Fundamentals of Project Planning
and Management
Darden School of Business
University of Virginia

Project Definition
1. Goal : - What is the Goal ? So, what is the goal of a project? Well typically,
we think about the goal as the higher level objective. What is that unique
product, or service that we're going to provide? Why are we even bringing
the temporary organization together? And, why are we even engaging in
this activity? That is the high level goal.
2. Establish Organization
3. The Three Objectives
Scope – The scope is usually a The scope is usually a description of
requirements, qualities, specifications of a product that we are going to
eventually deliver.
Time - The time, as the name might imply, has to do with the duration. Over
what kind of time frame are we talking about executing our project? By when
does it have to be finished?
Budget - the budget has everything to do with cost and resources that we
have available to us for the purposes of this project
Scope
Time
Holy
Trinity
Budget
1. Establish Organisation

SuperMarket
Scope Time Budget
Constrained √
Optimized √
Compromised √
Wedding
Scope Time Budget
Constrained √
Optimized √
Compromised √
GovernmentHealthProject
Scope Time Budget
Constrained √
Optimized √
Compromised √

Organization and Stakeholders
1. Who will be doing what ?
2. Who is the Project Manager ?
3. Who is paying for the project?
4. Who will consume the product or service?
5. Who are those effected by the Project
Identify
Stakeholders
Gather
Information
Stakeholders
Mission
Determine
Strength
Weakness
Predict
Stakeholder
Behavior
Implement
Stakeholder
Management
Strategy
The stakeholder cycle starts by identifying all the stakeholders
that are affected by our project and that affect the success of our
project. We gather information about them and we identify their
mission. We determine their strength and their weaknesses and
especially, we pay attention to how those strength and weaknesses
will affect our project and the success of our project.
Then we might predict their behavior, depending on alternative
strategies that we might deploy, and we identify the strategy that
we would like to incorporate into our project plan

Organization and Stakeholders
High
Power
Stakeholder Power/Interest Grid
Keep
Satisfied
Manage
Closely
Monitor
Keep
Informed
Low
Power
Low
Interest
High
Interest

Organization and Stakeholders
Main Reasons for Project Failure How to measure Success
Poor Planning - No clear goals, scope and timelines
Leadership – Lack of leadership, ownership and commitment from
stakeholders
Training – Lack of training on technology
Learnings – Learnings of past projects not referred well
Project Management – Lack of training on project management to
the team
Biases – Optimism (Over Confidence), Sunk Cost (Ignore) and
Confirmation (Perception)
• On Time
• On Budget
• Achieves Goals
• Achieves initial set of deliverables
• Stakeholders are satisfied with the initial
results