Project Management Essentials. Viewer s Guide. Presented by Tom Prior

Transcription

1 Project Management Essentials Viewer s Guide Presented by Tom Prior The know-how to create a plan, implement it, monitor progress and deliver as promised on track, on budget and on time!

2 There are benefits to you as an individual too. You can define and meet your goals, keep your team on track, know what to monitor, know problems early, improve morale, reduce stress and, lastly, look really, really smart. Yes, just being able to speak the language of project management can help you get your point across, get your project selected or be seen as someone more capable than other people. Introduction Project managers have been defined as people responsible for doing something that has never been done before, for people who don t know what they want, who must first predict the unknown, make a plan to cope with the unforeseen and execute the plan with too-limited resources that they do not control and who are held completely responsible for results, even if miracles are required. This description comes from Michael Dobson, who wrote the book Practical Project Management. Some of you may be able to relate to this description even if you are not yet a project manager! Of course, if you are just joining the world of project management, then you are more likely to be a project team member. I have a definition for you as well. We the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much for so long with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing. This is most often attributed to Mother Teresa. Of course, I give you both of these definitions with tongue in cheek. Like most humor, there is some basis for people to think of project management as difficult. It is not an easy job, but done properly can make getting positive results from your project that much easier. You may be asking why project management? There are two reasons that project management is important. It is important to your organization and also it is important to you. Organizations that implement project management where it did not exist before get these results: Better control, better customer relations, higher return on investment, shorter development times, lower costs, higher quality and reliability and higher profit margins. What organization would not want these kinds of results? Module 1: Initiation One of the key steps in the initiation process is the concept of setting the project goal. If we can get the project goal written correctly, then there is a possibility of successful completion of the project. A poorly written goal can make it almost impossible to complete that project. In many cases the project goal is created for you by your boss, a stakeholder or the project sponsor. In other situations you are tasked with the responsibility yourself. In either case I would suggest you have the right and the responsibility to ensure the project goal is correct before you get started. Fortunately, we have an excellent tool to help us set a good project goal. It is called the SMART approach. The acronym SMART stands for: Specific Measurable Agreed-upon Realistic Time-framed We will look at these one at a time. Specific means stated in clear and concise terms. Measurable means that it must be quantifiable. Agreed-upon, sometimes known as accurate, means that we are aligned with the customer, end-user and project manager. Realistic or relevant translates into the fact that the project can be accomplished and it makes sense for us to proceed with it. Our final test is time-framed or time-bound, which simply means the project must have an end date. 2

3 Let us now look at an example of a goal and see if it meets our SMART goal criteria. President John F. Kennedy said on May 25, 1961, in front of a joint session of Congress: I believe this nation should coit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. It certainly qualifies as specific because it is short and to the point. I like to think if we can set a goal to get to the moon in one sentence, then there is probably no need for your goal to be 20 pages long. If President Kennedy had done that, we would probably not have gotten to the moon yet! It is measurable because we must land a man on the moon and also get him returned safely to earth. Agreed-upon is there but not as strong as I would like: the nation should coit itself to achieving the goal. I would prefer the nation will because wording can make a difference. However, the president can get a little latitude on this one being the most powerful man in the world. Realistic: Of course, in hindsight we know we accomplished this goal, but think of being the head of NASA in 1961 and hearing this speech. I imagine it was cause for significant discussion. Time-framed is certainly there and quite specific in that it must be accomplished by the end of the decade. We can see President Kennedy or at least his speech writer covered all of the SMART criteria. Measure your goal against it, whether it is given to you or you write it yourself to be sure that you start off your project with a better chance of success. Module 2: Planning and Execution Planning is the next phase of a project. Once we have gotten the goal in place, we now can move on to the planning stage. Michael Dobson has said the planning stage has two major virtues: 1. A good plan teaches you about your project 2. Any plan, whether good or not, helps you monitor where your project is, compared to where it should be It is during the planning stage that we do learn about the project. We start to recognize what individuals need to be a part of our project team. You will start to get an understanding of what tasks need to be completed and even start putting together a timeline. His second point concerns monitoring of the project. During planning we also make decisions about what we need to track during the project. A rule of thumb is that any project will include monitoring the triple constraints: Time Budget Performance Time, which is sometimes referred to as schedule, means that we need to monitor the progress of the project as it progresses against the timeline that we set up in the planning stage. Budget, or cost, is monitoring the expenditures that are being made based on our schedule for expenditures. We can monitor the budget as a cost for each task, man hours used or resources expended. Lastly, we need to monitor performance, which is sometimes known as quality or technical. With performance we are monitoring the results of the project. Does the product or service meet the specifications set out in the goal? These triple constraints will be identified in the planning stage for tracking in the monitoring stage. Once we have identified these constraints, we must prioritize them to help us make better decisions throughout the project. We need to identify the driving constraint which is the number one priority the driving force behind the project. Then we must determine the middle constraint which is less important than the driver, but more important than the weak constraint. Lastly, we have the weak constraint or least strong, which can be defined as the most flexible and/or least important toward achieving your project goal. Risk Management Another technique that can save you many headaches is the use of risk management. It is one tool that probably is not used as consistently as it should be. The idea is to identify any risks that could cause problems with the project or keep it from succeeding. One option is to hold a meeting with your team and brainstorm the risks that might impact your project. Consider coon project risks like budget/funding issues: Do you have the money or financing available for the project? 3

4 Scope creep: It is said inside every large project there is a small project trying to get out. This refers to the tendency for a great little project to have so much added to it that it becomes almost impossible. Incorrect assumptions I mentioned before, and they can occur because the estimates on this project are a year old or were created in a different economic environment. Personnel issues include having the talent we need and even if we do, have we identified a backup plan in case we lose a key member of the team? Technical issues often include things like hardware and software. And, lastly, we may have vendor or supply issues, natural disasters, political or legal considerations or even just getting a permit that need to be considered as project risks. Once we have identified these risks, we do what is known as a criticality analysis. We determine which risks would have the greatest impact on the project. It is beneficial to evaluate risks with two criteria: 1. The probability of occurrence 2. The impact on the project You may find some things that could devastate the project but are extremely unlikely to occur and are not worth further analysis. On the other hand, you may find something that is very likely to occur but would not impact the project in any specific way. This, too, could be ignored. These two issues can be ignored, but finding a strong possibility of occurrence plus a major impact is the risk you want to spend some time on. Execution Execution is doing or performing the project. It is where the project team actually coences doing the tasks that need to be completed to accomplish the project goal. One of your biggest concerns here is to ensure you have the right people in the right places. If you have the opportunity to select your project team, I might suggest you focus more on the team member s ability to work with others than on their skill set alone. Project team members have to work closely together, and there is usually not that normal carrotand-stick control that a line manager has. I usually say if you are using school grades of A, B, C, D and F, then you might want to work on choosing B and C players who can work well together and stay away from the A players unless they have that same ability. Module 3: Monitoring and Controlling As I stated in the beginning, the monitoring stage is like drawing a line from monitoring to planning. We are constantly looking back at how we are progressing against the plan. This process coences right after we start the project. We can be two weeks into the project and we need to look back to the plan to see how we are doing against those triple constraints of time, budget and performance. Again we might also be comparing to other constraints we created, like customer satisfaction, a quality measurement, etc. Staying on top of these constraints is the tool that is most likely to allow you to complete the project as planned. The project team needs to create reports to keep the sponsor, stakeholders and any other interested parties informed of how the project is progressing. These reports would be modified depending upon the audience. The project team itself would have the most detailed reports because they need to be aware of all aspects of the project. As we counicate up the chain, the amount of information provided is reduced. We can think of the counication of status as a pyramid where the project team is at the base with access to the greatest amount of information. As we move up the chain of coand, the amount of information decreases through the managers, directors, vice presidents to the CEO. The CEO may just need to know that the project is meeting its time, budget and performance goals, while the others would get more facts and data. Controlling The controlling phase is the third step in the problemsolving loop. The loop works like this: Once we start executing, we begin the monitor phase where we check at least the triple constraints that we set up in the planning phase. If we discover a variance to the plan, then we go into the controlling phase. This is where we make an adjustment to deal with the situation. As I said earlier, at this stage we try to resolve the problem discovered, to mitigate the problem or at least report the impact potential to the sponsor and the stakeholders. 4

5 HIGH-IMPACT COMMUNICATION Using the seven-step problem-solving process can make your investigation more efficient. Step 1: Define the problem. Determine what the problem is or if there is a problem. Sometimes we have to deal with false alarms. Step 2: Gather data and analyze the problem. This could mean going to the scene of the problem or gathering data on how often the problem is occurring. Step 3: Generate potential solutions. Brainstorm as many possible solutions as possible with the project team. Step 4: Select the solution or choose from the alternatives. It might be a good idea to select the top two or three options. This can eliminate having to bring the problem-solving team back together if the first option does not solve the problem. Step 5: Implement the solution. Test the solution against the problem. Step 6: Evaluate the solution to see if it has resolved the issue. If it hasn t solved the problem, try the second or third options that were created or reconvene the team to start the process again. Step 7: Celebrate success and thank the team for their efforts. Following the seven-step problem-solving process can help avoid a normal tendency to jump from defining the problem to selecting a solution. We often skip the whole concept of gathering data and analyzing the problem to generate potential solutions. The process of following each step can prevent us from jumping to the wrong conclusion. If the project team is unable to solve the problem, then they must determine the impact to the project and report this to the project sponsor and stakeholders. A problem that would delay a project, has a significant impact on performance or exceeds the ability of the company to finance could lead to killing or shelving of the project. Module 4: Closing Closing includes the wrapping up of the project, a project evaluation and a celebration. Once you have cleared all the problems and gotten the project to closing, there are still a few things that need to be taken care of. First, we must make sure that your customers, stakeholders, sponsors, etc., are happy with the results. Of course, your focus has been to deliver the results that you spelled out in the project goal and the initiation process. It is possible that you will formally present this result to the sponsor and stakeholders, which may require participation of your project team. It is a very good idea to do an evaluation of the completed project. The main reason this is not done is due to the cost of the process. The evaluation is well worth doing and it is often known as lessons learned or after action report. The evaluation should be used to identify the things that went well in the project and those things that did not go so well. This does not necessarily require a lot of time. You can get the project team together for a final meeting and go through the project process together. You could start off with the initiation process and review how setting the goal and kicking off the project went. Then move on to the planning process and review things that worked well there and the things that could be improved upon. The objective is to find those things that worked well for the project team so that you can use that information on the next project. It also is beneficial to review what did not go well so that you can avoid those situations and use a substitute process in any follow-on projects. I often find that these few pages of notes that are generated from the evaluation meeting are invaluable to any projects that follow the original project. Celebration is the final key part of the closing process. It is important to celebrate the completion of a project. The longer the project, the more important it is to celebrate its completion. This could be gathering everyone involved for a celebration and a meal. It could be bringing in a cake for celebration or, at a minimum, we need to at least give our team a heartfelt thank-you for the efforts they put into making the project a success. This brings our project management session to a conclusion as well, and I sincerely hope you will be celebrating the closing of many successful projects in your future. Enjoy this resource? Visit to view our complete library for more professional learning products. 5