Projects Objectives

 

Projects must have objectives. It is one of the important tasks of project managers to see that the projects they manage meet their objectives. Let us now discuss the objectives of projects.

Completion Time

Most projects, when formulated, have completion times. A normal football match lasts for about 90 minutes. It is the duty of the referee to ensure that the football match is completed within the set time. Most public sector projects even at the time they are awarded or initiated always have a time frame attached to them. For example, the rehabilitation of the Lagos-Benin expressway may be projected to be completed in 24 months. That is the projected duration of the project. Any contractor who is given the contract for such a job should ensure that the road is completed on time.

Another point to note about completion time of projects is that late completion or delivery of an agreed project will not please the sponsor of a project. Consider, for example, that the Federal Ministry of Works awards a contract for the dualisation of the Owerri-Onitsha road to Julius Berger and the road is to be completed in 24 months under the terms of the underlying contract. If Julius Berger, the contractor, fails to complete the road project in 24 months, the Ministry of Works will not be pleased with it. Besides, time is money and if a contractor fails to operate within a time frame, inflation may set in and delay the project completion or increase the cost.

Performance

All projects have objectives which they set out to achieve. For example, a public hospital project should have the objective of providing safe and affordable healthcare to the community. Also, a private sector fast food project has the objective of manufacturing hamburgers, fish cake, hot dogs, etc. for its customers. This is a performance objective.

Also, apart from the performance objective, most projects have a quality objective. For example, a hospital should have the objective of providing healthcare. This is a performance objective. But the provision of the service should be safe. For example, hospital workers (nurses, doctors, etc.) while treating patients must take adequate care so as not to infect the patients with the HIV through use of unsterilized needle. This is a quality objective.

Most organisations have quality as one of their major objectives. See, for example, what Daimler Benz has done with Mercedes Benz cars.

Sony products are reputed for their amazing quality. Finally, another aspect of performance is reliability. A good product should also be reliable especially in the case of medical testing devices like PH meters.

In patient care, an unreliable thermometer may raise a false alarm concerning the health of a patient and lead to wrong diagnosis.

Budget

All projects involve financial outlays. The financial outlays (expenditures) attached to a project are usually controlled by the budget. The budget sets a limit as to the quantity of funds a project can consume. In most organisations, the budget for every project is usually set aside. The reason why a project should be monitored is that failure to do so in some cases may lead to exhaustion of funds and abandonment of the project in question.

We have seen that projects may have three main objectives, namely: time, performance and budget objectives. A major task facing project managers is how to balance these three objectives. What it means is that at all times the focus of managers must be on the three items. To retain our understanding of project objectives, we will go a step further to look at a simple triangle of objectives.

Triangle of Projects Objectives

CONCLUSION

In this article, we have discussed the nature and purpose of project management. We looked at the definition of a project and also a working definition of project management. We also looked at types of projects and also project objectives.