Most of the time when a project is nearing its rollout, if not everyone, atleast the Project Manager can be seen running around like a headless chicken. Nervous and distraught a project manager has so many things to look after. If one thing in 500-1000 tasks is missed out, everyone has one and only person to nail down – the project manager.
Usually when we begin any project we are very optimistic of completing the project with in the tenets of project management namely – cost, schedule and quality. But, as we move on, we start to digress. In the beginning, we miss few reports, few requirements or few weekly meetings and one fine day we realize we have already lost a big chunk of cost and schedule. Usually it is too late to realize and salvage the project. In this last effort, we finally jeopardize the last tenet of project management as well– the quality.
A successful project is an outcome of multiple factors and no one factor can be looked in isolation. Therefore, it is important for a project manager to strike a balance between these various factors. In this project, we identified and experienced various facets of project management and we hope these experiences compiled in this report will benefit us all, in rendering professionally managed successful projects.
With my experience of managing the projects, I would recommend IT Project Managers to consider following 10 basic points while managing a project.
1. Scope definition
You must know what you have to do and what not. My experience is, unless the scope is not well defined and agreed upon by all the parties the project never finishes on time. Customer expectations keep on changing and you keep on updating your requirement documents and project plans. Your development team keeps on modifying their code for existing functionalities and new development becomes slow. At the end, the product is not what was expected by any of the parties. Everyone is aggrieved.
2. Weekly meetings
Periodic Meeting– No matter how smooth the project is going, periodic meeting must happen to ensure that all issues are discussed, all action items are assigned to task owners. If the gap between two meetings is long and the meetings are not periodic, the momentum is lost. The project begins to move away as other things start taking priority, which eventually affects the project.
Agenda based meeting – A meeting with predefined agenda gives all attendees a clear vision of what they can expect from the meeting without digressing during the course of it. Agenda also helps in drawing the minutes of meetings, making action plans and identifying task ownership.
3. Project plan
A project plan must have detailed Work Breakdown Structure and tasks defined to the most basic levels. The clear project plan helps in foreseeing what is going to come for various task owners. The project plan should be up to date at all the times and accessible to all the stakeholders and task owners.
There is never a perfect project plan. Project plan evolves over a period of time and to achieve it you might have to go through a series of meeting with end users and the stakeholders.
4. Documentation
Usually in a project, technical part is given more importance and documentation of any kind is neglected.
For any project, documentation has to be excellent and very clear for all the stakeholders and task owners to know what they should do, when and how. At the time of development, testing, implementation or support for any kind of ambiguities, issues and questions these documents are referred. An appropriate set of documents help in resolving issues amicably. There are no game of pointing fingers and missing requirements from the system.
As such, there is no perfect list of documents. However, Project Manager should ensure all the critical information is documented.
5. Reporting
Strict reporting regimen must be followed during the span of project. All the stakeholders must distributed detailed report on achievements, contributions of team members and the plan for the next period.
If everything is clearly and proactively reported, there are no assumptions and confusions. This is very important for the steering committee and stakeholders, who do not monitor everyday action. A simplified consolidated report gives them confidence about the project progress.
6. Resources
A good project manager entrusts specific task in the project to specific specialist resources to accomplish tasks effectively. At the same time, he cautiously avoids overlapping tasks for resources. For example - A project manager doesn’t do the job of a business analyst or a developer doesn’t substitute for business analyst.
The project manager manages the project and a separate business analyst collects, analyzes and documents the requirements. So is the case with other resources. This helps in a big way as every specialist focused on his/her area of expertise is assigned appropriate tasks and contribute in the best.
7. Risk assessment & mitigation
It is important that project related risks are proactively identified, documented and mitigated. A project manager must complete the risk assessment in the beginning of the project itself and if required assign risk ownership appropriately so that at the time of contingency risk owner takes steps to mitigate the risks.
However, risk evaluation and mitigation is a continuous process. Not all the risks cannot be identified in the beginning of the project. Therefore, project manager must revisit risk sheet periodically and update it.
8. Team work
You need people to realize your dreams, to turn them into reality. You cannot work on your own in isolation, no matter how strong or intelligent you are. A cohesive team with right blend of resources can ensure success of the project.
9. Attitude
You might have experts in your team but if they lack right attitude, you have a serious problem. I would choose to work with a team with moderate skill sets but excellent attitude rather than a stubborn and arrogant expert with laidback attitude.
In my projects, I have observed if all the project members are persistent and proactive in approach the project can never fail. The laid-back attitude of even one member can kill the team spirit and over all project.
As a project manager you might not perfect blend of resources or I will say you will not be always lucky as I have been. You have to have right soft skills to pursue and extract the best out of every team member.
10.Authority and Accountability
The project manager without appropriate authority is like a toothless tiger. The project manager must be given free hand to run the project under right balance of supervision. The steering committee, must also directly or indirectly make it clear to the team members that the instructions of person of authority must be abided. If there is no single power center, there will be several power centers and conflict of interests, which will hamper the project goals.
Accountability goes hand in hand with authority. When the project manager has full authority to run the project, he has full accountability for all the outcomes. Like a captain of the ship, a project manager is accountable for the outcome of the project and anything associated with it.
At times, when we are managing a big project, we might become too focused or obsessed with only one aspect of the project. It can be deadlines, quality, resource management or meetings. A project manager has to have a balanced approach. Even under pressure cooker situation, the project manager should be clear in his head - what the project objectives are and how he plans to achieve them.
