Key to successful project management

Key to successful project management

The post is available in a PDF here.

With this article I will write about project planning and how it effects the further development of the processes.

First, why do we need to plan in advance our project? I will give you some examples:
If not planned a project will be run in tension, and thus the manager will not be able to provide the support for its teams. In that case rival teams could popup, and instead of focusing on the work, they might hide information from each other.

Again if most of the work around the project is not planned, it is most likely that the project would go over budget, or even be canceled.

Project Management Tools

You would need a project management tool to ease your project planning. This could be an ordinary Excel table, MS Project file, or even just a paper notebook. In big corporations, they use Project Management modules as part of their ERP systems. I personally prefer M$ Project, and Mindjet Mind Manager 8 (the last one is especially cool since it allows you to do fast brainstorming, and afterwards implement everything into M$ Project, PDF, or Excel).
Do not forget that there are a lot of free tools out there.

Starting...

After identifying where you need to go and set any basic activities along the way that needs to be done. That way you can setup your milestones. This is the stage that would take most of the time in your project. If you have missed something in the plan, or something has occurred and need to be managed this would cause project leakage (I am talking about it, a little bit at the end).

Then it is very common practice each of these small tasks to be subdivided into smaller segments of mini-projects. For example:

• Task 1: Find venue for party people (50)
• Task 2: Get beer
• Task 3: Arrange sound system
• Milestone 1: Transport the alcohol and the other logistics stuff
• Milestone 2: Opening of the party
• Milestone 3: Closing of the party
• Task 4: Clean up

The easiest way to start planning is to set milestones, and to divide the project into smaller parts (like mini-projects). That way you will be able to focus on specific task that needs to be done at the moment and even if necessary to micro-manage it, while still be able to see the global picture.

While this method is useful, it has its drawbacks. The time between the project has to be very well fixed, and schedule to be tight. This might wear off your team members - for example, if there are a couple of tasks that needs to be finished simultaneously, in order a third task to start and one of first two tasks is finished, then the person responsible for this task might get off the track. In that case, I personally recommend you to find him some work to do, even if it is a brute of a job so she could stay focused.

Communication!

Constantly communicate with your team about the project planning. You must know at every given moment what each department is going to do, and what it has been done. Track progress of your project - the way I do it is through IM (skype) or cell phone calls. In addition, I expect my team to keep the processes in the ERP system modules up-to-date and all files to be systematized there - including contract copies, e-mails, orders, client information, marketing materials.

The communication is of vital importance even when some tactical adjustments need to take place. For example, the printer has run out of ink and needs to be recharged, while there have been like 500 more pages needs printing, and the delivery company is not able to supply you just with one ink tank. OK, in this case no one has thought buying an additional ink tanks so somebody has to go to the local store and buy one (reallocating employee for this dirty job). But this is just a simple example, in large projects such tactical adjustments may occur more often if not planned well.

Project Leakage

Let's talk about the project leakage. There are vertical and horizontal ones. This might be considered as Horizontal leakage occurs when parallel tasks, similar to or related to their current activities, derail individuals. For example, someone working on delivery gets pulled into a series of meetings that are outside the project scope because he is an expert in the area.

Vertical leakage occurs when past or future projects divert resources from their funded project. An example of a forward vertical leak is project personnel taking time to prepare for the next round of funding and budgets, neglecting their currently funded activities.
Backward vertical leaks occur when current project resources are diverted to address leftover issues from previous projects. For example, a finance person diverts his attention to help track down and solve an issue with a package that will affect the reliability of his calculated budget.

Conclusion

At the end of each project, make a project wrap up - have a team meeting and have everyone describe what s/he thinks needs improvement, or needs to be done differently.
If you have external viewer on the project (it could be client, or partner), ask for their serious feedback - most of the people in the business are too busy and will usually rush through the feedback. Approach them in their spare time about this.

I hope you had a nice read.