Most people just jump in and look for an easy answer for project management planning monitoring and control.
Big mistake!
Just like brain surgery, you need to know how the use lasers before you get anywhere near your precious patient.If the words ‘project’ ‘manage’ and ‘control’ is voodoo to you, then you need to read on….
Running an operational area within your organisation is called ‘business as usual’ and it is entirely different to project management. Business as usual is all about efficiency and effectivity.
Compare and contrast that to project management which focuses on delivering the right results on time, within budget and managing the risks. You see, a project manage is change, and any change has risks associated with it.
So project management is all about managing those risks, whereas operational management, or ‘business as usual’ is all about reducing risks to virtually zero.
Any proposed project has to be prioritised and needs senior management approval before they even start. This gives rise to a host of communication skills called ‘managing the project stakeholders’ these are people who have some form of investment and interest in the project success.
Projects can occur in any industry. And range from simple, low cost, and low risk up to complex, high cost, and high risk. For the top end, think about the space shuttle and I think you will understand might point here.
At the other end of the scale, you may consider a simple low risk project as planning a special event in your personal life such as an anniversary or birthday. They too, fit the definition of a project.
There are many definitions for project, but this one is my favourite: “A project is a unique endeavour with clear cut objectives, the starting point, and end points, and usually a budget. The project outcome or end-product will realize benefits that make the time and cost investment worthwhile”
Project Management Tools
The characteristics of any project can be simplified down to the following points:
- Unique. Whether it is the products, the environment, the specialist techniques, the design approach, the site conditions, all contribute to each project being unique in some way. If it were not unique then you would call it manufacturing or production.
- Clear objectives. These define what the project is supposed to accomplish so that everyone knows when it is complete.
- A project has a start and a finish once it has delivered its end product and the desired outcome.
- Executing a project takes time, money and resources in order to complete its objectives.
Project management
Again, there are many definitions here, but most agree that project management is the art of balancing project objectives against the project constraints such as time, budgets and quality.
Since project management is undertaking a project that is unique, then achieving this balance required skills, experience, and many techniques by the project manager in order to be successful.
Project methodologies.
There is no one way to manage projects, the most methodologies agreed that the following five phases are typical for any project with in any environment:
- Initiating the project. This phase or stage is there to answer important questions such as “why are we doing this project?”, and “do we really want to do it?”
- Such answers will need information that defines the scope, the approach, and an initial business case that lays out the trade off between cost, time, risk, scope, and benefits.
- Planning the project is where you define the objectives, what work needs to be carried out, who’s going to do it, and when and how much the whole project will cost.
In addition you need to understand how communication between all other stakeholders will occur and who has to approve what aspects, plus how you will manage risks and changes
- Executing the project. This is where the approved plan will be followed and the project manager is there to ensure that the team work on the right things at the right time.
- Controlling the project. In the real world nothing goes exactly to plan so project managers need to monitor projects to see whether there on schedule, within product budget, and there are on-track to achieve their objectives.
So when you are controlling the project, if there are any differences from the agreed plan then these need corrective action to bring them back on-track by making necessary adjustments and then measuring to ensure that the plan is still realistic.
If the plan is no longer realistic, then RE planning may need to occur.
- Whether at the end of each stage or phase, or at the end of the project itself, the project needs to be closed in a controlled manner. The closing phase is when you ask for of written acceptance that the project is complete and you sign that your job is done.
You may be asking yourself why do projects need to be managed?
There is a well-known humorous set of five stages, please make sure this is not apply to your projects:
- Stage one, wild enthusiasm
- Stage two, dejected disillusionment
- Stage three, search for the guilty
- Stage four, punishment of the innocent
- Stage five, promotion of those not involved
Compare this to a properly planned project, and effective management of the plan. This will provide many benefits which include:
Happy customers. If customers like to get what they want and when they want it. The first step is finding out what your stakeholders’ and customers want to accomplish. If this is done, then your customer is more likely to get the results they expect, and by keeping your project under control, you are more likely to deliver those results on time and that the right price
Objectives achieved. A project plan is important here as it ties a project to specific objectives and ensures that everyone stays focused on achieving those goals. Having written and agreed objectives will help you control any renegades who may try to expand the scope of the project and cause you to final.
Timely completion. Completing a project on time is important since if the work continues longer than expected, costs will increase and budgets will be blown. The problem is compounded because you may lose the resources unit and as the knock on effect, prevent other projects and starting.
Flexibility. Effective project management allows teams to be flexible and despite common opinion, it makes any problems that may occur easier to resolve. The approach here is that if anything deviates from plan, then project management allows you to swiftly develop alternatives.
Better financial performance. This really relates back to the benefits. Be clear, that the project produces end products, which in and of themselves creates organisational outcomes (or potential benefits if you will), which ultimately needs to be managed until such benefits are fully realized.
Such realize benefits do not usually occur within the Annual of the project, so the project can only be responsible for producing in products which have the potential to realize the business benefits.
At project completion, the end products need to be implemented, managed, and maintained to ensure such future benefits can be realized.
Ultimately, a successful and well managed project will deliver benefits and return on investment.
More productive and happier workers. Seamless and professional project management will enable high morale and productive teams. Team management skills are a vital skill that project managers need. As already discussed, projects create change which in itself creates risk.
Those that need to use the end product of the project within the operational area also need to be well prepared and able to use the end product to achieve the business benefits. This is often not the responsibility of the project manager once the project is finished, and some or plan is needed of how the Tate these end products into operational status, and ultimately realize business benefits.
