Project Management

Project Management
Secrets

The experts tell all!

Matthew Batchelor

Contents

Title Page

Author’s Note

Good project management is vital to business success

Understand the role of projects

1.1 Projects are not tasks

1.2 Understand project constraints

1.3 Understand the project life cycle

1.4 Know your stakeholders

1.5 See your stakeholders’ points of view

1.6 Choose the right approach

1.7 ‘The buck stops here’

Aspire to succeed

2.1 Every masterpiece starts with a sketch

2.2 Get creative!

2.3 SOC it to them!

2.4 Sell the benefits

2.5 Build support

Plan for success

3.1 Define your objectives

3.2 Divide the project into work packages

3.3 First things first (and last things last)

3.4 Build a project timetable

3.5 Add contingency and use it wisely

3.6 Match people to tasks

3.7 Organize and control your project

3.8 Manage risks wisely

3.9 ‘Design in’ quality

Manage your money

4.1 Understand the role of finance

4.2 Estimate project costs

4.3 Choose to insource or outsource

4.4 Choose the right supplier

4.5 Negotiate the right type of contract

4.6 Make a return on your investment

4.7 Freeze the project budget

4.8 Control costs

Lead and inspire your team

5.1 Design in success to your project team

5.2 Understand team dynamics

5.3 Make the most of matrix working

5.4 Tailor your leadership style

5.5 Communication is more than just words

5.6 Learn to manage difficult conversations

5.7 Manage yourself, then the project

Turn your plan into reality

6.1 Plan for change

6.2 Create an open culture

6.3 Get results from team meetings

6.4 Get the data

6.5 Create a balanced project scorecard

6.6 There’s a solution to every problem

6.7 Be lucky!

Maximize project learning

7.1 Know when it’s closing time

7.2 Achieve closure

7.3 Plan to evaluate

7.4 Choose what to measure

7.5 Measure the true return on investment

7.6 Evaluation is a listening exercise

7.7 Never stop learning

Jargon buster

Further Reading

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Good project management is vital to business success

In today’s highly competitive business world, more and more organizations are moving to a project approach. Whether launching a new, multi-million-dollar product or planning an office move, project management will enable you to deliver high-quality results on time and within budget.

Just as important, it provides a framework for continuous learning and improvement. In my own field of communications, I’ve spent over 20 years as a project manager, delivering projects as diverse as product launches and health conferences. I’ve observed a range of different project management approaches in action, and tried to adopt the best of them to improve the quality of the projects I manage.

Successful project management is about good systems and good leadership, to be sure, but it’s also about exercising good judgement when required. This book will help you develop all three of these skills. It aims to impart what I believe are the 50 most important project management secrets I’ve learnt along the way. These secrets are divided into seven key chapters:

Understand the role of projects. This section introduces you to the world of project management and helps you choose the right approach.

Aspire to succeed. To start your project you need a clear ‘vision’ and the ability to convince people to support your project.

Plan for success. Learn how to use Gantt charts, network diagrams and other essential tools for the project manager.

Manage your money. This section tells you how to build a project budget, manage risks and allocate contingency (extra); it will also help you identify the key areas to focus on to keep costs under control.

Lead and inspire your team. How to recruit, manage and fire up your project team.

Turn your plan into reality. Introduces some of the most common project management software, shows how to monitor progress accurately, and how to diagnose and solve problems.

Maximize project learning. Shows you how to close a project properly and conduct an effective evaluation.

Whether you are an experienced project manager or novice, if you follow these simple rules, you will be more confident in your ability to lead projects succesfully. This book will not only teach you how to act like a project manager but also enable you to think like one!

Great leadership, effective systems and making good judgements are vital in project management.

Understand the role of projects

This chapter aims to give you an understanding of the essential background to project management. It discusses the concept of the project life cycle, introduces the main stakeholders, and describes the role of the project manager. The most popular approaches to managing projects are discussed, along with some of the most popular software tools.

1.1 Projects are not tasks

Before getting started, it’s worth understanding what a ‘project’ actually is. The UK Association of Project Management (APM) defines a project as ‘a unique, transient endeavour undertaken to achieve a desired outcome’. In other words, a project has a defined beginning, middle and end, and a stated purpose.

Managing a project therefore differs from fulfilling a task, programme or professional work role. The following list helps to differentiate a project from other types of work.

• A project has a specified outcome. Unlike a job or work role where you are likely to have aims that change over time, a project sets out to achieve a stated goal (or goals) within a certain timetable.

• A project involves a number of different tasks. These tasks are generally defined as the smallest useful units of work. Related tasks are often combined into work packages or activities, which can be assigned to a single supplier or team.

• Each task will ideally be carried out by someone with suitable skills. Project working therefore calls for a multidisciplinary approach. The more complex a project, the greater the degree to which people and tasks need to be carefully matched.

one minute wonder Are you still confused about what a project is? Take a moment to consider this: despite their very different sizes, delivering the 2012 London Olympics and relocating your team to an office down the corridor are both projects. ‘Being a sales rep’ is not a project because it is an ongoing work role. On the other hand, a plan ‘to deliver a 20 per cent increase in sales leads through the installation of a new marketing database’ is likely to fulfil the critera for a project.

• A project is self-contained. It has its own aims, timetable and resources. That’s not to say that projects should be sealed off from the rest of the business – they can and should utilize skills and resources possessed by the wider organization, and the lessons learned should be exported to other colleagues and teams, and used on future projects.

Though they are capable of standing alone, projects may be linked to a wider programme of work, or be part of a portfolio of similar projects.

Adopting a project approach can yield significant benefits by defining clear outcomes against which to measure the input of resources and the quality of the project team and leadership. A project’s resources can be human, or financial or physical – equipment and so on.

A project should have a clear time frame and be undertaken to achieve a desired outcome.

1.2 Understand project constraints

Planning your project will involve making a series of assumptions and a consideration of the constraints facing your project. Understanding these factors will help you plan a project that is of the right size and has appropriate objectives.

The assumptions you might make about a project normally involve things such as:

• Scope (scale). How big is the project? Where does it fit into what your organization is doing? Roughly how much money is likely to be available?

• People. Who can I get to help deliver this project?

• Physical resources. What equipment and meeting space, for example, will be available?

None of this information has to be 100 per cent (or even 90 per cent) accurate at the outset. Nevertheless, understanding the assumptions around a project is an important first step – even if at this stage there are more questions than answers!

A useful way of looking at the constraints faced by projects is known as the ‘project triangle’. This model describes three main things to consider for any project:

• Time. How much of it do you have to complete your project?

• Cost. What is the available budget?

• Quality (or specification). Are you aiming to deliver something fairly basic, or more of a ‘Rolls Royce’ model?

With any project you will face a series of decisions about whereabouts in the triangle you position your project. For example, let’s say you are asked to complete an office move for your company. If you are asked to complete the move over a weekend at short notice, and given only a limited budget, you are unlikely to be able to deliver the best results. So the costs and time used will be low, but so will the quality. If you are given more time, the results will be better; if you have more time and a bigger budget, they will be better still.

Another dimension often added to this diagram is people. For any given amount of time and money, the greater the skill and motivation of the people involved, the better the results will be. Looked at this way, the triangle becomes a pyramid, with the project manager leading his or her team upward to achieve the best possible results within a given schedule and budget.

For your project, try listing the following in priority order – speed, quality and low cost.

1.3 Understand the project life cycle

All projects have a recognizable ‘life cycle’. There are many different approaches to managing projects, but all agree that projects can be divided into various stages, each requiring a different focus.

The most straightforward life cycle approach recognizes four main stages of a project: aspiration, planning, implementation and measurement. You can easily memorize this life cycle because the stages both represent and substitute the words for how A Project Is Managed:

1 Aspire This stage focuses on the creation of a shared vision for your project. What are you aiming to achieve and why? How will you recognize and measure success? Whose support will you need to begin the project, and what will convince them to support you?

2 Plan This stage looks in detail at identifying what needs to be done to deliver your project successfully. What are the various tasks that need to be done, and how can they best fit together? Who will you need on your project team? What resources will you need, both financial and physical (equipment, meeting spaces and so on)? What are the main risks to successful delivery, and how can these be avoided (or at least minimized)? Lastly, how will the project be managed, and progress communicated?

3 Implement This stage can be divided into two parts: motivating and monitoring. At the beginning of your project you will need to form and motivate your project team, and agree the project’s aims and working methods. Once your project is underway, your role shifts to monitoring – what progress has been made? What if any changes need to be made to the original plan? Is your project running on time, or has the schedule slipped? Are the costs as expected, or is the project in danger of going over budget? Have any problems been reported and discussed, and any necessary changes to the plan or budget been agreed?

4 Measure Once the project is complete, the final role of the project manager is to determine its success and to communicate the results, so that the lessons learned can be incorporated into other projects. To what extent were the original aims achieved? What went well and what went not so well? What lessons are there for future projects?

Adopting a life cycle approach will help you focus on the most important issues at each stage of the project.

1.4 Know your stakeholders

There are likely to be several different groups of people taking an interest in your project. Collectively, these people are known as ‘stakeholders’. It’s important to understand the actual stake each group has in the project – otherwise it may be difficult to balance what may seem like competing priorities. Here we outline the key roles.

• Sponsor. The person who has asked you to undertake the project, and to whom you are accountable for its success. Often, this will be a senior manager within your organization – maybe your immediate boss. On larger projects, or within larger organizations, you may be asked to report to the sponsor via a project executive.

• Customers or users. These are the people who will make use of the product or service you are designing, whether it be a new school, a product launch party or a company database. A key concern for this group is usability.

• Suppliers. This group of stakeholders will undertake the design and delivery of your product or service, to ensure it meets the needs of users or customers. Suppliers also play an important part in risk management.

one minute wonder A useful way of classifying a project’s stakeholders is by assessing how interested each group is in the outcome of your project, and the authority they have over it. This enables you to work out the best way to communicate with each group throughout the project, which is essential both in ensuring continued support and in planning your time.

• Project team. The people who will help you deliver the project. These could be colleagues from within your existing team, others from across the organization, externally recruited specialists, or a mixture of all three.

• Project manager. That’s probably you! The project manager is accountable for the planning and delivery of the project, including progress reporting and project team management. Hopefully, one of the reasons you are reading this book is to discover more about this role, which we’ll discuss in more detail in the next section.

• Others. Depending on the nature of your project, other stakeholders might include your board of directors, the media, local or national politicians or industry regulators – even your competitors.