Notesale: Turn your study into money

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Project Management Step by Step
10 Min a day
Day 1:
How to Measure Success of the Projects in the Portfolio
All projects should be measured to validate whether it was successful
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Organizations should
determine what else makes a project successful
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Once you define success criteria, you can apply the criteria consistently to all projects to validate if they
were successful or not
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Tolerances are a way to build
in "reasonableness" to the measures
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A typical set of success criteria might be as follows
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• The project is delivered within the estimated cost (plus or minus the tolerance)
• The project is delivered within its deadline (plus or minus the tolerance)
• All of the major deliverables and functionality are completed
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• The overall quality is acceptable
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• Other success criteria (performance excellence, customer satisfaction, etc
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The whole point of understanding the success criteria model is to be rigorous in the collection and
analysis of metrics, while also being reasonable
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It is likely that the
project will ultimately still be completed and deliver business value
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You believe it to be true, but you are not certain
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Because of this uncertainty
assumptions are very much related to risk, and in fact are simply low-level risks
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Let's take an example of a common statement that is included in many Project Charters - that the
resources needed for this project will be available when needed
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After all, when a project starts, you always assume you will get the
resources you need
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In that case, the same statement would definitely be a risk - not an assumption
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There is some degree of uncertainty to an assumption
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If the event is positive and there is a
high likelihood it will happen, it is also an assumption
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Assumption Statement
Risk Statement
We are not confident in the support from our management
We will have strong support for this
team, which could make it harder to implement culture change
initiative from our management team
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To support the aggressive schedule, we will
not allow requirements changes once the
initial set are approved
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The new equipment will perform as
specified
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One way to identify important assumptions is to perform a risk assessment and look at all the low-risk
items
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These are the ones that you can document as assumptions
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Instead, you identify large chunks of work first, and then break the larger chunks into
smaller pieces
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This technique is referred to as decomposition and is used to create a Work Breakdown
Structure (WBS)
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This is referred to as your “estimating threshold”
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The
threshold can be different based on the size of your project and how well the work is understood
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For a typical large project (say 5000 effort hours or more)
the activities should be no longer than two weeks
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Remember that this threshold is an upper limit
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Assigning work that is smaller than your threshold allows the work to be more manageable
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When you assign work to a team member you don’t know for sure how he is progressing until the due
date (or the completion date if it comes first)
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But many of us work in the knowledge business (IT, Sales, Finance) and it
is not easy to know for sure how the work is progressing
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If you assign a team member work that is due in four weeks, you are not going
to know for sure whether the work is on time until the four-week deadline
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If the work is completed on
time you will know you are on track
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However, four
weeks (or longer) is too long to wait to know if the work is on track
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Then you will know after the first week if the work is on
time or not
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If you
give someone work that takes four weeks or longer there is just too much time before you really know if
things are on-track or not
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From an organizational
perspective, if the people do not report to you as a functional manager, then you are probably operating in
some type of matrix structure
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How do you hold team members accountable for their deadlines without this authority?
If team members are missing their deadlines you must first try to determine the cause
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If it is because
they do not fully understand the expectations you have, then you may have some changes to make as
well
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You can try to hold people accountable by making sure they
understand that you will be providing performance feedback into their review
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) This should also be supported and agreed to by the functional staffing managers
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Although you may not have a lot of formal power, the project sponsor generally does
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If you refer to the sponsor needs in
tjis way you are exercising "referent" power
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Project Management Processes
From a process management side, there are project management techniques and processes that should
be utilized
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As part of risk management, you need to put a proactive plan in place to make
sure that this risk is addressed
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During issues management, you again look
for the cause of the problem and try to resolve it
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In many cases, it is
not the fact that people miss their deadlines that gets you frustrated; it is that the team member does not
tell you ahead of time
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If he just misses the date and does not communicate, then
he is not managing expectations as should be done
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Communicate well with your team and make sure they understand
dates and expectations
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Matrix management involves a complex and delicate balancing act between project managers and people
managers
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Even so, it is possible to complete your projects successfully
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Utilize them to raise risks and issues when needed
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The sponsor can help you generate urgency and focus, and can also
have an impact on the functional managers to make sure that you have the resources you need to be
successful
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Day 5:
Ten Steps to Manage Issues on Large Projects
Issues are more than just common problems
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An issue is a
formally-defined problem that will impede the progress of the project and cannot be totally resolved by
the project team without outside help
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Use the following process to manage issues on large
projects
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The first step is to document the nature of the
issue
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Solicit potential issues from any
project stakeholders, including the project team, clients, sponsors, etc
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Determine if the problem is really an issue
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If so, it can be classified as a true issue
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If it is an issue, the project manager enters the issue into the
Issues Log
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needs help outside the project team to resolve
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The sponsor may or may not be
involved
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However, at some point the alternatives will be discussed and a
resolution will be made
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Assign to team member for analysis and alternatives
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The
team member will investigate options that are available to resolve the issue
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Gain agreement on resolution
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The project manager should take the issue, alternatives and
project impact to the appropriate stakeholders (from step 6 above) for discussion and resolution
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Close the Issues Log
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Close the Issues Form
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Add action plan to the schedule
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Communicate through the Status Report
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Smaller projects do not need all of these steps
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