As the past few decades have witnessed a rapid expansion in the reach and impact of project management (PM) (Morris, 2013; Shenhar and Dvir, 2007), more and more managers in aviation are trying to induce the concept and tools of Project Management into their daily work. However, many projects in aviation, which are said to be organized and managed under project management structure, actually came out to be managed in traditional ways. Needless to say, those projects seldom enjoy the strengths and advantages of Project Management. In this article, the writer tries to clarify concepts in project management and its related tools, and further find out practical ways to apply PM in aviation of China.

Concept of Project Management

Speaking of Project management, most project managers will respond with the classic triangle: Resources, time and quality. Some even believe that is the total content of project management. However, Project Management is much more than using this triangle in the project. Using limited resources to help the project to become qualified enough on time is just one target of Project Management. Before we define objectives of project management, we need to know what successful project management is.

The Success of Project Management

There are different criteria in assessing the success of project management. Some argue that the success of a project depends on whether the project is completed on time. However, this is just enough to judge the success of a project. In project management, we still need to consider whether the project is over-budgeted and qualified.

Then another argument comes out, which advocates that the iron triangle should be the best standard in judging the success of project management. The supporters of this argument insist that the triangle (time, resources used and quality) should be the only standard in the assessment of project management. Undoubtedly, the triangle is critical in judging the performance of project management. However, projects have often enough been delivered within time, cost, and quality, only to be considered failures (this is the case of the second generation of the Ford Taurus car that was completed on time in 1995 but turned out to be a disappointing business experience [Shenhar et al., 2005]).

At the same time, the "time/cost/quality triangle" or "iron triangle," or the "golden triangle," that some professionals call the "Holy Trinity" or the "triangle of virtue" sufficed as a definition of project success (Atkinson, 1999; Hazebroucq & Badot, 1996, p. 35; Westerveld, 2003). But project success doesn't equals to project management success. It is not uncommon that one project was accomplished, perfectly satisfying the requirements of quality, time and resources. But the project also ignited the anger of workers or local residents because of payment issue or environmental problem. Sometimes the anger upgraded into large-scale strike. In that case, can we define the project as a successful one? The answer is definitely negative.

As we know, project management is a process. If we consider all parties in a project, we could define the target of project management as follows: to balance all requirements from all stake holders and try to satisfy every stakeholder. Stakeholders stated here, should not only include those staff who directly participate in the project, but also include all the people, who directly or indirectly influenced by the project. Take the construction of airport as an example, the owner, local government, flight corporations, and authority of civil aviation are more viewed as key stakeholders. However, we should never ignore local farmers, who may lose their land in the construction, residents near the airport, who are expected to suffer noise in the construction and coming flight operation, and environment protector, who care the influence of natural environment.

Prioritization of Key Stakeholders' Satisfaction

The definition above embraces a wide range of factors. But project managers cannot and should not allocate equal attention on every factor. Actually, prioritization in varied factors is also a requirement of project management, which is also reflected in CPM (Critical Path Method). As we stated above, some critical stakeholders, such as owners, play an important part in a project. Without them, the project cannot survive. The construction of SMS will not exist if the managerial level believes this new system does no good to the safety of the corporation, no matter how the new system is popular in front line staff. Definitely, management of a project should satisfy these stakeholders first, in order to keep the project going. In practice, project managers should prioritize stakeholders' satisfaction. Normally, a rank list of satisfaction of all stakeholders is necessary for the project managers, especially facing many stakeholders.

In the definition of success, result is also valued in evaluating project management. Because satisfaction of owners is a key factor in assessing project management, result will affect the success of project management by influencing owners' satisfaction.

Therefore, the success of project management depends on satisfaction of varied parties. And satisfaction of some parties would matter much, even determining the death of a project. We need to take all of them into consideration, and we also need to rank them according to their influence to the project. No two projects are alike; each has its own peculiar history, and lending has to be tailored to its circumstances. (Baum, 1970, p. 3, Baum, 1978, p. 12). As a result, every priority rank list should be composed according to the specific project, in order to decide what to be considered and what is fatal. Only when we decide what to care and what to care more, we could have our clear targets.

Definition of Objectives and Scope in a Project

It is important to make clear the definition of objective, especially for those projects that are part of a large program. A project might become endless when it does not have a clear objective definition. Take the project of SMS construction as an example, if the project manager inadequately defines one goal of the project is kill every possible mistake in the corporation, the project is deemed to fail. Therefore, to define the objective of a project well is the first critical job in a project. The definition of objective should be made jointly by the owner, project managers, related professionals, and possible parties involved. Technical feasibilities, political factors, economic trend, and other factors should be fully considered in the definition discussion.

On the other side, projects have limit on time, and thus normally become relatively short-term. Plus requirements on resources, you cannot require managers to finish some undefined goals, which might exceed abilities of a project team. Then why project management is popular in long-term aviation programs? Because a serial of projects with clear definition could inter-link each other and make up a program well. Again, the key in melting several projects into a program lies in clear definition of objective. Interrelation with other project and tolerance for connection should be one objective of a project.

In the objective definition discussion, project managers should also fully understand the expectation of all parties concerned and the feasibility, and further make the objective definition clear and practical. In this process, opinions of owners and high-level management should be highly respected. Only with clear objectives acknowledged and supported by owners and top level, the project could proceed smoothly.

We also need to define the scope of a project. As we know, most projects in aviation will be closely related to other operation partners. The project of CDM in air traffic control units will inevitably influence and be affected by flight operators. However, the project manager should be clear that this project will only happen and benefit in the air traffic control unit. At most, this project should not exceed its defined scope. And the project manager is not supposed to try to change something in your partners' internal procedure.

Quantization in Project Management

Many project managers fall into the trap of demonstration-result domination when they are interpreting satisfaction into goals. The reason behind this phenomenon is satisfaction is subjective, and thus goals interpreted are always demonstrated and immeasurable. For example, satisfaction of farmers is usually perceived as subjective, demonstrated and immeasurable. As the demonstration of results tends to dominate project management processes and is implicitly seen as the end result, the rest of the RBM (Result Based Management) processes tend to be skipped or reduced to a superficial level. (Ika & Lytvynov, 2009). Undoubtedly, demonstration result deeply flaws RBM. What is more, in management, there is a theory that you cannot manage something if you cannot measure something. As a result, one demonstrated and immeasurable factor becomes something that is always good until something uncontrollable happen, such as demonstration.

As a result, translating quantizing subjective goals into measurable and controllable indexes is critical in project management. We could take different methods to translate these goals. For example, questionnaire in score is a good way to measure the satisfaction of a crowd. The resistance of local residents could be reflected by their comment on the questionnaire. Therefore, we could set the one goal of an airport construction project is that the score of questionnaire should be no lower than 7.5 (if full score is 10). Take popularity of staff in a new developed training program for another example, the number of visitors on the program introduction pages could be also a good index. A goal of flight corporation training program is daily visitors' number is more than 500 (if there are 10,000 staff in that corporation).

It is important to translate immeasurable goals into measurable index, making the whole project manageable. In practice, we also need to pay attention on the effectiveness and efficiency of the index in measuring our goals.

Application of Project Management

In the following charters, I would like to take the construction of SMS in an ACC control center as an example, to illustrate how we can use project management in aviation industry in order to enjoy the advantages of its tools. The case happens in one of major control centers in a country with over 4000 flights operated every day. Because of traffic congestion and flow control, this control center decided to implement CDM in the daily ATFM. Before CDM, this control center used traditional methods to control air flow. Using traditional methods, controllers are responsible for their own sectors, but the efficiency was relatively low.

Application of WBS in Aviation

Another powerful strength of project management is to break a big project into small tasks and assign one particular person to be responsible for every single task. In front of big projects, such as the construction of an area CDM system, project managers may feel helpless on where to start. But when you break the project into small task, everything turns out to be clear. In the breaking down of project, WBS is a tool used most in daily work. In a WBS chart, the sequence of jobs to be done is clear and easy to follow. Again, take the construction of CDM in an area control center as an example, the general objective of this project is to build an efficient and effective CDM system. To reach this objective, we need to have the system prepared and get all user educated. The preparation of the system needs hardware construction, software programming, and final rehearsal. When we break every sub-project or task into smaller tasks, we could easily have a clear idea where to start and what to do next. If we continue to break down sub-projects and tasks, we will find that the first task we need to complete is to design basic structure of hardware network.

This is a principle in project management, which is breaking big task into smaller one and try to finish the project task by task. However, this method does not encourage break projects into isolated sub-projects. Because tasks in a project are interrelated, we should not isolate the subtasks. For example, we cannot just consider the feasibility of software when we are designing the CDM system. We are supposed to consider the limit of hardware, which was decided in the hardware procurement phrase.

Another critical step in project management is to assign particular persons to be responsible for a series of tasks. Because every task will be in charge of one single person, we could trace the mistake or failure of someone if there is something wrong with the project. In this way, we avoid untraceable errors resulted from ambiguous responsibility. Also with clear definition of responsibility, we can expect high efficiency of staff.

Utilization of CPM (Critical Path Method)

The idea of prioritization is reflected perfectly again in CPM. I believe most aviation staff, especially staff in operation departments, perform well in prioritization. In CPM, priority allocation becomes much easier. Prioritization needs to be given to those tasks on the critical path. What is critical path? The critical path should be an array of tasks, which would take the longest period to finish. Because this path will experience the longest period, the moment of completion of this path will finally decide the completion time of the whole project. As we stated above, time is a critical factor in assessing project management. Therefore, successful project manager will always keep an eye on the completion of critical path task, in order to control completion time of the project.

On the other side, the critical path always changes in the implementation of a project. A task may become critical when something else happens. We are not spending much attention on illustrating how to use this tool. What we need to focus is the idea of prioritization in Project Management. In aviation, the only thing unchanged is change. Because of the change of tasks on critical tasks, we need to review the influence of paths or tasks in the project. For example, in the construction of a general airport, it might not a critical task to communicate the benefit of airport to local residents. But when we meet resistance from farmers in the construction, the communication with local residents and paying compensation to land owners become critical. In that case, every effort should be made on this critical task, avoiding possible delay caused by this task.

Risk Management in Aviation

As we know, safety is the top priority in aviation. Therefore, risk management, to a great extent, is related to safety management. In project management, risk management normally appears in the form of controlling the probability and destroying result of risk. However, you cannot sustain the probability of risk as high as that in other area because any incidents, resulted from risks, would cause severe damage both to passenger in air and people on the ground. Therefore, higher standard in safety present higher requirements for risk management in aviation.

Tools of risk management are also applicable in projects of aviation. And we are still using three basic ways in managing risk: reduce, transfer, control. However, we cannot use the ignorance, the fourth basic way, because of top priority of safety. In contradiction, I suggest project managers should induce the idea of SMS into their daily project management.

The basic idea of SMS is to reduce the risk to an acceptable level, through continuous effort (Safety Management Manual, ICAO, Doc 9859). And it encourages everyone in the system to contribute to the safety improvement. Project manager should encourage more involvement of front line employees. Only with continuous efforts of everyone, the project could be on an acceptable level of safety, meeting the requirements of risk control. On the other hand, SMS advocates acceptable safety level rather than zero error, which a short-term project is more likely to reach.

Conclusion

Project Management is an on-going progress. Only with the basis of good definition, prioritization, quantization, we could apply it well in aviation projects. In practice, we also need to fully utilize WBS, CPM and Risk Management, and try to combine other excellent tools and systems in aviation, such as ideas of SMS, into project management, making PM more powerful and applicable in aviation projects.

References

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This article is contributed by Lindley Zheng, who worked for five years in one of three largest area control center in China, owning years of aviation experience. He holds a master degree of University of Ottawa. During post-graduation in Canada, Lindley witnessed the general aviation industry in North America and has formulated his own understanding on general aviation.