Project Management 2-hr _Robert Sutcliffe.pptx

project management

1. Project Management Communications and Document management With Robert Sutcliffe Lecturer in Project Management, and Project Co- ordinator for undergraduate projects

2. Overview What I hope to cover today is: What is Project management? What do we need to be good at it? A communications activity Complications – what makes it so difficult? Artefacts People management

3. What is a Project? A temporary endeavor. Not “business as usual”, its all about CHANGE. It’s a change to a system , done systematically with all parts considered. Co-ordinates time, money, resources, people. Around 25% of world GDP through projects, 14% fail, 10% of money completely wasted (no return at all) Around 8% of GDP in MEGA-projects - $100 million+ (to rise to 24% in 10 years), 80%+ blow-out in cost, time etc. And these stats are a lot better than a decade ago…we’re taking this very seriously.

4. What is Project management? A professional discipline Project management is the practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time. So its practices of co-ordinating and managing both the team and outcome, to reach specified goals. What are these goals?

5. Success Criteria Time – deadlines for completion, but also for milestones, deliverables, use of resources especially outside the team. Cost – overall cost and monthly costs. Managing estimates as you get closer to finishing. No surprises. Scope – all the content that is meant to be in, excluding that which isn’t in the plan. Managing changes to that. Happy client – so maybe they would hire you again. Developing rapport, managing the relationship to levels they want/need. Get the benefit – actual advantages you made really work. Not enough to do as they ask, but have to make it successful as well.

6. Discussion What is in common with all these - lets brainstorm your ideas and observations!

7. Complications Virtual teams / outsourcing / off-shoring Less contact, technology in the middle of all communications, languages, time-zones, laws, training, cultural and organizational biases. Less people involvement = less trust and loyalty. May be significant savings, more access to people/systems/training, more flexibility, more accountability. Shared knowledge Do we share the same systems? Same definitions – same technical language? How do we communicate non-technical values? Can business/arts/finance etc people communicate well with IT techos ? Do we all value the importance of things differently? Who is right? The customer? The users? The techos ? The Project Manager?

8. So what do we do? PM practice or methodology is a collection of best practices. Sort of standards set. Some are explicit – like Prince2 Select practices that address our situation / complications Use them! There will be a lot of COMMUNICATION happening. Use and share the tools/processes/documents so we can communicate clearly. Use communications methods carefully – the right medium for the message.

9. Recommended Tools and Practices Use templates a lot – shared meaning! Use milestones – shared progress markers – encouraging! Share plans and estimates with those that want them – no secrets! No lies! Set expectations honestly and openly – build trust! Use planning and scheduling systems – be clear what is being worked on and when – remove confusion! Report progress and achievement regularly – enable future planning! All this allows good financial reporting and budget control. Make the big bosses happy! Do project learned lessons at the end – learn from your mistakes!

10. Templates, Tools, Processes and Practices. Choose wisely, and the best practices for the above will protect the project from much trouble. This leaves the professional staff to get on with the jobs they know how to do best, and success follows. Set up a repository to hold, mange (versions), and share documentation and plans. Those that need it will use it. Common now are big, complicated, enterprise products and simpler web tools to share the materials and direct work. But that’s just 20% of the job. The other 80% is managing people.

11. The Essentials of Good Management Get the Right staff Put them in the Right jobs Motivate them Get their teams to Jell and stayed jelled. All the rest is administrivia .

12. Reflection Questions What makes a Right Person? Are YOU one? How would I know? What is YOUR Right Job? What motivates YOU. What creates and keeps team jell in YOUR experience?

13. A little wisdom…. Murphy’s Law is an actual Law in project management KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid! Huge detail may give better planning, but has huge overhead and low resilience. But the devil is in the details. You need to absorb these details so others don’t have to. The vast range of project tools (=best practices) address all the common risks and assumptions – so quality improves! Its where you are especially vulnerable, that needs extra attention. ASSUMPTION is the mother of all screw-ups. It will be something you assumed safe that turns out not to be, that will be the thing that kills the project. Can you question everything? How will people feel about that questioning? Trust but Verify.

14. If time permits We will now look at a few templates and tools This covers the essentials of what project management is about. The ‘why’ and ‘what to do’ questions are both relevant – too many people fill in a template with poor data, and so make poor decisions. Garbage in = garbage out. The biggest challenge in Project management is managing people. This needs COMMUNICATIONS and people skills. Is this you?