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Chapter 14 Managing Projects 575

problems and develop smooth working relationships among a predominantly
technical team. The team should be under the leadership of a manager with
a strong technical and project management background, and team members
should be highly experienced. Team meetings should take place frequently.
Essential technical skills or expertise not available internally should be secured
from outside the organization.

Formal Planning and Control Tools
Large projects benefit from appropriate use of formal planning tools and
formal control tools for documenting and monitoring project plans. The two
most commonly used methods for documenting project plans are Gantt charts
and PERT charts. A Gantt chart lists project activities and their correspond-
ing start and completion dates. The Gantt chart visually represents the timing
and duration of different tasks in a development project as well as their human
resource requirements (see Figure 14.4). It shows each task as a horizontal bar
whose length is proportional to the time required to complete it.
Although Gantt charts show when project activities begin and end, they don’t
depict task dependencies, how one task is affected if another is behind sched-
ule, or how tasks should be ordered. That is where PERT charts are useful.
PERT stands for Program Evaluation and Review Technique, a methodology
developed by the U.S. Navy during the 1950s to manage the Polaris subma-
rine missile program. A PERT chart graphically depicts project tasks and their
interrelationships. The PERT chart lists the specific activities that make up a
project and the activities that must be completed before a specific activity can
start, as illustrated in Figure 14.5.
The PERT chart portrays a project as a network diagram consisting of
numbered nodes (either circles or rectangles) representing project tasks.
Each node is numbered and shows the task, its duration, the starting date,
and the completion date. The direction of the arrows on the lines indicates
the sequence of tasks and shows which activities must be completed before
the commencement of another activity. In Figure 14.5, the tasks in nodes 2,
3, and 4 are not dependent on each other and can be undertaken simultane-
ously, but each is dependent on completion of the first task. PERT charts for
complex projects can be difficult to interpret, and project managers often use
both techniques.
These project management techniques can help managers identify bottle-
necks and determine the impact that problems will have on project comple-
tion times. They can also help systems developers partition projects into
smaller, more manageable segments with defined, measurable business results.
Standard control techniques can successfully chart the progress of the project
against budgets and target dates, so deviations from the plan can be spotted.

Increasing User Involvement and Overcoming User
Resistance
Projects with relatively little structure and many undefined requirements
must involve users fully at all stages. Users must be mobilized to support one
of many possible design options and to remain committed to a single design.
External integration tools consist of ways to link the work of the implemen-
tation team to users at all organizational levels. For instance, users can become
active members of the project team, take on leadership roles, and take charge of
installation and training. The implementation team can demonstrate its respon-
siveness to users, promptly answering questions, incorporating user feedback,
and showing their willingness to help.

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