2. A Brief Description of Related Theories
Project and project management is the results of engineering and project management practice (Crosby, P.B. 1987). Traditional project and project management originated in the construction industry, the reason is that the organization and implementation process of traditional practice of construction projects is relatively complex compared to other projects, and the controllability is not easy. Modern project management is generally considered as a product of World War II (Deming, W.E. 1986), on four or five decades in the 20th century, it was mainly used in national defense and military industry, from the sixes to the eighties, its scope of application was also construction, defense, and aerospace fields. Until the nine decades, the advent of the information age makes the characteristics of the project changed dramatically. Traditional enterprises such as manufacturing emphasized repetitive activity, in the environment of information economy, the uniqueness, flexibility and variability of transaction replaced the repetitive process. Managers soon discovered that project management is precisely in line with this requirement. They also found that project management can make maximum use of internal and external resources, as a result, many companies began to use this management model, and it became a critical business management tool.
In the process of study and improve the historical project management, large amounts of theory is founded such as operations research, queuing theory, combining scheduling theory, optimization theory whose core is methods of systems engineering, these methods includes PERT / Gantt chart (PERT / Gant Chart), critical path method, schedule planning techniques, organization management, conflict management and so on. Since the 90s of last century, due to the view point of project was variable, all projects were used enterprise project management theory to manage, so, project management theory and method has been further expansion, such as risk management, human resources management, communication management, these theory was founded to meet the increasingly complex project needs (Fukuda, K. 1994).
Project is a special limited mission, it will be accomplished in a certain period of time, and meets with series of specific goals in a number of related works in general, and it has a character of temporary. In short, the so-called project management is the management of the project, the central task of project manager is complete the task by duration, by budget, as required.
The U.S. Project Management Institute considers: Project management is to put a variety of systems, methods and personnel together, within the scope of the required practices, budget and quality to complete the work. Effective project management is defined as planning、guiding and controlling the organization resources within the specific targets and the specified time (Denison, D.R. 1990).
Project management is consisted with two meanings:The first refers to a management activity that is a conscious activity in accordance with the characteristics and laws of the project to organize and manage project (Erdener, C.B. 1998). The second refers to a management science that is project management activities as the research object of science. It explores the theory and method of the scientific organization and management of project activities.
Project Management Features: As all projects have their own characteristics, project management also has its characteristic, shown as follows:
(l) Project Management is targeted to deal with business as a project or be considered as the project.
(2) Project management for each project has its own specific management procedures and management steps.
(3) Project management is the management that a project manager is the center.
(4) The project management organization is particularity, and project management organization is temporary, once the project is end, the organization is end too, the project organization is flexible.
(5) Dynamic control is used as a means of project management.
(6) Project management approach is the goal-oriented management, project management is a multi-level goal of management.
2.2.1The definition of Enterprise Project Management
Enterprise Project Management is the utilization of a management model of enterprise management of the project (Graf, L., Hemmasi, M., Lust, J. and Liang, Y. 1991), organizes or reorganizes the enterprise activities, including production and operational activities of the processes rationally in order to be able to use project management methods and techniques for their management and achieve the organization's activities in the efficient planning, organization, coordination and control, efficiently to achieve the ultimate success of the organization's strategic objectives.
The Enterprise Project Management is on the perspective of senior managers in a variety of tasks for enterprise project management (London: Sage. Hofstede, G. 1991), the dominant ideology is managing the task as a project, which is long-term approach that is project-centric organization and management. The core is based on the organization and management system of project management.
The Enterprise Project Management is based on the "managing the entire enterprise-wide project"( Kermally, S. 1996) , adopts the "management by project" mentality, planning, organizing, directing and controlling the company's resources through project management, in order to achieve management methods of enterprise strategy. Enterprise Project Management in essence is the entire enterprise-wide project management, which is often mixed with the daily management of the enterprise and the core is multi-project management and business strategy (Martinsons, M.G. 1996). Guiding ideology is based on Management by project. It is a goal-oriented, results-oriented approach for system management. The core is based on the organization and management system of the project management that allows long-term management of the organization by facing functions, process-oriented approach to managing transform to a object-oriented management, which becomes an important research area of international project management (Montagu-Pollock, M. 1991).
Enterprise project management is a form of corporate governance, in the clear of business strategy and implementation strategy to uniform deployment of enterprise capabilities, using goal-oriented and project-oriented approach to the implementation of corporate activities, including the allocation of responsibilities, the implementation of process and quality, control of the overall risk, statement and measure the performance of package management system(Pun, K.F., Chin, K.S. and Poon, G.K.K. 1999). Enterprise Project Management promotes the opening of corporate culture, requires employees to comply with its commitment, and cooperate and be initiative. Enterprise project management carries out a greater market pressures and adapts to the change of enterprises.