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How is a Statement of Work related to my project? A Statement of work is a document which defines all of the deliverables which required to be outsourced to an external supplier. You create a statement of work through MPMM by completing a Statement of work Template and this will help you to define not only the deliverables you wish to outsource but the time frames and process by which you should complete your out sourcing requirements. The Statement of work case study example within MPMM will take you through a worked example of how this has been completed for a sample project.

What is a Tender and how is it to be executed? A Tender is a term frequently used to describe the public release of the requirements of goods and services for a project. A Tender process is a process within which a project requests from the external market place proposals on the supply of goods and services to that project. The process that the project team defines to create a tender will involve a number of steps which will include releasing documents such as a statement of work, a request for information, and a request for proposal. Check out project management life cycle

Managing Scope with Project Management Templates Does your customer often change their requirements half way though the project, putting pressure on your budget and delivery dates? If this happens to you. Then read these.. 5 tips for Managing Scope... Why does a customer change their requirements frequently? Simply because your project scope is fixed for a period of time, yet your customers business is constantly changing. And the bad news is that the longer your project is, the more likely it is that your customer will want to change their requirements. So how do you manage this? Tip 1:  Set it in concrete Sounds simple, but the first step is to define the scope in your project management templates of the project in depth. It sounds easy—but what really is the scope of the project? We define scope as “the complete set of deliverables that you need to produce for your customer”. This means that by defining your project deliverables in depth, you’re actually defining your project scope

Please tell me what tasks are involved when setting up contracts with external suppliers? The appointment of suppliers is one of those tasks that is typically underrated in the project management lifecycle . If you wish to appoint suppliers which meet your project needs it is important to define what those needs are. Your project needs once defined leads to the production of a statement of work. This will be issued to suppliers as part of a request for information. Suppliers will then register an interest in meeting your needs and they will then complete a proposal document which will be reviewed by your team prior to contract negotiations with a preferred supplier.

When should I create a Procurement Plan, and for what types of projects? Well, you really need a Procurement Plan for projects which involve the purchase of goods and services from external suppliers. While a Procurement Plan may be created for internal goods and services purchased with an organization typically Procurement Plans are used for purchasing from external organizations. You can create a Procurement Plan by setting out all of the items you wish to procure and setting out a schedule for purchasing those items from the external market place. It is important to research all of the available suppliers and make a strategic decision on which of the suppliers should be used for the purchasing of goods and services.

Prioritizing within your Project Management Life Cycle As a Project Manager, you often have more than one project management life cycle “on the go” at the same time. So to help you manage this, we’ve described here in this newsletter... How to Prioritize Projects... Why should you prioritize your projects - don’t they all have to be delivered on time and within budget? Yes, but any smart Project Manager will recognize that the project management life cycle only have limited time, resources and budget available to do it. So they need to set priorities, to ensure that their most important projects don’t run out of time, people or money when they need them. So here are 3 steps to help you prioritize projects quickly and easily... Step 1:  Define your Criteria The first step is to define your criteria for ranking one project over another. And the best criteria for determining project priority is the fit between your project and the overall business strategy. If one project is undertaken

How can I create a Time Management Procedure for my organization? A Time Management procedure describes all of the methods, processand steps a person takes in order to record time spent by staff to create deliverables for the project. A formal preocedure is required to be able to ensure that all time from contractors, part-timers, full-timers, project managers and project teams is recorded on the project. The time management process ensuresrecording time in time sheets, implementing an approval process so that time undertaken is confirmed by the project manager and the project plan is updated at each step.

How do I create a Communications Plan? Well a Communications Plan is another critical document in the project management documentation set. It contains the details of the lines of communications and the type of communication which needs to take place to keep the stake holders of the project fully informed of the progress of the project. It also sets out a schedule of communications activities and a process for releasing project status documentation to staff, managers, and other project stake holders.

What is project acceptance and how do I ensure that we gain it? Acceptance is one of those tasks that few project managers do well. Acceptance is simply defined as the ability of the project manager to gain acceptance by the customer that the deliverables meet the requirement levels agreed by the customer at the start of the project. By putting in place an acceptance plan you can ensure that you gain the customers agreement at the end of the project that the deliverables produced actually meet their requirements and therefore gain final approval that the customer is satisfied with the outcome of the project.

Levelling with Project Management Templates Would you like to spread work evenly across your project management team? This task is called “resource levelling” and it’s one of the hardest things you will have to do. To assist you out, we’ve listed… Levelling your Resources - 5 Tips It’s easy enough using tools like Microsoft Project, to create a Project Plan and allocate resources against it. But how do you make sure that each resource has an amount of work allocated which exactly matches the amount of time they have available, i.e. how do you know they are over loaded or not under? Very few project management templates actually provide sound resource levelling features, so we’ve described here 5 generic tips for doing it yourself... 1. Create a Bullet Proof Plan The first step is to create a Work Breakdown Structure that includes ALL phases, activities and tasks. The worst thing you can do is to level your resources and then find that you’ve missed critical tasks in your plan and ha

We have appointed a supplier but not created a contract. What should we do now? A supplier contract is an important document for the management of supplier relationships. This document will set out all of the deliverables and mile stones for the supplier and it will define the expectations for that supplier regards the delivery of goods and services to that project. Using the supplier contract template in MPMM you can ensure that you will have a professional supplier contract for your project and you will be able to manage your suppliers’ performance accordingly.

When should I create a Risk Plan? A Risk Plan will be created in the project planning phase of the project management life cycle . The plan will comprise of a set of predefined risks identified during the initiation phase of the project. Each of those risks will be quantified in the likelihood of them occurring, and the impact they will have on the project. The risk plan will describe the actions required to mitigate each risk and a process will be put in place to ensure that those risks are mitigated accordingly

We would like to create a quality plan, how do we do it? The Quality Plan document describes each of the quality targets and how they are going to be meet through out the project life cycle. Quality is defined as the ability of the project to produce deliverables which meet the requirements of the customer. Quality is also defined in terms of the targets defined by the customer for each deliverable produced. Each of those targets are defined in the quality plan and a quality assurance and quality control process are put in place to measure quality on a regular basis and determine if the targets have been meet.

Kick Starting your Projects using a Project Management Template Want to kick start your projects into life in the New Year? By reading this newsletter, and using this project management template you’ll find out how to rally your team and give your project that boost needed to finish on time. Kick starting your projects... Welcome to 2008. The New Year is a challenging time for your project as a Project Manager. You have staff away on leave, you may have deliverables from last year that you need to catch up on and the clock is already ticking. So how do you catch up and then give your project the edge you need to get ahead? Here are 5 tips for doing just this... Tip 1:  Playing Catch up Projects are always behind in some areas and ahead in others. When starting the New Year, make a list of all of the areas that you’re behind in. Then prioritize the list and calculate the amount of effort needed to complete them. Are there any tasks that can be completed by others outside your team? If

I have created a project financial plan for a project but it is very rudimentary. What steps should I take to complete my plan comprehensively? The Financial Plan is usually created after the project and resource plan have been completed. The Financial Plan itself is a critical document within the project documentation set because it defines the total budget for the project and how that budget will be consumed through out the project management life cycle . The Financial plan will include a set of mile stones and each of those milestones will summaries the total expenditure of the project at that point in time. Not only is it important to find out how much the project is going to cost and to create the schedule for the consumption of that cost it is also important to identify the process for identifying project expenses, approving them and updating the financial plan on a weekly basis.