Project Management

Posting about Project Management

Linky

10 TIPS TO BECOME SUPER PRODUCTIVE

These Time Management tips will work for any-one, especially busy entrepreneurs, business owners, service professionals, project managers and online marketers.

1. Use self-imposed discipline

In other words, put yourself in a position where you have to get XYZ done. For example, instead of waiting until you have the Power Point presentation done to schedule the webinar… schedule it today and announce to your list, so you then MUST get the presentation done.

2. Every project, task, milestone you work on should have a deadline

Periodically throughout your workday, ask yourself… “does what I’m working on have a deadline”. If not, put one on it. If it’s not worthy of a deadline, dump it.

3. Only check your email 2x a day… and never before getting at least one hour of focused work done.

Work out the times each day that are best for you to check your email.

4. Have the least amount of unscheduled time each day

In other words, try to schedule every hour of your work day. This is one of the most effective productivity tools.

5. Have productivity goals, along with your financial and business goals

In other words, have goals for focused time and completion of tasks.

6. Have rewards at incremental stages of your goal achievement

Far, far off goals tend NOT to motivate us. Close goals, that we can see, tend to be a lot more motivational.

7. Pre-schedule repetitive tasks into your calendar in advance

If there are certain things you do every week, they should get a permanent place in your calendar and they should be treated just like an important appointment.

8. Monitor the time it takes you to go from idea to implementation; and try to speed up the process

Once you know how long a task or project takes, try to speed up the process next time.

9. Try to estimate the amount of time every task will take, then put it in your schedule with a start and stop time

This will force you to work faster and more efficiently. Think… the day before vacation.

10. Regularly consider the consequences of not doing something or of procrastination

Source:  Todd Brown from Productivity Tools for Entrepreneurs

Linky

Startups – Entrepreneurs and Project Management

Entrepreneurs and FoundersSTARTUPS

Startups begin with entrepreneurs who have ideas about how they can create new organizations of products and services. They have the capacity to be great!  They just need some oversight, planning and a little project management direction.

(Source: Mike Donoghue – Gantthead)

The Founders of a new company have to be able to do almost everything.  Everyone takes out the garbage, all staffers do technical support to some degree. There is pride in ownership and responsibility in actions.

When Startups Become Successful

If an organization is successful, more people are then brought in to handle more specific tasks. A consequence of this is that categories gets formed that more clearly identifies duties and qualifications.

For those people who learned skills from previous firms that help support and define the operation by developing new processes and departmental structures, there is potential for them to have a great future with the startup.

Skills Diversity

Managing a startup requires a diversity of skills. To perform project management in a newly created company is a similar endeavor, but one that requires dedication to incorporating best practices, building activity plans and developing analytics that help a corporation figure out how to progress.

Operating with the skills of project management means developing a discipline–something sorely lacking in many startups because of deficits of the right personnel or missing skills. Often startup companies are full of talent and energy for the moment, but with literally no plan for the coming day. Being too busy becoming productive and profitable, many don’t include project management in their startup scope.

An Ideal World

Ideally, two or more of the company founders should have project management experience. Putting the pressure on one person to have the knowledge to develop processes and procedures is flawed and creates a probable situation for vulnerability. Bringing in other project-savvy people as the firm expands is helpful. Otherwise, those skills must be taught in the atmosphere of the startup, which can be difficult. Project management is also about strategy and planning. This is another missing component from startups that usually get to a point where they are working hard to tread water just to stay afloat in the business.

The person that makes a difference in a startup uses their forecasting and scheduling abilities to foster a healthy work environment. They are the ones who can take a business beyond a two person operation and set their sights on a horizon where significantly more contributors are part of the plan. The shortsighted unfortunately only have the capacity to run an organization that is an extension of themselves and cannot get beyond that number of employees.

Keeping projects under control through project management principles is essential to long-term success and goals for the future. However, the special spirit that entrepreneurs epitomize can be quickly squashed if it is too severely administered through these guidelines.

I invite entrepreneurs to leave comments about qualities required from founders of new companies especially with regards to managing projects.

Linky

Project Management Is Fun!

40 Rules of Project Management

1. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it.

2. You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it .

3. At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.

4. A user will tell you anything you ask about, but nothing more.

5. Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is the correct one.

6. What you don’t know hurts you.

7. There’s never enough time to do it right first time but there’s always enough time to go back and do it again.

8. The bitterness of poor quality lasts long after the sweetness of making a date is forgotten.

9. I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.

10. What is not on paper has not been said.

11. A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning.

12. If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven’t understood the plan.

13. If at first you don’t succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.

14. There are no good project managers – only lucky ones.

15. The more you plan the luckier you get.

16. If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.

17. A project is one small step for the project sponsor, one giant leap for the project manager.

18. Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when.

19. Everyone asks for a strong project manager – when they get them they don’t want them.

20. Overtime is a figment of the naïve project manager’s imagination.

21. Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance.  Metrics are learned men’s excuses.

22. For a project manager overruns are as certain as death and taxes.

23. Some projects finish on time in spite of project management best practices.

24. Fast – cheap – good – you can have any two.

25. There is such a thing as an unrealistic timescale.

26. The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale.

27. A two year project will take three years, a three year project will never finish.

28. When the weight of the project paperwork equals the weight of the project itself, the project can be considered complete.

29. A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected – a well planned project only twice as long as expected.

30. Warning: dates in a calendar are closer than they appear to be.

31. Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.

32. There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop.

33. A project gets a year late one day at a time.

34. If you’re 6 months late on a milestone due next week but really believe you can make it, you’re a project manager.

35. No project has ever finished on time, within budget, to requirement – yours won’t be the first to.

36. Managing IT people is like herding cats.

37. If you don’t know how to do a task, start it, then ten people who know less than you will tell you how to do it.

38. The person who says it will take the longest and cost the most is the only one with a clue how to do the job.

39. The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.

40. The nice thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.

Linky

10 Ways To Make Projects Fail

Reasons Why Projects Fail

Project Failure
Project Failure

Even though Project Management has become a respected and well-known profession in modern times, in some circles, the belief still persists that getting work done through projects is a waste of time. This is especially true for people who have seen many projects start with a bang only to fail miserably later on.

Let’s look at some causes for project failure that leads to or re-enforces the belief that projects and having a management-by-project approach is a waste of time and money.

Failure can easily be the outcome of a project if you ignore some core principles.

The 10 ways to FAIL projects are:

  1. Don’t analyse the precise Business Needs for a project. Just start the work.
  2. Don’t bother to define Business Benefits as derived from business needs being met.  This way no benefits are realised as none were expected in the first place.
  3. Don’t waste time with Detail Planning. A high level plan, or a graphical picture of the end result, is good enough to show people what the goals are and to get them going.
  4. Don’t bother identifying Tangible Deliverables for a project. Too much documentation is a waste of paper and who will read it anyway? Just fix your attention on the end goal.
  5. Use any available Resources (people), as long as the work gets done. Don’t waste time on precise role descriptions and finding the right people to do the job.
  6. Don’t make the Project Manager Responsible and Accountable for the project outcome. Accountability should come from the project team members. Keep them responsible to make the project happen.
  7. Once a project plan is in place, don’t bother to Follow-up. Each person should commit to what they need to do and that’s it.
  8. Communication should be just enough to keep the project on track, don’t over-complicate things by communicating too much or too often.  Stakeholders (people with a vested interest in the project) can ask if they need more information.
  9. When a project team starts working together, they will build their own momentum without the project manager facilitating the process. Teams will work together without Team Building and Team Development.
  10. As long as the project manager is technically competent, the Leadership abilities can always be developed later.

Surely, you will recognize some of these symptoms of failing projects that you have witnessed or that you may have been a part of.  As stupid as it may sound, if even 3 or more of the principles are lacking (not present) in any project, it is doomed to fail. A failed project is recognized by the fact that it is late, over budget and/or it lacks quality, which means it did not deliver according to requirements and expectations as agreed up-front.  Worst of all, the project was never finished! (Have you ever heard of sunk money?  This is usually how projects are referred to when they are cancelled half-way).

Project Success
Project Success

Now go and re-read the 10 ways to fail projects. See if you can recognise the CORE PRINCIPLES that you need to follow to ensure a successful outcome for your business projects.  Please feel free to add principles or give comments on your experiences of project failures…..

For more Project Management articles, click here

Linky

Project Management’s Golden Ratio

Golden Ratio for Project Management   Golden Ratio

“The Golden Ratio is a universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all forms striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art” Wikipedia.

The Golden Ratio is also defined as divine proportion, divine section, golden proportion or golden number. The golden ratio is often denoted by the Greek letter phi, usually lower case (φ).

The Golden Ratio finds its fullest realization in the human form.

Examples:

Hand Mona Lisa

The human hand and Mona Lisa’s face is a perfect golden ratio.

According to a recent Oprah Winfrey show, cosmetic surgeons use the Golden Ratio as measurement when they perform cosmetic surgery to people’s faces.

What Does The Golden Ratio Have To Do With Project Management?

Every Project has characteristics and requirements that set it apart from others, in other words, that makes it unique. Each project needs to be responded to with a fresh approach, with the intensity of effort and with the care and attention to detail that every project deserves.

The methods, processes and best practices used to deliver projects, are like the 3 parts of the Golden Ratio. You need to find the ‘golden proportion’ for each project.

What Is A Methodology?

A methodology is “a set of methods, processes and practices that are repeatedly carried out to deliver projects”. The key concept is that you repeat the same steps for every project you undertake, and by doing that, you will gain efficiencies in your approach.

What Is A Standard?

A standard is “a collection of knowledge areas that are generally accepted as best practice in the industry”.  Let’s try to understand the difference between a methodology and a standard. Standards give you industry guidance, whereas methodologies give you practical processes for managing projects. Standards are not methodologies, and vice versa. The two most popular standards are PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) and Prince2.

Here are 5 things that should be included in a Project Management Methodology?

  • A core set of processes to follow for delivering projects.
  • A set of templates to help you build deliverables quickly.
  • An option for customizing the methodology provided.
  • The ability to import your existing processes into it.
  • A suite of case studies to help you learn from past projects.

Here is the one thing that a Project Methodology will not do. A Methodology is not a silver bullet. It will not fix projects by itself or guarantee success and an efficient, effective experienced project manager is still required to deliver projects successfully. Remember that the finest carpenter’s tool-box will only be as good as the carpenter.

No methodology will be 100% applicable to every type of project. So you will need to customise any methodology you use to ensure that it perfectly fits your project management environment – to find the ‘golden proportion’.

The biggest mistake in project management is not using a Methodology. Here is what you will gain from using a project management methodology:

  • Create a project roadmap
  • Monitor time, cost and quality
  • Control change and scope
  • Minimise risks and issues
  • Manage staff and suppliers

Of course, you will need to use the elements of the methodology that are most suitable to each project you undertake. When managing smaller projects, you will only want to apply lightweight processes to your project and when managing large projects, you should apply the heavyweight processes to monitor and control every element of your project in depth.

But if you can manage every project you undertake in the same way, then you will gain efficiencies with your approach, work smarter and reduce your stress. You will also give your team a clear understanding of what you expect from them and boost your chances of success.

A simple way to organise your business projects, is to use a Project Management Methodology or at least a standardised approach to manage projects.  This will greatly enhance your chances of finding the Golden Ratio and deliver successful projects – projects that finish on time, within budget and with quality.

If you liked this article, please subscribe to my blog (to the right) and receive more project management tips and articles.

About the author: Linky van der Merwe is a Microsoft Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 11 years Project Management and 14 years IT industry experience.

She consults with small business owners and service professionals about project management and project processes, best practices and successful delivery through projects. She is most experienced in corporate infrastructure projects (upgrades, migration, deployment etc) and process optimisation. She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

Linky

Public Speaking Tips for Project Managers

4 Tips for Public Speaking

Many people may not realise it, but speaking in front of an audience of 15-20 people, like when you do formal project feedback, is as close to public speaking as you can get. This is not a skill that comes naturally to many people, even experienced Project Managers. According to that great journal (The Readers Digest!), speaking in front of a group of people is still the number one fear in the world today!

The following four suggestions may help you deal with that fear. These will assist you when speaking to 2 or 20 or 200!

  1. Preparation compensates for a lack of talent! Prepare the talk (feedback) in advance. Organize your visuals, handouts, and material. Practice and rehearse not only the content but also the delivery. Analyze the audience by asking yourself these questions: In what are the attendees interested? What is important to them? How do they want to feel or think at the end of my presentation?
  2. Your “first burst” is important! You should practice, rehearse, memorize, and/or choreograph your “first burst.” This is your opening sentence or paragraph. The purpose of the “first burst” is to grab the attention AND the interest of your audience. Using hilarious humor, quotable quotes, startling statistics, topical stories, and/or a focusing question can accomplish this. Use your imagination when creating your “first burst.”
  3. Your audience is more forgiving than you are! Loosen up, lighten up, have fun when making a presentation. Don’t take yourself too seriously. The audience is not expecting perfection and neither should you! Remember: angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
  4. Stick to the goal of the speech (feedback). Ensure that you deliver the main message that you set out to give, nothing more, nothing less.

This post is written with input from an article of Bryan Flanagan about: “How do I give an effective speech”

Linky

Project Management is not the enemy

Once there was a guy, called Henry. He was the proud owner of a successful small business.  He was passionate about his golf academy as this related to his keen interest in golf.  He appointed some coaches to supply golf training to clients.  This business gave him the excuse to spend as much time on the golf course as he wanted.  He had many ideas for new systems, products and packages that he wanted to implement at the golf academy to ensure business growth.  However, he didn’t use a systematic approach to implement each of these ideas. 

One day he decided that it’s time to put in that new system, but he had no idea what to budget for the roll-out of the system from beginning to end. He had no idea of the effort and resources required to deploy the system and therefore he didn’t have an end date for when this should all be done.  He had dived right in and got started, because that’s the way he was used to doing business and getting things done. 

The fact that the system implementation took 3 months longer than anticipated didn’t bother him at first, but the associated costs and lack of adequate resources gave him a huge shock.  His ideas for new products and additional golf lesson packages were dependant on the new system being installed.  For the first time he realised that he was trying to do all of this without a proper business strategy and vision, without a proper plan and without hiring the right people to assist him with the work.  He hasn’t heard of the term Project Management, but he realised that he needed a process and quickly!

Another guy, called Steven, also had a small business which he was very passionate about.  He owned a Marketing and Design Company that specialised in helping small and medium-sized, entrepreneurial businesses get the most of their marketing budget. 

He believed in having a vision, a business strategy to guide business growth and in objectives to reach the strategic goals.  He made a point of doing quarterly planning which usually helped him to identify at least two new business projects.  To him Project Management was no enemy, but the way to get results fast.

Each project was planned properly, budgeted for, with adequate time and resources allocated to it. By applying basic Project Management principles and a simple process, he managed to complete the projects successfully within 6 months.  This resulted in a steady business growth pattern and before long Steven was honoured as national business man of the year.  Most of his success he attributed to the fact that he used project management and sound business principles, which he embraced as his key business tools to ensure growth and success!

The biggest mistake in business is not following a plan to reach specific goals. If you are like Henry at a loss of how to approach Project Management in your business, why not start at the beginning.  Follow a simple Project Management approach that will give you the framework to do business projects and get the results you wanted.

Linky

What Is Project Management

Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to a broad range of activities in order to meet the requirements of the particular project. A project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to achieve a particular aim.

The Latin word projectum means, “to throw something forward.” Project Management is all about making things happen and moving forward and has existed for thousands of years. For example, the Great Pyramid of Giza 2,550 B.C, the Great Wall of China 221 B.C. – 206 B.C or the Roman Coliseum 80 A.D. all used project management techniques.

Project Management is as much a way of thinking as it is an approach that can be applied to any initiative large or small that must deliver within a certain timeframe and cost, in order to meet specific objectives.

Recognised as an essential capability for organisations to maximise value and reduce costs, Project Management has developed considerably in the past 20 years. Today Project Management is a professional discipline with a body of knowledge, a set of skills and competencies and professional certification bodies (listed at the end of this article).

The Basic Principles

There are a number of significant principles which determine success in any project. These are simple and well known principles, however they are difficult to apply and are quite frequently ignored in practice.

1. Precise Business Needs

Successful projects are business driven. This represents the ‘why’ of the project, and it is important because it provides the basis for all decision making.

2. Defined Benefits

Projects are about translating the business need into the business benefit. In addition to the business need, the ‘bottom line’ benefits must also be well defined in terms of source, timing and quantity.

3. Explicit Plans

Effective planning, allows people to work together in a co-ordinated way in order to achieve the project objectives. Effective planning is dependent on being at an appropriate level of detail and being presented in an appropriate way.

4. Agreed Deliverables

Quite simply a ‘deliverable’ is an unambiguous way of defining responsibilities in terms of outputs rather than inputs. Each phase, area and task within the project plan should have a tangible deliverable associated with it, ie. something that one can see, touch, or otherwise validate.

5. Pro-Active Decision Making

Project work has little momentum of its own, unlike routine work. All parties involved are therefore required to take the initiative and actively look for ways of driving and improving the project outcome.

6. Single Point Responsibility

In business tasks are only completed successfully when people have unambiguous accountabilities. ‘Single point responsibility’ for results is of the very essence. The Project Manager is ultimately responsible for making the project happen.

7. Active Follow-Up

Plans have practical value only when they are used to help people do their daily work. They are similarly used as a means of identifying problems while there is still time to overcome them. Plans must therefore be used throughout the entire project in order to allocate tasks and monitor achievement.

8. Open Communications

Time must be invested in communication as it is the key to a successful project. By effectively communicating the project and issues everyone involved has the opportunity to take the initiative and contribute fully with ideas and decisions.

9. Good Teamwork

Teamwork in projects is absolutely critical but does not happen automatically. Project work involves people from different parts of the organisation, often with competing priorities and different perspectives, which can make teamwork all the more difficult to achieve. Teams must therefore be actively developed by the Project Manager.

10. Strong Leadership

Successful projects are usually led by an individual who is committed to the project objectives, and who has a completely clear view of where the project is going and how they intend to get there. The leadership qualities of the Project Manager are as important as their technical management skills.

Benefits of Project Management

In order to apply project management principles it takes time and effort, disciplines and techniques. The results are there for the taking if you are prepared to make the effort.

Applying a project management approach is not easy. At the start of a project the project management approach may not necessarily show immediate results. But the investment always pays off in the long run.

Project management adds value in quite a number of ways, some of which are detailed below:

  1. maximises the benefits of the project by focusing the efforts, of everyone involved, on the business need while working to improve the value of the result.
  2. advances the benefits by minimising the time taken for the project and wherever possible, achieving a phased delivery of business results.
  3. optimises resources by ensuring that everyone knows what they have to do.
  4. minimises costs by ensuring that only essential work is completed, and that work does not have to be redone.
  5. avoids wasted time simply by communicating extensively, and running effective meetings which result in agreed actions, which are completed.

By using project management principles and practices millions of dollars can be saved on projects. It can dramatically accelerate the introduction of beneficial change, and greatly increase the satisfaction of everyone involved, alleviating enormous frustration usually involved in projects.

When applied with sensitivity and adjustment the benefits of project management far outweigh the time and energy invested.

If you require any further information or would like to speak to a consultant please email linky@vitualprojectconsulting.com