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Knowledge Management ('KM') comprises a range of practices used by organisations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge for reuse, awareness and learning. It has been an established discipline since 1995 with a body of university courses and both professional and academic journals dedicated to it. Most large companies have resources dedicated to Knowledge Management, often as a part of 'Information Technology' or 'Human Resource Management' departments, and sometimes reporting directly to the head of the organisation. As effectively managing information is a must in any business, Knowledge Management is a multi-billion dollar world wide market.
Knowledge Management programs are typically tied to organisational objectives and are intended to achieve specific outcomes, such as shared intelligence, improved performance, competitive advantage, or higher levels of innovation.
One aspect of Knowledge Management, knowledge transfer, has always existed in one form or another. Examples include on-the-job peer discussions, formal apprenticeship, corporate libraries, professional training and mentoring programs. However, with computers becoming more widespread in the second half of the 20th century, specific adaptations of technology such as knowledge bases, expert systems, and knowledge repositories have been introduced to further simplify the process.
Knowledge Management programs attempt to manage the process of creation (or identification), accumulation and application of knowledge across an organisation. Knowledge Management, therefore, attempts to bring under one set of practices various strands of thought and practice relating to:
* intellectual capital and the knowledge worker in the knowledge economy
* the idea of the learning organisation
* various enabling organisational practices, such as Communities of Practice and corporate Yellow Page directories for accessing key personnel and expertise
* various enabling technologies such as knowledge bases and expert systems, help desks, corporate intranets and extranets, Content Management, wikis and Document Management
While Knowledge Management programs are closely related to Organizational Learning initiatives, Knowledge Management may be distinguished from Organisational Learning by a greater focus on specific knowledge assets and the development and cultivation of the channels through which knowledge flows.
The emergence of Knowledge Management has also generated new roles and responsibilities in organisations, an early example of which was the Chief Knowledge Officer. In recent years, Personal knowledge management (PKM) practice has arisen in which individuals apply KM practice to themselves, their roles and their career development.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Approaches to Knowledge Management
* 2 Schools of thought in Knowledge Management
* 3 Key concepts in Knowledge Management
o 3.1 Dimensions of knowledge
o 3.2 Knowledge capture stages
o 3.3 Ad hoc knowledge access
* 4 Drivers of Knowledge Management
* 5 Knowledge Management Technologies
* 6 Knowledge Management enablers
* 7 Knowledge Management roles and organizational structure
* 8 Knowledge Management lexicon
* 9 Knowledge Management Reasons of Failure or Success
* 10 Related definitions
* 11 See also
* 12 Further reading
o 12.1 Articles
* 13 External links
[edit] Approaches to Knowledge Management
There is a broad range of thought on Knowledge Management with no unanimous definition. The approaches vary by author and school. Knowledge Management may be viewed from each of the following perspectives:
* Techno-centric: A focus on technology, ideally those that enhance knowledge sharing/growth.
* Organisational: How does the organisation need to be designed to facilitate knowledge processes? Which organizations work best with what processes?
* Ecological: Seeing the interaction of people, identity, knowledge and environmental factors as a complex adaptive system.
In addition, as the discipline is maturing, there is an increasing presence of academic debates within epistemology emerging in both the theory and practice of knowledge management. British and Australian standards bodies both have produced documents that attempt to bound and scope the field, but these have received limited acceptance or awareness.
[edit] Schools of thought in Knowledge Management
There are a variety of different schools of thought in Knowledge Management. For example:
* The Intellectual Capital movement with Professor Nick Bontis, Professor Leif Edvinsson and Tom Stewart
* A body of work derivative of information theory associated with Prusak and Davenport.
* Advanced practice and leadership of tangibles & intangibles, living networks, co-creation and whole systems through value networks and value network analysis.
* Complexity approaches associated with David Snowden (see Cynefin).
* 'Narrative' with Denning, Snowden, Boje and others.
[edit] Key concepts in Knowledge Management
[edit] Dimensions of knowledge
A key distinction made by the majority of knowledge management practitioners is Nonaka's reformulation of Polanyi's distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge. The former is often subconscious, internalized, and the individual may or may not be aware of what he or she knows and how he or she accomplishes particular results. At the opposite end of the spectrum is conscious or explicit knowledge -- knowledge that the individual holds explicitly and consciously in mental focus, and may communicate to others. In the popular form of the distinction, tacit knowledge is what is in our heads, and explicit knowledge is what we have codified.
Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) argued that a successful KM program needs, on the one hand, to convert internalized tacit knowledge into explicit codified knowledge in order to share it, but, on the other hand, it also must permit individuals and groups to internalize and make personally meaningful codified knowledge they have retrieved from the KM system.
The focus upon codification and management of explicit knowledge has allowed knowledge management practitioners to appropriate prior work in information management, leading to the frequent accusation that knowledge management is simply a repackaged form of information management. (Eg Wilson, T.D. (2002) "The nonsense of 'knowledge management'" Information Research, 8(1), paper no. 144 [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/8-1/paper144.html]
Critics have argued that Nonaka and Takeuchi's distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge is oversimplified and that the notion of explicit knowledge is self-contradictory. Specifically, for knowledge to be made explicit, it must be translated into information (i.e., symbols outside of our heads).
Another common framework for categorizing the dimensions of knowledge include embedded knowledge (knowledge which has been incorporated into an artifact of some type, for example an information system may have knowledge embedded into its design) and embodied knowledge (representing knowledge as learned capability of the body’s nervous, chemical, and sensory systems). These two dimensions, while frequently used, are not universally accepted.
It is also common to distinguish between the creation of "new knowledge" (i.e., innovation) vs. the transfer of "established knowledge" within a group, organization, or community. Collaborative environments such as communities of practice or the use of social computing tools can be used for both creation and transfer.
[edit] Knowledge capture stages
Knowledge may be accessed, or captured, at three stages: before, during, or after knowledge-related activities.
For example, individuals undertaking a new project for an organization might access information resources to learn best practices and lessons learned for similar projects undertaken previously, access relevant information again during the project implementation to seek advice on issues encountered, and access relevant information afterwards for advice on after-project actions and review activities. Knowledge management practitioners offer systems, repositories, and corporate processes to encourage and formalize these activities.
Similarly, knowledge may be captured and recorded before the project implementation, for example as the project team learns lessons during the initial project analysis. Similarly, lessons learned during the project operation may be recorded, and after-action reviews may lead to further insights and lessons being recorded for future access.
Different organizations have tried various knowledge capture incentives, including making content submission mandatory and incorporating rewards into performance measurement plans. There is controversy over the whether incentives work or not in this field and no firm consensus has emerged.
[edit] Ad hoc knowledge access
One alternative strategy to encoding knowledge into and retrieving knowledge from a knowledge repository such as a database, is for individuals to make knowledge requests of subject matter experts on an ad hoc basis. A key benefit of this strategy is that the response from the expert individual is rich in content and contextualized to the particular problem being addressed and personalized to the particular person or people addressing it. The downside of this strategy is that it is tied to the availability and memory recall skill of specific individuals in the organization. It does not capture their insights and experience for future use should they leave or become unavailable, and also does not help in the case when the experts' memories of particular technical issues or problems previously faced change with time. The emergence of narrative approaches to knowledge management attempts to provide a bridge between the formal and the ad hoc, by allowing knowledge to be held in the form of stories.
[edit] Drivers of Knowledge Management
There are a number of claims as to 'drivers', or motivations, leading to organizations undertaking a knowledge management program.
Perhaps first among these is to gain the competitive advantage (in industry) and/or increased effectiveness that comes with improved or faster learning and new knowledge creation. Knowledge management programs may lead to greater innovation, better customer experiences, consistency in good practices and knowledge access across a global organization, as well as many other benefits, and knowledge management programs may be driven with these goals in mind. Government represents a highly active area, for example DiploFoundation Conference on Knowledge and Diplomacy (1999) outlines the range of specific KM tools and techniques applied in diplomacy.
Considerations driving a Knowledge Management program might include:
* making available increased knowledge content in the development and provision of products and services
* achieving shorter new product development cycles
* facilitating and managing organizational innovation and learning
* leverage the expertise of people across the organization
* benefiting from 'network effects' as the number of productive connections between employees in the organization increases and the quality of information shared increases, leading to greater employee and team satisfaction
* managing the proliferation of data and information in complex business environments and allowing employees rapidly to access useful and relevant knowledge resources and best practice guidelines
* managing intellectual capital and intellectual assets in the workforce (such as the expertise and know-how possessed by key individuals) as individuals retire and new workers are hired
[edit] Knowledge Management Technologies
The early Knowledge Management technologies were online corporate yellow pages (expertise locators) and document management systems. Combined with the early development of collaborative technologies (in particular Lotus Notes), KM technologies expanded in the mid 1990s. Subsequently it followed developments in technology in use in Information Management. In particular the use of semantic technologies for search and retrieval and the development of knowledge management specific tools such as those for communities of practice.
More recently social computing tools (such as blogs and wikis) have developed to provide a more unstructured approach to knowledge transfer and knowledge creation through the development of new forms of community. However, such tools for the most part are still based on text, and thus represent explicit knowledge transfer. These tools face challenges distilling meaningful re-usable knowledge from their content.
Knowledge mapping is commonly used to cover functions such as a knowledge audit (discovering what knowledge exists at the start of a knowledge management project), a network survey (Mapping the relationships between communities involved in knowledge creation and sharing) and creating a map of the relationship of knowledge assets to core business process. Although frequently carried out at the start of a Knowledge Management programme, is not a necessarily pre-condition or confined to start up.
[edit] Knowledge Management enablers
Historically, there have been a number of technologies 'enabling' or facilitating knowledge management practices in the organization, including expert systems, knowledge bases, various types of Information Management, software help desk tools, document management systems and other IT systems supporting organizational knowledge flows.
The advent of the Internet brought with it further enabling technologies, including e-learning, web conferencing, collaborative software, content management systems, corporate 'Yellow pages' directories, email lists, wikis, blogs, and other technologies. Each enabling technology can expand the level of inquiry available to an employee, while providing a platform to achieve specific goals or actions. The practice of KM will continue to evolve with the growth of collaboration applications, visual tools and other technologies. Since its adoption by the mainstream population and business community, the Internet has led to an increase in creative collaboration, learning and research, e-commerce, and instant information.
There are also a variety of organisational enablers for knowledge management programs, including Communities of Practice, before-, after- and during- action reviews (see After Action Review), peer assists, information taxonomies, coaching and mentoring, and so on.
Another aspect would be the creation of an incentive-system not only to provide the organisation with knowledge but also to manage and handle ideas of staff.
[edit] Knowledge Management roles and organizational structure
Knowledge management activities may be centralized in a Knowledge Management Office, or responsibility for knowledge management may be located in existing departmental functions, such as the Human Resource (to manage intellectual capital) or IT departments (for content management, social computing etc.). Different departments and functions may have a knowledge management function and those functions may not be connected other than informally.
[edit] Knowledge Management lexicon
Knowledge Management professionals may use a specific lexicon in order to articulate and discuss the various issues arising in Knowledge Management. For example, terms such as intellectual capital, metric, and tacit vs explicit knowledge typically form an indispensable part of the knowledge management professional's vocabulary.
[edit] Knowledge Management Reasons of Failure or Success
There is no established evidence as to the reasons behind failure and success of Knowledge Management initiatives in organizations. Some argue that a failure to sustain investment is one factor, but it can equally be argued that if knowledge management delivered on its promises investment would continue. As with many management initiatives, particularly those with a heavy IT basis (as is the case in Knowledge Management), frequent questions are raised about the level of consultation necessary before a program is started; these questions are linked to issues of cultural change and a willingness to share and collaborate with colleagues There is no evidence that Knowledge Management, in all these respects, is any different from other management initiatives.
[edit] Related definitions
* Intellectual capital - the intangible assets of a company which contribute to its valuation.
* Chief Knowledge Officer - an executive responsible for maximizing the knowledge potential of an organization.
* Knowledge - that which can be acted upon.
* Personal knowledge management - the organization of an individual's thoughts and beliefs.
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Management. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Management. Tampilkan semua postingan
Jumat, 14 September 2007
Project management
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Project Management is the discipline of organizing and managing resources (e.g. people) in such a way that the project is completed within defined scope, quality, time and cost constraints. A project is a temporary and one-time endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service, which brings about beneficial change or added value. This property of being a temporary and one-time undertaking contrasts with processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent ongoing functional work to create the same product or service over and over again. The management of these two systems is often very different and requires varying technical skills and philosophy, hence requiring the development of project management.
The first challenge of project management is to ensure that a project is delivered within defined constraints. The second, more ambitious challenge is the optimized allocation and integration of inputs needed to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, quality, risk, etc.) to meet the pre-defined objectives.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 History of Project Management
* 2 Definitions
* 3 The Project Manager
* 4 The Traditional Triple Constraints
o 4.1 Time
o 4.2 Cost
o 4.3 Scope
* 5 Project Management activities
* 6 Project Objectives
* 7 Project Management artifacts
* 8 Project control variables
* 9 Approaches
o 9.1 The traditional approach
o 9.2 Rational Unified Process
o 9.3 Temporary organization sequencing concepts
o 9.4 Critical chain
o 9.5 Event chain methodology
o 9.6 Process-based management
* 10 Project systems
o 10.1 Project control systems
o 10.2 Project development stages
+ 10.2.1 Initiation
+ 10.2.2 Planning and design
+ 10.2.3 Closing and Maintenance
* 11 Project Management Tools
* 12 Project Management Associations
o 12.1 International Standards
o 12.2 Professional Certifications
* 13 See also
* 14 References
* 15 Literature
* 16 External links
[edit] History of Project Management
As a discipline, Project Management developed from different fields of application including construction, engineering, and defense. In the United States, the forefather of project management is Henry Gantt, called the father of planning and control techniques, who is famously known for his use of the "Gantt" chart as a project management tool, for being an associate of Frederick Winslow Taylor's theories of scientific management[1], and for his study of the work and management of Navy ship building. His work is the forerunner to many modern project management tools including the work breakdown structure (WBS) and resource allocation.
The 1950s marked the beginning of the modern project management era. Again, in the United States, prior to the 1950s, projects were managed on an ad hoc basis using mostly Gantt Charts, and informal techniques and tools. At that time, two mathematical project scheduling models were developed: (1) the "Program Evaluation and Review Technique" or PERT, developed by Booz-Allen & Hamilton as part of the United States Navy's (in conjunction with the Lockheed Corporation) Polaris missile submarine program[2]; and (2) the "Critical Path Method" (CPM) developed in a joint venture by both DuPont Corporation and Remington Rand Corporation for managing plant maintenance projects. These mathematical techniques quickly spread into many private enterprises.
In 1969, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was formed to serve the interest of the project management industry. The premise of PMI is that the tools and techniques of project management are common even among the widespread application of projects from the software industry to the construction industry. In 1981, the PMI Board of Directors authorized the development of what has become A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), containing the standards and guidelines of practice that are widely used throughout the profession. The International Project Management Association (IPMA), founded in Europe in 1967, has undergone a similar development and instituted the IPMA Competence Baseline (ICB). The focus of the ICB also begins with Knowledge as a foundation, and adds considerations about relevant Experience, Interpersonal Skills, and Competence. Both organizations are now participating in the development of a ISO project management standard.
[edit] Definitions
* PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge as defined by the Project Management Institute - PMI):"Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements."[3]
* PRINCE2 project management methodology: "The planning, monitoring and control of all aspects of the project and the motivation of all those involved in it to achieve the project objectives on time and to the specified cost, quality and performance."[4]
* PROJECT: A temporary piece of work with a finite end date undertaken to create a unique product or service. Projects bring form or function to ideas or needs.
* DIN 69901 (Deutsches Institut für Normung - German Organization for Standardization): "Project management is the complete set of tasks, techniques, tools applied during project execution"
[edit] The Project Manager
Project management is quite often the province and responsibility of an individual project manager. This individual seldom participates directly in the activities that produce the end result, but rather strives to maintain the progress and productive mutual interaction of various parties in such a way that overall risk of failure is reduced.
A project manager is often a client representative and has to determine and implement the exact needs of the client, based on knowledge of the firm he/she is representing. The ability to adapt to the various internal procedures of the contracting party, and to form close links with the nominated representatives, is essential in ensuring that the key issues of cost, time, quality, and above all, client satisfaction, can be realized.
In whatever field, a successful project manager must be able to envision the entire project from start to finish and to have the ability to ensure that this vision is realized.
Any type of product or service —buildings, vehicles, electronics, computer software, financial services, etc.— may have its implementation overseen by a project manager and its operations by a product manager.
[edit] The Traditional Triple Constraints
Like any human undertaking, projects need to be performed and delivered under certain constraints. Traditionally, these constraints have been listed as scope, time, and cost. These are also referred to as the Project Management Triangle, where each side represents a constraint. One side of the triangle cannot be changed without impacting the others. A further refinement of the constraints separates product 'quality' or 'performance' from scope, and turns quality into a fourth constraint.
The Project Management Triangle
The Project Management Triangle
The time constraint refers to the amount of time available to complete a project. The cost constraint refers to the budgeted amount available for the project. The scope constraint refers to what must be done to produce the project's end result. These three constraints are often competing constraints: increased scope typically means increased time and increased cost, a tight time constraint could mean increased costs and reduced scope, and a tight budget could mean increased time and reduced scope.
The discipline of project management is about providing the tools and techniques that enable the project team (not just the project manager) to organize their work to meet these constraints.
Another approach to project management is to consider the three constraints as finance, time and human resources. If you need to finish a job in a shorter time, you can throw more people at the problem, which in turn will raise the cost of the project, unless by doing this task quicker we will reduce costs elsewhere in the project by an equal amount.
[edit] Time
For analytical purposes, the time required to produce a deliverable is estimated using several techniques. One method is to identify tasks needed to produce the deliverables documented in a work breakdown structure or WBS. The work effort for each task is estimated and those estimates are rolled up into the final deliverable estimate.
The tasks are also prioritized, dependencies between tasks are identified, and this information is documented in a project schedule. The dependencies between the tasks can affect the length of the overall project (dependency constrained), as can the availability of resources (resource constrained). Time is not considered a cost nor a resource since the project manager cannot control the rate at which it is expended. This makes it different from all other resources and cost categories.
[edit] Cost
Cost to develop a project depends on several variables including (chiefly): labor rates, material rates, risk management, plant (buildings, machines, etc.), equipment, and profit. When hiring an independent consultant for a project, cost will typically be determined by the consultant's or firm's per diem rate multiplied by an estimated quantity for completion.
[edit] Scope
Requirements specified for the end result. The overall definition of what the project is supposed to accomplish, and a specific description of what the end result should be or accomplish. A major component of scope is the quality of the final product. The amount of time put into individual tasks determines the overall quality of the project. Some tasks may require a given amount of time to complete adequately, but given more time could be completed exceptionally. Over the course of a large project, quality can have a significant impact on time and cost (or vice versa).
Together, these three constraints have given rise to the phrase "On Time, On Spec, On Budget". In this case, the term "scope" is substituted with "spec(ification)".
[edit] Project Management activities
Project Management is composed of several different types of activities such as:
1. Planning the work or objectives
2. Analysis & design of objectives and events
3. Assessing and controlling risk (or Risk Management)
4. Estimating resources
5. Allocation of resources
6. Organizing the work
7. Acquiring human and material resources
8. Assigning tasks
9. Directing activities
10. Controlling project execution
11. Tracking and reporting progress
12. Analyzing the results based on the facts achieved
13. Defining the products of the project
14. Forecasting future trends in the project
15. Quality Management
16. Issues management
17. Issue solving
18. Defect prevention
19. Identifying, managing & controlling changes
20. Project closure
21. Communicating to stakeholders
22. Increasing/ decreasing a company's workers
[edit] Project Objectives
Project objectives define target status at the end of the project, reaching of which is considered necessary for the achievement of planned benefits. They can be formulated as S.M.A.R.T.
* Specific,
* Measurable (or at least evaluable) achievement,
* Achievable (recently Acceptable is used regularly as well),
* Realistic and
* Time terminated(bounded).
The evaluation (measurement) occurs at the project closure. However a continuous guard on the project progress should be kept by monitoring and evaluating.
[edit] Project Management artifacts
Most projects, to be successful, must adequately document objectives and deliverables. These documents are a mechanism to align sponsors, clients, and project team's expectations.
1. Project Charter
2. Preliminary Scope Statement/Statement of Work
3. Business case/Feasibility Study
4. Scope Statement / Terms of reference
5. Project management plan / Project Initiation Document
6. Work Breakdown Structure
7. Change Control Plan
8. Risk Management Plan
9. Risk Breakdown Structure
10. Communications Plan
11. Governance Model
12. Risk Register
13. Issue Log
14. Action Item List
15. Resource Management Plan
16. Project Schedule
17. Status Report
18. Responsibility assignment matrix
19. Database of lessons learned
20. Stakeholder Analysis
These documents are normally hosted on a shared resource (i.e., intranet web page) and are available for review by the project's stakeholders (except for the Stakeholder Analysis, since this document comprises personal information regarding certain stakeholders. Only the Project Manager has access to this analysis). Changes or updates to these documents are explicitly outlined in the project's configuration management (or change control plan).
[edit] Project control variables
Project Management tries to gain control over variables such as risk:
Risk
Potential points of failure: Most negative risks (or potential failures) can be overcome or resolved, given enough planning capabilities, time, and resources. According to some definitions (including PMBOK Third Edition) risk can also be categorized as "positive--" meaning that there is a potential opportunity, e.g., complete the project faster than expected.
Customers (either internal or external project sponsors) and external organizations (such as government agencies and regulators) can dictate the extent of three variables: time, cost, and scope. The remaining variable (risk) is managed by the project team, ideally based on solid estimation and response planning techniques. Through a negotiation process among project stakeholders, an agreement defines the final objectives, in terms of time, cost, scope, and risk, usually in the form of a charter or contract.
To properly control these variables a good project manager has a depth of knowledge and experience in these four areas (time, cost, scope, and risk), and in six other areas as well: integration, communication, human resources, quality assurance, schedule development, and procurement.
[edit] Approaches
There are several approaches that can be taken to managing project activities including agile, interactive, incremental, and phased approaches.
Regardless of the approach employed, careful consideration needs to be given to clarify surrounding project objectives, goals, and importantly, the roles and responsibilities of all participants and stakeholders.
[edit] The traditional approach
A traditional phased approach identifies a sequence of steps to be completed. In the traditional approach, we can distinguish 5 components of a project (4 stages plus control) in the development of a project:
1. project initiation stage;
2. project planning or design stage;
3. project execution or production stage;
4. project monitoring and controlling systems;
5. project completion stage.
Not all the projects will visit every stage as projects can be terminated before they reach completion. Some projects probably don't have the planning and/or the monitoring. Some projects will go through steps 2, 3 and 4 multiple times.
Many industries utilize variations on these stages. For example, in bricks and mortar architectural design, projects typically progress through stages like Pre-Planning, Conceptual Design, Schematic Design, Design Development, Construction Drawings (or Contract Documents), and Construction Administration. In software development, this approach is often known as 'waterfall development' i.e one series of tasks after another in linear sequence. In software development many organizations have adapted the Rational Unified Process (RUP) to fit this methodology, although RUP does not require or explicitly recommend this practice. Waterfall development can work for small tightly defined projects, but for larger projects of undefined or unknowable scope, it is less suited. Because software development is often the realization of a new or novel product, this method has been widely accepted as ineffective for software projects where requirements are largely unknowable up front and susceptible to change. While the names may differ from industry to industry, the actual stages typically follow common steps to problem solving--defining the problem, weighing options, choosing a path, implementation and evaluation.
[edit] Rational Unified Process
1. Inception - Identify the initial scope of the project, a potential architecture for the system, and obtain initial project funding and stakeholder acceptance.
2. Elaboration - Prove the architecture of the system.
3. Construction - Build working software on a regular, incremental basis which meets the highest-priority needs of project stakeholders.
4. Transition - Validate and deploy the system into the production environment
[edit] Temporary organization sequencing concepts
1. Action-based entrepreneurship
2. Fragmentation for commitment-building
3. Planned isolation
4. Institutionalised termination
[edit] Critical chain
Critical chain is an extension to the traditional critical path method.
In critical studies of project management, it has been noted that several of these fundamentally PERT-based models are not well suited for the multi-project company environment of today. Most of them are aimed at very large-scale, one-time, non-routine projects, and nowadays all kinds of management are expressed in terms of projects. Using complex models for "projects" (or rather "tasks") spanning a few weeks has been proven to cause unnecessary costs and low maneuverability in several cases. Instead, project management experts try to identify different "lightweight" models, such as Extreme Programming for software development and Scrum techniques. The generalization of Extreme Programming to other kinds of projects is extreme project management, which may be used in combination with the process modeling and management principles of human interaction management.
[edit] Event chain methodology
Event chain methodology is the next advance beyond critical path method and critical chain project management.
Event chain methodology is an uncertainty modeling and schedule network analysis technique that is focused on identifying and managing events and event chains that affect project schedules. Event chain methodology helps to mitigate the negative impact of psychological heuristics and biases, as well as to allow for easy modeling of uncertainties in the project schedules. Event chain methodology is based on the following major principles.
* Probabilistic moment of risk: An activity (task) in most real life processes is not a continuous uniform process. Tasks are affected by external events, which can occur at some point in the middle of the task.
* Event chains: Events can cause other events, which will create event chains. These event chains can significantly affect the course of the project. Quantitative analysis is used to determine a cumulative effect of these event chains on the project schedule.
* Critical events or event chains: The single events or the event chains that have the most potential to affect the projects are the “critical events” or “critical chains of events.” They can be determined by the analysis.
* Project tracking with events: If a project is partially completed and data about the project duration, cost, and events occurred is available, it is possible to refine information about future potential events and helps to forecast future project performance.
* Event chain visualization: Events and event chains can be visualized using event chain diagrams on a Gantt chart.
[edit] Process-based management
Also furthering the concept of project control is the incorporation of process-based management. This area has been driven by the use of Maturity models such as the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) and ISO/IEC15504 (SPICE - Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination), which have been far more successful.
Agile project management approaches based on the principles of human interaction management are founded on a process view of human collaboration. This contrasts sharply with traditional approach. In the agile software development or flexible product development approach, the project is seen as a series of relatively small tasks conceived and executed as the situation demands in an adaptive manner, rather than as a completely pre-planned process.
[edit] Project systems
As mentioned above, traditionally, project development includes five elements: control systems and four stages.
[edit] Project control systems
Project control is that element of a project that keeps it on-track, on-time, and within budget. Project control begins early in the project with planning and ends late in the project with post-implementation review, having a thorough involvement of each step in the process. Each project should be assessed for the appropriate level of control needed: too much control is too time consuming, too little control is too costly. If control is not implemented correctly, the cost to the business should be clarified in terms of errors, fixes, and additional audit fees.
Control systems are needed for cost, risk, quality, communication, time, change, procurement, and human resources. In addition, auditors should consider how important the projects are to the financial statements, how reliant the stakeholders are on controls, and how many controls exist. Auditors should review the development process and procedures for how they are implemented. The process of development and the quality of the final product may also be assessed if needed or requested. A business may want the auditing firm to be involved throughout the process to catch problems earlier on so that they can be fixed more easily. An auditor can serve as a controls consultant as part of the development team or as an independent auditor as part of an audit.
Businesses sometimes use formal systems development processes. These help assure that systems are developed successfully. A formal process is more effective in creating strong controls, and auditors should review this process to confirm that it is well designed and is followed in practice. A good formal systems development plan outlines:
* A strategy to align development with the organization’s broader objectives
* Standards for new systems
* Project management policies for timing and budgeting
* Procedures describing the process
[edit] Project development stages
Regardless of the methodology used, the project development process will have the same major stages: initiation, development, production or execution, and closing/maintenance.
[edit] Initiation
The initiation stage determines the nature and scope of the development. If this stage is not performed well, it is unlikely that the project will be successful in meeting the business’s needs. The key project controls needed here are an understanding of the business environment and making sure that all necessary controls are incorporated into the project. Any deficiencies should be reported and a recommendation should be made to fix them.
The initiation stage should include a cohesive plan that encompasses the following areas:
* Study analyzing the business needs in measurable goals.
* Review of the current operations.
* Conceptual design of the operation of the final product.
* Equipment requirement.
* Financial analysis of the costs and benefits including a budget.
* Select stake holders, including users, and support personnel for the project.
* Project charter including costs, tasks, deliverables, and schedule.
[edit] Planning and design
After the initiation stage, the system is designed. Occasionally, a small prototype of the final product is built and tested. Testing is generally performed by a combination of testers and end users, and can occur after the prototype is built or concurrently. Controls should be in place that ensure that the final product will meet the specifications of the project charter. The results of the design stage should include a product design that:
* Satisfies the project sponsor, end user, and business requirements.
* Functions as it was intended.
* Can be produced within quality standards.
* Can be produced within time and budget constraints.
[edit] Closing and Maintenance
Closing includes the formal acceptance of the project and the ending thereof. Administrative activities include the archiving of the files and documenting lessons learned.
Maintenance is an ongoing process, and it includes:
* Continuing support of end users
* Correction of errors
* Updates of the software over time
In this stage, auditors should pay attention to how effectively and quickly user problems are resolved.
Over the course of any construction project, the work scope changes. Change is a normal and expected part of the construction process. Changes can be the result of necessary design modifications, differing site conditions, material availability, contractor-requested changes, value engineering and impacts from third parties, to name a few. Beyond executing the change in the field, the change normally needs to be documented to show what was actually constructed. Hence, the owner usually requires a final record to show all changes or, more specifically, any change that modifies the tangible portions of the finished work. The record is made on the contract documents – usually, but not necessarily limited to, the design drawings. The end product of this effort is what the industry terms as-built drawings, or more simply, “asbuilts.” The requirement for providing them is a norm in construction contracts.
[edit] Project Management Tools
Project Management Tools include
* Financial Tools
* Cause and Effect Charts
* PERT Charts
* Gantt Charts
* Event Chain Diagrams
* Run Charts
* Project Cycle Optimisation
* List of project management software
* Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis (An approach for developing common understanding and consensus amongst project partcipants and stakeholders as to how the project will achieve its goal)
[edit] Project Management Associations
Several national and professional associations exist which have as their aim the promotion and development of project management and the project management profession. The most prominent associations include:
* The Project Management Institute (PMI)
* The Association for Project Management (UK) (APM)
* The Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM)
* The International Project Management Association (IPMA)
* The International Association of Project and Program Management (IAPPM)
[edit] International Standards
There have been several attempts to develop project management standards, such as:
* A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide)
* The Standard for Program Management
* The Standard for Portfolio Management
* Project Management Certification (Project Management Institute (PMI))
* APM Body of Knowledge 5th ed. (APM - Association for Project Management (UK))
* PRINCE2 (PRojects IN a Controlled Environment)
* P2M (A guidebook of Project & Program Management for Enterprise Innovation, Japanese third-generation project management method)(Download page for P2M and related products)
* V-Modell (German project management method)
* HERMES method (The Swiss general project management method, selected for use in Luxembourg and international organisations)
* Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3)
* International Standards Organization Founded 1947
o ISO 9000: a family of standards for quality management systems.
o ISO 10006:2003, Quality management systems - Guidelines for quality management in projects
* JPACE (Justify, Plan, Activate, Control, and End - The James Martin Method for Managing Projects (1981-present))
* Software Engineering Institute: Capability Maturity Model
[edit] Professional Certifications
* CompTIA Project+, ([Computer Technology Industry Association])
* CPM ([The International Association of Project & Program Management])
* Project Management Professional, Certified Associate in Project Management. PMI certifications
* Master Project Manager, Certified International Project Manager. AApM certifications
• Ten things you didn't know about Wikipedia •
Jump to: navigation, search
Project Management is the discipline of organizing and managing resources (e.g. people) in such a way that the project is completed within defined scope, quality, time and cost constraints. A project is a temporary and one-time endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service, which brings about beneficial change or added value. This property of being a temporary and one-time undertaking contrasts with processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent ongoing functional work to create the same product or service over and over again. The management of these two systems is often very different and requires varying technical skills and philosophy, hence requiring the development of project management.
The first challenge of project management is to ensure that a project is delivered within defined constraints. The second, more ambitious challenge is the optimized allocation and integration of inputs needed to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, quality, risk, etc.) to meet the pre-defined objectives.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 History of Project Management
* 2 Definitions
* 3 The Project Manager
* 4 The Traditional Triple Constraints
o 4.1 Time
o 4.2 Cost
o 4.3 Scope
* 5 Project Management activities
* 6 Project Objectives
* 7 Project Management artifacts
* 8 Project control variables
* 9 Approaches
o 9.1 The traditional approach
o 9.2 Rational Unified Process
o 9.3 Temporary organization sequencing concepts
o 9.4 Critical chain
o 9.5 Event chain methodology
o 9.6 Process-based management
* 10 Project systems
o 10.1 Project control systems
o 10.2 Project development stages
+ 10.2.1 Initiation
+ 10.2.2 Planning and design
+ 10.2.3 Closing and Maintenance
* 11 Project Management Tools
* 12 Project Management Associations
o 12.1 International Standards
o 12.2 Professional Certifications
* 13 See also
* 14 References
* 15 Literature
* 16 External links
[edit] History of Project Management
As a discipline, Project Management developed from different fields of application including construction, engineering, and defense. In the United States, the forefather of project management is Henry Gantt, called the father of planning and control techniques, who is famously known for his use of the "Gantt" chart as a project management tool, for being an associate of Frederick Winslow Taylor's theories of scientific management[1], and for his study of the work and management of Navy ship building. His work is the forerunner to many modern project management tools including the work breakdown structure (WBS) and resource allocation.
The 1950s marked the beginning of the modern project management era. Again, in the United States, prior to the 1950s, projects were managed on an ad hoc basis using mostly Gantt Charts, and informal techniques and tools. At that time, two mathematical project scheduling models were developed: (1) the "Program Evaluation and Review Technique" or PERT, developed by Booz-Allen & Hamilton as part of the United States Navy's (in conjunction with the Lockheed Corporation) Polaris missile submarine program[2]; and (2) the "Critical Path Method" (CPM) developed in a joint venture by both DuPont Corporation and Remington Rand Corporation for managing plant maintenance projects. These mathematical techniques quickly spread into many private enterprises.
In 1969, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was formed to serve the interest of the project management industry. The premise of PMI is that the tools and techniques of project management are common even among the widespread application of projects from the software industry to the construction industry. In 1981, the PMI Board of Directors authorized the development of what has become A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), containing the standards and guidelines of practice that are widely used throughout the profession. The International Project Management Association (IPMA), founded in Europe in 1967, has undergone a similar development and instituted the IPMA Competence Baseline (ICB). The focus of the ICB also begins with Knowledge as a foundation, and adds considerations about relevant Experience, Interpersonal Skills, and Competence. Both organizations are now participating in the development of a ISO project management standard.
[edit] Definitions
* PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge as defined by the Project Management Institute - PMI):"Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements."[3]
* PRINCE2 project management methodology: "The planning, monitoring and control of all aspects of the project and the motivation of all those involved in it to achieve the project objectives on time and to the specified cost, quality and performance."[4]
* PROJECT: A temporary piece of work with a finite end date undertaken to create a unique product or service. Projects bring form or function to ideas or needs.
* DIN 69901 (Deutsches Institut für Normung - German Organization for Standardization): "Project management is the complete set of tasks, techniques, tools applied during project execution"
[edit] The Project Manager
Project management is quite often the province and responsibility of an individual project manager. This individual seldom participates directly in the activities that produce the end result, but rather strives to maintain the progress and productive mutual interaction of various parties in such a way that overall risk of failure is reduced.
A project manager is often a client representative and has to determine and implement the exact needs of the client, based on knowledge of the firm he/she is representing. The ability to adapt to the various internal procedures of the contracting party, and to form close links with the nominated representatives, is essential in ensuring that the key issues of cost, time, quality, and above all, client satisfaction, can be realized.
In whatever field, a successful project manager must be able to envision the entire project from start to finish and to have the ability to ensure that this vision is realized.
Any type of product or service —buildings, vehicles, electronics, computer software, financial services, etc.— may have its implementation overseen by a project manager and its operations by a product manager.
[edit] The Traditional Triple Constraints
Like any human undertaking, projects need to be performed and delivered under certain constraints. Traditionally, these constraints have been listed as scope, time, and cost. These are also referred to as the Project Management Triangle, where each side represents a constraint. One side of the triangle cannot be changed without impacting the others. A further refinement of the constraints separates product 'quality' or 'performance' from scope, and turns quality into a fourth constraint.
The Project Management Triangle
The Project Management Triangle
The time constraint refers to the amount of time available to complete a project. The cost constraint refers to the budgeted amount available for the project. The scope constraint refers to what must be done to produce the project's end result. These three constraints are often competing constraints: increased scope typically means increased time and increased cost, a tight time constraint could mean increased costs and reduced scope, and a tight budget could mean increased time and reduced scope.
The discipline of project management is about providing the tools and techniques that enable the project team (not just the project manager) to organize their work to meet these constraints.
Another approach to project management is to consider the three constraints as finance, time and human resources. If you need to finish a job in a shorter time, you can throw more people at the problem, which in turn will raise the cost of the project, unless by doing this task quicker we will reduce costs elsewhere in the project by an equal amount.
[edit] Time
For analytical purposes, the time required to produce a deliverable is estimated using several techniques. One method is to identify tasks needed to produce the deliverables documented in a work breakdown structure or WBS. The work effort for each task is estimated and those estimates are rolled up into the final deliverable estimate.
The tasks are also prioritized, dependencies between tasks are identified, and this information is documented in a project schedule. The dependencies between the tasks can affect the length of the overall project (dependency constrained), as can the availability of resources (resource constrained). Time is not considered a cost nor a resource since the project manager cannot control the rate at which it is expended. This makes it different from all other resources and cost categories.
[edit] Cost
Cost to develop a project depends on several variables including (chiefly): labor rates, material rates, risk management, plant (buildings, machines, etc.), equipment, and profit. When hiring an independent consultant for a project, cost will typically be determined by the consultant's or firm's per diem rate multiplied by an estimated quantity for completion.
[edit] Scope
Requirements specified for the end result. The overall definition of what the project is supposed to accomplish, and a specific description of what the end result should be or accomplish. A major component of scope is the quality of the final product. The amount of time put into individual tasks determines the overall quality of the project. Some tasks may require a given amount of time to complete adequately, but given more time could be completed exceptionally. Over the course of a large project, quality can have a significant impact on time and cost (or vice versa).
Together, these three constraints have given rise to the phrase "On Time, On Spec, On Budget". In this case, the term "scope" is substituted with "spec(ification)".
[edit] Project Management activities
Project Management is composed of several different types of activities such as:
1. Planning the work or objectives
2. Analysis & design of objectives and events
3. Assessing and controlling risk (or Risk Management)
4. Estimating resources
5. Allocation of resources
6. Organizing the work
7. Acquiring human and material resources
8. Assigning tasks
9. Directing activities
10. Controlling project execution
11. Tracking and reporting progress
12. Analyzing the results based on the facts achieved
13. Defining the products of the project
14. Forecasting future trends in the project
15. Quality Management
16. Issues management
17. Issue solving
18. Defect prevention
19. Identifying, managing & controlling changes
20. Project closure
21. Communicating to stakeholders
22. Increasing/ decreasing a company's workers
[edit] Project Objectives
Project objectives define target status at the end of the project, reaching of which is considered necessary for the achievement of planned benefits. They can be formulated as S.M.A.R.T.
* Specific,
* Measurable (or at least evaluable) achievement,
* Achievable (recently Acceptable is used regularly as well),
* Realistic and
* Time terminated(bounded).
The evaluation (measurement) occurs at the project closure. However a continuous guard on the project progress should be kept by monitoring and evaluating.
[edit] Project Management artifacts
Most projects, to be successful, must adequately document objectives and deliverables. These documents are a mechanism to align sponsors, clients, and project team's expectations.
1. Project Charter
2. Preliminary Scope Statement/Statement of Work
3. Business case/Feasibility Study
4. Scope Statement / Terms of reference
5. Project management plan / Project Initiation Document
6. Work Breakdown Structure
7. Change Control Plan
8. Risk Management Plan
9. Risk Breakdown Structure
10. Communications Plan
11. Governance Model
12. Risk Register
13. Issue Log
14. Action Item List
15. Resource Management Plan
16. Project Schedule
17. Status Report
18. Responsibility assignment matrix
19. Database of lessons learned
20. Stakeholder Analysis
These documents are normally hosted on a shared resource (i.e., intranet web page) and are available for review by the project's stakeholders (except for the Stakeholder Analysis, since this document comprises personal information regarding certain stakeholders. Only the Project Manager has access to this analysis). Changes or updates to these documents are explicitly outlined in the project's configuration management (or change control plan).
[edit] Project control variables
Project Management tries to gain control over variables such as risk:
Risk
Potential points of failure: Most negative risks (or potential failures) can be overcome or resolved, given enough planning capabilities, time, and resources. According to some definitions (including PMBOK Third Edition) risk can also be categorized as "positive--" meaning that there is a potential opportunity, e.g., complete the project faster than expected.
Customers (either internal or external project sponsors) and external organizations (such as government agencies and regulators) can dictate the extent of three variables: time, cost, and scope. The remaining variable (risk) is managed by the project team, ideally based on solid estimation and response planning techniques. Through a negotiation process among project stakeholders, an agreement defines the final objectives, in terms of time, cost, scope, and risk, usually in the form of a charter or contract.
To properly control these variables a good project manager has a depth of knowledge and experience in these four areas (time, cost, scope, and risk), and in six other areas as well: integration, communication, human resources, quality assurance, schedule development, and procurement.
[edit] Approaches
There are several approaches that can be taken to managing project activities including agile, interactive, incremental, and phased approaches.
Regardless of the approach employed, careful consideration needs to be given to clarify surrounding project objectives, goals, and importantly, the roles and responsibilities of all participants and stakeholders.
[edit] The traditional approach
A traditional phased approach identifies a sequence of steps to be completed. In the traditional approach, we can distinguish 5 components of a project (4 stages plus control) in the development of a project:
1. project initiation stage;
2. project planning or design stage;
3. project execution or production stage;
4. project monitoring and controlling systems;
5. project completion stage.
Not all the projects will visit every stage as projects can be terminated before they reach completion. Some projects probably don't have the planning and/or the monitoring. Some projects will go through steps 2, 3 and 4 multiple times.
Many industries utilize variations on these stages. For example, in bricks and mortar architectural design, projects typically progress through stages like Pre-Planning, Conceptual Design, Schematic Design, Design Development, Construction Drawings (or Contract Documents), and Construction Administration. In software development, this approach is often known as 'waterfall development' i.e one series of tasks after another in linear sequence. In software development many organizations have adapted the Rational Unified Process (RUP) to fit this methodology, although RUP does not require or explicitly recommend this practice. Waterfall development can work for small tightly defined projects, but for larger projects of undefined or unknowable scope, it is less suited. Because software development is often the realization of a new or novel product, this method has been widely accepted as ineffective for software projects where requirements are largely unknowable up front and susceptible to change. While the names may differ from industry to industry, the actual stages typically follow common steps to problem solving--defining the problem, weighing options, choosing a path, implementation and evaluation.
[edit] Rational Unified Process
1. Inception - Identify the initial scope of the project, a potential architecture for the system, and obtain initial project funding and stakeholder acceptance.
2. Elaboration - Prove the architecture of the system.
3. Construction - Build working software on a regular, incremental basis which meets the highest-priority needs of project stakeholders.
4. Transition - Validate and deploy the system into the production environment
[edit] Temporary organization sequencing concepts
1. Action-based entrepreneurship
2. Fragmentation for commitment-building
3. Planned isolation
4. Institutionalised termination
[edit] Critical chain
Critical chain is an extension to the traditional critical path method.
In critical studies of project management, it has been noted that several of these fundamentally PERT-based models are not well suited for the multi-project company environment of today. Most of them are aimed at very large-scale, one-time, non-routine projects, and nowadays all kinds of management are expressed in terms of projects. Using complex models for "projects" (or rather "tasks") spanning a few weeks has been proven to cause unnecessary costs and low maneuverability in several cases. Instead, project management experts try to identify different "lightweight" models, such as Extreme Programming for software development and Scrum techniques. The generalization of Extreme Programming to other kinds of projects is extreme project management, which may be used in combination with the process modeling and management principles of human interaction management.
[edit] Event chain methodology
Event chain methodology is the next advance beyond critical path method and critical chain project management.
Event chain methodology is an uncertainty modeling and schedule network analysis technique that is focused on identifying and managing events and event chains that affect project schedules. Event chain methodology helps to mitigate the negative impact of psychological heuristics and biases, as well as to allow for easy modeling of uncertainties in the project schedules. Event chain methodology is based on the following major principles.
* Probabilistic moment of risk: An activity (task) in most real life processes is not a continuous uniform process. Tasks are affected by external events, which can occur at some point in the middle of the task.
* Event chains: Events can cause other events, which will create event chains. These event chains can significantly affect the course of the project. Quantitative analysis is used to determine a cumulative effect of these event chains on the project schedule.
* Critical events or event chains: The single events or the event chains that have the most potential to affect the projects are the “critical events” or “critical chains of events.” They can be determined by the analysis.
* Project tracking with events: If a project is partially completed and data about the project duration, cost, and events occurred is available, it is possible to refine information about future potential events and helps to forecast future project performance.
* Event chain visualization: Events and event chains can be visualized using event chain diagrams on a Gantt chart.
[edit] Process-based management
Also furthering the concept of project control is the incorporation of process-based management. This area has been driven by the use of Maturity models such as the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) and ISO/IEC15504 (SPICE - Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination), which have been far more successful.
Agile project management approaches based on the principles of human interaction management are founded on a process view of human collaboration. This contrasts sharply with traditional approach. In the agile software development or flexible product development approach, the project is seen as a series of relatively small tasks conceived and executed as the situation demands in an adaptive manner, rather than as a completely pre-planned process.
[edit] Project systems
As mentioned above, traditionally, project development includes five elements: control systems and four stages.
[edit] Project control systems
Project control is that element of a project that keeps it on-track, on-time, and within budget. Project control begins early in the project with planning and ends late in the project with post-implementation review, having a thorough involvement of each step in the process. Each project should be assessed for the appropriate level of control needed: too much control is too time consuming, too little control is too costly. If control is not implemented correctly, the cost to the business should be clarified in terms of errors, fixes, and additional audit fees.
Control systems are needed for cost, risk, quality, communication, time, change, procurement, and human resources. In addition, auditors should consider how important the projects are to the financial statements, how reliant the stakeholders are on controls, and how many controls exist. Auditors should review the development process and procedures for how they are implemented. The process of development and the quality of the final product may also be assessed if needed or requested. A business may want the auditing firm to be involved throughout the process to catch problems earlier on so that they can be fixed more easily. An auditor can serve as a controls consultant as part of the development team or as an independent auditor as part of an audit.
Businesses sometimes use formal systems development processes. These help assure that systems are developed successfully. A formal process is more effective in creating strong controls, and auditors should review this process to confirm that it is well designed and is followed in practice. A good formal systems development plan outlines:
* A strategy to align development with the organization’s broader objectives
* Standards for new systems
* Project management policies for timing and budgeting
* Procedures describing the process
[edit] Project development stages
Regardless of the methodology used, the project development process will have the same major stages: initiation, development, production or execution, and closing/maintenance.
[edit] Initiation
The initiation stage determines the nature and scope of the development. If this stage is not performed well, it is unlikely that the project will be successful in meeting the business’s needs. The key project controls needed here are an understanding of the business environment and making sure that all necessary controls are incorporated into the project. Any deficiencies should be reported and a recommendation should be made to fix them.
The initiation stage should include a cohesive plan that encompasses the following areas:
* Study analyzing the business needs in measurable goals.
* Review of the current operations.
* Conceptual design of the operation of the final product.
* Equipment requirement.
* Financial analysis of the costs and benefits including a budget.
* Select stake holders, including users, and support personnel for the project.
* Project charter including costs, tasks, deliverables, and schedule.
[edit] Planning and design
After the initiation stage, the system is designed. Occasionally, a small prototype of the final product is built and tested. Testing is generally performed by a combination of testers and end users, and can occur after the prototype is built or concurrently. Controls should be in place that ensure that the final product will meet the specifications of the project charter. The results of the design stage should include a product design that:
* Satisfies the project sponsor, end user, and business requirements.
* Functions as it was intended.
* Can be produced within quality standards.
* Can be produced within time and budget constraints.
[edit] Closing and Maintenance
Closing includes the formal acceptance of the project and the ending thereof. Administrative activities include the archiving of the files and documenting lessons learned.
Maintenance is an ongoing process, and it includes:
* Continuing support of end users
* Correction of errors
* Updates of the software over time
In this stage, auditors should pay attention to how effectively and quickly user problems are resolved.
Over the course of any construction project, the work scope changes. Change is a normal and expected part of the construction process. Changes can be the result of necessary design modifications, differing site conditions, material availability, contractor-requested changes, value engineering and impacts from third parties, to name a few. Beyond executing the change in the field, the change normally needs to be documented to show what was actually constructed. Hence, the owner usually requires a final record to show all changes or, more specifically, any change that modifies the tangible portions of the finished work. The record is made on the contract documents – usually, but not necessarily limited to, the design drawings. The end product of this effort is what the industry terms as-built drawings, or more simply, “asbuilts.” The requirement for providing them is a norm in construction contracts.
[edit] Project Management Tools
Project Management Tools include
* Financial Tools
* Cause and Effect Charts
* PERT Charts
* Gantt Charts
* Event Chain Diagrams
* Run Charts
* Project Cycle Optimisation
* List of project management software
* Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis (An approach for developing common understanding and consensus amongst project partcipants and stakeholders as to how the project will achieve its goal)
[edit] Project Management Associations
Several national and professional associations exist which have as their aim the promotion and development of project management and the project management profession. The most prominent associations include:
* The Project Management Institute (PMI)
* The Association for Project Management (UK) (APM)
* The Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM)
* The International Project Management Association (IPMA)
* The International Association of Project and Program Management (IAPPM)
[edit] International Standards
There have been several attempts to develop project management standards, such as:
* A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide)
* The Standard for Program Management
* The Standard for Portfolio Management
* Project Management Certification (Project Management Institute (PMI))
* APM Body of Knowledge 5th ed. (APM - Association for Project Management (UK))
* PRINCE2 (PRojects IN a Controlled Environment)
* P2M (A guidebook of Project & Program Management for Enterprise Innovation, Japanese third-generation project management method)(Download page for P2M and related products)
* V-Modell (German project management method)
* HERMES method (The Swiss general project management method, selected for use in Luxembourg and international organisations)
* Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3)
* International Standards Organization Founded 1947
o ISO 9000: a family of standards for quality management systems.
o ISO 10006:2003, Quality management systems - Guidelines for quality management in projects
* JPACE (Justify, Plan, Activate, Control, and End - The James Martin Method for Managing Projects (1981-present))
* Software Engineering Institute: Capability Maturity Model
[edit] Professional Certifications
* CompTIA Project+, ([Computer Technology Industry Association])
* CPM ([The International Association of Project & Program Management])
* Project Management Professional, Certified Associate in Project Management. PMI certifications
* Master Project Manager, Certified International Project Manager. AApM certifications
Emergency management
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Disaster management)
• Ten things you didn't know about images on Wikipedia •
Jump to: navigation, search
Mitigation redirects here; for use of that term in criminal law, see extenuating circumstances.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Phases and professional activities
o 1.1 Mitigation
o 1.2 Preparedness
o 1.3 Response
o 1.4 Recovery
* 2 Phases and personal activities
o 2.1 Mitigation
o 2.2 Preparedness
o 2.3 Response
o 2.4 Recovery
* 3 As a profession
o 3.1 Tools
* 4 International organisations
o 4.1 International Association of Emergency Managers
o 4.2 Red Cross/Red Crescent
o 4.3 United Nations
* 5 National organisations
o 5.1 Australia
o 5.2 Canada
o 5.3 Germany
o 5.4 New Zealand
o 5.5 Russia
o 5.6 United Kingdom
o 5.7 United States
* 6 Academic resources
* 7 Footnotes
* 8 See also
* 9 External links
Emergency management (or disaster management) is the discipline of dealing with and avoiding risks.[1] It is a discipline that involves preparing, supporting, and rebuilding society when natural or human-made disasters occur. In general, any Emergency management is the continuous process by which all individuals, groups, and communities manage hazards in an effort to avoid or ameliorate the impact of disasters resulting from the hazards. Actions taken depend in part on perceptions of risk of those exposed.[2] Effective emergency management relies on thorough integration of emergency plans at all levels of government and non-government involvement. Activities at each level (individual, group, community) affect the other levels. It is common to place the responsibility for governmental emergency management with the institutions for civil defense or within the conventional structure of the emergency services. In the private sector, emergency management is sometimes referred to as business continuity planning.
Emergency Management is one of a number of terms which, since the end of the Cold War, have largely replaced Civil defense, whose original focus was protecting civilians from military attack. Modern thinking focuses on a more general intent to protect the civilian population in times of peace as well as in times of war. Another current term, Civil Protection is widely used within the European Union and refers to government-approved systems and resources whose task is to protect the civilian population, primarily in the event of natural and human-made disasters. Within EU countries the term Crisis Management emphasises the political and security dimension rather than measures to satisfy the immediate needs of the civilian population.
[edit] Phases and professional activities
The nature of emergency management is highly dependent on economic and social conditions local to the emergency, or disaster. This is true to the extent that some disaster relief experts such as Fred Cuny have noted that in a sense the only real disasters are economic. [3] Experts, such as Cuny, have long noted that the cycle of emergency management must include long-term work on infrastructure, public awareness, and even human justice issues. This is particularly important in developing nations. The process of emergency management involves four phases: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.
A graphic representation of the four phases in emergency management.
A graphic representation of the four phases in emergency management.
[edit] Mitigation
Mitigation efforts attempt to prevent hazards from developing into disasters altogether, or to reduce the effects of disasters when they occur. The mitigation phase differs from the other phases because it focuses on long-term measures for reducing or eliminating risk.[1] The implementation of mitigation strategies can be considered a part of the recovery process if applied after a disaster occurs.[1] However, even if applied as part of recovery efforts, actions that reduce or eliminate risk over time are still considered mitigation efforts.[1]
Mitigative measures can be structural or non-structural. Structural measures use technological solutions, like flood levees. Non-structural measures include legislation, land-use planning (e.g. the designation of nonessential land like parks to be used as flood zones), and insurance. Mitigation is the most cost-efficient method for reducing the impact of hazards. However, mitigation is not always suitable and structural mitigation in particular may have adverse effects on the ecosystem.
A precursor activity to the mitigation is the identification of risks. Physical risk assessment refers to the process of identifying and evaluating hazards.[1] In risk assessment, various hazards (e.g. earthquakes, floods, riots) within a certain area are identified. Each hazard poses a risk to the population within the area assessed.[2] The hazard-specific risk (Rh) combines both the probability and the level of impact of a specific hazard. The equation below gives that the hazard times the populations’ vulnerability to that hazard produce a risk. Catastrophe modeling tools are used to support the calculation. The higher the risk, the more urgent that the hazard specific vulnerabilities are targeted by mitigation and preparedness efforts. However, if there is no vulnerability there will be no risk, e.g. an earthquake occurring in a desert where nobody lives.
\mathbf{R_h} = \mathbf{H} \times \mathbf{V_h} \,
[edit] Preparedness
In the preparedness phase, emergency managers develop plans of action for when the disaster strikes. Common preparedness measures include the
* communication plans with easily understandable terminology and chain of command
* development and practice of multi-agency coordination and incident command
* proper maintenance and training of emergency services
* development and exercise of emergency population warning methods combined with emergency shelters and evacuation plans
* stockpiling, inventory, and maintenance of supplies and equipment
An efficient preparedness measure is an emergency operations center (EOC) combined with a practiced region-wide doctrine for managing emergencies. Another preparedness measure is to develop a volunteer response capability among civilian populations. Since, volunteer response is not as predictable and plannable as professional response, volunteers are most effectively deployed on the periphery of an emergency.
[edit] Response
The response phase includes the mobilization of the necessary emergency services and first responders in the disaster area. This is likely to include a first wave of core emergency services, such as firefighters, police and ambulance crews. They may be supported by a number of secondary emergency services, such as specialist rescue teams.
In addition volunteers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the local Red Cross branch or St. John Ambulance may provide immediate practical assistance, from first aid provision to providing tea and coffee. A well rehearsed emergency plan developed as part of the preparedness phase enables efficient coordination of rescue efforts.[4] Emergency plan rehearsal is essential to achieve optimal output with limited resources. In the response phase, medical assets will be used in accordance with the appropriate triage of the affected victims.
Where required, search and rescue efforts commence at an early stage. Depending on injuries sustained by the victim, outside temperature, and victim access to air and water, the vast majority of those affected by a disaster will die within 72 hours after impact.[5]
Individuals are often compelled to volunteer directly after a disaster. Volunteers can be both a help and a hindrance to emergency management and other relief agencies.
[edit] Recovery
The aim of the recovery phase is to restore the affected area to its previous state. It differs from the response phase in its focus; recovery efforts are concerned with issues and decisions that must be made after immediate needs are addressed.[1] Recovery efforts are primarily concerned with actions that involve rebuilding destroyed property, re-employment, and the repair of other essential infrastructure.[1] An important aspect of effective recovery efforts is taking advantage of a ‘window of opportunity’[4] for the implementation of mitigative measures that might otherwise be unpopular. Citizens of the affected area are more likely to accept more mitigative changes when a recent disaster is in fresh memory.
In the United States, the National Response Plan dictates how the resources provided by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 will be used in recovery efforts.[1] It is the Federal government that often provides the most technical and financial assistance for recovery efforts in the United States.[1]
[edit] Phases and personal activities
[edit] Mitigation
Personal mitigation is mainly about knowing and avoiding unnecessary risks. This includes an assessment of possible risks to personal/family health and to personal property.
One example of mitigation would be to avoid buying property that is exposed to hazards, e.g. in a flood plain, in areas of subsidence or landslides. Homeowners may not be aware of a property being exposed to a hazard until it strikes. However, specialists can be hired to conduct risk identification and assessment surveys. Purchase of insurance covering the most prominent identified risks is a common measure.
Personal structural mitigation in earthquake prone areas includes installation of an Earthquake Valve to instantly shut off the natural gas supply to a property, seismic retrofits of property and the securing of items inside a building to enhance household seismic safety. The latter may include the mounting of furniture, refrigerators, water heaters and breakables to the walls, and the addition of cabinet latches. In flood prone areas houses can be built on poles, as in much of southern Asia. In areas prone to prolonged electricity black-outs installation of a generator would be an example of an optimal structural mitigation measure. The construction of storm cellars and fallout shelters are further examples of personal mitigative actions.
[edit] Preparedness
See also hurricane preparedness and earthquake preparedness
Unlike mitigation activities, which are aimed at preventing a disaster from occurring, personal preparedness focuses on preparing equipment and procedures for use when a disaster occurs, i.e. planning. Preparedness measures can take many forms including the construction of shelters, installation of warning devices, creation of back-up life-line services (e.g. power, water, sewage), and rehearsing evacuation plans. Two simple measures can help prepare the individual for sitting out the event or evacuating, as necessary. For evacuation, a disaster supplies kit may be prepared and for sheltering purposes a stockpile of supplies may be created. The preparation of a survival kit, commonly referred to as a "72-hour kit", is often advocated by authorities. These kits may include food, medicine, flashlights, candles and money.[6]
[edit] Response
The response phase of an emergency may commence with search and rescue but in all cases the focus will quickly turn to fulfilling the basic humanitarian needs of the affected population. This assistance may be provided by national or international agencies and organisations. Effective coordination of disaster assistance is often crucial, particularly when many organisations respond and local emergency management agency (LEMA) capacity has been exceeded by the demand or diminished by the disaster itself.
On a personal level the response can take the shape either of a home confinement or an evacuation. In a home confinement a family would be prepared to fend for themselves in their home for many days without any form of outside support. In an evacuation, a family leaves the area by automobile (or other mode of transportation) taking with them the maximum amount of supplies they can carry, possibly including a tent for shelter. If mechanical transportation is not available, evacuation on foot would ideally include carrying at least three days of supplies and rain-tight bedding, a tarpaulin and a bedroll of blankets being the minimum.
[edit] Recovery
The recovery phase starts after the immediate threat to human life has subsided. During reconstruction it is recommended to consider the location or construction material of the property.
The most extreme home confinement scenarios include war, famine and severe epidemics and may last a year or more. Then recovery will take place inside the home. Planners for these events usually buy bulk foods and appropriate storage and preparation equipment, and eat the food as part of normal life. A simple balanced diet can be constructed from vitamin pills, whole-meal wheat, beans, dried milk, corn, and cooking oil.[7] One should add vegetables, fruits, spices and meats, both prepared and fresh-gardened, when possible.
[edit] As a profession
Emergency managers are trained in a wide variety of disciplines that support them through out the emergency life-cycle. Professional emergency managers can focus on government and community preparedness (Continuity of Operations/Continuity of Government Planning), or private business preparedness (Business Continuity Management Planning). Training is provided by local, state, federal and private organizations and ranges from public information and media relations to high-level incident command and tactical skills such as studying a terrorist bombing site or controlling an emergency scene.
In the past, the field of emergency management has been populated mostly by people with a military or first responder background. Currently, the population in the field has become more diverse, with many experts comming from a variety of backgrounds and having no military or first responder history at all. Educational opportunities are increasing for those seeking undergraduate and graduate degrees in emergency management or a related field.
Professional certifications such as Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) and Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) are becoming more common as the need for high professional standards is recognized by the emergency management community, especially in the United States.
[edit] Tools
In recent years the continuity feature of emergency management has resulted in a new concept, Emergency Management Information Systems (EMIS). For continuity and interoperability between emergency management stakeholders, EMIS supports the emergency management process by providing an infrastructure that integrates emergency plans at all levels of government and non-government involvement and by utilizing the management of all related resources (including human and other resources) for all four phases of emergencies.
[edit] International organisations
[edit] International Association of Emergency Managers
The International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting the goals of saving lives and protecting property during emergencies and disasters. The mission of IAEM is to serve its members by providing information, networking and professional opportunities, and to advance the emergency management profession.
[edit] Red Cross/Red Crescent
National Red Cross/Red Crescent societies often have pivotal roles in responding to emergencies. Additionally, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC, or "The Federation") may deploy assessment teams to the affected country. They specialize in the recovery component of the emergency management framework.
[edit] United Nations
Within the United Nations system responsibility for emergency response rests with the Resident Coordinator within the affected country. However, in practice international response will be coordinated, if requested by the affected country’s government, by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA), by deploying a UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team.
[edit] National organisations
[edit] Australia
The key federal coordinating and advisory body for emergency management in Australia is Emergency Management Australia (EMA). Each state has its own State Emergency Service. The Emergency Call Service provides a national 000 emergency telephone number to contact state Police, Fire and Ambulance services. Arrangements are in place for state and federal cooperation.
[edit] Canada
Public Safety Canada (PSC) is Canada’s national emergency management agency. Each province is required to set up their Emergency Management Organizations.
PSC coordinates and supports the efforts of federal organizations ensuring national security and the safety of Canadians. They also work with other levels of government, first responders, community groups, the private sector (operators of critical infrastructure) and other nations.
PSC’s work is based on a wide range of policies and legislation through the Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Act which defines the powers, duties and functions of PSEPC are outlined. Other acts are specific to fields such as corrections, emergency management, law enforcement, and national security.
[edit] Germany
In Germany the Federal Government controls the German Katastrophenschutz (disaster relief) and Zivilschutz (civil defense) programs. The German fire department and the Technisches Hilfswerk (Federal Agency for Technical Relief, THW) are part of these programs. The German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) can be deployed for disaster relief operations.
[edit] New Zealand
In New Zealand the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management (MCDEM) has statutory authority for managing any state of emergency declared by the central government. Local government bodies such as city and regional councils have their own emergency management agencies to manage localised states of emergency, but these all defer to the MCDEM in the event of a national state of emergency. The Wellington Emergency Management Office (WEMO) occupies a purpose built building with its own water, electricity, communications and sewerage facilities to ensure continued operations in the event of an emergency or disaster.
[edit] Russia
In Russia the Ministry of Emergency Situations (EMERCOM) is engaged in fire fighting, Civil Defense, Search and Rescue, including rescue services after natural and human-made disasters.
[edit] United Kingdom
The United Kingdom adjusted its focus on emergency management following the 2000 UK fuel protests, severe UK flooding in the same year and the 2001 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth crisis. This resulted in the creation of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (CCA) which legislated the responsibilities of all category one responders regarding an emergency response. The CCA is managed by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat through regional disaster centres and at the local authority level.
Disaster Management training is generally conducted at the local level by the organisations involved in any response. This is consolidated through professional courses that can be undertaken at the Emergency Planning College. Furthemore diplomas and undergraduate qualifications can be gained throughout the country - the first course of this type was carried out by Coventry University in 1994. Institute of Emergency Management is a charity organization, established in 1996, to provide consulting services for the government, media and commercial sectors.
The UK’s largest ever emergency exercise was carried out on 20 May 2007 near Belfast, Northern Ireland, and involved the scenario of a plane crash landing at Belfast International Airport. Staff from five hospitals and three airports participated in the drill, and almost 150 international observers assessed its effectiveness.[8]
[edit] United States
Under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is lead agency for emergency management. The HAZUS software package developed by FEMA is central in the risk assessment process in the country. The United States and its territories are covered by one of ten regions for FEMA’s emergency management purposes. Tribal, state, county and local governments develop emergency management programs/departments and operate hierarchially within each region. Emergencies are managed at the most-local level possible, utilizing mutual aid agreements with adjacent jurisdictions. If the emergency is terrorist related or if declared an "Incident of National Significance", the Secretary of Homeland Security will initiate the National Response Plan (NRP). Under this plan the involvement of federal resources will be made possible, integrating in with the local, county, state, or tribal entities. Management will continue to be handled at the lowest possible level utilizing the National Incident Management System (NIMS).
The Citizen Corps is an organization of volunteer service programs, administered locally and coordinated nationally by DHS, which seek to mitigate disaster and prepare the population for emergency response through public education, training, and outreach. Community Emergency Response Teams are a Citizen Corps program focused on disaster preparedness and teaching basic disaster response skills. These volunteer teams are utilized to provide emergency support when disaster overwhelms the conventional emergency services.
(Redirected from Disaster management)
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Mitigation redirects here; for use of that term in criminal law, see extenuating circumstances.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Phases and professional activities
o 1.1 Mitigation
o 1.2 Preparedness
o 1.3 Response
o 1.4 Recovery
* 2 Phases and personal activities
o 2.1 Mitigation
o 2.2 Preparedness
o 2.3 Response
o 2.4 Recovery
* 3 As a profession
o 3.1 Tools
* 4 International organisations
o 4.1 International Association of Emergency Managers
o 4.2 Red Cross/Red Crescent
o 4.3 United Nations
* 5 National organisations
o 5.1 Australia
o 5.2 Canada
o 5.3 Germany
o 5.4 New Zealand
o 5.5 Russia
o 5.6 United Kingdom
o 5.7 United States
* 6 Academic resources
* 7 Footnotes
* 8 See also
* 9 External links
Emergency management (or disaster management) is the discipline of dealing with and avoiding risks.[1] It is a discipline that involves preparing, supporting, and rebuilding society when natural or human-made disasters occur. In general, any Emergency management is the continuous process by which all individuals, groups, and communities manage hazards in an effort to avoid or ameliorate the impact of disasters resulting from the hazards. Actions taken depend in part on perceptions of risk of those exposed.[2] Effective emergency management relies on thorough integration of emergency plans at all levels of government and non-government involvement. Activities at each level (individual, group, community) affect the other levels. It is common to place the responsibility for governmental emergency management with the institutions for civil defense or within the conventional structure of the emergency services. In the private sector, emergency management is sometimes referred to as business continuity planning.
Emergency Management is one of a number of terms which, since the end of the Cold War, have largely replaced Civil defense, whose original focus was protecting civilians from military attack. Modern thinking focuses on a more general intent to protect the civilian population in times of peace as well as in times of war. Another current term, Civil Protection is widely used within the European Union and refers to government-approved systems and resources whose task is to protect the civilian population, primarily in the event of natural and human-made disasters. Within EU countries the term Crisis Management emphasises the political and security dimension rather than measures to satisfy the immediate needs of the civilian population.
[edit] Phases and professional activities
The nature of emergency management is highly dependent on economic and social conditions local to the emergency, or disaster. This is true to the extent that some disaster relief experts such as Fred Cuny have noted that in a sense the only real disasters are economic. [3] Experts, such as Cuny, have long noted that the cycle of emergency management must include long-term work on infrastructure, public awareness, and even human justice issues. This is particularly important in developing nations. The process of emergency management involves four phases: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.
A graphic representation of the four phases in emergency management.
A graphic representation of the four phases in emergency management.
[edit] Mitigation
Mitigation efforts attempt to prevent hazards from developing into disasters altogether, or to reduce the effects of disasters when they occur. The mitigation phase differs from the other phases because it focuses on long-term measures for reducing or eliminating risk.[1] The implementation of mitigation strategies can be considered a part of the recovery process if applied after a disaster occurs.[1] However, even if applied as part of recovery efforts, actions that reduce or eliminate risk over time are still considered mitigation efforts.[1]
Mitigative measures can be structural or non-structural. Structural measures use technological solutions, like flood levees. Non-structural measures include legislation, land-use planning (e.g. the designation of nonessential land like parks to be used as flood zones), and insurance. Mitigation is the most cost-efficient method for reducing the impact of hazards. However, mitigation is not always suitable and structural mitigation in particular may have adverse effects on the ecosystem.
A precursor activity to the mitigation is the identification of risks. Physical risk assessment refers to the process of identifying and evaluating hazards.[1] In risk assessment, various hazards (e.g. earthquakes, floods, riots) within a certain area are identified. Each hazard poses a risk to the population within the area assessed.[2] The hazard-specific risk (Rh) combines both the probability and the level of impact of a specific hazard. The equation below gives that the hazard times the populations’ vulnerability to that hazard produce a risk. Catastrophe modeling tools are used to support the calculation. The higher the risk, the more urgent that the hazard specific vulnerabilities are targeted by mitigation and preparedness efforts. However, if there is no vulnerability there will be no risk, e.g. an earthquake occurring in a desert where nobody lives.
\mathbf{R_h} = \mathbf{H} \times \mathbf{V_h} \,
[edit] Preparedness
In the preparedness phase, emergency managers develop plans of action for when the disaster strikes. Common preparedness measures include the
* communication plans with easily understandable terminology and chain of command
* development and practice of multi-agency coordination and incident command
* proper maintenance and training of emergency services
* development and exercise of emergency population warning methods combined with emergency shelters and evacuation plans
* stockpiling, inventory, and maintenance of supplies and equipment
An efficient preparedness measure is an emergency operations center (EOC) combined with a practiced region-wide doctrine for managing emergencies. Another preparedness measure is to develop a volunteer response capability among civilian populations. Since, volunteer response is not as predictable and plannable as professional response, volunteers are most effectively deployed on the periphery of an emergency.
[edit] Response
The response phase includes the mobilization of the necessary emergency services and first responders in the disaster area. This is likely to include a first wave of core emergency services, such as firefighters, police and ambulance crews. They may be supported by a number of secondary emergency services, such as specialist rescue teams.
In addition volunteers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the local Red Cross branch or St. John Ambulance may provide immediate practical assistance, from first aid provision to providing tea and coffee. A well rehearsed emergency plan developed as part of the preparedness phase enables efficient coordination of rescue efforts.[4] Emergency plan rehearsal is essential to achieve optimal output with limited resources. In the response phase, medical assets will be used in accordance with the appropriate triage of the affected victims.
Where required, search and rescue efforts commence at an early stage. Depending on injuries sustained by the victim, outside temperature, and victim access to air and water, the vast majority of those affected by a disaster will die within 72 hours after impact.[5]
Individuals are often compelled to volunteer directly after a disaster. Volunteers can be both a help and a hindrance to emergency management and other relief agencies.
[edit] Recovery
The aim of the recovery phase is to restore the affected area to its previous state. It differs from the response phase in its focus; recovery efforts are concerned with issues and decisions that must be made after immediate needs are addressed.[1] Recovery efforts are primarily concerned with actions that involve rebuilding destroyed property, re-employment, and the repair of other essential infrastructure.[1] An important aspect of effective recovery efforts is taking advantage of a ‘window of opportunity’[4] for the implementation of mitigative measures that might otherwise be unpopular. Citizens of the affected area are more likely to accept more mitigative changes when a recent disaster is in fresh memory.
In the United States, the National Response Plan dictates how the resources provided by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 will be used in recovery efforts.[1] It is the Federal government that often provides the most technical and financial assistance for recovery efforts in the United States.[1]
[edit] Phases and personal activities
[edit] Mitigation
Personal mitigation is mainly about knowing and avoiding unnecessary risks. This includes an assessment of possible risks to personal/family health and to personal property.
One example of mitigation would be to avoid buying property that is exposed to hazards, e.g. in a flood plain, in areas of subsidence or landslides. Homeowners may not be aware of a property being exposed to a hazard until it strikes. However, specialists can be hired to conduct risk identification and assessment surveys. Purchase of insurance covering the most prominent identified risks is a common measure.
Personal structural mitigation in earthquake prone areas includes installation of an Earthquake Valve to instantly shut off the natural gas supply to a property, seismic retrofits of property and the securing of items inside a building to enhance household seismic safety. The latter may include the mounting of furniture, refrigerators, water heaters and breakables to the walls, and the addition of cabinet latches. In flood prone areas houses can be built on poles, as in much of southern Asia. In areas prone to prolonged electricity black-outs installation of a generator would be an example of an optimal structural mitigation measure. The construction of storm cellars and fallout shelters are further examples of personal mitigative actions.
[edit] Preparedness
See also hurricane preparedness and earthquake preparedness
Unlike mitigation activities, which are aimed at preventing a disaster from occurring, personal preparedness focuses on preparing equipment and procedures for use when a disaster occurs, i.e. planning. Preparedness measures can take many forms including the construction of shelters, installation of warning devices, creation of back-up life-line services (e.g. power, water, sewage), and rehearsing evacuation plans. Two simple measures can help prepare the individual for sitting out the event or evacuating, as necessary. For evacuation, a disaster supplies kit may be prepared and for sheltering purposes a stockpile of supplies may be created. The preparation of a survival kit, commonly referred to as a "72-hour kit", is often advocated by authorities. These kits may include food, medicine, flashlights, candles and money.[6]
[edit] Response
The response phase of an emergency may commence with search and rescue but in all cases the focus will quickly turn to fulfilling the basic humanitarian needs of the affected population. This assistance may be provided by national or international agencies and organisations. Effective coordination of disaster assistance is often crucial, particularly when many organisations respond and local emergency management agency (LEMA) capacity has been exceeded by the demand or diminished by the disaster itself.
On a personal level the response can take the shape either of a home confinement or an evacuation. In a home confinement a family would be prepared to fend for themselves in their home for many days without any form of outside support. In an evacuation, a family leaves the area by automobile (or other mode of transportation) taking with them the maximum amount of supplies they can carry, possibly including a tent for shelter. If mechanical transportation is not available, evacuation on foot would ideally include carrying at least three days of supplies and rain-tight bedding, a tarpaulin and a bedroll of blankets being the minimum.
[edit] Recovery
The recovery phase starts after the immediate threat to human life has subsided. During reconstruction it is recommended to consider the location or construction material of the property.
The most extreme home confinement scenarios include war, famine and severe epidemics and may last a year or more. Then recovery will take place inside the home. Planners for these events usually buy bulk foods and appropriate storage and preparation equipment, and eat the food as part of normal life. A simple balanced diet can be constructed from vitamin pills, whole-meal wheat, beans, dried milk, corn, and cooking oil.[7] One should add vegetables, fruits, spices and meats, both prepared and fresh-gardened, when possible.
[edit] As a profession
Emergency managers are trained in a wide variety of disciplines that support them through out the emergency life-cycle. Professional emergency managers can focus on government and community preparedness (Continuity of Operations/Continuity of Government Planning), or private business preparedness (Business Continuity Management Planning). Training is provided by local, state, federal and private organizations and ranges from public information and media relations to high-level incident command and tactical skills such as studying a terrorist bombing site or controlling an emergency scene.
In the past, the field of emergency management has been populated mostly by people with a military or first responder background. Currently, the population in the field has become more diverse, with many experts comming from a variety of backgrounds and having no military or first responder history at all. Educational opportunities are increasing for those seeking undergraduate and graduate degrees in emergency management or a related field.
Professional certifications such as Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) and Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) are becoming more common as the need for high professional standards is recognized by the emergency management community, especially in the United States.
[edit] Tools
In recent years the continuity feature of emergency management has resulted in a new concept, Emergency Management Information Systems (EMIS). For continuity and interoperability between emergency management stakeholders, EMIS supports the emergency management process by providing an infrastructure that integrates emergency plans at all levels of government and non-government involvement and by utilizing the management of all related resources (including human and other resources) for all four phases of emergencies.
[edit] International organisations
[edit] International Association of Emergency Managers
The International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting the goals of saving lives and protecting property during emergencies and disasters. The mission of IAEM is to serve its members by providing information, networking and professional opportunities, and to advance the emergency management profession.
[edit] Red Cross/Red Crescent
National Red Cross/Red Crescent societies often have pivotal roles in responding to emergencies. Additionally, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC, or "The Federation") may deploy assessment teams to the affected country. They specialize in the recovery component of the emergency management framework.
[edit] United Nations
Within the United Nations system responsibility for emergency response rests with the Resident Coordinator within the affected country. However, in practice international response will be coordinated, if requested by the affected country’s government, by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA), by deploying a UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team.
[edit] National organisations
[edit] Australia
The key federal coordinating and advisory body for emergency management in Australia is Emergency Management Australia (EMA). Each state has its own State Emergency Service. The Emergency Call Service provides a national 000 emergency telephone number to contact state Police, Fire and Ambulance services. Arrangements are in place for state and federal cooperation.
[edit] Canada
Public Safety Canada (PSC) is Canada’s national emergency management agency. Each province is required to set up their Emergency Management Organizations.
PSC coordinates and supports the efforts of federal organizations ensuring national security and the safety of Canadians. They also work with other levels of government, first responders, community groups, the private sector (operators of critical infrastructure) and other nations.
PSC’s work is based on a wide range of policies and legislation through the Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Act which defines the powers, duties and functions of PSEPC are outlined. Other acts are specific to fields such as corrections, emergency management, law enforcement, and national security.
[edit] Germany
In Germany the Federal Government controls the German Katastrophenschutz (disaster relief) and Zivilschutz (civil defense) programs. The German fire department and the Technisches Hilfswerk (Federal Agency for Technical Relief, THW) are part of these programs. The German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) can be deployed for disaster relief operations.
[edit] New Zealand
In New Zealand the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management (MCDEM) has statutory authority for managing any state of emergency declared by the central government. Local government bodies such as city and regional councils have their own emergency management agencies to manage localised states of emergency, but these all defer to the MCDEM in the event of a national state of emergency. The Wellington Emergency Management Office (WEMO) occupies a purpose built building with its own water, electricity, communications and sewerage facilities to ensure continued operations in the event of an emergency or disaster.
[edit] Russia
In Russia the Ministry of Emergency Situations (EMERCOM) is engaged in fire fighting, Civil Defense, Search and Rescue, including rescue services after natural and human-made disasters.
[edit] United Kingdom
The United Kingdom adjusted its focus on emergency management following the 2000 UK fuel protests, severe UK flooding in the same year and the 2001 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth crisis. This resulted in the creation of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (CCA) which legislated the responsibilities of all category one responders regarding an emergency response. The CCA is managed by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat through regional disaster centres and at the local authority level.
Disaster Management training is generally conducted at the local level by the organisations involved in any response. This is consolidated through professional courses that can be undertaken at the Emergency Planning College. Furthemore diplomas and undergraduate qualifications can be gained throughout the country - the first course of this type was carried out by Coventry University in 1994. Institute of Emergency Management is a charity organization, established in 1996, to provide consulting services for the government, media and commercial sectors.
The UK’s largest ever emergency exercise was carried out on 20 May 2007 near Belfast, Northern Ireland, and involved the scenario of a plane crash landing at Belfast International Airport. Staff from five hospitals and three airports participated in the drill, and almost 150 international observers assessed its effectiveness.[8]
[edit] United States
Under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is lead agency for emergency management. The HAZUS software package developed by FEMA is central in the risk assessment process in the country. The United States and its territories are covered by one of ten regions for FEMA’s emergency management purposes. Tribal, state, county and local governments develop emergency management programs/departments and operate hierarchially within each region. Emergencies are managed at the most-local level possible, utilizing mutual aid agreements with adjacent jurisdictions. If the emergency is terrorist related or if declared an "Incident of National Significance", the Secretary of Homeland Security will initiate the National Response Plan (NRP). Under this plan the involvement of federal resources will be made possible, integrating in with the local, county, state, or tribal entities. Management will continue to be handled at the lowest possible level utilizing the National Incident Management System (NIMS).
The Citizen Corps is an organization of volunteer service programs, administered locally and coordinated nationally by DHS, which seek to mitigate disaster and prepare the population for emergency response through public education, training, and outreach. Community Emergency Response Teams are a Citizen Corps program focused on disaster preparedness and teaching basic disaster response skills. These volunteer teams are utilized to provide emergency support when disaster overwhelms the conventional emergency services.
Human resource management
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Human resources management)
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Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets - the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business.[1] The terms "human resource management" and "human resources" (HR) have largely replaced the term "personnel management" as a description of the processes involved in managing people in organizations.[2] Human Resource management is evolving rapidly. Human resource management is both an academic theory and a business practice that addresses the theoretical and practical techniques of managing a workforce.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Synonyms
* 2 Academic theory
o 2.1 Critical Academic Theory
* 3 Business practice
* 4 Careers
* 5 Professional organizations
* 6 See also
* 7 References
[edit] Synonyms
Its Synonyms include:
* Personnel administration
* Personnel management
* Manpower management
* Industrial management[3][4]
But these traditional expressions are becoming less common for the theoretical discipline. Sometimes even industrial relations and employee relations are confusingly listed as synonyms,[5] although these normally refer to the relationship between management and workers and the behavior of workers in companies.
The theoretical discipline is based primarily on the assumption that employees are individuals with varying goals and needs, and as such should not be thought of as basic business resources, such as trucks and filing cabinets. The field takes a positive view of workers, assuming that virtually all wish to contribute to the enterprise productively, and that the main obstacles to their endeavors are lack of knowledge, insufficient training, and failures of process.
HRM is seen by practitioners in the field as a more innovative view of workplace management than the traditional approach. Its techniques force the managers of an enterprise to express their goals with specificity so that they can be understood and undertaken by the workforce, and to provide the resources needed for them to successfully accomplish their assignments. As such, HRM techniques, when properly practiced, are expressive of the goals and operating practices of the enterprise overall. HRM is also seen by many to have a key role in risk reduction within organistions.[6]
Synonyms such as personnel management are often used in a more restricted sense to describe activities that are necessary in the recruiting of a workforce, providing its members with payroll and benefits, and administrating their work-life needs.
[edit] Academic theory
The goal of human resource management is to help an organization to meet strategic goals by attracting, and maintaining employees and also to manage them effectively. The basic premise of the academic theory of HRM is that humans are not machines, therefore we need to have an interdisciplinary examination of people in the workplace. Fields such as psychology, industrial engineering, industrial and organizational psychology, industrial relations, sociology, and critical theories: postmodernism, post-structuralism play a major role. Many colleges and universities offer bachelor and master degrees in Human Resources Management.
One widely used scheme to describe the role of HRM, developed by Dave Ulrich, defines 4 fields for the HRM function[7]:
* Strategic business partner
* Change agent
* Employee champion
* Administration
However, many HR functions these days struggle to get beyond the roles of administration and employee champion, and are seen rather as reactive than strategically proactive partners for the top management. In addition, HR organizations also have the difficulty in proving how their activities and processes add value to the company. Only in the recent years HR scholars and HR professionals are focusing to develop models that can measure if HR adds value.[8]
[edit] Critical Academic Theory
Postmodernism plays an important part in Academic Theory and particularly in Critical Theory. Indeed Karen Legge in 'Human Resource Management: Rhetorics and Realities' posses the debate of whether HRM is a modernist project or a postmodern discourse (Legge 2004)? In many ways, critically or not, many writers contend that HRM itself is a movement away from the modernist traditions of personnel (man as machine) towards a postmodernist view of HRM man as individuals. Critiques include the notion that because 'Human' is the subject we should recognise that people are complex and that it is only through various discourses that we understand the world. Man is not Machine, no matter what attempts are made to change it i.e. Fordism / Taylorism, McDonaldisation (Modernism).
Critical Theory also questions whether HRM is the pursuit of "attitudinal shaping" (Wilkinson 1998), particularly when considering empowerment, or perhaps more precisely pseudo-empowerment - as the critical perspective notes.
[edit] Business practice
Human resources management comprises several processes. Together they are supposed to achieve the above mentioned goal. These processes can be performed in an HR department, but some tasks can also be outsourced or performed by line-managers or other departments.
* Workforce planning
* Recruitment (sometimes separated into attraction and selection)
* Induction and Orientation
* Skills management
* Training and development
* Personnel administration
* Compensation in wage or salary
* Time management
* Travel management (sometimes assigned to accounting rather than HRM)
* Payroll (sometimes assigned to accounting rather than HRM)
* Employee benefits administration
* Personnel cost planning
* Performance appraisal
[edit] Careers
The sort of careers available in HRM are varied. There are generalist HRM jobs such as human resource assistant. There are careers involved with employment, recruitment and placement and these are usually conducted by interviewers, EEO (Equal_Opportunity_Employment) specialists or college recruiters. Training and development specialism is often conducted by trainers and orientation specialists. Compensation and benefits tasks are handled by compensation analysts, salary administrators, and benefits administrators.
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Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets - the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business.[1] The terms "human resource management" and "human resources" (HR) have largely replaced the term "personnel management" as a description of the processes involved in managing people in organizations.[2] Human Resource management is evolving rapidly. Human resource management is both an academic theory and a business practice that addresses the theoretical and practical techniques of managing a workforce.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Synonyms
* 2 Academic theory
o 2.1 Critical Academic Theory
* 3 Business practice
* 4 Careers
* 5 Professional organizations
* 6 See also
* 7 References
[edit] Synonyms
Its Synonyms include:
* Personnel administration
* Personnel management
* Manpower management
* Industrial management[3][4]
But these traditional expressions are becoming less common for the theoretical discipline. Sometimes even industrial relations and employee relations are confusingly listed as synonyms,[5] although these normally refer to the relationship between management and workers and the behavior of workers in companies.
The theoretical discipline is based primarily on the assumption that employees are individuals with varying goals and needs, and as such should not be thought of as basic business resources, such as trucks and filing cabinets. The field takes a positive view of workers, assuming that virtually all wish to contribute to the enterprise productively, and that the main obstacles to their endeavors are lack of knowledge, insufficient training, and failures of process.
HRM is seen by practitioners in the field as a more innovative view of workplace management than the traditional approach. Its techniques force the managers of an enterprise to express their goals with specificity so that they can be understood and undertaken by the workforce, and to provide the resources needed for them to successfully accomplish their assignments. As such, HRM techniques, when properly practiced, are expressive of the goals and operating practices of the enterprise overall. HRM is also seen by many to have a key role in risk reduction within organistions.[6]
Synonyms such as personnel management are often used in a more restricted sense to describe activities that are necessary in the recruiting of a workforce, providing its members with payroll and benefits, and administrating their work-life needs.
[edit] Academic theory
The goal of human resource management is to help an organization to meet strategic goals by attracting, and maintaining employees and also to manage them effectively. The basic premise of the academic theory of HRM is that humans are not machines, therefore we need to have an interdisciplinary examination of people in the workplace. Fields such as psychology, industrial engineering, industrial and organizational psychology, industrial relations, sociology, and critical theories: postmodernism, post-structuralism play a major role. Many colleges and universities offer bachelor and master degrees in Human Resources Management.
One widely used scheme to describe the role of HRM, developed by Dave Ulrich, defines 4 fields for the HRM function[7]:
* Strategic business partner
* Change agent
* Employee champion
* Administration
However, many HR functions these days struggle to get beyond the roles of administration and employee champion, and are seen rather as reactive than strategically proactive partners for the top management. In addition, HR organizations also have the difficulty in proving how their activities and processes add value to the company. Only in the recent years HR scholars and HR professionals are focusing to develop models that can measure if HR adds value.[8]
[edit] Critical Academic Theory
Postmodernism plays an important part in Academic Theory and particularly in Critical Theory. Indeed Karen Legge in 'Human Resource Management: Rhetorics and Realities' posses the debate of whether HRM is a modernist project or a postmodern discourse (Legge 2004)? In many ways, critically or not, many writers contend that HRM itself is a movement away from the modernist traditions of personnel (man as machine) towards a postmodernist view of HRM man as individuals. Critiques include the notion that because 'Human' is the subject we should recognise that people are complex and that it is only through various discourses that we understand the world. Man is not Machine, no matter what attempts are made to change it i.e. Fordism / Taylorism, McDonaldisation (Modernism).
Critical Theory also questions whether HRM is the pursuit of "attitudinal shaping" (Wilkinson 1998), particularly when considering empowerment, or perhaps more precisely pseudo-empowerment - as the critical perspective notes.
[edit] Business practice
Human resources management comprises several processes. Together they are supposed to achieve the above mentioned goal. These processes can be performed in an HR department, but some tasks can also be outsourced or performed by line-managers or other departments.
* Workforce planning
* Recruitment (sometimes separated into attraction and selection)
* Induction and Orientation
* Skills management
* Training and development
* Personnel administration
* Compensation in wage or salary
* Time management
* Travel management (sometimes assigned to accounting rather than HRM)
* Payroll (sometimes assigned to accounting rather than HRM)
* Employee benefits administration
* Personnel cost planning
* Performance appraisal
[edit] Careers
The sort of careers available in HRM are varied. There are generalist HRM jobs such as human resource assistant. There are careers involved with employment, recruitment and placement and these are usually conducted by interviewers, EEO (Equal_Opportunity_Employment) specialists or college recruiters. Training and development specialism is often conducted by trainers and orientation specialists. Compensation and benefits tasks are handled by compensation analysts, salary administrators, and benefits administrators.
Accounting Management
Accounting Management (Business) is the practical application of management techniques to control and report on the financial health of the organization. This involves the analysis, planning, implementation, and control of programs designed to provide financial data reporting for managerial decision making. This includes the maintenance of bank accounts, developing financial statements, cash flow and financial performance analysis. Accounting management is a mandatory knowledge module of any MBA program.
Accounting (IT) management: Accounting is often referred to as billing management. The goal is to gather usage statistics for users.
Using the statistics the users can be billed and usage quota can be enforced.
Examples:
* Disk usage
* Link utilisation
* CPU time
Accounting (IT) management: Accounting is often referred to as billing management. The goal is to gather usage statistics for users.
Using the statistics the users can be billed and usage quota can be enforced.
Examples:
* Disk usage
* Link utilisation
* CPU time
The importance of control
At least two perspectives on role of control exist:
1. Top management expects to control everything, making all decisions, while middle and lower managers implement decisions, and production workers operate only as instructed
2. Top management does not decide the "right" way to do something, and lower-level staff become involved in decision-making processes.
3. Some companies use "slopey shoulder syndrome" style management, where people will take credit for when things go right. However when things go wrong they will pass the blame and responsibility to people either below or adjacent in the company structure.
[edit] Managerial levels/hierarchy
The management of a large organisation may have three levels:
1. Senior management (or "top management" or "upper management")
2. Middle management
3. Low-level management, such as supervisors or team-leaders
[edit] Areas and categories and implementations of management
* Accounting management
* Agile management
* Association management
* Capability Management
* Change management
* Communication management
* Constraint management
* Cost management
* Crisis management
* Critical management studies
* Customer relationship management
* Design management
* Disaster management
* Earned value management
* Educational management
* Enterprise management
* Environmental management
* Facility management
* Financial management
* Human resources management
* Information technology management
* Innovation management
* Interim management
* Inventory management
* Knowledge management
* Land management
* Leadership management
* Logistics management
* Lifecycle management
* Marketing management
* Materials management
* Operations management
* Organization development
* Perception management
* Program management
* Project management
* Process management
* Performance management
* Product management
* Public administration
* Public management
* Quality management
* Records management
* Research management
* Resource management
* Risk management
* Skills management
* Social entrepreneurship
* Spend management
* Strategic management
* Stress management
* Supply chain management
* Systems management
* Talent management
* Time management
* Visual management
1. Top management expects to control everything, making all decisions, while middle and lower managers implement decisions, and production workers operate only as instructed
2. Top management does not decide the "right" way to do something, and lower-level staff become involved in decision-making processes.
3. Some companies use "slopey shoulder syndrome" style management, where people will take credit for when things go right. However when things go wrong they will pass the blame and responsibility to people either below or adjacent in the company structure.
[edit] Managerial levels/hierarchy
The management of a large organisation may have three levels:
1. Senior management (or "top management" or "upper management")
2. Middle management
3. Low-level management, such as supervisors or team-leaders
[edit] Areas and categories and implementations of management
* Accounting management
* Agile management
* Association management
* Capability Management
* Change management
* Communication management
* Constraint management
* Cost management
* Crisis management
* Critical management studies
* Customer relationship management
* Design management
* Disaster management
* Earned value management
* Educational management
* Enterprise management
* Environmental management
* Facility management
* Financial management
* Human resources management
* Information technology management
* Innovation management
* Interim management
* Inventory management
* Knowledge management
* Land management
* Leadership management
* Logistics management
* Lifecycle management
* Marketing management
* Materials management
* Operations management
* Organization development
* Perception management
* Program management
* Project management
* Process management
* Performance management
* Product management
* Public administration
* Public management
* Quality management
* Records management
* Research management
* Resource management
* Risk management
* Skills management
* Social entrepreneurship
* Spend management
* Strategic management
* Stress management
* Supply chain management
* Systems management
* Talent management
* Time management
* Visual management
Management functions
[edit] Different levels of management
[edit] Top-level management
* Top-level managers require an extensive knowledge of management roles and skills.
* They have to be very aware of external factors such as markets.
* Their decisions are generally of a long-term nature.
* They are responsible for strategic decisions.
[edit] Middle management
* Mid-level managers have a specialised understanding of certain managerial tasks.
* They are responsible for and carrying out the decisions made by top-level management.
* They are responsible for tactical decisions.
[edit] Lower management
* This level of management ensures that the decisions and plans taken by the other two are carried out.
* Lower-level managers' decisions are generally short-term ones.
* They are responsible for operational decisions.
[edit] Good qualities for a general manager
* Has educational and management qualifications, and experience
* Has experience in all of the business's departments
* Is able to coordinate the departments
* Is realistic in outlook regarding the business's prospects
* Has good interpersonal relationships
* Works for the good of the business
* Able to plan and act with creativity
* Believes in own abilities as well as colleagues'
[edit] Formation of the business policy
* The mission of the business is its most obvious purpose -- which may be, for example, to make soap.
* The objective of the business refers to the ends or activity at which a certain task is aimed.
* The business's policy is a guide that stipulates rules, regulations and objectives, and may be used in the managers' decision-making. It must be flexible and easily interpreted and understood by all employees.
* The business's strategy refers to the plan of action that it is going to take, as well as the resources that it will be using, to achieve its mission and objectives. It is a guideline to managers, stipulating how they ought to use best the factors of production to the business's advantage. Initially, it could help the managers decide on what type of business they want to form.
[edit] How to implement policies and strategies
* All policies and strategies must be discussed with all managerial personnel and staff.
* Managers must understand where and how they can implement their policies and strategies.
* A plan of action must be devised for each department.
* Policies and strategies must be reviewed regularly.
* Contingency plans must be devised in case the environment changes.
* Assessments of progress ought to be carried out regularly by top-level mangers.
* A good environment is required within the business.
[edit] The development of policies and strategies
* The missions, objectives, strengths and weaknesses of each department must be analysed to determine their roles in achieving the business's mission.
* The forecasting method develops a reliable picture of the business's future environment.
* A planning unit must be created to ensure that all plans are consistent and that policies and strategies are aimed at achieving the same mission and objectives.
* Contingency plans must be developed, just in case.
All policies must be discussed with all managerial personnel and staff that is required in the execution of any departmental policy
[edit] Where policies and strategies fit into the planning process
* They give mid- and lower-level managers a good idea of the future plans for each department.
* A framework is created whereby plans and decisions are made.
* Mid- and lower-level management may add their own plans to the business's strategic ones.
[edit] Basic elements of management
Management operates through various functions, often classified as planning, organizing, leading/motivating and controlling.
* Planning: deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week, next month, next year, over the next five years, etc.) and generating plans for action.
* Organizing: making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful carrying out of plans.
* Leading/Motivating: exhibiting skills in these areas for getting others to play an effective part in achieving plans.
* Controlling: monitoring -- checking progress against plans, which may need modification based on feedback.
[edit] Theoretical scope
Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth century, defined management as "the art of getting things done through people". [2] One can also think of management functionally, as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular basis and of adjusting some initial plan; or as the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Frenchman Henri Fayol [3] considers management to consist of five functions:
1. planning
2. organizing
3. leading
4. co-ordinating
5. controlling
Some people, however, find this definition, while useful, far too narrow. The phrase "management is what managers do" occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions, and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or class.
One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to "business administration", although this then excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in charities and in the public sector. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments which teach management as "business schools." Some institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term "management."
Speakers of English may also use the term "management" or "the management" as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation.
[edit] Historical development
Difficulties arise in tracing the history of management. Some see it (by definition) as a late modern (in the sense of late modernity) conceptualization. On those terms it cannot have a pre-modern history, only harbingers (such as stewards). Others, however, detect management-like activities in the pre-modern past. Some writers [Who?] trace the development of management-thought back to Sumerian traders and to the builders of the pyramids of ancient Egypt. Slave-owners through the centuries faced the problems of exploiting/motivating a dependent but sometimes unenthusiastic or recalcitrant workforce, but many pre-industrial enterprises, given their small scale, did not feel compelled to face the issues of management systematically. However, innovations such as the spread of Hindu-Arabic numerals (5th to 15th centuries) and the codification of double-entry book-keeping (1494) provided tools for management assessment, planning and control.
Given the scale of most commercial operations and the lack of mechanized record-keeping and recording before the industrial revolution, it made sense for most owners of enterprises in those times to carry out management functions by and for themselves. But with growing size and complexity of organizations, the split between owners (individuals, industrial dynasties or groups of shareholders) and day-to-day managers (independent specialists in planning and control) gradually became more common.
[edit] 19th century
Some argue [citation needed] that modern management as a discipline began as an off-shoot of economics in the 19th century. Classical economists such as Adam Smith (1723 - 1790) and John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873) provided a theoretical background to resource-allocation, production, and pricing issues. About the same time, innovators like Eli Whitney (1765 - 1825), James Watt (1736 - 1819), and Matthew Boulton (1728 - 1809) developed elements of technical production such as standardization, quality-control procedures, cost-accounting, interchangeability of parts, and work-planning. Many of these aspects of management existed in the pre-1861 slave-based sector of the US economy. That environment saw 4 million people, as the contemporary usages had it, "managed" in profitable quasi-mass production.
By the late 19th century, marginal economists Alfred Marshall (1842 - 1924) and Léon Walras (1834 - 1910) and others introduced a new layer of complexity to the theoretical underpinnings of management. Joseph Wharton offered the first tertiary-level course in management in 1881.
[edit] 20th century
By about 1900 one finds managers trying to place their theories on what they regarded as a thoroughly scientific basis (see scientism for perceived limitations of this belief). Examples include Henry R. Towne's Science of management in the 1890s, Frederick Winslow Taylor's Scientific management (1911), Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's Applied motion study (1917), and Henry L. Gantt's charts (1910s). J. Duncan wrote the first college management textbook in 1911. In 1912 Yoichi Ueno introduced Taylorism to Japan and became first management consultant of the "Japanese-management style". His son Ichiro Ueno pioneered Japanese quality-assurance.
The first comprehensive theories of management appeared around 1920. The Harvard Business School invented the Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) in 1921. People like Henri Fayol (1841 - 1925) and Alexander Church described the various branches of management and their inter-relationships. In the early 20th century, people like Ordway Tead (1891 - 1973), Walter Scott and J. Mooney applied the principles of psychology to management, while other writers, such as Elton Mayo (1880 - 1949), Mary Parker Follett (1868 - 1933), Chester Barnard (1886 - 1961), Max Weber (1864 - 1920), Rensis Likert (1903 - 1981), and Chris Argyris (1923 - ) approached the phenomenon of management from a sociological perspective.
Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005) wrote one of the earliest books on applied management: Concept of the Corporation (published in 1946). It resulted from Alfred Sloan (chairman of General Motors until 1956) commissioning a study of the organisation. Drucker went on to write 39 books, many in the same vein.
H. Dodge, Ronald Fisher (1890 - 1962), and Thornton C. Fry introduced statistical techniques into management-studies. In the 1940s, Patrick Blackett combined these statistical theories with microeconomic theory and gave birth to the science of operations research. Operations research, sometimes known as "management science" (but distinct from Taylor's scientific management), attempts to take a scientific approach to solving management problems, particularly in the areas of logistics and operations.
Some of the more recent developments include the Theory of Constraints, management by objectives, reengineering, and various information-technology-driven theories such as agile software development, as well as group management theories such as Cog's Ladder.
As the general recognition of managers as a class solidified during the 20th century and gave perceived practitioners of the art/science of management a certain amount of prestige, so the way opened for popularised systems of management ideas to peddle their wares. In this context many management fads may have had more to do with pop psychology than with scientific theories of management.
Towards the end of the 20th century, business management came to consist of six separate branches, namely:
* Human resource management
* Operations management or production management
* Strategic management
* Marketing management
* Financial management
* Information technology management responsible for management information systems
[edit] 21st century
In the 21st century observers find it increasingly difficult to subdivide management into functional categories in this way. More and more processes simultaneously involve several categories. Instead, one tends to think in terms of the various processes, tasks, and objects subject to management.
Branches of management theory also exist relating to nonprofits and to government: such as public administration, public management, and educational management. Further, management programs related to civil-society organizations have also spawned programs in nonprofit management and social entrepreneurship.
Note that many of the assumptions made by management have come under attack from business ethics viewpoints, critical management studies, and anti-corporate activism.
As one consequence, workplace democracy has become both more common, and more advocated, in some places distributing all management functions among the workers, each of whom takes on a portion of the work. However, these models predate any current political issue, and may occur more naturally than does a command hierarchy. All management to some degree embraces democratic principles in that in the long term workers must give majority support to management; otherwise they leave to find other work, or go on strike. Hence management has started to become less based on the conceptualisation of classical military command-and-control, and more about facilitation and support of collaborative activity, utilizing principles such as those of human interaction management to deal with the complexities of human interaction. Indeed, the concept of Ubiquitous command-and-control posits such a transformation for 21st century military management.
[edit] Nature of managerial work
In for-profit work, management has as its primary function the satisfaction of a range of stakeholders. This typically involves making a profit (for the shareholders), creating valued products at a reasonable cost (for customers), and providing rewarding employment opportunities (for employees). In nonprofit management, add the importance of keeping the faith of donors. In most models of management/governance, shareholders vote for the board of directors, and the board then hires senior management. Some organizations have experimented with other methods (such as employee-voting models) of selecting or reviewing managers; but this occurs only very rarely.
In the public sector of countries constituted as representative democracies, voters elect politicians to public office. Such politicians hire many managers and administrators, and in some countries like the United States political appointees lose their jobs on the election of a new president/governor/mayor. Some 2500 people serve at the pleasure of the United States Chief Executive, including all of the top US government executives.
Public, private, and voluntary sectors place different demands on managers, but all must retain the faith of those who select them (if they wish to retain their jobs), retain the faith of those people that fund the organization, and retain the faith of those who work for the organization. If they fail to convince employees of the advantages of staying rather than leaving, they may tip the organization into a downward spiral of hiring, training, firing, and recruiting. Management also has the task of innovating and of improving the functioning of organizations.
[edit] Top-level management
* Top-level managers require an extensive knowledge of management roles and skills.
* They have to be very aware of external factors such as markets.
* Their decisions are generally of a long-term nature.
* They are responsible for strategic decisions.
[edit] Middle management
* Mid-level managers have a specialised understanding of certain managerial tasks.
* They are responsible for and carrying out the decisions made by top-level management.
* They are responsible for tactical decisions.
[edit] Lower management
* This level of management ensures that the decisions and plans taken by the other two are carried out.
* Lower-level managers' decisions are generally short-term ones.
* They are responsible for operational decisions.
[edit] Good qualities for a general manager
* Has educational and management qualifications, and experience
* Has experience in all of the business's departments
* Is able to coordinate the departments
* Is realistic in outlook regarding the business's prospects
* Has good interpersonal relationships
* Works for the good of the business
* Able to plan and act with creativity
* Believes in own abilities as well as colleagues'
[edit] Formation of the business policy
* The mission of the business is its most obvious purpose -- which may be, for example, to make soap.
* The objective of the business refers to the ends or activity at which a certain task is aimed.
* The business's policy is a guide that stipulates rules, regulations and objectives, and may be used in the managers' decision-making. It must be flexible and easily interpreted and understood by all employees.
* The business's strategy refers to the plan of action that it is going to take, as well as the resources that it will be using, to achieve its mission and objectives. It is a guideline to managers, stipulating how they ought to use best the factors of production to the business's advantage. Initially, it could help the managers decide on what type of business they want to form.
[edit] How to implement policies and strategies
* All policies and strategies must be discussed with all managerial personnel and staff.
* Managers must understand where and how they can implement their policies and strategies.
* A plan of action must be devised for each department.
* Policies and strategies must be reviewed regularly.
* Contingency plans must be devised in case the environment changes.
* Assessments of progress ought to be carried out regularly by top-level mangers.
* A good environment is required within the business.
[edit] The development of policies and strategies
* The missions, objectives, strengths and weaknesses of each department must be analysed to determine their roles in achieving the business's mission.
* The forecasting method develops a reliable picture of the business's future environment.
* A planning unit must be created to ensure that all plans are consistent and that policies and strategies are aimed at achieving the same mission and objectives.
* Contingency plans must be developed, just in case.
All policies must be discussed with all managerial personnel and staff that is required in the execution of any departmental policy
[edit] Where policies and strategies fit into the planning process
* They give mid- and lower-level managers a good idea of the future plans for each department.
* A framework is created whereby plans and decisions are made.
* Mid- and lower-level management may add their own plans to the business's strategic ones.
[edit] Basic elements of management
Management operates through various functions, often classified as planning, organizing, leading/motivating and controlling.
* Planning: deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week, next month, next year, over the next five years, etc.) and generating plans for action.
* Organizing: making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful carrying out of plans.
* Leading/Motivating: exhibiting skills in these areas for getting others to play an effective part in achieving plans.
* Controlling: monitoring -- checking progress against plans, which may need modification based on feedback.
[edit] Theoretical scope
Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth century, defined management as "the art of getting things done through people". [2] One can also think of management functionally, as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular basis and of adjusting some initial plan; or as the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Frenchman Henri Fayol [3] considers management to consist of five functions:
1. planning
2. organizing
3. leading
4. co-ordinating
5. controlling
Some people, however, find this definition, while useful, far too narrow. The phrase "management is what managers do" occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions, and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or class.
One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to "business administration", although this then excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in charities and in the public sector. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments which teach management as "business schools." Some institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term "management."
Speakers of English may also use the term "management" or "the management" as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation.
[edit] Historical development
Difficulties arise in tracing the history of management. Some see it (by definition) as a late modern (in the sense of late modernity) conceptualization. On those terms it cannot have a pre-modern history, only harbingers (such as stewards). Others, however, detect management-like activities in the pre-modern past. Some writers [Who?] trace the development of management-thought back to Sumerian traders and to the builders of the pyramids of ancient Egypt. Slave-owners through the centuries faced the problems of exploiting/motivating a dependent but sometimes unenthusiastic or recalcitrant workforce, but many pre-industrial enterprises, given their small scale, did not feel compelled to face the issues of management systematically. However, innovations such as the spread of Hindu-Arabic numerals (5th to 15th centuries) and the codification of double-entry book-keeping (1494) provided tools for management assessment, planning and control.
Given the scale of most commercial operations and the lack of mechanized record-keeping and recording before the industrial revolution, it made sense for most owners of enterprises in those times to carry out management functions by and for themselves. But with growing size and complexity of organizations, the split between owners (individuals, industrial dynasties or groups of shareholders) and day-to-day managers (independent specialists in planning and control) gradually became more common.
[edit] 19th century
Some argue [citation needed] that modern management as a discipline began as an off-shoot of economics in the 19th century. Classical economists such as Adam Smith (1723 - 1790) and John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873) provided a theoretical background to resource-allocation, production, and pricing issues. About the same time, innovators like Eli Whitney (1765 - 1825), James Watt (1736 - 1819), and Matthew Boulton (1728 - 1809) developed elements of technical production such as standardization, quality-control procedures, cost-accounting, interchangeability of parts, and work-planning. Many of these aspects of management existed in the pre-1861 slave-based sector of the US economy. That environment saw 4 million people, as the contemporary usages had it, "managed" in profitable quasi-mass production.
By the late 19th century, marginal economists Alfred Marshall (1842 - 1924) and Léon Walras (1834 - 1910) and others introduced a new layer of complexity to the theoretical underpinnings of management. Joseph Wharton offered the first tertiary-level course in management in 1881.
[edit] 20th century
By about 1900 one finds managers trying to place their theories on what they regarded as a thoroughly scientific basis (see scientism for perceived limitations of this belief). Examples include Henry R. Towne's Science of management in the 1890s, Frederick Winslow Taylor's Scientific management (1911), Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's Applied motion study (1917), and Henry L. Gantt's charts (1910s). J. Duncan wrote the first college management textbook in 1911. In 1912 Yoichi Ueno introduced Taylorism to Japan and became first management consultant of the "Japanese-management style". His son Ichiro Ueno pioneered Japanese quality-assurance.
The first comprehensive theories of management appeared around 1920. The Harvard Business School invented the Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) in 1921. People like Henri Fayol (1841 - 1925) and Alexander Church described the various branches of management and their inter-relationships. In the early 20th century, people like Ordway Tead (1891 - 1973), Walter Scott and J. Mooney applied the principles of psychology to management, while other writers, such as Elton Mayo (1880 - 1949), Mary Parker Follett (1868 - 1933), Chester Barnard (1886 - 1961), Max Weber (1864 - 1920), Rensis Likert (1903 - 1981), and Chris Argyris (1923 - ) approached the phenomenon of management from a sociological perspective.
Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005) wrote one of the earliest books on applied management: Concept of the Corporation (published in 1946). It resulted from Alfred Sloan (chairman of General Motors until 1956) commissioning a study of the organisation. Drucker went on to write 39 books, many in the same vein.
H. Dodge, Ronald Fisher (1890 - 1962), and Thornton C. Fry introduced statistical techniques into management-studies. In the 1940s, Patrick Blackett combined these statistical theories with microeconomic theory and gave birth to the science of operations research. Operations research, sometimes known as "management science" (but distinct from Taylor's scientific management), attempts to take a scientific approach to solving management problems, particularly in the areas of logistics and operations.
Some of the more recent developments include the Theory of Constraints, management by objectives, reengineering, and various information-technology-driven theories such as agile software development, as well as group management theories such as Cog's Ladder.
As the general recognition of managers as a class solidified during the 20th century and gave perceived practitioners of the art/science of management a certain amount of prestige, so the way opened for popularised systems of management ideas to peddle their wares. In this context many management fads may have had more to do with pop psychology than with scientific theories of management.
Towards the end of the 20th century, business management came to consist of six separate branches, namely:
* Human resource management
* Operations management or production management
* Strategic management
* Marketing management
* Financial management
* Information technology management responsible for management information systems
[edit] 21st century
In the 21st century observers find it increasingly difficult to subdivide management into functional categories in this way. More and more processes simultaneously involve several categories. Instead, one tends to think in terms of the various processes, tasks, and objects subject to management.
Branches of management theory also exist relating to nonprofits and to government: such as public administration, public management, and educational management. Further, management programs related to civil-society organizations have also spawned programs in nonprofit management and social entrepreneurship.
Note that many of the assumptions made by management have come under attack from business ethics viewpoints, critical management studies, and anti-corporate activism.
As one consequence, workplace democracy has become both more common, and more advocated, in some places distributing all management functions among the workers, each of whom takes on a portion of the work. However, these models predate any current political issue, and may occur more naturally than does a command hierarchy. All management to some degree embraces democratic principles in that in the long term workers must give majority support to management; otherwise they leave to find other work, or go on strike. Hence management has started to become less based on the conceptualisation of classical military command-and-control, and more about facilitation and support of collaborative activity, utilizing principles such as those of human interaction management to deal with the complexities of human interaction. Indeed, the concept of Ubiquitous command-and-control posits such a transformation for 21st century military management.
[edit] Nature of managerial work
In for-profit work, management has as its primary function the satisfaction of a range of stakeholders. This typically involves making a profit (for the shareholders), creating valued products at a reasonable cost (for customers), and providing rewarding employment opportunities (for employees). In nonprofit management, add the importance of keeping the faith of donors. In most models of management/governance, shareholders vote for the board of directors, and the board then hires senior management. Some organizations have experimented with other methods (such as employee-voting models) of selecting or reviewing managers; but this occurs only very rarely.
In the public sector of countries constituted as representative democracies, voters elect politicians to public office. Such politicians hire many managers and administrators, and in some countries like the United States political appointees lose their jobs on the election of a new president/governor/mayor. Some 2500 people serve at the pleasure of the United States Chief Executive, including all of the top US government executives.
Public, private, and voluntary sectors place different demands on managers, but all must retain the faith of those who select them (if they wish to retain their jobs), retain the faith of those people that fund the organization, and retain the faith of those who work for the organization. If they fail to convince employees of the advantages of staying rather than leaving, they may tip the organization into a downward spiral of hiring, training, firing, and recruiting. Management also has the task of innovating and of improving the functioning of organizations.
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