UNDERSTANDING PROJECT MANAGEMENT
To run any Project, two methodologies should be clearly understood:
1. Project Lifecycle
2. Project management process
Project Life Cycle:
- Is unique to a project
- Highly customizable
- May have one or multiple phases of a project
Project Management Process
Five Process Groups:
1. Initiation
2. Planning
3. Executing
4. Monitoring and Controlling
5. Closing
1. Initiation Process Group
a. Develop Project Charter document
- Develop a Business case
- Check point
- Getting approvals from senior leadership of the organization to start working on
the proposed project
b. Identify Project Stakeholders [Document: Project Stakeholder Register]
2. Planning Process Group
- Planning is much comprehensive and detailed
In planning, we are looking to find answers to 3 main questions:
Q1: What are we going to do?
Q2: How are we going to do it?
Q3: How to know when the project is done?
At the end of the planning process, you will develop a comprehensive project plan
that will include few items such as
- Project requirements
- Scope
- WBS
- Schedule
- Budget
- Quality
Project requirements: can be collected via different tools & techniques e.g. Delphi
technique, interview but the best tool is meeting with all stakeholders all together to
avoid any contradictory requirements.
Defining the Project Scope:
Documents required in Defining the project scope: Project Charter, Project requirement
documents, any risk or assumptions considered.
Project Scope Statement should include:
- Project justification
- Project scope (must be clearly defined)
- Project deliverables
- Project sources criteria
Scope Baseline: consists of three things:
1. Scope statement
2. WBS
3. WBS Dictionary
Work Breakdown Structure:
Breaks the project into smaller and more manageable pieces
It’s a top down effort
Decompose Project deliverables
Allocate cost and time assumptions related to each work package in WBS.
Each work packages identified can be further divided in to sub segments.
WBS Dictionary:
If we don’t define work packages properly, then we are prone to a Scope Creep.
Scope Creep is basically, scope extending its boundaries.
Project Schedule:
Project scheduling can be done with Software like MS Project, Primavera P6 OR can be
done through a Gantt chart.
Fast Tracking a Project: means performing more activities in parallel
Project Crashing: Shortening the durations of activities by adding more resources
Cost Management:
Detailed cost estimating for each activity and then work package to determine the
overall project cost
Adding up all Costs; direct, indirect or variable costs.
Also consider, management reserves, contingency estimates in overall project cost
estimate
3 Executing Process Group
The purpose of the executing process is to complete work we defined in the project
management plan.
If Project Planning is done rightly then project execution part will be easy to accomplish.
In project execution phase, a project manager should consider the following:
- Manage project stakeholders expectations
- Protect Project scope as defined earlier (protect from all unnecessary change
requests by stakeholders)
Gold Plating: making changes to a project that are outside the original project scope
4. Monitoring & Controlling Process Group
Measuring the performance of Project against the plan, managing change requests.
Start with project execution phase.
Need to monitor and control the following:
- Project Scope creep
- Timeline
- Cost
- Quality
- Risk
- Procurement
Earned Value Calculation
Earned value is Total Project Budget x % complete of the project
EV is primarily used in construction and software projects.
Most of the projects shows exponential growth instead of linear growth and get
compounded results every month.
5. Closing Process Group
In project closing:
- Signoff
- Final payment, finish procurement
- Lessons learned
- Release resources
