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PROJECT MANAGEMENT

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7 Essential Project Planning Documents. Solid project planning is a prerequisite for project success. Poor planning, meanwhile, can lead to missed deadlines, budget overruns, poor quality deliverables, frustrated project teams and even project failure. In my previous post, I offered five steps to assist in planning the project-planning phase. One of those steps involved preparing planning documents. To foster a successful planning phase, here are seven planning documents I believe most project managers will find indispensable. This list certainly might vary depending on the project setup, project size, complexity and organizational planning guidelines. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Start with this checklist when you sit down to plan for your next project-planning phase. Revisit this planning exercise, learn from it and enhance it, to continuously improve your project planning skills. What project planning documents do you find indispensable? See other posts from Marian. Finding the Shortest Path to Project Success. What's the shortest possible path from project initiation to completion? You might say it depends on the size of the project or the work involved. But there's always a shorter path than the one you have in mind -- even for larger projects.

There's always a solution that makes better use of resources while providing faster delivery times. It's like when you play Scrabble® and come up with a word combination that uses the fewest letters and still gives you the highest point value. Say you walked into a job interview, for example, and you were hired on the spot. Although it seems impossible to get hired just by walking into the room, it's the ability to recognize the possibility that allows you to open yourself up to ideas that you'd otherwise discount. So what's wrong with the way you currently manage a project from initiation to completion?

Try asking these questions to help you create the space in which actions towards the shortest path will arise: Project Planning for The Great Unknown. My project team and I had embarked on a massive renovation to our company's main movie theater. It was one of the largest projects we'd done to date. And it was one of those "your job is on the line if something goes wrong" type of projects. Such a big project brings some very big potential risks. My project delivery team and I made a list of possible risks plus a list of planned responses. As you may have guessed by now, this huge project that couldn't go wrong went very, very wrong. Our team realized one thing while planning: We know that we don't know. We knew that even our collective genius may not be enough to avoid disaster. The plan included an eight-step process tailored to how the project team operates and how we run our projects.

Because of this project, my team and I still always assume an "unplanned for" risk is on the horizon. Do you have a risk-management response-mitigation plan in place for risks you know you don't know? Excel as a Project Team. What makes projects move and people excel? In my opinion, there are three characteristics that are consistently found in great project practitioners: 1. Urgency 2. Persistence 3. Executing projects with a sense of urgency means you and your team must really apply yourselves.

Don't look at the future as a way to fix the mistakes you might make today. Persistence means not giving in or giving up. Don't let it slide when you feel less productive: You and your team should encourage each other to be in motion at all times. When the entire team is aligned to such a work ethic and mindset, it no longer is a job for a project manager. Together aligned we achieve more, have fun, constantly grow and become better at what we do. Craft "High-Quality" Requirements. Project requirements derive from concrete business needs or business-use cases and constitute the foundation for the project work.

Without requirements, projects cannot exist. Incomplete and unclear requirements may result in project failure. Moreover a significant part of project rework is attributable to problems with the project requirements. On the other hand, requirements that are clear, complete and understood by all the parties are of "high quality. " They build a solid foundation for the project work. Collecting high quality requirements can be a challenging endeavor for several reasons: • Stakeholders often don't speak the same language (business vs. technical) • Stakeholders have different understandings and views of the product • Stakeholders have different backgrounds and expertise on the matter It may not be the project manager's role to collect, qualify and write requirements. The following guidelines should help in collecting high-quality project requirements: 1. 2. 3. Coach Your Project Teams by Example. Empower Project Team Members.

Project teams are built of people with multiple layers of skills and competencies. A few will be selected as project leads to have less responsibility than a project manager, but more than a team member. Project leads ensure smooth task management and reporting flow, but how many of them are allowed or trusted to make decisions? What level of decisions can they make? The key to empowering a team member lies in the project manager's ability to get to know the person's strengths and weaknesses. In one of my earlier posts, I talked about delegating work to team members as a way to help them succeed. When empowering team members, the same rules apply. First, select someone with a suitable background and competencies.

When you empower team members by giving them greater responsibility, you can significantly improve the way a project is managed. What decisions do you trust your team members to make? Ask Good Questions to Ensure Project Governance. Effective project management governance is becoming an important topic at all levels of many organizations. Project governance focuses on making sure the whole of an organization's project management system is effectively supporting its strategy. Good governance requires that the governing board sets the strategy and provides direction -- and not become involved in the day-to-day management of the organization. It's up to the organization's managers to implement the strategy and provide the board with the necessary assurances, information and advice needed to support the governance process. Good governance and optimum performance should be synonymous. The directors need to ask their executive managers the right questions and the managers need to develop efficient systems that deliver the right answers.

In other words, if you don't ask the right questions, you are unlikely to get the information you need to make good decisions. Some key questions to ask include: Project Entrepreneurship: Beyond Management and Leadership. Project management has begun to play an increasingly important role in organizations. Projects are identified to continuously improve the existing business performance and to prepare for the future per organizational strategy. Unfortunately, many of those projects fail. It's my belief that if you approach a project with management, leadership and entrepreneurial mindsets, the success rate of projects will improve. A management mindset helps project managers to initiate, plan, execute, monitor, control and close projects to deliver on time, within budget and expected quality deliverables.

The management mindset focuses mostly on tasks, and not much on people. A leadership mindset helps project managers to drive the project team toward a common project goal. A project manager with both the management and leadership mindset will satisfy his team and customers, but might fail to deliver complete business value to customer.

Coaching Through Process Improvements. 7 Essential Project Planning Documents. Best Practices Improve Customer Experiences. In order to survive, project-driven organizations must compete on many levels. Delivering on time, to cost and with quality is always important -- but so is the interaction and customer experience they provide during the project. Project-driven organizations must consider customer satisfaction as a critical success factor. Organizations that deliver projects that disregard customer needs create negative experiences and ultimately cause huge problems for the organization. Typically, project teams that fail to capture what the customer actually needs or wants end up getting the product or service wrong.

A project manager blindly follows process and doesn't consider human compassion or understanding. In my experience, organizations with project management practices that deliver positive experiences are customer-focused and have proactive, sound processes in place. I believe the following practices can help deliver a positive customer experience: Are You a Project Driver or Enabler? Project managers are tasked with many simultaneous responsibilities. They manage and drive the delivery of a project while managing their team to deliver results according to the business expectations, on time and on budget. It's no small feat when this is accomplished seamlessly. As a project manager, many times I find myself to be the driver, serving as the catalyst for movement and action. A driver is someone who takes on the responsibility and accountability for the project deliverables. Enablers act as complements to the driver. Enablers add life and color to the project.

The great value of project managers serving as enablers is that -- when combined with their authority, they are able to drive the project and enable their teams to deliver higher quality projects and longer lasting results. Are you an enabler or a driver? Does Crowdsourcing Work in a Project Environment? Can someone please help me understand the hype surrounding crowdsourcing? I understand the premise: Tasks are essentially outsourced to a large group of people through a call to action. (For more, see "The In Crowd" in the June 2009 PM Network®.) This seems like a project manager's worst nightmare. The requirements and quality management alone must be a huge undertaking: How do you ensure a team of people who aren't getting paid remain focused enough to see your project through to completion? How do you ensure no one is trying to game the system? How do you reward those contributing more than others?

I hope this will serve as a conversation starter. Boost Productivity by Renaming Tasks. Do you assign yourself a task that's actually framed as an expected result? For example, creating or updating a report is a task, while producing a report is a result of that activity. Or, performing a troubleshooting session is a task; solving a problem is an expected result. Language impacts how we work and what we accomplish. This reality is illustrated in project management through the use of the work breakdown structures, for example, where we break down the tasks and label them appropriately to be able to execute them.

The work seems easier to accomplish that way. To be productive, tasks need to be executable and controllable. I find that I get a lot more done when I put a task on my calendar that I know I can control. When our mind considers a task to be particularly important or ambiguous, it tends to look for an easier outlet or for ways to delay working on that task. Look at the work you planned for today or the next seven days. Persuade Stakeholders for Effective Project Governance. One of the biggest challenges faced by all sectors of the project management profession is persuading senior executives to focus on implementing effective project governance. Governance is a "top-down" process.

Most of the risks and rewards associated with a project or program are determined long before the project manager is appointed. Effective project management delivers a realistic and achievable outcome efficiently. If the parameters for the project are unrealistic in the first place, the best project management can do is stop the situation from deteriorating further. Failure is guaranteed. Wishful thinking is not an effective substitute for effective project governance. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) does not have a miracle process that will magically transform an impossible set of objectives into an achievable set of objectives. The only way to achieve meaningful change is by communicating to affect a change in the understanding of stakeholders.

Are You Sure Your Project Information is Secure? Fellow blogger V. Srivinasa Rao recently wrote an interesting post about the Global Distribution Model 2.0 that is launching soon. The model holds a lot of promise and is a great framework for implementing mobile global communications tools. Today, the fastest rising communications and computing technology is mobile. And while this development provides exciting possibilities for improved project efficiency, it does not come without risks. I'm focusing specifically on devices with a mobile operating system, such as iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry or Nokia. The reason for my concern is the speed of adoption for the devices. Think about it: With this expanded communication comes an increased risk that your project's confidential or critical information could be exposed, intentionally or unintentionally.

This information can be controlled fairly easily by IT departments on laptops, but mobile operating systems don't allow for the same kind of security just yet. Voices on Project Management. In my last post, I wrote about the importance of a project schedule plan and the fact that a project schedule is generally constrained by various factors. In this post, I'll take a deeper dive into the three techniques that can be applied to address resource and time constraints. Resource leveling This technique can be applied to a project's schedule plan when the project is facing resource constraints or when you need to allocate resources consistently and most effectively throughout the life cycle (e.g., all resources utilized at 100 percent capacity by project completion).

You'll need to apply this technique when resources are available only for a certain time or when you have resources over-allocated in parallel project activities. The basic idea behind resource leveling is to recognize tasks, priorities, dependencies and constraints. Logically speaking, resource leveling is applied in this order: Schedule crashing This technique focuses on the tasks on the critical path. Fast-tracking. Using Expert Stakeholders Wisely. Is Crowdsourcing Most Effective in Doses? Objetives SMART. The Three P’s for Successful Conflict Management | PMI Career Central.

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COURSES. - Ricardo Viana Vargas, MSc, CSM, PMP.