Four Steps to Keep Your Project Plan Up-To-Date

Thee “project plan” refers to your schedule, budget and all the other project management deliverables that you use to manage your project. Whether you’re managing small, medium or large projects, you need to keep your project plan up-to-date on a regular basis. We recommend you update your Project Plan on a weekly basis.

It takes discipline to make sure all the project management processes and deliverables are up-to-date. But, on the other hand, if you do this work weekly it will not be so time-consuming.

Step 1: Update the schedule

The first step taken when updating your Project Plan is to identify the state of the currently assigned work. This may be captured through a combination of time reporting and weekly team status updates. Use this information to update the schedule. Each week the schedule should represent current reality of the project. Each week you should also validate that the schedule includes all the work required to get from today though the end of the project.

Step 2: Update financial status

On a weekly (or perhaps monthly) basis you can reconcile all of the expenditures of the project and compare to the work completed. You also need to understand the work remaining and the cost of the remaining work. This will help you get your hands around how your project is progressing against the budget.

Step 3: Update all tracking logs

In addition to schedule and budget the project manager should have a number of other logs that are used to manage the project. These include the risk log, issue log and scope change logs. These tracking logs should all be up-to-date to make sure you are on top of areas that could impact your project.

Step 4. Determine if any other project management artifacts need to be updated

There may be other documents that are used to provide guidance for managing the project. These are usually created during planning. They may need to be updated as the project progresses. Examples of those planning documents include:

  • Communications Management Plan
  • Stakeholder Management Plan
  • Risk Management Plan
  • Resource Management Plan
  • etc.

These documents are not needed for all projects but if you created them as a part of planning, you should also review them from time to time to make sure they still provide the best guidance. If not update the plans, and update your project management processes accordingly.

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Are your projects less than successful? Contact us today to discuss implementing solid project management practices in your organization.

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Three First Steps to Deploy Project Management Practices

Project management methodology is a framework that allows project managers to successfully manage projects of varying sizes. Many organizations do not follow a formal, consistent methodology of any kind. How do you start with an initiative to introduce project management practices within an organization?

From a project management perspective you would probably start the project by identifying stakeholders and formally planning the initiative. But let’s assume that work is done. Where do we start in the actual work associated with this type of culture change?

Step 1. Current State Assessment

When you are planning to change organization behavior it is usually good to understand the current state. This gives you the perspective and baseline to understand what needs to change. The Current State Assessment looks at project management practices, enablers, barriers, roles and responsibilities, tools, skill levels, portfolio processes, etc.  You can uncover the nature of the current state through a formal assessment. The assessment could involve talking to many people in the organization and reviewing evidence from current projects. The assessment could also be as simple as a workshop discussion with a cross-section of staff members that can form a consensus of the current state.

Step 2. Define the More Desired Future State

While you are looking at the current environment, you also need to ask what the future vision would look like. This is usually not so difficult in may areas. For instance, if the current state shows that project managers have weak skills, the future state will probably be that all project managers have a basic skill level, and perhaps a certification. Seeing the weaknesses of the current state will help paint a picture for the more desirable future state.

Step 3. Define the Gap Between the Current and the Future State

Many change initiatives start off by trying to define what the future vision looks like. However, describing the future state of project management in your organization is not the major deliverable at this point. The ultimate deliverable is a Gap Analysis that shows what you need to focus on to move the organization from where it is today to where you want it to be in the future. This is important because you do not want to spend your time implementing in areas where your organization already does well. At the same time, you don’t want to implement a number of changes and still see your effort fail because you did not address other important areas as well.

Next Steps

Once you have the Gap Analysis, everything else flows from there. You can describe the work required to close the gaps, the resources needed, the priorities and timeframes, etc. You can also define the organizational change management components that are required to move to the organization to your future state. You now at a point where you can move forward with the deployment project.

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Do you need help assessing your organization, deploying project management or other processes? Contact us today to discuss implementing solid project management practices in your organization.

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The Big Three Steps to Manage Project Quality

Being a Project Manager is a tough job! You not only have to produce the deliverables on time and within budget, but you also need to ensure that they meet the quality expectations of your customer. To do this, you need to define and execute a quality management process.

By implementing a quality process within your project, you will not only be able to control the level of quality of your deliverables, but you can also provide your customer with assurance that the project will result in a solution which meets their expectations.

Formal quality management is hard to implement. It takes time and a lot of work. Fortunately there are not a lot of elements to a quality management process. In fact, there are three.

Step 1. Create a Quality Plan

Before you begin to manage quality on your project, you should first create a Quality Plan. The Quality Plan describes how you will understand quality requirements and expectations, quality tools, quality roles, how to measure quality, how to validate process acceptance, and more.

In particulate, the Quality Plan describes the overall quality control and quality assurance steps you will implement to ensure quality.

Steps 2: Control the quality of your deliverables (quality control)

Quality control (QC) activities are those that focus on the overall quality of the deliverables being produced. Quality control is usually the responsibility of the project manager and the specific person responsible for a deliverable. Examples of quality control activities include:

  • Deliverable reviews (also called peer reviews)
  • Product checklists
  • Testing

Quality control is also called “inspection”. The deliverable must exist in some form to validate its quality level through inspection.

Steps 3: Assure the quality level of your deliverables (quality assurance)

Quality assurance (QA) refers to validating the processes used to create deliverables. It is especially helpful for managers and sponsors. Managers may not have the time or expertise required to validate whether deliverables are complete, correct and of high quality. However, they can discuss the processes used to create the deliverables to determine if the processes seem sound and reasonable.

Overall, project quality is obtained through quality planning, having good work processes (QA), and checking the results to be sure (QC).

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Are your projects less than successful? Contact us today to discuss implementing solid project management practices in your organization.

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Use These Five Reports and Logs to Show Overall Project Status

I think most people are asked to create regular project status reports. Really, status reports are the minimum expectations for project management communication. However, when communicating status, there are other elements that should be communicated in addition to a formal status report.

When you communicate project status, you should include the following project management documents as well.

1. Status Report

Yes, you need to actually send a status report. This provides a recap of the project status today and communicates anything interesting that the reader should know. This report should be detailed enough to answer questions about the current health of the report, yet not-so detailed that people who read it are lulled to sleep with trivial details.
This report should answer the following questions:

  • Where do things currently stand with this project?
  • What are the next steps on this project?
  • What obstacles are in the way of this project coming to completion?
  • What is the current state of key project metrics (schedule, budget, etc.)?

2. The Risk Register

The risk register is another vital report. Risks are always lurking in the background of any project just waiting to knock it off course. The risk register identifies those risks, quantifies the potential impact they could have on a project, and then offers mitigations plans for each of the identifies risks.

3. The Issue Log

The issue log report is your way of identifying, tracking and managing current problems that require help outside the project team.　 This log should show what is actively being done to address each issue and prioritize them by area of impact on the project.

4. Scope Change Log

This log shows a prior and current scope change requests, and their resolution. This is important to keep the management stakeholders aware of how their scope approvals are changing the nature of the project over time.

5. Other tracking logs not included in the Status Report

Generally you don’t want to track and report project information in two places. For example, you should place schedule and budget information on your status report. But the Status Report is for the summary information. You may have reports or logs that you are using to track schedule and budget details. If your stakeholders would like to see these details you can include your separate tracking logs.

You don’t want to copy/paste this information from your detailed logs to the status report. The status report contains the summary information. If your stakeholders want to see the details, just attach the separate logs for their review.

Are your projects less than successful? Contact us today to discuss implementing solid project management practices in your organization.　

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Three Ways to Ensure You Collect the Right Metrics

Most companies want to collect more data to be used for fact-based decision making. However, companies struggle actually implementing a strong metrics program. There is a reason – it is really hard! However, there are things you can do to ensure you collect good metrics without going overboard.

1. Make Sure Your Metrics Add Value

Identifying, gathering and leveraging the right mix of metrics are ways to add value to an organization or a project. The value can be quantified in a number of areas including:

  • Improved performance of the overall project fulfillment and delivery process
  • Improved estimating for future projects
  • Validation of duration, cost, effort and quality objectives for the project
  • Identification and communication of best practices

Metrics provide a more factual and quantitative basis for understanding how you are doing and the things that can be done better. Without at least some basic metric information, all discussions on performance and improvement are based on anecdotal evidence, perceptions and guesses.

2. Use the Metrics that You Collect

You don’t want to collect metrics just for the sake of collecting them. That doesn’t make sense and it just ends up being a waste of time. If certain metrics are required by your organization, collect them. In addition, you should collect any other metrics that are needed by your particular project. However, if you don’t have a purpose for the metrics, or if your project is not long enough that you can really leverage the information, these customized project-specific metrics are not worth collecting for your project.

3. Compare the Cost of Collecting a Metric vs. the Benefit

Just as there is some cost associated with most project management activities, there is a cost to collecting and managing a metrics process. In many cases, the cost to collect and leverage a certain type of metric is prohibitive. These metrics should not be pursued. Other metrics are interesting, but do not provide the type of information that can be leveraged for improvement. The bottom line is that the cost to gather each metric must be balanced against the potential benefit that will be gained. Start by gathering metrics that are required by the organization. Then add metrics that have the lowest cost and effort to collect and can provide the highest potential benefit.

If you want to discuss the collection of metrics for your project to be in control and gather them to improve estimating for future projects contact us today.

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Four Tips for a Nervous Presenter

Are You a Nervous Presenter? Use These Four Tips to Feel Confident.

[image source_type=”attachment_id” source_value=”96″ align=”right” width=”300″ autoHeight=”true”] It is said that all people fear two things – death and public speaking. Having to present in front of others can be nerve-racking – even for experienced speakers. You are not going to find the answers in your Communications Plan. Here are some tips to help you feel more confident.

1. Prepare

Nothing gives you as much confidence as being prepared. Of course, you need to know the content, but you should also understand the structure of your presentation and how you will move from point to point. You don’t need (or want) to memorize the presentation, but you don’t want to forget things either.

You should rehearse the presentation multiple times. This could be in front of a safe audience, or even saying the words to yourself. You don’t want to read content from a slide, but having the overall session framed by some slides with bullet points can keep you on topic and make the presentation more comfortable.

2. On the day of the presentation.

Get yourself mentally and physically prepared.

  • Get a good night’s sleep
  • Eat a healthy meal
  • Try to free your schedule, so you’re more relaxed
  • Before you present, spend 15 minutes going over your presentation one last time. You should have a copy of your presentation that you can review.
  • Relax

3. Use confident body language

Much of your message is relayed through your body language.

  • Make eye contact with people
  • Appear confident using an open stance. Stand tall.
  • Smile and let your personality shine
  • Walk around a little
  • Vary your voice and use slow, open hand gestures.
  • Speak slowly and carefully, but passionately. If you’re enthusiastic about the topic, then your listeners will be as well.

4. Look for opportunities for interaction

Encourage interaction with others during your presentation. When others talk for a few seconds, it takes the focus off you and lets you clear your head and focus on the key points ahead. Interaction also keeps the audience engaged.

Public speaking is one of the hardest things to master. If you prepare carefully, have a great mindset and are enthusiastic, you will deliver a great presentation.

Are you looking for training or coaching to become a beter presenter or are your projects less than successful? Contact us today to discuss how we can help you.

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Know These Ten Focus Areas for Project Success

There are many project management processes and techniques that can help your project be successful. Although there are no guarantees, these tips will give you a better chance to be successful.

1. Requirements

Make sure that your customer defines their requirements in depth. You need to know exactly what must be delivered. Be specific, write them formally, and get them approved. This document will become one of the baselines upon which to measure your success.

2. Scope

Define scope well. Get your sponsor approval for scope changes, making sure the sponsor understands any schedule, budget or other impact to the project.

3. Stakeholders

Involve your stakeholders throughout the project. Get them involved in the analysis and planning, as well as execution. Gain their approval when needed and keep them informed when needed. The more you involve them, the greater their level of buy-in and the better you will manage their expectations.

4. Duration

Keep your delivery timeframes short and realistic. It is easier to be successful if your deadlines are shorter rather than longer. Split large projects into “mini-projects” if possible. Keep each mini-project to less than six months if possible. This keeps everyone motivated and focused.

5. Communication

Make sure you keep everyone informed by providing the right information at the right time. Produce status reports and run regular team meetings.

6. Quality

Understand the expectations of your customer in terms of quality and put a plan in place to meet their expectations.

7. Issues

Jump on issues as soon as they are identified. Prioritize and resolve them before they impact on your project. Take pride in keeping issues to a minimum.

8. Risks

Risk management is a great proactive way to solve potential problems before they occur. Identify risks early in the project and continue to manage risks throughout the project.

9. Deliverables

As each deliverable is complete, hand it formally over to your customer. Ask them to verify acceptance to make sure it meets their expectations. Only then can you consider each deliverable as 100% complete.

10. Your team

Be a great people manager. Show them the project vision and how they can make it happen. Motivate them. Trust and believe in them. Make them feel valued. They will work wonders.

There are your ten tips for project success. Now is the time to put them into action.

Are your projects less than successful? Contact us today to discuss implementing solid project management practices in your organization.

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Use These Three Steps to Create a Resource Plan

A Resource Plan identifies the physical resources required to complete a project. It lists each of the resource types (such as labor, equipment and materials) and how many of each you need. If you would like to define a comprehensive Resource Plan for your project, take the following three steps.

First, identify the different types of resources needed to complete the project. You then need to quantify the amount of each type of resource required. And finally, you need to schedule the consumption of each resource within the project. Let’s describe each step in a little more detail.

Step 1: List the resource required

You should start by listing the resources required to complete the project.

  • Labor. Identify all the roles involved in performing the project, including all full-time, part-time and contracting roles.
  • Equipment. Identify all of the equipment involved in performing the project. For instance, this may include office equipment (e.g. PCs, photocopiers, and mobile phones), telecommunications equipment (e.g. cabling, switches) and machinery (e.g. heavy and light machinery).
  • Materials. Identify all of the non-consumable materials to complete project activities such as materials required to build physical deliverables (e.g. wood, steel and concrete).
  • Hardware/software. Identify if applicable.
  • More…

Step 2: Estimate the number of resources required

The next step is to estimate the number of each resource.

  • Labor, estimate how many hours you need per role
  • Equipment, estimate how many pieces of equipment needed
  • Materials, estimate how much material, in terms such as square meters, kilograms, number of units, etc.

As much as possible, also indicate the date the resources are needed and the consumption rate per day, week or month.

Step 3: Construct a resource schedule

You have now collated all the information required to build a detailed Resource Schedule. Create a resource schedule which specifies the:

  • Resources required to complete the project
  • Timeframes for the consumption of each resource
  • Quantity of each resource required per week/month
  • Total quantity of resource consumed per week/month
  • Assumptions and constraints identified

That’s it – your three steps to creating a resource plan.

Need help understanding resource management and other aspects of project and portfolio management? Contact us today to discuss bringing a training class to your organization.

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Four Ways to Manage the “Project Grapevine”

Back in the 60′, Motown’s “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” was a huge hit, made famous by Marvin Gaye. Marvin may no longer be with us, but the grapevine he sang about is alive and well. The “grapevine” is a great metaphor for the way informal and unofficial news travels from person to person. Official news comes through official channels. Informal news, rumors and gossip travel though the grapevine.

In a project environment, the circulation of unofficial information and rumors can be disruptive and destructive. Your Communication Plan addresses the formal communication content and paths, but it can be hard to manage the grapevine. The following tips help stop the confusion and manage the grapevine effectively.

Tip 1 – Become Part of the Grapevine

People love talking about what goes on within their work environment. As a project manager, you cannot monitor and manage the grapevine unless you can be a part of it, or at least aware of what is being said.  Assume the projects you manage are one part of that conversation, insert yourself into it and ask people what they are hearing about your projects. Then be sure to add your own facts into the mix. A little bit of accurate information never hurt anyone.

Tip 2 – Combat Negative Messages

Negative communication sometimes gets spun into a mile-long email thread. Inaccurate information and intensity of emotion continue to escalate the longer the email thread grows. The best antidote to negative communication is to get the facts out as quickly as possible. Compose a thoughtful and precise message with a handful of relevant facts to get everyone in sync. Ask your team members to carry the message forward in their grapevine discussions.

Tip 3 – Stop the Bad Press

Much of the talk on the grapevine is harmless babble, primarily serving as an interesting diversion during a long day at work. However, sometimes the message can be very negative and detrimental to the project. In this situation try to track down the source, and discuss the situation with the person formally. The rebuttal is much more effective if the person that started the bad press is also the one to put out the correction. Even if you cannot find the source, put out a positive rebuttal to the people that can carry the message forward in the grapevine.

Tip 4 – Fill the Vacuum

You may have projects that aren’t impacted by negative communication. However, you may then have a vacuum of communication. It’s up to you to fill this void with positive and factual information about your project. Send out pertinent emails, give appropriate updates at company meetings, and have one-off conversations. That way, people will have something positive to talk about when your project gets tangled up in the grapevine.

The grapevine has been around since the time the 3rd person walked on this Earth. There’s nothing you can do to stop it from happening, so include it as part of your unofficial communication plan. You’ll notice a big difference with the buzz on your projects.

Need training on project soft skills – leadership, negotiating, communication, change management? Contact us today to discuss bringing a training class to your organization.

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