Exploring Project Management

Defining a project

We should start with defining, what is a project? A project is a unique and temporary endeavor. It has a defined beginning and end. And the purpose of the project is to create a specific product or service or to make changes to a specific product or service.

Each project is unique. Say you have a blueprint for a house design, you might think of the work is the same every time you build that house. But each construction project is just that, a project. Where you build the house or the weather can make a big difference in each construction project. A big snow could delay excavation, require careful concrete pouring, or a modification to the roofs structure to handle snow load. So each new construction project is unique

A project has a specific goal to accomplish. Maybe the project is supposed to solve a problem, like reducing costs in your company or taking advantage of an opportunity like repurposing your company's product to increased sales.

A project has a beginning and an end. If the project seems to go on forever it could be doing just that, because you haven't defined the goal clearly enough. The goal of project is crucial for identifying when the project is done.

Projects have budgets. Most the time you think about money when you hear the word budget. But you’re likely to face other constraints on projects such as resources or time

Project is not operations. An operation is work the same day after day producing the same results. For example, I am in charge of the technical support group a software company. Every day our team opened and closed support request. Each support request was unique but we basically perform the same tasks day after day. This was operations. However, besides my operational work, I was given the task of modifying our systems and taking advantage of our international offices, so that we could begin providing 24-hour technical support. I was given a specific goal, a beginning and end date, and a budget this was clearly a project.

Defining project management

Many project managers get their start because they are good at making things happen. Project management is more than showing off your organizational skills and supervising others. Project management can be summed up as answering a few crucial questions.

• What problem are you solving? The best route to a successful project starts with knowing what you're trying to do.

• How are you going to solve this problem? Whether you are solving a problem or pouncing on an opportunity you might have to choose from several possible strategies.

• What is your plan? You need a plan to getting the project done. You have to identify the work to be done in detail. How long the work takes, the resources you need, and how much they cost

• How you know when you're done? Clearly defined objectives and requirements are the first step. But you also needed to define success criteria. Quantifiable measurable results that shows that the project is complete. Like the certificate of occupancy for a house, or a sales increase of 20%.

• How well did the project go? This important step is often skipped. What worked well? What didn’t? And why? How could works have been done better?

We will be looking at how to answer these crucial questions on the succeeding part of our discussion, to increase the likelihood of success for your project and the ones you worked on in the future.

Understanding what it takes to be a project manager

The perception most people have about project managers, is of they are really organized, and good in getting things done.

Project managers actually utilize the following skills:

• Technical skills, specific to project management. Like what goes into a project plan, how to build and fine-tune your project schedule, and how to measure project progress with tools like earned value analysis.

• Business expertise. As a project manager it’s up to you make sure your project delivers value. You want to make sure that the project achieves the goals and objectives that you identified during project planning. You also need to understand your organization business, what it does and what it considers important.

• Interpersonal skills. Projects typically use people from different groups, departments, and even different companies. You are the leader of this team, so it’s your job to motivate your people. Strong leadership could be the most important characteristic. You must inspire your people. Guide them to do the right things and motivate them to give their best.

Once you know your own strengths and weaknesses you can develop a plan from building up your skills set. A great resource for this is the book 101 Project Management Problems and How to Solve Them: Practical Advice for Handling Real-World Project Challenges by Tom Kendrick. It discusses the personality types best fit into project management, habits of successful managers and responsibilities of project managers.

The five processes of project management

Project management can be categorized into five major processes, to help guide a projects successfully from beginning to end. Here is how the project management Institute classifies these activities.

1. Initiating is all about getting the commitment to start the project. Basically we answer the questions, what problem are you solving and how are you going to solve this problem.

See Related article: The Project Initiation Phase: How to Start a Project

2. Planning is where you figure out how you are going to perform the project. We answer the questions, what is your plan and how you know when you're done?

See Related article: The Project Planning Phase: How to Plan for the Project

3. The executing process starts with launching the project. You bring your resources on board, introduced them to one another, get them settled in and explain the rules you’ll used to run the project.

See Related article: Project Monitoring and Controlling: How to Run the Project

4. Monitoring and controlling a project is your ongoing responsibility to see whether the project is going according to plan, and if it isn't you work out ways to get it back on track.

See Related article: Project Monitoring and Controlling: How to Run the Project

5. The closing process is sure, but important. You get the client to officially accept that the project is complete. You document the project performance, gather lessons learned, close contracts and help resources move on to their next assignments

See Related article: The Project Closing Phase: The Project Conclusion

Traditional vs. agile project management

Traditional project management or the waterfall approach works well when a project is relatively familiar. The goal and solution are easy to identify, Scope and deliverables are clear, and you use familiar technology or tools. Because the project is a known quantity, you can define it clearly and build a plan in completing for it. Then you execute the project and perform the usual activities, to make sure the work is done and the goal is achieved.

With many projects today, you don't know what the solution looks like, so you have to figure it out as you go along. This type of project requires a different approach.

Agile project management goes through iterations to get closer to, and eventually reach a successful outcome. For example, you might know the project goal such as replacing a financial system, but your customer doesn't have his procedures and requirements documented in any way. In this case, you can iterate within the project management processes to get closer to what he wants.

See related article: Understanding Agile Project Management

In the initiating and planning processes, you define the overall goal for the project, and build an overall plan to achieve that goal. With agile project management you also define what you trying to achieve with each iteration and develop a detailed plan for the work in that iteration.

The executing process is often easier in agile projects because they typically use small teams of highly skilled people who work in the same location. These conditions make it much simpler to get everyone on board. With agile project management, you monitor and control the project more closely, and communicate faster and more frequently.

Finally, each iteration has its own closing process for accepting its specific deliverables. Then, when the final iteration is accepted you can complete the other closing activities, such as closing contracts.

You’ll determine which approach, traditional or agile, makes sense during the initiating process of a project, once you know whether or not your solution is clear.

Exploring project management software option

Let examine some of the software options available on the market that can make your job as a project manager easier.

Scheduling software comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. With the simplest projects some people use a spreadsheet to map out who works on what, day by day. However, for more complex projects the most well-known desktop project management programs are Microsoft Project and Oracle Primavera. Both of these programs, comes with a ton of features for setting up, and managing a project schedule.

Other project management programs cost less but still offer impressive toolkit. For example, FastTrack schedule, open project and @task.

When you think about all the documents you produced during the life of the project, you quickly realize that a word processing program is an essential part of your project management software. Although every project is unique, project still share a lot of similarities. So it’s a good idea to build document templates, so you don't have to start from scratch every time.

A spreadsheet program is another must have for all kinds of calculations and analysis. For example you can put together a spreadsheet to analyze the risks you project faces, and figure out which one you should keep an eye on. A presentation program like PowerPoint is useful when you have to communicate project information at the high level, or when you want to include information from a variety of other types of documents.

Because the projects usually have a team of people working on it, you need some kind of tool for collaborating with others. Basecamp And Microsoft SharePoint are just two of the web oriented collaboration tools you can use to share files with others, keep track of issues or even manage your workflow.

If you work on very large projects, or in an organization that runs dozens or even hundreds of different projects at the same time, then you should consider enterprise project management software. Enterprise level software provides tools that allow you to find resources with the skills you need, and see which resources are available when you need them. It helps you track risks, issues, and other information, and even build document library so team members can easily find information they need. We’ve only briefly touched upon some of the software options available.

I recommend you consider the following in your decisions:

• the culture and work environment in your organization

• costs

• the number of projects you manage

• and their complexity

You can also check the following articles:

• Exploring Project Management

• The Project Initiation Phase: How to Start a Project

• The Project Planning Phase: How to Plan for the Project

• Building a Project Schedule

• Project Monitoring and Controlling: How to Run the Project

• The Project Closing Phase: The Project Conclusion

There are many sources of information to learn more about Project management. Here are some books I recommend:

• Successful Project Management: Applying Best Practices, Proven Methods, and Real-World Techniques with Microsoft Project by Bonnie Biafore

• Project Planning and Control by James P. Lewis

• Making Things Happen by Scott Berkun

• Fast Forward MBA in Project Management

• 101 Project Management Problems and How to Solve Them: Practical Advice for Handling Real-World Project Challenges by Tom Kendrick.

#ProjectManagement