We discussed the concept of project management in chapter 9. We are revisiting it briefly in this chapter because an organizations operations system needs to support and reinforce the project organizational structure.
In a project organization the operations system should provide an effective and efficient means of pooling the people and physical resources needed to complete the specific project or goal within the specified time period. In the illustration of the operations system shown in Figure18-1 the inputs now encompass the project teams and the resources by those team. The transformation process would include the various activities involved with project planning project scheduling and project controlling used by the project team to produce the specific outputs of the project.
Operations management is just as important to project organizations as it is to those that do not use projects. As an organization makes the move to projects its operations system must adapt to reflect the changed inputs and transformation processes. Why? To make sure that projects are completed effectively and efficiently within the time frame allotted. In fact many of the operations planning and controlling tools and techniques that we are going to discuss next are appropriate for project teams as well as for other types of organizations.