BASIC OVERVIEW OFVARIOUS ASPECTS OF

IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

PRIYA KUMARI

HPGD/OCT16/2377

IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

I am using this opportunity to express my gratitude to everyone who

supported me throughout the course of this project. I am thankful for their
aspiring guidance, invaluably constructive criticism, and friendly advice
 during the project. I am thankful to Welingker university ,for providing me
opportunity to brainstorming in this grate project.

“A project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to achieve

something
Unique”.
A project is, therefore, always characterized by one or more of
the
following:
• It is a One time and non-repetitive activity
• Even where it is repetitive–each product/service delivered is
very large in
terms of magnitude, cost, resource mobilization etc for
instance, a ship
building yard which makes ships but each ship is so large that
it could be
called a project.
• There is something which is unique about it – which means
that each
project has to be planned separately. The differences in the
projects from
any other project either in terms of its purpose, goals,
stakeholders,
risks, requirements or people involved must be studied
carefully and
should reflect in the plan.
• A project has a single objective that must be accomplished
through the
completion of tasks that are unique and interrelated.
• Projects are completed through the deployment of resources.

• Projects have scopes, schedules, and costs and are

accomplished within
specific deadlines, budgets, and according to specification.
The one time nature, the size, complexity and uniqueness of
the project
necessitates, proper planning and careful execution to ensure
success. Examples of Projects
• Construction of Ships, Aircraft or Space Craft.
• Launching a New Product.
• Setting up a New Office, a New Branch etc.
• Launching a New Quality Management Program in the
Company.
• Constructing a Building, Bridge, Road etc. What is project
management?
Application of:
• Knowledge.
• Skills.
• Tools and techniques.
• To project activities to meet or exceed stakeholders’
expectations while
using resources efficiently and effectively.

Managing a project includes:

• Identifying the requirements.
! • Establishing clear and achievable objectives.
• Balancing the competing demands for quality, scope, time,
and cost.
• Adapting specifications, plans, and concerns of the
stakeholders.

++++++

Seven Aspects of Project Management Software

There are plenty of software solutions to help you manage project tasks but
what all functionalities one would need for managing projects is debatable.
There are basic task management tools, some advance scheduling & resource
planning tools, some are extremely complex but enterprise solutions while,
there are tools for specific purpose like

 Issue tracking,
 Risk management,
 Time tracking,
 Project budgeting and
 Cost management,
 Resources planning, etc.
Of all these features that project management tools offer, project managers
should understand what kind of project management software will be useful and
effective for the project team as well as management.

After years of project delivery cycles using conventional tools and techniques,
businesses realize that they need to a project management software to
streamline project planning and delivery process. Okay, I hear you. Let’s pause
for a moment and let’s understand what do you really mean by project
management? Do you simply want to do task scheduling and assigning
activities to team members or want greater collaboration or also do resource
planning, project budgeting & tracking cost or tracking time, managing
documents, tracking incidents & risks or scheduling project meeting, managing
change requests, managing project scope, collaborating with clients as well as
sponsors or more. You may need few of these capabilities or many or all of
these.

What is implied by “project-management tool“? The answer to this question

changes from one organization to another. What problems does project
management solve for your organization depends on kind of projects, project
team members’ readiness, client’s expectations, current maturity of project
process at your company and where you would like to shape up project
management process in future.

As a provider of project management software – ZilicusPM, we constantly

interact with small, medium businesses as well as enterprises. It is our constant
endeavour to understand their current project management processes, what they
mean by project management software, how they have been managing projects
so far and how they want project management tool to help their business.

Seven Aspects of Project Management Software

Though there are plenty of variations in their answers but for the simplicity of
reading and understanding we grouped project managers’ expectation to seven
different aspects of project management software. Let’s look at those project
management aspects, different tools they used and their experiences/opinion
about those tools.

Tasks Scheduling/ Task Management

This is one of the most common perception about project management – task
scheduling. And the most commonly used tools are spreadsheet like Microsoft
Excel®, Microsoft Project®. Typically there are basic expectations like to be
able to create tasks, assign to a team member(s), set timeline (start date, due
date), tracking when it got actually completed.
Microsoft Project offers more advanced as well as complex capabilities for a
project manager to create project schedule. The biggest disadvantage with cost
conscious use of MS Project® or MS Excel® is, lack of real time update or
collaboration. There are many copies of project schedule and team members get
confused, updating schedule is manual, laborious activity that often leads to
errors.

On the other hand there is a crowded market of online project management and
project collaboration tools that offers task management features e.g. Asana,
Smartsheet, Basecamp, Podio, Central Desktop, Zoho, Deskaway, Producteev,
Trello, Task Merlin, ToDoist, HiTask among many others.

Of these some solutions are good ToDo list and collaboration software such as
Basecamp, Asana, where as Zoho, Podio are not limited to task management.
Again some of these are positioned for specific purpose like digital marketing,
digital project management, etc. You will have to understand that since these
web based task management tools have fewer features, they are simple to use.
As your project complexity increases, you will face the trade-off between ease
of use and number of project management features.

There is more to project scheduling than simple tasks/todo list management.

Project scheduling involves work breakdown structure, delivery schedule, Gantt
chart, task estimation, task dependency, lead time/ lag time. There is a distinct
category of the PM tools that offers such comprehensive project scheduling and
tracking capability.
Document Sharing and Project Collaboration

Project documents are integral part of every project. There is project charter,
scope document, team information, documents related to project tasks, issues,
risks and discussions, financial documents, project reports, etc. The
conventional way of managing project documents has been a common/central
folder and everyone accesses project documents by navigating to the folder
location either on intranet computer or on cloud. Document sharing certainly
helps in project collaboration, in its basic form. However common folder
location turns out problematic if you have geographically dispersed project team
or clients are locate elsewhere. Though some customers said they used emails to
share documents, knowing that, it is one of the least collaborative option.
Nowadays size of email attachment is not any deterrent factor but how many
times can you send project documents, to how many people and waste
everybody’s bandwidth.

Document sharing is one of the essential functionality found in web based

project management software, be it Basecamp, Podio, Zoho, or Asana. One get
to access project documents in real time using online collaboration system.
There are advance solutions to manage project documents, such as Microsoft
SharePoint and there are even specialized real time document sharing solution,
cloud based document collaboration platform such as Dropbox, Box, Google
Drive, Zoho Doc, Docstar, Bitrix24, OneDrive, M-Files among others. Also we
have seen that security professional at cloud based solutions can handle security
aspects much better than individual IT team of a given organization.

There is more to project collaboration than document sharing. It is about sharing

project plan, real time access to project activities, email notification, initiating
and participating in discussion forum, commenting on task progress, issue
comments, risk comments, sharing issues and risks with project team or
individual team member, scheduling project meetings, recording and sharing
meeting information, notifying changes in project timeline, documents
upload/change notification, alert to update timesheet, allowing clients to access
project information and participate in project activities, etc.

Project Resource Planning and Resource Management

For many organizations including professional services companies, resources

management is one critical area of managing projects. There are primarily two
aspects of managing project resources

 Project Resource Planning

 Project Resource Assignment & Tracking

If your business is struggling to deploy right resources to right projects or if you

have no idea whether you have enough capacity to take up new project: project
resources planning is very important for your company. Project resources
planning involve identifying resource skillset, job role, experience, knowing
their availability, assigned work, actual work, estimated work across all
projects. Now there are software that offers resource planning features such as
Microsoft Project®(but it is debated by some), Resource Guru, Ganttic,
Workotter, Deltek People Planner, Hubplanner, among others.

Tracking whether things are falling in place as planned is also vital to know
efficiency and effectivity of your planning as well as project resources. If you
have planned 40 hours of work for couple of resources and if it is taking more
than 60 hours to complete in reality, then you should take cognizance of the
same and make the planning better. The direct implication of such variation
(between planned resource hours and actual resource hours) is your bottom-line
or margin will get hit. Hence there are tools that offers way to track resources
assigned across projects (actual assignment verses actual hours spent in doing
the work). It will be a mix of resource planning and tracking resource load,
resource time tracking.

Project Times Tracking and Time Management

The ability of deploying consultants on multiple projects to maximize the

billability is business driver for professional services organization. The
billability in such cases is based on number of hours spent on client-project
activities. Hence it is important for professional services companies to track
project time. Not only professional services companies but wherever it involves
project delivery on time and material basis. It helps businesses knowing
resource efficiency, keep project cost under control and improving project
margins.

Now there are plethora of time tracking software some of them are purely time
tracking tool such as Toggl, Timecamp, Harvest, Tsheet, Replicon, OpenAir,
Freckle, TimeDoctor, Officetime, SlimTimer, eBillity, actiTime, Timewriter,
RescueTime, ClickTime, among others. On the other hand there are tools which
sometimes offer integrated or extra/add-on with basic project management like
Atlassian Jira, Asana, Bascamp, etc.

Tracking time can be essential or optional or not-required for your business or

project depending on business/project/client/team factors. Generally it helps if
you track resources time spent on project by analyzing the data. If you are
expected to track time, you should select right tool to track time, something that
would be dead simple for project team member, tool that they can use on the go,
anytime, anywhere; a tool that will remind them about pending timesheet for
previous weeks.

Project Issue Management

Speaking of project status, project manager generally refers to whether the
project is on time. But many times, if not always it also means whether is
project has any pending issues or if it is stuck anywhere. Now there are different
ways how such problems are identified or named: some call it project issues,
some call it project incidents, IT people call it bugs some merely name it as
problem. Project issues are identified with specific number, summary,
description, priority, documents/screenshot, reporter, assignee, comments and
issue lifecycle (accept, resolve, reassign, reopen, verify, close).

There are good number of tools available for issue tracking: some of those are
installable such as Fogbugz, Redmine, Trac, MantisBT, BugZilla, BugGenie,
where as others are cloud based such as Jira, YouTrack, Zoho BugTracker,
Airbrake Bug Tracker, Bugify, ASITrack, Bontq, Bug-Track.com, BugAware,
Bugclipper, BugHerd, BugHost, Bugrocket among others. One of the
confusions project coordinators have regarding the issues are treated in tools
such as Jira, they consider issue as task. Project issue is a project issue is a
project issue. Whether it can become a scheduled activity or not, is a project
manager’s decision based on many other factors (project cost, resource
availability, timeline impact, budget approval, client approval, etc).

Issues/bugs are often considered the disputed area between vendor and
consumer organization. To streamline the issue reporting process, to track issue
lifecycle, to bring transparency in dealing with issues, project managers require
issue tracking tool. More often than not, project team end up working on issue
resolution, sometime client pay for the issue resolution work. There are project
management tools that allows tracking time not only against tasks but also
issues and risks.

Project Budget and Tracking Project Cost

One cannot skip tracking project financials if business is to sustain. Tracking

project financials like budget, estimated cost, actual cost, billing helps
businesses to know whether projects are delivered by making profit or it is a
loss-making-business. If you have financial numbers to track, you can improve
the project financials, make them profitable. But if you do not even track
financial numbers you are merely relying on gut and luck, which does sustain
longer.

When a project manager tracks project financials it comes down to five main
aspects

 Financial provision for a project i.e. budget

  Estimated Cost (estimated resource cost, estimated fixed cost, expected
expenses, etc.)
 Actual Cost (actual resource cost, actual fixed cost, actual expense)
 Project Billing/ Revenue
 Margins/ Profit

When projects are delivered on time and material basis, it is necessary to track
project cost. There are project management tools which help project manager in
managing project cost. Microsoft Project can help in project cost estimation,
Ecosys, Replicon, Cost Management, HardDollar, MPower, Abak 360, Deltek,
Uniphi, Pronomics, Galorath, ProjStream, SIS among others.

While looking at or evaluating any of above tools, one must keep in mind that
as project team members work on activities, update progress, fill in timesheet,
submit expenses: the software should update cost information automatically. If
you had to update project cost information separately, it will lead to confusion,
error and frustrating conversations.

Also make it a point to understand that effective project management requires is

more than just budget/cost/billing numbers. There are variance report, earned
value report, dashboard representation of project financial radar chart, bar chart,
etc.
Ultimate Project Management Tool that Has All Of Above

When I speak with customers to understand their expectations, typically they

remained unhappy with whatever they were using, interestingly many of them
are looking for ultimate project management software that has all above
features. Their expectations are pretty much reasonable Instead of using discrete
project management tools with different purpose, we would like to use one
advanced and integrated tool that packages everything together.

You may find such tools that provide all of above functionalities but there will
cost you a bomb. These tools requires heavy customization, extensive training,
and significant change management drive. But finally what is important is the
adoption of the tool and in turn RoI.

Of course one can find such ultimate project management software like
ZilicusPM. ZilicusPM has

 Project Scheduling Software (Simple Excel like, Advance interactive

Gantt chart, Kanban board)
  Project Resource Planning and Management Software
 Project Issue Tracking Software and Project Risk Management Software
 Timesheet Tracking Software
 Project Expenses Management Software
 Project Portfolio Management Software with Financial Management
 Project Collaboration Software
 Project Dashboard and Reporting Software

ZilicusPM is designed as a modular software. You can enable module of your

choice

 If you do not wish to track team members’ time, disable time tracking
module,
 Not ready for risk management now, disable it till you get ready

One should also keep in mind that there are no free lunches but having said that,
ZilicusPM is pretty reasonably priced such that it provides enterprise grade
project management capabilities in the most cost effective manner.

Concluding Remark

As you will start researching for the “best project management software” for
your company and when someone asks you, “what do you mean by the best
project management software”, this article will help you answer the question.

But let me reiterate, the tool that works for your team, has optimal functionality
you need and available cost-effectively is your best tool. After all, any tool will
not have some or other feature which will be present in other tool. Your choice
of project management software should be of a tool that will centralize your
project management processes, project management artifacts, something that is
easier to use for everyone, keeps then engaged in multiple channels like web,
mobile, email and deliver faster performance.

++++++

+++++++
  Project Health – Schedule

Though not every organization has mature project management processes in

place but business managers are smart people and they have a clear way to
assess whether project business is going in right direction or not. If your
organization has a way to specify what is acceptable slippage for a project, it
becomes a project KPI. As mentioned earlier, some organizations can not let
project lag more than 40% behind schedule, otherwise they feel the heat of
penalty from their clients. In this case, internally, they might want to set project
schedule KPI as 30%. So whenever any project lags behind schedule by 25%, it
gets highlighted and corrective action can be taken.

 Project Health – Resources

If your project has resource being used for their 30% of allocated time, that
would be very difficult to justify in today’s competitive world. Especially if
your projects have contractors and if you don’t assign them enough work, they
it adds to cost without significant benefit to the project. Resource utilization is
very important project KPIs not only from team perspective but also whether
project manager is able to do justice to its role. ZilicusPM let’s you clearly and
transparently track resource utilization KPIs.
  Project Health – Issues

If you are a professional services orgnaization delivering client projects, or if

you are building a product, then can you let project issues, incidents/bugs
remain open: how many, for how much longer, by whom, of what priority.
Answers to these questions gives you another KPI about project Health – Issues.
ZilicusPM multi-project dashboard clearly shows percentage of open issues for
a given project a given point in time. If KPI says there can not be more than
50% of the issue remain open at any time, clearly what we see below is a
crossing the limit set by KPI.

 Project Health – Risk

Similarly if your organization, department or projects deal with compliance,

audit or anything related to hazardous stuff (Environment Health Safety); then
risk management is must for you. It is not to say that risk management is no
necessary in other kind of projects or business activities. In such cases, the
performance evaluation i.e. the project KPI can be based on project Risk
Exposure. You can track risk exposure on a regular basis and ensure that you
are not crossing the line.
  Project Schedule Planned Vs Actual Progress

How far a business can allow project progress to fall behind schedule? Different
businesses have different measures, metrics e.g. usually in engineering
procurements and construction (EPC) projects lag behind schedule in the early
phases, so some clients understand it. In such cases slippage in early phases of
such project my be acceptable say 20%.
  Project Budget Utilization

Tracking this KPI PM would expect that actual cost of the project is still within
the budget and you don’t have to go for increase-the-budget approval
  Project Budget vs Estimated Cost

If project’s estimated cost is lesser than budget, it should raise warning sign.
That’s a common sense. But how much lesser is acceptable is a project KPI

thing.

Project Budget vs Estimated Cost KPI gives absolute picture whether project
estmated cost is overshooting budget or project maanger would have revise
budget and get the approval. ZilicusPM has these comparison chart presented
for project managers to easily and clearly understand the true picture of project
budget-estimated cost.

 Project Estimated Cost Vs Actual Cost

Project Estimated Cost vs Actual Cost KPI is clear indicator that informs project
managers how far project ‘s actual financials are deviating from its planned one.
It is easier to trace project cost daviation to estimated cost and understand which
elements (project resources, tasks, issues, risks, changes) have contributed to
change in the actual project cost from the estimated one.

 Project Resource Utilisation

Project managers in professional services companies are very careful about

resource utilization; simply because every resource hour costs and can be billing
to client. Maximum resource utilization and maximum billability is how
professional services strive to do the business. This KPI clearly helps project
manager understand which all projects where resources are not utilized to
desired percentage. Say an organization has KPI of at least 78% resource
utilization across project, then project managers will find this KPI easier to
know whether s/he is complying to organization’s KPI.

Definition

A simple definition of project management includes a handful of key premises:

 Project management is no small task.

 Project management has a definite beginning and end. It's not a
continuous process.
 Project management uses various tools to measure accomplishments and
track project tasks. These include Work Breakdown Structures, Gantt
charts and PERT charts.
 Projects frequently need ad-hoc resources rather than dedicated, full-time
positions common in organisations.
  Project management reduces risk and increases the chance of success.

Often, a triangle, commonly called the "triple constraint", is used to summarise

project management (see Figure 1). The three most important factors are time,
cost and scope. These form the vertices with quality as the central theme.

Figure 1: The triple constraint

In words, the triple constraint has four core elements:

 Projects must be within cost.

 Projects must be delivered on time.
 Projects must be within scope.
 Projects must meet customer quality requirements.

More recently, the project management triangle has given way to a project
management diamond - with cost, time, scope and quality as the four vertices
and customer expectations as a central theme (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: The project management diamond

No two customers have the same expectations. You must ask, explicitly, about
each customer's expectations. If you don't know what those expectations are,
you have no hope of meeting them.

Project Phases

A project goes through six phases during its lifecycle:

1. Project Definition: Defining the goals, objectives and critical success

factors for the project
2. Project Initiation: Everything needed to set up the project before work
can start
3. Project Planning: Detailed plans of how the work will be carried out,
including time, cost and resource estimates
4. Project Execution: Doing the work to deliver the product, service or
desired outcome
5. Project Monitoring & Control: Ensuring that a project stays on track
and taking corrective action to ensure it does
 6. Project Closure: Formal acceptance of the deliverables and disbanding
of all the elements required to run the project

Project Manager's Role

The role of the project manager is one of great responsibility. The project
manager's job is to direct, supervise and control the project from beginning to
end. Project managers should not carry out project work - managing the project
is enough. Here are some of the activities a project manager undertakes:

 The project manager must define the project, reduce it to a set of

manageable tasks, obtain appropriate resources and build a team to
perform the work.
 The project manager must set the final goal of the project and motivate
the project team to complete the project on time.
 The project manager must inform all stakeholders of progress on a
regular basis.
 The project manager must assess and monitor risks to the project and
mitigate them.

No project ever goes quite as planned. Project managers must learn to adapt to
and manage change.

Project Manager's Skill Set

A project manager must have a range of competencies:

 Leadership
 People management (customers, suppliers, functional managers and
project team)
 Effective communication (verbal and written)
 Influencing
 Negotiation
 Conflict management
 Planning
 Contract management
 Estimating
 Problem solving
 Creative thinking
 Time management

Project managers bear ultimate responsibility for making things happen.

Traditionally, they have carried out this role as mere implementers. To do their
jobs they needed to have the necessary administrative and technical
competencies.

Today they play a far broader role. In addition to the traditional skills, they need
to have business skills, customer relations skills, and political skills.

Psychologically, they must be results-oriented self-starters with a high tolerance

for ambiguity because little is clear-cut in today's tumultuous business
environment. Shortcomings in any of these areas can lead to project failure.

J. Davidson Frame

Barriers, Risks and Issues That Affect Project Success

Many things can go wrong in project management. Any barriers, risks and
issues can affect every phase and process of project management. Here are just
some of the things that can possibly go wrong:

 Poor communication
 Disagreement
 Misunderstandings
 Inclement weather
 Union strikes
 Personality conflicts
 Poor management
 Poorly defined goals and objectives

A good project management discipline will not eliminate all risks, issues and
surprises - but it will provide standard processes and procedures to deal with
them and help prevent the following:

 Projects finishing late, exceeding budget and not meeting customer

expectations
 Inconsistency between the processes and procedures used by project
managers, leading to the favouring of some project managers more than
others
 Successful projects, despite a lack of planning, achieved through high
stress levels, goodwill and significant amounts of overtime
 Project management being seen as not adding value and as a waste of
time and money
 Unforeseen internal and external events impacting the project

In Summary
Project management is all about creating an environment and conditions in
which to achieve a particular goal or objective - in a controlled manner with a
team of people.

When you're familiar with what project management entails, from the process to
mitigating all that can possibly (and often does) go wrong, you affect the end
result - whether you're engaged in a project methodology for the first time or a
seasoned pro.

The key disciplines are:

1. Planning
2. Scope
3. Requirements
4. Time/Schedule
5. Costs
6. Resources
7. Communications
8. Logistics
9. Procurement
10.Quality
11.Risk
12.Integration
13.Change control
14.Ethics
15.Governance.

Each discipline may require measuring, reporting and adjusting to ensure the
project stays on track. The degree of effort each discipline deserves depends on
the type, size and complexity of the project.

Project planning

Planning is about how to capture, document and maintain data on each of the
disciplines. Ideally, your project management office (PMO) will have
guidelines, standards and templates to assist with this. The data must be
summarised in a regular project status report.

Read How to create a clear project plan.

For more information on project management, please see Service

development projects.
Project scope

The scope is what is in this project and what is not. Scope creep (the clandestine
addition of activities without re-evaluation of impact) is one of the greatest
killers of projects. Make sure that the project is not undertaking any activity that
is not in its charter to do so, and list all of the deliverables.

Requirements

Create and maintain a 'requirements register' that shows all of the identified
requirements — who requested them, when, priority, how will they be
addressed or are they superseded?

Time/Schedule

The time/schedule is the work breakdown structure (WBS) that shows all of the
activities that have to be performed to meet the requirements and create the
deliverables of the project. How long will each activity take and what are the
dependencies between them? This is where Microsoft Project comes to the fore.

Costs

Each activity has an associated cost. It may be in the resources spent,

operational costs in its undertaking and any items that must be bought such as
hardware, licences and plant. What is the budget for the project and each
activity, and how is the project tracking against that budget?

Resources

When it comes to resources, ask yourself: Which resources are needed to

perform the required activities? What skills sets are required? How many
resources are required? When do they start and when do they finish? Are they
available on demand, a lead-time involved or only for a certain period?

CIO Executive Council member profile: Geoff Quattromani,

Asia Pacific business analyst, data and analytics, Johnson & Johnson
More from CIO Executive Council

Communications

Build a communications plan of who needs to be consulted, the frequency of

communication and their preferred method of discussion. Even the simplest
project can have many stakeholders, so it is important to have a
communications plan, a to make sure you deliver to that communication plan.
There is nothing worse for a stakeholder than receiving too little or too much
communication.

Logistics

When it comes to logistics, ask yourself: Are all the components at the right
place at the right time? How do components move from where they are
constructed to where they are needed? What is the cost and time involved? Can
it physically be done?

Procurement

The project will require elements and services that are easier to purchase than to
construct specifically as part of the project. It’s important to think about the
right time to buy, contract management, finding the best price and ensuring you
get what you paid for.

Quality

When it comes to quality, ask yourself: Will it have the capacity, availability
and strength that are required? Decisions elsewhere in the project may impact
on the quality, and hence the value, of the product outcome.

Risk

Murphy’s Law can be applied to risk and how to manage the unexpected. Is risk
likely to happen? What will be done if it does happen and how to prevent it
from happening? Is there any contingency allowed for? Can the project
activities be scheduled to tackle the high risk activities first (risk-driven
scheduling)?

Integration

No project runs in isolation. It’s about managing the impact of other projects
that are happening in conjunction, and what to consider when integrating with
these other projects. Will it affect the critical path?
Change control

All of the above elements of the project will change over the lifespan of the
project. Requests for change to the elements must be tracked and their impact
managed.

Ethics

When it comes to ethics, ask yourself: Does the project comply with good
corporate citizenship? Are we treating those impacted by the project fairly?
Have we engaged the unions, civil authorities, government, environment and
other interested parties?

Governance

How do we know the project is delivering on what it promised? An independent

body needs to review the progress of the project and its relevance to the
changing environment in which it sits.

I have yet to see a juggler manage 15 balls at once. This skill is reserved for real
project managers so next time you ask, “How is the project going?” remember
the full scope of that question.

1. Look Beyond the triple constraints

Many times we do complete projects but still feel unsatisfied with the way the
targets have been achieved. I feel the value that the project brings apart from the
margin should be quantified and communicated to team members well in
advance so that every body can work and achieve both tangible and intangible
gains from the project. Organizations should concentrate on achieving internal
deliverable (values) as much as on satisfying project stake holders by delivering
the project within triple constrains. Organizations must establish procedures to
ensure that the value delivered by the project is assessed, verified and improved
upon on subsequent projects. Any organizations that strives to excel in
delivering projects must ensure that the project managers and project team
members are adequately trained in project management skills. Handling
multiple projects with limited resources is the need of the hour, which requires a
highly competent project managers and proven systems within the organization.

2. Latest trends in Project Management

No organization can grow with out implementing best practices or industry

standard templates. Most of the established methods in the organization must be
reviewed in a periodic manner and updated to suit the latest business trends and
the current economic condition. Organization’s should make a sincere effort to
catch up with the improvements in the field of information technology and
derive value out of it.

3. Project Management Skills for functional managers

Any organization whose top line is driven by projects cannot afford to have just
good project managers with out imparting necessary skills to other functional
managers. A project manager can never work in isolation and all functional
managers should be trained to respond to the needs of the project. In order to
derive value from projects it is imperative that certain projects be implemented
within the domain of functional managers some good examples are
implementation of ERP system within the organization, enterprise wide project
management tool, Quality Management Systems etc. These projects will impart
on the job training to functional managers and help functional managers
understand various complexities involved in delivering a project within the
constraints.

4. Every employee as a Project Manager

Every employee as a project manager is a good concept and is especially

important in a matrix organization structure where project managers have little
authority over the resources assigned and have to face a much larger challenge
of getting things done by these resources within the organization. Most of the
times functional managers assign resources for a project and do not feel prudent
to look beyond this primary role of assigning a resource to a project. Quite often
functional managers fail to understand the larger picture of the project with
respect to schedule, deliverable and values that the project can deliver to the
organization. Project Management training to all is necessary in order to
develop better appreciation of the project manager’s role and its strategic
significance. Basic concepts of project management like planning and
scheduling should be imparted to all employees within the organization.

5. PMO as profit center

The project Manager is not just a person coordinating activities among various
departments, handling communication among project stakeholders or handling
mundane tasks like organizing meetings and sending reminders for not meeting
the target deadline. However project managers have a much larger role within
the organization, a competent project manager needs to demonstrate a business
manager like mindset with key focus on customer satisfaction, delivering
projects under unpredictable economic scenarios and also drive business and
growth in challenging market conditions. A project manager must treat his
project

1. Have Clear Project Goals

Make sure you have all the details in front of you before you start. Get
everything in writing so that a detailed timeline and a realistic budget can be
drawn up and agreed on by stakeholders. Having this at the beginning, will
make you instrumental in choosing the right team for the project. You will be
able to select members whose skill-sets are right for each task. It also helps you
avoid ‘scope creep’ when the client wants little things added here and there.
When this happens, suddenly the project can look very different than how it
started. Even though it’s likely that the project will change slightly before its
completion. When you outline clear project goals at the start, you will maintain
control of the project.

2. Be Dynamic

Once you have your plan in place, remain flexible. All sorts of things can
happen which could change the plan slightly. But if you can anticipate these and
are ready to act when they come up, you will find yourself better equipped to
deal with them. Before your project starts think about potential issues that could
arise, how to prevent them, and, if they arise, how you will resolve them. You
need to fulfill your role as a team leader in these situations and deal with these
issues confidently and calmly.

3. Communication

You need to ensure your team clearly communicates with one another. Make
sure that everyone knows what the aims of the project are and how to achieve
them. Any change to plans need to be understood by the team members and
they must be able to discuss any concerns freely. Short and regular meetings
keep everyone updated, instead of long and infrequent ones. In doing this, you
will be able to spot any problems emerging more quickly. Therefore, having
meetings frequently, you will maintain a high level of motivation and morale
within the team as it helps everyone feel included and promotes a good group
dynamic.

Make sure you’re communicating with the client. Keep them updated on
progress or any potential problems and of course listen to their feedback. This
way, you won’t run the risk of them becoming unhappy with any steps you have
taken.
4. Stay on Track

One of your main tasks as project manager is to make sure that the team is
working well together – that they are on the right track and sticking to the
schedule. There is project management software which can help you track the
progress your team is making. Online Kanban boards, even a physical one in the
office, helps you visualize your workflow, facilitating efficient use of time. If
everyone in the team has access to the board, they can update their progress,
making status-update meetings quicker. Gantt charts also work in a similar way,
helping you to visualize the tasks that need to be done against the time they are
likely to take for completion.

5. Review The Project to Improve for The Next Time

To finish, when the project is over it’s imperative that you examine what you
did during the project and learn from your actions. It’s important to work out
exactly what worked well and what didn’t. In order to make sure your company
maintains its edge over any competitors you must always seek to improve.
Encourage your team members and clients to give you feedback to help with
this. Stay up to date with what’s going on in your company and any new project
management theories between projects. Project management is a continuous
process of analyzing, prioritizing and reviewing in order to make right decisions
quickly. Final tip, stay focused and organised at every stage and you will do
great work.