CAN BE EASY
Fast-Track Guide
For Accidental Project Managers
By
Perry Wilson
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Copyright 2011 by Perry Wilson
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
What is project management about?
What skills are most important to project managers?
Balancing Operational Needs with Project
For almost a decade I’ve been in the project management software business, I had privilege to speak with hundreds of business owners, entrepreneurs, managers, developers, designers, marketing specialists and “jacks of all trades” from over 50 countries around the globe.
They all had one thing in common: they were looking for a tool that would help them manage their tasks and projects. However, a surprisingly large number of these people did not have a clear picture of what project management really is. What was even more disturbing to me, plenty of really smart and successful individuals could not even name a couple of specific goals and objectives they wanted to achieve with the help of project management software.
I started digging a little deeper and uncovered an interesting fact. About 80% of people who came to us were first-time “accidental” project managers.
In some cases they were just promoted and immediately thrown into the deep-end: “…you’re a manager now, so start managing your projects.” Some were given an assignment by their supervisors to find a project management tool for their organization. Another group, mostly executives and business owners, realized that they could not effectively manage their company any longer with paper, whiteboards and Excel.
All these people were in desperate need of at least some guidance on the basics of project management: how are projects different from activities, what is the purpose of portfolios, what are the best practices for planning and scheduling and so on…
Initially, our company would hold one-on-one training sessions to cover the essentials of project management, and then we realized that we need something else, something that would scale better.
That’s how “Project Management Can Be Easy!” was born. Our key goal was to put together a quick reference that assists you to easily grasp all the basics of project management in a matter of days.
This book is really a no-nonsense guide with very little if any fancy jargon and you will find a lot of good practical advice here.
I hope you will enjoy “Project Management Can Be Easy!” and it will help you advance in your life and career.
Vadim Katcherovski,
Chief Make-It-Happen Officer
Logic Software Inc.
I started in project management the same way many of you did. I volunteered. For me it was the start of a career I love, but I faced many of the same challenges you are. I was lucky enough to have a mentor in the beginning to help me find my way.
Since that first opportunity, I have managed complex programs of projects designed to completely change the way a client delivered service to customers. I’ve managed multimillion dollar mergers and I’ve managed small projects to improve processes.
Along the way I realized that there are some basic skills and techniques to make every project, no matter the size or complexity. I now work with clients to help them apply these basic skills and techniques so they can be successful with their projects.
Perry A Wilson, PMP
HELPFUL READING TIPS
In order to help you easily digest all of the content presented in this e-book, we have split it up into major Sections and Sub-Sections.
At the end of the book, you’ll find a very useful glossary with all of the popular project management terminology along with a number of useful resources which you can research for more information.
You will also find plenty of tips, suggestions and examples throughout the book. The legend below will help you identify the different kinds of content that you’ll come across:
This is a definition or an explanation of project management
terminology. You can also reference this in the glossary at the end
of the book.
This is a question that you should ask yourself and ponder upon.
Finding the answer relevant to your situation will help you become a
better project manager.
This is an example of how project management methodologies can be
applied in a real-life project.
This is a useful resource or a link which you should research
further.
This book is for people who have been given a project to do. Often you’ve been picked because you have a reputation for getting things done. And, some of you volunteered to take on the project— a great way to show or grow your skills across the entire spectrum of management skills.
The challenge you now face is that you’ll need to show you are in control of the project. People will want to know what you are doing and will need reassurance that you will deliver. So, no more just getting it done, you need a language and an understanding of how to successfully deliver projects over and over.
The book is structured to help you do just that, without overloading you with technical project speak. There’s jargon, yes, but it’s there so you know what other project managers mean when they say things like scope creep. Each section will start with the project management information you need and then use a story to illustrate the skills and the common pitfalls.
There are no tests, but here and there throughout are questions for you to reflect on for your company. I suggest that you take a few minutes to do just that; reflect.
Do we talk about tools? Yes, project management comes with all kinds of tools and templates. The secret is we all make up our own. Start with a sample from someone else then tailor it to your specific needs. We put together some ready to use templates for you, you will find them at http://www.easyprojects.net/Templates/.
The big tool that people focus on is a scheduling tool; most of us don’t make up our own. For small projects, a calendar or spreadsheet will work just fine, but as your projects get larger, you will need a tool that does some of the complicated adjustments for you. Easy Projects .NET is a tool that I use and (full disclosure) it has sponsored this book, so naturally I arranged for some discounts for my readers. You’ll find coupon codes at the end of the book.
And finally if you are looking for a book that will help you pass the PMP, this isn’t it. This book is designed to help people who aren’t project managers but have a project to get done.
WHAT IS PROJECT MANAGEMENT ABOUT?
There is a definition from the Project Management Institute – a professional organization for
Project Managers.
A temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service,
or result.
That’s a bit jargony and vague for our purposes. And, it doesn’t take into account what is hap- pening in business these days, where repetitive jobs are being run like projects. So, let’s take a stab at a more clear definition.
A project has a beginning and an end:
That means month end processing could be a project, but sales wouldn’t be one. Another example is marketing campaigns, they are often seen as projects, but selling the products is not.
A project creates something unique:
That means developing a new car model is a project, but building an existing car model is not. Maybe a bit more needs to be said here.
If we look at some fairly common projects worldwide, we can see buildings and bridges and airports that are all projects. So, why is every bridge, building and airport unique? There are so many variable that each one needs a tailored design and has specific conditions that apply. So each bridge, building and airport is unique.
To go back to the car example, a new model of car will be unique because it will have new fea- tures, new materials, and new regulations to meet. Building the existing models is a repetitive process. But, if the auto company is improving the process of building the existing models, now we have a project.
Does it fit into the definition? Before going further, reflect on your project. If not, there may be something missing that you’ll discover through this book.
A project is defined by what it will deliver and what it won’t:
This is called scope – what you will do and what you won’t do – the boundaries of the project. We’ll get into the details of scope later in the book, but an example project managers use a lot to describe projects is building or renovation of a house. Let’s look at it from two perspectives: You are doing major renovations yourself on your own time.
What you will or won’t do (scope) is often defined by what you can spend at the time, how much time you have and how much inconvenience you’ll put up with.
You may have planned to paint the walls in the den and not the ceiling. But, there’s a great deal on lighting when you go to the store, so now you’ve increased your scope to include installing lights and painting the ceiling.
This isn’t a project because there is flexibility in what will be done and decisions are made based on opportunities, not on the overall effect on the project.
You hire a contractor to do the renovations.
The contractor will start with defining exactly what you want done, make suggestions about what you need to do, and get you to estimate your budget.
The contractor will come back with an estimate of the timeline and budget. You sign the agreement and you get what you agreed to. Any additions – like the great deal on lighting – will need to be assessed and added to the timeline and the budget.
This is a project.
It might sound like you can’t start your project until you have thought through everything, planned for every contingency and agreed on every little detail. We’ll there’s one thing that is also true about projects:
Things change and the more complex your project and the longer your timeline, the more things will change.
This book will guide you through the tools and techniques you can use to help you manage your project to successful completion—despite the fact that things change.
WHAT SKILLS ARE MOST IMPORTANT TO PROJECT MANAGERS?
One of the misconceptions of project management is that the project manager is supposed to manage the schedule and make sure the tasks are done. Well, tasks don’t do themselves, so the PM is actually managing people to deliver the project successfully.
If you have a background in people management, you’ll use those skills in project management. What you’ll find is your skills aren’t just applied to the project team; you manage up, down and sideways.
Here’s what you’ll find as we delve into the project management skills:
Communication Skills
As the PM, you need to provide information to all the people who are affected by your project. You don’t always need to understand how to develop the communication, but you do need to understand what needs to be communicated to, whom, and when it needs to be done. You will be responsible for communicating to:
1. your sponsor – the person who holds the budget and is responsible to the company for the outcomes of the project.
2. your team - the people who will have to deliver your project work.
3. possibly your clients.
And, you’ll work with and manage stakeholders – people who are in some way impacted by the project. Your message will not always be welcome, so you need to be able to communicate difficult topics.
Take a moment to consider who is in the communication stream for your
project. How will you tailor your communications to each group?
Conflict Management
No matter what the objectives and goals of the project, it drives change within an organization. Change brings conflict. You will need to develop skills in conflict management to keep your project on track. Conflict can come in the form of competing ideas for features of your deliverable. Or it can be challenges to the validity of your project within the organization. Your sponsor will count on you to help manage whatever conflict arises.
Take a moment to think about what conflicts will arise as you
progress through your project. How will you handle each one?
Facilitation
When you hold a planning session, you will be facilitating a brainstorming (check the glossary for tips on this) meeting. You will need to manage the process of building the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) – a graphical representation of the work of the project (when you get to the planning section, this will make more sense), without taking over the meeting.
Take some time to think about your facilitation skills, do they need
some brushing up? Think about meetings you’ve attended that went
really well, or really badly. What can you learn from the experience?
Political Savvy
Because projects bring change, you will need to be comfortable working with people throughout the organization. You will need to manage your sponsor, who will likely be a VP or higher in the organization, as well the end user, who might be sales people on the front line, or clients.
Think about how your organization runs. What do you think you can do
to help your project be successful?
Stakeholder Management
Stakeholders are people who are affected by or think they are affected by your project.You need the skills to manage both types and know when to raise their issues to your sponsor and when to take care of it within the team.
Take some time to think about who will be your stakeholders. How can
you work with both groups to make your project successful?
Team Leadership
A project is successful because of people, not because tasks were completed on time. As the PM you will need to be able to manage a team of people who have no reporting relationship to you. PMs call it management without authority. You will need to be able to motivate your team when deadlines approach. You will need to encourage innovation, and manage the consequences of innovative changes.
What if you are the team? Well it becomes much more complicated, but you need to manage yourself. You’ll need to know when to switch hats from worker to manager and you’ll need to remember to lift yourself out of the details periodically to make sure the project continues on track.
In this list of skills you probably noticed you will be managing a variety of issues and challenges. As the PM you will act differently than if you were a department manager. In your operational job, you are probably expected to take care of things and not bother your boss. As the PM you need to learn when to fix the problem and when to ask for help. The sections below in the Working the Plan chapter will help with that.
Let’s look first at the project management lifecycle.
These are the stages of a project and they illustrate the most efficient path from beginning to end. What often happens is people want to get going, so they start executing, but then realize (hopefully quickly) that they don’t really know what they are executing. So they head back up the lifecycle path and work out what they want to do (initiate) then jump back into executing.
Then someone says “when will you be done” and they realize they can’t answer the question. Or, someone says “are you on track for budget?” and they realize they can’t answer the question. So the whole team goes back and does some planning.
You can see how the costs add up when you jump around like this. Imagine you are trying to bring a new product to market before your competitor. If you don’t know when you’ll be ready, marketing can’t do their job. If you don’t know how much it’s going to cost, no one can decide on the price.
This book will follow the lifecycle so you have the best chance to be successful. And in order to minimize the jargon in the book, here’s how we define the lifecycle:
Think about projects you have been involved in. Have they been
managed clearly through a lifecycle? What did you learn? What would
you do differently?
Getting started is the process of determining what you are doing, why you are doing it, and what benefits you expect to achieve. This starts with the business case (a document that details the financial and other benefits of the project) and ends with the information you need to start planning.
As the PM, you benefit from being there at the beginning, but in practice, you might not be brought in until the project seems ready to plan.
Whether you are invited to be part of the process or not, as the project manager you need to have at least two pieces of information in order to start planning:
One – An understanding of what the project is expected to do
That can be in the form of a list of features, or benefits, or a set of objectives. For instance, if you have been assigned to manage a project to move the head office of your company to a new location, you might get:
• A list of features: people need to be in offices, equipment needs to be in a central place, all colors must be calming, sound must be reduced.
• A list of benefits: we need to ensure our employees are provided with an ergonomic and environmentally healthy environment.
• A set of objectives: we need to support a productivity increase of 20% through effective placement of workgroups and equipment.
These statements are not complete, but you have enough information to gather a group of people and brainstorm how to achieve the desired results.
How to write a Project Initiation Report
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/write-a-project-initiation-report-HA001140644.aspx
Two – An understanding of your boundaries
If there is anything that may restrict how you approach the project you need to know. This could be a budget restraint (and often is). It could be a competing project. It could be a limitation of software used by the company. No matter what, if you know before you plan you can plan more effectively.
Really, only two things?
One more thing to keep in mind, you won’t have all the details. Part of the planning process will uncover more work, questions about boundaries, and potential challenges. As the PM, you will work with your sponsor to answer the questions that get raised.
What do you do if you don’t have this information? It’s pretty common for your sponsor to not tell you what you need to know at first. It’s because they don’t often know what you need. Having a conversation with your sponsor and asking questions is the best way to pull the details out.
JBL Industries produces designer furniture for their retail stores and other furniture retailers.
The latest fad for furniture is collapsible coffee tables for small apartments. JBL missed the opportunity to be the first to market, and now needs to provide their version of the coffee table.
Bill Watson, VP product development has assigned Jane Jones as the project manager. Jane is new to the role, but she’s eager to show Bill she’s up to the challenge.
Before you read the story, think about what information Jane might need to get before she can start planning.
Bill and Jane have their first meeting.
“Jane, I’m happy you were available to take this on. It’s a challenge because we need to get the product designed and available for sale ASAP.”
Jane pulls out her notebook and looks at the list of information she needs to get from Bill. “Bill, I’m excited to get started. I have a couple of questions. First, can you tell me what you want the project to achieve?”
“I have to admit we’re a bit embarrassed that we missed the signals on this. We want something in the stores within the month.”
Jane puts that in her notebook. “Anything else?”
“We want to make sure we improve on the current versions out there. That’s only way to make up for the fact we’re not first.”
“Thanks, Bill. Is there anything I need to know that we can’t do, or we need to avoid?” “Well, Jane, I guess you can’t spend a ton of money on the project, but other than that, you should be okay.”
Jane makes the note and tells Bill she’ll start the planning tomorrow morning.
Before you read on, think for a minute. If you were Jane, would you
be able to explain to a team of people what they need to do to
deliver a successful project?
That afternoon, Jane prepares for her planning session. She sends initiations to the design team, the manufacturing foreman and one of the sales managers. Then she starts to create a list of speaking points:
1. What are we going to accomplish?
o Collapsible coffee table
o In the stores within 30 days
Looking at the list she realizes it’s not enough information. She asks herself what questions the planning team might have that she needs to answer. She starts listing the questions:
1. Quality – is this targeted at our high end customers, or is it a cheaper item intended to be replaced after a year.
2. Budget – what is the limit?
3. Product range – how many versions of the table need to be ready.
4. Design improvements – do we have any industry research on what the customer wants?
Jane calls Bill and asks if she can have a half hour of his time today.
Jane realized she was taking too much for granted at the earlier meeting. When she met with Bill again, he provided her with the following details.
1. Quality – we need to provide two levels of quality. For about 40% of the customers this is a fad and will be replaced with the next fad, but for 50% of them, it’s a viable solution to the lack of space in their apartments.
2. Budget – the project budget is $50,000 which does not include the salary cost for the team.
3. Product range – for the first delivery in 30 days, there needs to be two versions of the product, one wood and one metal. After that, the product needs to come in five colors of wood, and both stainless steel and bronze metal.
4. Design improvements – a quick survey of the sales people where the tables are available shows that customers are interested in lighter versions which are easier to collapse and an ability to have the tables at two different heights.
At this point, Jane believes she has enough information to allow the team to start planning the work involved in developing the product.
When a project manager creates a plan, they need to have a team of people who will be able to describe the work that needs to be done to complete the project.
Sometimes you will have a team, and sometimes not. Let’s start with the ideal situation and see how the process works. Then we’ll talk about what you can do to create a reliable plan when you are the PM and the team.
The steps to create a plan are:
1. Identify the areas touched by the project and invite people to the planning meeting who represent those areas. This is important because these are the people who will know what work needs to be done.
2. Hold the planning meeting to create the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). This is a representation of the work of the project— it is not your schedule. You will use this to create your schedule. I’ll explain this more below.
3. Review the information and confirm any new scope items with your Sponsor.
4. Create the schedule and validate it with the team.
You’ll see how our project manager goes through the steps in the planning story, but let’s go through the steps and add a little more detail.
Identify the planning team
If you are the team and going to do all the work, and you know exactly what needs to be done, it is wise to still include someone else in your planning team. You need someone to challenge your assumptions. In this case, ask someone who will not make the same assumptions.
If you have a team, try to invite people who are actually doing the work right now. It’s tempting to bring in people who have done the job in the past, but the danger is they will not know what is really happening now. So, if you need a sales representative, the manager is only useful if they are also doing sales. If they aren’t they can only talk in theory.
Hold the planning meeting
This one is more complicated. Now we need to talk about the WBS.
First, I recommend you use this process even if you are the only team member. One of the advantages of creating the WBS is its brainstorming, nonlinear approach. By using this method, new ideas will pop into your mind, or the team’s mind and you’ll end with a more complete understanding of the work.
Begin the meeting with an explanation of the scope and objective of the meeting. If you are the team, read the scope statement to refresh your thoughts.
When people know what the project is about, ask them to sit for 10 minutes and write all the different things they need to do on sticky notes. Have them think in the terms of noun/verb formats; e.g. create document, build prototype, test program. Doing the first round of brainstorming individually allows them to think from their expertise. Then ask them to place the notes on a blank wall.
Now you have a wall covered with work.
The next step is to review what is on the wall and add to it. If you have a team, you can ask them to go up as a group and review the information and add notes where they think it’s needed.
If you are the team, do the same steps, you will find more work.
When the team (or you) slows down, start the next step. Have them group the work by what they think is logical. You’ll end up with clusters of work on the wall.
At this point, you can end the meeting. As the PM you’ll want to validate that the groupings make sense to you since you have to manage the schedule that will come out of the WBS.
This is what you’ll have at the end (maybe not so pretty because it’s clustered notes). You can see that this is my plan to create this book.
Your WBS may look different, but here’s the language around the levels.
- the first level is usually the project name.
- the second level is usually main phases.
Any box without a sub box is a work package. That means someone is doing the work, all of the work packages add up to the phases.
Your next steps as the PM are about validating the work:
1. Review the work against the scope statement, you will likely find new scope which you need to take to the sponsor for approval. Sometimes at this stage projects have grown so big and complicated that they are not worth doing.
2. Create a schedule.
Creating the schedule involves talking to your team members, getting their ideas on what work needs to be done first, how long it will take them and asking again if there is anything missing. Your best approach here is to talk to the people who will do the work since they know the most about how long it will take. There are a lot of techniques to gather an estimate of the time it takes to do a project task, but you only need to know enough about it to feel confident that the timeline is accurate.
The first thing to understand is the difference between effort and duration.
Effort is what time the work would take if there were no interruptions, no other priorities, and you didn’t have to wait for anyone or anything. If I have to write an email it might take 5 minutes of effort. But if someone calls me in the middle of it, then I have to go to a meeting, and then someone needs a decision…
You see what happens. This means that the duration of writing the email could be 3 hours or all day.
Think about how you estimate your own work. Do you under estimate?
Over estimate? Do you come in pretty close?
To manage your schedule you need to know whether the estimate is given as effort or duration. And you need to know if the estimate is reliable. What I use is a 2 point estimate, what’s the shortest time and what’s the longest time. This technique works whether you are the team or you have a team.
You can use your judgment and knowledge to decide where in that spectrum you will plan your timeline. If you take all the worse case timings, you’ll be running the project well past the expected delivery date, and coming in early is not always a good thing. If you take all the best case scenarios, you’ll miss deadlines.
And a final caution; you will never achieve 100% accuracy. No matter how good the plan is, things will happen along the way. You are trying to find the best estimate not a guarantee. When you put all the information into a schedule you’ll see something like the graphic on the next page. It’s called a Gantt chart. The bars are timelines for individual tasks; the linking lines show logical order called dependencies.
When you look at line 382 ‘prepare three solutions’ you can see the links between lines 381 and 380. This is the order I need to do the tasks in.
You can see that the whole project takes 6 weeks (estimated) and as the PM you can manage the progress of the project.
Top 10 Benefits of a Gantt Chart
http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/2434.aspx
You have the schedule all worked out, it looks great and you’ve included all the estimates after thinking through what you received from the team. You are finished, right? Okay, no that was a trick question.
There is one more step before you get the sponsor to sign off on the project. You need to take it back to the team and make sure you’ve captured what they meant when they gave you the information. It’s still surprising to me that when people see the whole plan put together, there’s usually a small (or sometimes large) gap left between their assumptions.
This happens because of the things you don’t know people are assuming. The sales people might have assumed that training will take place in a one hour meeting on Monday. Based on that assumption, they estimated that they would be ready to start selling by Tuesday afternoon at the latest. When the training team looked at the amount of information that needed to be delivered, they estimated three one hour training sessions over three days. If the training starts on Monday, it will be Thursday before sales can start.
By returning with the plan to the team, you can capture most of the assumption gaps. I like to do this with the whole team if possible. In our example, if training and sales people are in the same room when they notice the gap, they can find a resolution to the problem and you don’t have to head back into a planning session.
When you have the project scheduled the next step is to go back to your sponsor and get them to sign off on the plan. Once they do that, you are then ready to work on it.
Our PM, Jane, has invited the following people to the planning meeting:
Design: Oscar Fremant
Manufacturing: Julie Olsop
Sales: Wendy Larntor
She starts her planning meeting by explaining what the goals are and what the current view of the scope is.
Quality – we need to provide two levels of quality. For about 40% of the customers this is a fad and will be replaced with the next fad, but for 50% of them, it’s a viable solution to the lack of space in their apartments.
1. Budget – the project budget is $50,000 which does not include the salary cost for the team.
2. Product range – for the first delivery in 30 days, there needs to be two versions of the product, one wood and one metal. After that, the product needs to come in five colors of wood, and both stainless steel and bronze metal.
3. Design improvements – a quick survey of the sales people where the tables are available shows that customers are interested in lighter versions which are easier to collapse and an ability to have the tables at two different heights.
The three team members take some time to quietly reflect on what needs to be done. At the end of a half hour brainstorming session, Jane works with them to develop the following WBS from the sticky notes generated.
After reviewing the details and gathering the estimated duration and sequence information from the team, Jane translates the WBS in to the schedule using a Gantt Chart tool.
Jane is pleased to see that if all goes well, they will be ready to sell the new coffee table in the middle of the third month.
She arranges an appointment with Bill to sign off the schedule so she can start the project.
“Jane, this looks great. I’m really happy we’ll be in the stores before Christmas,” Bill says then gives her the authorization to go ahead.”
Jane gives Oscar a call.
“Oscar, you can start the coffee table design. Let me know if you have any challenges meeting your deadlines.”
“Great, Jane,” Oscar replies. “You know that the schedule is pretty tight, we may need more time to get through the approval process than we expected.”
At this point in the story, I ask you to think about what the implications are of Oscar’s comment. We’ll discuss how to manage the plan next.
The most effort for project management goes into this stage. No matter how well you plan, when you start to execute the tasks things will change. As the PM you need to find your balance on each project between close management and empowerment.
When you have a team of experienced people, you will want to ensure they understand what needs to be done and how they need to communicate with you.
When you have people on your team who are inexperienced, or are often late on their deadlines, you will want to keep in closer contact.
When you are the team, you will need to balance the ‘doing’ with the ‘managing’. There will be times when you have to self manage to the project needs rather than to the operational needs of your area. You might find it useful to schedule yourself appointments to act as the PM – looking at the schedule going forward, prepare status reports (short reports that provide a snapshot of where you are in the project), anticipate future road blocks, etc. This will allow you to focus on the details when you do the ‘work’ and focus on the project when you are managing.
Take some time to think about how you might be able to manage the conflicting demands of your desk job and your project.
Let’s talk first about how you manage your team. We’ll start with the presumption that no one like to be micro managed and no one really likes to micro manage.
Let’s go back to the WBS for writing an ebook (that we had as an example before), and look at a specific slice of the work:
This slice shows two work packages, ‘agree target market’ and ‘agree format option and sales channels’.
As the PM, you instinctively know that there is more than just one task in ‘agree target market’. The work package owner (the person responsible for ensuring that work is done on time), will know that they have to arrange a meeting with the marketing department to discuss the possible target markets and with an analyst to do the initial report. And then they need to get approval of the target market. As the PM, you can ask for a report on every step, or you can ask for a report on 3 points:
1. Are you ready to start? If there is something in the way, how do we fix it?
2. Have you started? It’s a good idea to clarify whether work is started.
3. About 2/3 of the way through the timeline of that work package, “will you finish on time?”
Using this method, the PM is going to be able to manage time without constantly nagging people about getting the work done.
However, there is an even better way of going about this. The answer is simple, use project management software. PM software will be able to keep you updated on whether a task has been started, what issues might the person assigned to it be experiencing and you’ll be easily able to track and monitor the progress of the task as well as the timelines associated with it.
Let’s see this on a Gantt Chart timeline. Our work package owner (the person responsible to make sure the work gets done) will have broken down the task into steps.
As the PM you need to know in Day -1 (the day before they start) if they will be ready. By day 3 you will want to know if they are on track and at the beginning of day 5 you will want to know if they will be ready on time.
If you are the worker as well as the PM, you can use these questions to keep your PM hat up to date. If you don’t do that, you might find yourself starting on time, but not completing on time or not dealing with issues early.
We will discuss how to deal with the answers to the questions in following sections.
Managing scope is the way PMs get through a project. If scope is managed well, the impacts on the timeline, quality and budget will be understood when the scope changes are requested. If scope is not managed, you will have scope creep (the process of never-ending additions and changes to what you are supposed to be doing) and you might get to the end of the project and find you haven’t delivered on the original scope. Or, you might never get to the point where people agree your project is done.
An example of well managed scope is building a house.
Your contractor will have you sign the original agreement on how many bedrooms, whether there is a basement or not, and the quality of the fixtures (and many other aspects).
If you decide to add a bedroom, the contractor will assess the impact and tell you how much more it will cost, how much longer the project will take, and what else has to change to accommodate the new room. He will not start the work until you sign off on the change. As the client, you have the opportunity to decide not to add the bedroom if the cost is too great.
An example of scope creep is in planning a wedding.
You and your fiancé agree that a small wedding is your ideal celebration. You want friends and immediate family there. You think the wedding will be 40 to 45 people. Then your future in-laws ask you to invite second cousin Amy and her partner. When your parents hear about that, they say you should invite Mario, your dad’s old friend and his new girlfriend. Your uncle Joe wants to bring his three kids along, your fiancé says his boss has been angling for an invitation and wants to bring his mother and father along. After the dust settles, you realize you have sent out 75 invitations and if everyone comes with a guest, your wedding reception can’t be held in the back yard. So your mother starts looking for halls….. you suddenly have no control over the scope of your wedding project.
This might seem like a specific example that wouldn’t apply to your projects. But, take care. If we think about the sample ebook project, it can easily grow to include pictures, links to tools, audio, video, interactive testing and scoring.
All projects can be subject to scope creep, however it can be easily managed through Change Request tracking, a feature available in most project management software applications. Change Request tracking will allow you to keep tabs on all sorts of requests and changes that might arise during the lifecycle of your projects. You can then easily estimate their impact on your project schedule and allocate available resources as you see fit, without jeopardizing your project deadlines.
Risks are events that can affect your project – positively and negatively – that can be predicted. Risk identification and planning can start at the planning stage and will continue until you are almost done. The reflection questions in the skills section were a form of risk management. Taking the time to reflect early in the project will help to minimize the impact of events later.
People often confuse Risks with Issues. Issues are events that are happening; risks may happen. Issues must be resolved, risk have other management strategies.
We’ll work with an example of issue management below. In this section we’ll deal with risks. Often people think about risks as something to be mitigated. In practice, you can do much more than mitigate.
Avoid
This strategy means what it says. You do everything you can to avoid the risk arising.
Your project takes place in a country that has a hurricane season. The risk might be that at a certain time of year you will have a potential shut down for several weeks. If there are activities that can take place elsewhere, you would plan your project to take advantage of offsite work during hurricane season.
Mitigate
You may not be able to avoid, but you can minimize the impact.
Your project is to deliver a significant change to your company. The risk is that people will not change. You mitigate that risk by keeping everyone up to date on the progress of your project and placing measurements in the project to assess the progress of people changing their behavior.
Accept
Some risks can only be accepted.
You are building an office tower in an earthquake zone, the risk is that the building will collapse if an earthquake is stronger than 3.6. You build in more reinforcement and systems to ensure the building will survive to 7.4 earthquake.
Transfer
The impact of some risks can be transferred, at a cost, to someone else.
You are planning a golf tournament and you have a hole-in-one prize of a new car. You purchase insurance that transfers the risk to the insurance company if someone wins.
Exploit
This section is called risk management but it is really risk and opportunity management. An opportunity will have an impact on your project, but you might want to make it happen.
Your project is to build a new bank in a commercial development. You find out that the drugstore going in is planning to open two weeks before your bank is planning to open. A joint opening will bring in more business to the bank. You work with your schedule to open 2 weeks earlier.
Remember, issues are events happening now that are getting in the way of completing your project. If the event does not affect your schedule, your budget, or the scope then it’s not a project issue.
Jane’s coffee table project is going well until she gets a call
from Julie in manufacturing.
“Jane, I’ve just gotten off the phone with our supplier and we have a problem. The supply of hinges we need is back ordered 3 weeks and that means a delay in delivery to the stores by 3 weeks. We won’t be in store for Christmas shopping.”
Julie knows that the project will be successful as long as they have the coffee table in the stores by year end, but the schedule says mid December. “Are there any other suppliers?”
Julie answers, “Yes, but no one has enough stock. If we order the hinges from several suppliers, it will cost more. And I don’t really have a lot of time to call around.”
“How much more?” Jane is hoping that it will be within her budget discretion. “It’s going to be at least 20% more.”
“Let me call you back in a few minutes.” Jane has the information she needs to get a decision from Bill.
Jane makes a note that the options are:
1. Delay the delivery of the coffee tables until year end which misses prime selling time.
o This may cost the company up to $10,000 in lost revenue, but there is no hard data to support the figures.
2. Order hinges from multiple suppliers which will increase the cost by at least $1,000 to $2,000.
o There is a risk that one of the suppliers will be late in delivery, but they are within a two hour drive. Jane may be able to pick up the hinges.
She calls Bill who listens to the options and approves option 2.
Jane documents the decision with the supporting analysis and sends it to Bill as a permanent record. She calls Julie and gives her the go ahead.
STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT
Stakeholders can be very helpful to the PM, or they can cause issues if not handled properly. Stakeholders that the project team has identified are easy to manage because you know who they are and why they are affected by the project. You can talk to them in advance and prepare them to contribute where they are needed.
Stakeholders who have not been identified can be difficult to manage. They will appear when a decision has been made, or a deadline is approaching. The PM will need to manage how new stakeholders are brought into the project, and ensure they contribute rather than block progress.
Jane gets a call from Michael Anderson, the VP of manufacturing, the
day after Julie confirms which suppliers they are using to fulfill
the hinge order.
“Jane, I hear you have approved ABC metals to provide the hinges for this new coffee table.”
“Yes, they’ve come to our rescue since HRM wasn’t able to fill the order.”
“You know we dropped them as a supplier because the quality is not great?” Michael asks. “I don’t think we can go to market with a poorly constructed product.”
Jane remembers that Julie did mention there had been problems, but that her contact there guaranteed the quality would be high. “I think we have it covered, Michael, but if we don’t we are stuck because there is no other stock in town.”
“Let me know when the stock comes in. I might know someone who can sell us some of their own supply if we are in a pinch.”
Jane thanks Michael and sends an email to Julie to let her know about his offer.
TEAM MANAGEMENT STORY
Jane gets a message that the shipment from ABC has come in and there
is a problem with the stock; about half of the order is not high
enough quality to work on the coffee table. Julie has asked for a
meeting.
Jane meets Julie in her office. “What did Michael say about his contacts?” she asks.
“He found us some, but we’re going to be short on the order. I called and the hinge is still back ordered, but we should be able to get the final 10% to ship by year end.”
Jane makes a note to update Bill on the partial delay, and thanks Michael for the help, but she waits for Julie to tell her why they needed to meet.
Julie sighs and says, “I have a problem. I don’t know if Michael is on board with the decision to put this coffee table in the stores. He keeps saying things to the line guys that makes them question the project.”
“Okay, give me some details, I’ll talk to Michael, or get Bill to talk to him.” Jane realizes that it’s time to reenergize the production team.
If they are not sure about the project, it might be hard to get them to agree to overtime if it’s needed.
“How about we have a quick morning meeting with the line guys tomorrow and give them a recap on the importance of this product in our new range? I’ll bring the coffee and donuts.”
Julie agrees and seems relieved that the problem will be resolved.
Bill calls Jane the next day and suggests there should be changes to
the design. “I think it would be a good idea to make the table in a
variety of sizes, like an end table and a consol table.”
Jane makes a note and says “We’re pretty far along in the process, Bill. Let me check with the team and see what we can do.” She sets a meeting with Bill for that afternoon.
She looks at the schedule, production has commenced. If they have to stop and redesign, then the coffee table will not make it into the stores on time. Jane needs to know how much time the design team needs to make the new designs.
She also needs to get some information on supplies needed. The hinges will be a delay, but is there anything else that might be in short supply? She makes a note to call Michael and check on his supply contacts if needed.
Jane meets with Oscar and Julie. Oscar tells her that the design team needs a day to adjust the current design and a second day to build and test a model. Julie needs a couple of days to build a prototype and another day to source the inventory of parts. The production schedule will need to be adjusted, but it is based on the design so she can’t give a real estimate of the delay.
She remembers that the hinges were available in different sizes and will give Oscar the information to see if his team can incorporate the available supplies into the design. Jane thanks them and starts creating the decision document for Bill.
Change request:
Add two new sizes to the product range.
Options:
1. Continue with the current coffee table production and start sales with original scope. Begin design phase for two new sizes while the coffee table is selling. Assess the success and schedule the new sizes to coincide with the secondary scope of the original request (more finishes).
a. Pros
i. Provides the sales team with a product while the design is still fashionable.
ii. Allows a test of the market for the design and any suggestions for improvement can be incorporated.
iii. Minimizes inventory if product is not popular.
b. Cons
i. Narrows the market to people only interested in coffee tables.
ii. May miss the short window for the fad of this style.
iii. May allow competitors time to copy and create their own version of the products.
2. Stop production and delay sales of coffee table until new sizes are available.
a. Pros
i. Delivers a full range of options. This allows people who want amatched set to purchase and opens a new market for smaller homes to purchase a side table, rather than a coffee table.
b. Cons
i. Delay the sales, possibly missing the market opportunity
ii. Will require additional sales training
Jane reflects on the documentation she created at the beginning of the project. At that time Bill was more concerned about the timeline than the budget, and she assumes that is still the case. Based on that knowledge, she recommends option 1.
When she meets with Bill, she presents the information she’s collected. “I also gave a call to Wendy in Sales and she said they could incorporate some new models in the sales training as long as there is minimal difference in design.”
Bill asks, “How confident are you in the estimated delay?”
“It’s more likely we’ll hit a snag and the delay will increase rather than shorten.”
Bill agrees to Jane’s recommendation and she arranges a new planning session to tie down the details of the new project.
In any organization you will find politics and influence that has an effect on your project. Projects bring change and that will shift the balance of power. As the PM you will need to understand how to be successful within that shift and work with the politics.
As project managers we often focus on getting to the end of a project, and try to ignore the politics in the organization, or see it as a barrier to our success. For a PM to be successful, they need to understand who will be helpful, who will obstruct and who will champion.
By observing and using the relationships within your organization, you can be more successful than someone who ignores or pushes through the barriers.
BALANCING OPERATIONAL NEEDS WITH PROJECT
It is far more common these days for a Project Manager to have operational duties as well as project duties. Managing a project ‘off the side of your desk’ is a challenge of balancing priorities and making sure that the project is not the last priority every time.
The main challenge for the PM is that operational priorities tend to be immediate and high visibility. The report has to be on your boss’s desk by the end of the day is competing with a status report that needs to be completed tomorrow. The system is down is competing with the process analysis due by the end of the week. The competing demands accumulate until your status report is late and your process analysis is rushed to meet the deadline.
As the project manager you are expected to manage these conflicting demands. The trick to being successful at it can be found in time management techniques. A successful PM will include the ‘normal’ demands into the timeline of their project – whether they have a team or are the team. They work with the concept of Effort and Duration that we looked at in the planning section.
What surprises people is the amount of time spent on ‘other things’ when assigned to a project. The rule of thumb is that if the effort is 1 day, plan 1.6 days of duration. That’s if you are assigned 100% to a project. Here’s how it works:
Project overhead (writing reports, attending meetings, etc) 5%
Schedule contingency (a guess at what the cumulative delays might be) 10%
Non Project overhead (department meetings, personal appointments, operational issues) 40%
Available for project work45%
That translates to 18 hours in a 40 hour week that someone will be working on the project. These numbers are fairly standard, but you can work them out for your organization. If you plan your project so that you need to work 35 hours of your work week, you need to understand where that time will come from.
Tip: Track your time, so you can compare estimation and actual and use it for the next project. Same for the team if possible.
Simple projects will have 3 roles, even if you are going to be all of them you need to understand what the function is of every role.
Sponsor: the person who holds the budget, who is responsible for the business objectives, who has the final decision making power. Usually found within the executive team.
Project Manager: the person responsible for making sure the project is delivering on time, within budget, and with full scope. Will have some decision making power, but is the liaison between the sponsor and the team.
Team Member: this person is doing the work. They will have little decision making power outside the details of the work.
For more complex projects, the PM will only fulfill their PM role and will have subject matter experts to do the work, or provide guidance and advice to the team members. The PM will often have a group of team leaders who supervise the workers in a very large project.
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