Method123

Every organization will have to deal with projects that are under-performing, over budget, behind schedule -- in a word troubled ! We identify 2 very specific things that organizations need to do in response. The first is immediate and the later is a more systematic response to prevent projects in the future from becoming troubled. 1. Deal with Troubled Projects Head On When a project gets in trouble, too often, the first tendency is to extend the deadline and spend more money on it in hopes of getting it finished. This is a bad idea, especially if the situation occurs late in the project's life cycle. Ideally, early on, the PMO leader should develop a basic list of conditions that will trigger an investigation into whether a project is in trouble. Usually, a "consensus" on trouble inevitably will emerge, but it often occurs too late in the process. The primary means of addressing troubled projects are: Re-scope : Assess if there is value that can be derived from the p...

Five Options for Project Start Dates One of the characteristics of a project is that it is a temporary endeavor. In other words there is a start and end-date. This seems simple enough until you start to try to define exactly what these dates mean. Is it after the Project Charter is signed? Is it when the schedule is finalized? There are no universally recommended definition for either date. It depends on each organization and whether there are any implications for choosing one alternative over another. Here are some of the options for identifying the project start-date. The need/idea is generated. The definition you choose can depend on what the implication is. You may choose this definition of project start date if your company is trying to focus on the time it takes between when an idea is generated until the idea is fulfilled. Your company may be concerned that it takes too long to commercialize good ideas. If your company wants to minimize this total time span between idea and ...

Have you ever been asked how far along you were on a project? Of course you have. If you do not have a valid schedule, or if you are not keeping the schedule up-to-date, you know that your answer is pretty much a guess. If you have a good schedule and you are keeping it up-to-date, you should have a sense for how much work is remaining and what the projected end-date is. But are you 50% complete? Or 90% complete? It is not always easy to know. Earned value metrics were established to remove the guess work from determining where you are at in relation to a baseline. Using it allows a project manager to know precisely how far along he is, how much work is remaining, what the expected cost will be, and all sorts of other interesting information. Are you using earned value on your project today? Probably not. You are not using earned value because your organization has not adopted it. Implementing earned value on your project requires a tremendous level of discipline and a common set of pr...

The Procurement Management Plan is a part of the overall Project Management Plan. The document describes how items will be procured during the project and the approach you will use to managing vendors on the project. Specific areas to describe include: Procurement process . This section provides a brief overview of the process requirements necessary to manage procurement of the identified needs. This process should include: Initiating a request Development of requirements (technical, timing, quality, constraints) Request approval Purchasing authority Bid / proposal review Contract management responsibility Contract closure requirements Procurement process flowchart Roles and responsibilities. This section describes the various roles on the project that have some connection to procurement. This section should describe who can request outside resources, who can approve the requests, any secondary approvers, etc. Identified procurement needs. This section details the mat...

Objectives are concrete statements that describe the things the project is trying to achieve. They are included in your Project Charter. An objective should be written in a way that it can be evaluated at the conclusion of a project to see whether it was achieved. A well-worded objective will be Specific, Measurable, Attainable / Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound (SMART). (SMART is a technique for wording the objective. An objective does not absolutely have to be SMART to be valid.) An example of an objective statement might be to " upgrade the customer service telephone system by December 31 to achieve average client wait times of no more than two minutes ". Note that the objective is specific. The objective is measurable in terms of the average client wait times the new phone system is trying to achieve. You can assume that the objective is achievable and realistic. The objective is time-bound , and should be completed by December 31. Objectives should infer th...

Sometimes the project manager places too high an expectation on the amount of foresight and vision that customers and sponsors have. In many cases, the project manager will go to the customer looking for answers to help define the project and the customer will not have all of the information needed. This happens all the time and it does not mean that the customer does not know what they are doing. In many cases, especially for large projects, the customer has a vision of what the end results will be, but cannot yet articulate this vision into concrete objectives, deliverables and scope.  There are three approaches for when you don't know very much information on the nature of the project. Increase Estimating Range Based on Uncertainty Based on having less than complete information, the  project manager may feel the need to guess on the details. This is not a good solution. It is better to state up-front everything that you know, as well as everything that you do not know. If you a...

A Primer on Processes and Templates Recipes for cooking are a beautiful thing. A recipe tells you the ingredients and how much of each you should include in whatever you are making. It then describes what you need to do to these ingredients in order to make a dish that is not only edible, but tasty as well. It’s great that someone else has already spent the time in putting together a recipe to follow that nearly guarantees success each time. To a certain extent we use recipes in our profession as project managers. The recipes we follow are the processes and templates that guide our projects to success each time. How can you put a process together and make the most of templates? Consider the following: A Primer on Processes and Templates Start with Phases To put a process together, a good starting place is defining the major phases in which a project must go through. Think about how a project moves through your organization, and document those major steps. For example, a simplified soft...

An executive has administrative or supervisory authority in an organization. That authority is used in a number of ways on projects. An executive is typically responsible for the Business Case of a project, which is used to determine whether the project should even be started. Once the project is approved they can impact the success of your project in four key areas. 1. Sponsorship and Funding Every project within a company starts with an idea. It’s hard for that idea to go much further without backing from the right person and some money to make it happen. An executive can provide the sponsorship and funding your project needs to get off the ground. They are responsible for signing off on the project charter, which describes the project, gives you the authority to manage and, most importantly, allocates the necessary funds to keep it alive. 2. Escalations and Resolution The second role an executive plays in your projects is to be the go-to person when unresolved problems surface. An e...