which is used for guiding and planning the process of the project (Dybå, Dingsøyr & Moe, 2014). This iteration is nothing but some small sections of the whole project. With the iteration method, the project is developed in some development cycle. Each of the iteration methods is reviewed by the project team. From this review, the project team decides what the next steps will be. In the case of the FIFA World Cup tournament, the best practice which can be adopted for the lean approach is the acceptance criteria-driven development. This is a type of agile practice which can help to reduce the rate of the defects (Moran, 2015). The defects are reduced by covering all the test scenarios in the acceptance criteria part. By reducing the defects related to the project, it is actually increasing the value and quality of the tournament which makes this agile process leaner. 

For the lean project management, the DMAIC methodology is a quality strategy. It is a data-driven strategy which is used for improving the process by integrating the lean six sigma quality (Kumaravadivel & Natarajan, 2013). This methodology includes the core busies process and the critical to quality issues. As a lean approach, the DMAIC can help to solve the problems related to the project management. The DMAIC methodology is different from the traditional problem solving method because it includes some steps while solving the problems. These steps are defined, measure, analyse, improve and control (Sutphin et al., 2015). This lean approach solves the problem using some statistical method. In the define stage, the outcome which needs to be measured is described. In the measure stage performance of the current process is measured. In analysing part, the causes which are creating the problem is determined. In the improve part how the problems can be eliminated or reduced is analysed. In the last part which is the control, part is used for analysing if the process has improved or not.

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the lean project management has a major impact on the case project management. The lean implementation can help the whole project by eliminating the waste from the system and by satisfying the customer. Also, the lean processes which are the PMBOK process, Organizational Project Management, Agile Practices, PRINCE2 and the Lean Six Sigma is discussed in this essay, and it has also been shown that how this processes can help to achieve the lean implementation in the current project. From the discussion of lean implementation how the lean implementation can help the project manager to organize the FIFA World Cup tournament is observed. For the recommendation purpose how the lean projects can be integrated into the FIFA World Cup and how this lean implementation can help the whole project management system is described briefly. 

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