TABLE OF CONTENTS Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities so as to meet (or exceed) customer needs and expectations from a project. Meeting or exceeding customer needs and expectations invariably involves balancing competing demands, scope, time, cost, and quality.1
A project is defined as an undertaking of a nonroutine (unique), non-repetitive nature having prescribed objectives in terms of scope, time, quality, and cost. Within the realm of project management, such projects can be further defined as generally being complex, having a multidisciplinary involvement, and having various phases in their life span. The various phases of a microwave (and any other) network build-out project may be defined differently by different organizations, but they generally fall into the following categories:
Concept (or feasibility) analysis
Network planning and preliminary design
Detailed design and engineering
Deployment (also called implementation)
Testing and commissioning
Each of these phases can be divided into a whole list of subphases and activities. The completion of each of these project phases is usually accompanied by a finished, smaller project of some sort. While project management skills are quite distinct from engineering design skills, the requirements of good project management are not different from the requirements of good engineering or good management.
Effective management of a project calls for the early establishment of policies and procedures for its implementation. During the initial phase of the project, therefore, the project manager, in conjunction with the...
