Managing a Project- Take charge right now

The ‘Project Management Insistute’ (PMI) in 2008 defined a project as

” A temporary endeavor to produce a unique product/service. ”

It has been said that only around 14% of projects fail on technical issues, the major problem areas are:

A) The objectives are not defined properly.

B) Incorrect scope and complexity.

B) Poor management.

It is worth noting that this formalized approach to project management can be contrasted against an ‘ad-hoc’ strategy which can be more flexible and lead to more innovation.

Some positive attributes of a good project manager include:

A) Facilitates discussion.

B) Strong levels of organization and manages time well.

C) Communicates effectively and ensures understanding of tasks.

D) Delegates appropriately, is charismatic and conveys enthusiastiasm.

E) Is resourceful and adaptive.

The overall aim should be to produce a project management schedule. While I am sure that there are programs which can do this, many people draw up a plan using a large roll of paper paper, markers, and sticky notes.

We kick off with a high level outlook which can help define a project, this is normally a couple of paragraphs long.

This can cover:

A) Objectives- What you want to achieve with the project.

B) Assumptions- What have you assumed about the client, these can be

C) Constraints- What is stopping you from meeting your objectives.

Deliverables are what you need to give to the client (such as a report, press advert, venue or entertainment). These will always be nouns.

Workstreams will lead to Deliverables. An example relating to the above list would be a workstream to source a venue for an event.

Tasks are activities that fit within the workstreams to be able to achieve your deliverables. These should be short and represent one action. An example would be ‘Ring the venue organiser’.

These tasks can be written on yellow ‘post-it’ notes and are then placed along each workstream in chronological order.

For each of the tasks estimate how accurately as possible how long each will take. The sum of these will dictate how long the project will take.

Now its time to allocate resources to each task/ ‘post-it’ note. Examples of resources include time, money or employee utilization based.

A useful approach is to now link the tasks together using a marker pen if the completion of one depends on the other.

Once the project schedule is completed, its a good idea to ensure that you can explain the schedule to the members of your team, or the client if applicable.

Hope these tips help, Wikipedia has a good article on project management if you would like some more information. Also I’ve found a glossary for project management which might be useful.