METHODOLOGIES

What is a project?
A project is a finalized set of activities and actions undertaken in order to meet a defined need within a specified time and within the allocated budget. Unlike operations, which are repetitive processes, the essence of a project is to be innovative and unique.
 

A project is a temporary action with a beginning and an end, which mobilizes identified resources (human, material, equipment, raw materials, informational and financial) during realization, which has a cost and is therefore subject of budgeting means and of an independent assessment from the company’s one.
The project’s expected results are called “livrables”.
 

What is project management ?
Project management is an approach aiming to structure, ensure and optimize the smooth running of a sufficiently complex project to have to :

• Be planned through time
• Be budgeted (preliminary study of the costs and benefits or consideration of the expected revenue, funding sources, study of operational and financial risks and of the various impacts, etc.)
• Understand and manage the risks
• Achieving the desired level of quality
• Involve many stakeholders: this is the subject of organizations that identify control and project owner
• Name a project manager (unit projects) or a project director (group of projects)
• Establish a steering committee
• Follow significant operational and financial issues

The goal must be clearly specified, quantified and dated. The result must be conform to quality  standards and predefined performances, at lower cost and in the shortest time.
 

The Franco-French sounding terms one must absolutely know:

• La maîtrise d’ouvrage (MOA) - project owner - is the function responsible of the definition of features, of end-to-end testing and of acceptance of technical development.
• L’assistance à la maîtrise d’ouvrage (AMOA) - Assistance to the project owner -  is the function that participates in these activities under the responsibility of the MOA.
• La maîtrise d’œuvre (MOE) – project management - is the function responsible for the technical realization of a project, according to the functional specifications provided by the MOA.
• L’assistance à la maîtrise d’œuvre (AMOE) - Assistance in project management - is the function which participates to the technical realization of a project, according to the functional specifications provided by the MOA.

Specifically, the MOA is the functional expert or a manager of the organization department that will manage the project on behalf of the business. The AMOA will be a junior consultant or a member of the organization department who will participate in the drafting of the functional specifications and conduct tests. The MOE will be the IT project manager and the AMOE will be the technical analyst or the developer.
 

Towards a standardization of project management
The performance of a project manager (risk control and quality of deliverables) is in function 1/ of his experience and 2/ his ability to benefit from the experiences of the other project managers.

Project management professionals have long understood the benefits of methods standardization. From there were born repositories such as HERMES, PRINCE2, PMBOK, etc. which provide guidelines and professionals said tools since the 70’s.

What has changed in recent years is the fact of being certified in project management and being able to sell better, either as a consultant or as an employee.

Is the certification itself a guarantee of seriousness?
No certification can qualify your ability to carry out a project : a mismanaged project lasts 3 to 5 times longer than the initial estimates while a project wellmanaged lasts…
Only twice longer than the initial estimates.
 

No certification will ever qualify your charisma, that is to say, your interpersonal skills : a technically well led project (that is to say where all the steps and documents expected were made) may fail simply because of the personality of the project manager.
 

No certification will ever eliminate the conception mistakes related to ignorance of the business :
 

However, if managing a project is first of all a good dose of pragmatism combined with real interpersonal skills, nothing will ever replace the knowledge of your customer’s business.

We describe the main repositories and existing certifications in the following chart.