4 “Small Project” Mistakes to Avoid

July 28, 2010 Leave a Comment

It’s common to assume that small projects are simple and easy—until you try to do one. Small projects can be just as complex as their larger counterparts, and even seasoned PM pros sometimes mishandle them. Improve your project management skills by learning to recognize and avoid these common “small project” mistakes.

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1. Underestimating the scope. Ensure your small project has adequate resources, funds, and other support, and recognize its potential impact on other active projects. Dedicate ample time up front to ensure your small project can reach its objectives, and get firm stakeholder buy-in, even if it’s trifling compared to other initiatives they’re supporting.

2. Inattention to budget. Create, defend, and adhere to your small project’s budget just as aggressively as you would any of your larger projects. Don’t settle for a smaller budget than the project needs, in hopes you can “find” a few dollars later. Sticking to a budget is critical for small projects, because the lower dollar figures leave less wiggle room—even a small overage will be glaring.

3. Failure to dedicate enough time. It’s easy for small projects to get lost among the larger (and potentially more visible) projects your team is also juggling. Fitting a small project in amongst larger endeavors without dedicating the necessary time to proper project management could lead to project failure. Carefully plot your tasks, milestones, and deadlines. Get them onto your calendar, plugged into your master timetable, and then stay on top of them.

4. Lack of adequate resources. Don’t expect to “borrow” resources from other projects if you discover your small project is lacking something. Earmark sufficient funds, personnel, space, and time to each project individually, otherwise your larger projects may suffer, and your smaller project still won’t receive the support it needs to be truly successful.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Filed Under: Project Management, Project Management Lists Tagged With:

Project Management: Tackle (and Conquer!) the Project Tasks You Hate

July 26, 2010 Leave a Comment

We all have them – project tasks we dread doing. But they need to be done, so how can we accomplish them without the fuss? Below are a few tricks to get you started.

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Group tasks when possible. Not only is it good time management, it will also help you get into the groove on tasks you really dislike. If you can tackle all your phone calls, e-mails or memo-writing at one time, you’ll get through the tasks faster with less opportunity to dread doing them.

Take advantage of downtime. Get a handsfree headset and use your commute time to handle phone calls and check voicemail messages. If you commute by train or bus, see if you can hop on to a WiFi or other wireless signal to tackle your e-mails. You’ll feel great when you arrive at the office knowing you’ve already sifted through your new mail and answered the important stuff. This is also a good opportunity to delete spam, so you aren’t saddled with a list of worthless e-mails upon arrival at your desk.

Do the tough stuff first. Procrastination is more likely to grip you when facing a task you don’t like, so get it out of the way early. You’about also less likely to stall on other things if you can check off the distasteful items first. For tasks requiring focus or concentration, tackle them as soon as you reach your most productive time of day.

Delegate if you can. If you can delegate your least favorite tasks, then do it. As long as you aren’t constantly handing off the sludge, you’ll be using the resources at your disposal while accomplishing your objectives. Be sure to delegate fun stuff from time to time as well, to keep the rest of your team from avoiding you.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Filed Under: Project Management, Project Management Tips

Project Management: Juggling Multiple Projects

July 22, 2010 Leave a Comment

Most project professionals have a number of projects going at any given time. Many are in the pre-approval phase (from which they may never emerge), some are in full swing, and others are wrapping up; some may be small, and others large.

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Keeping your objectives straight, knowing what needs to be done now (and what must wait for later), maintaining various channels of communication, and adhering to each project’s budget and schedule takes focus, excellent organization, and winning time management skills.

Color code

The simple act of visually separating projects is often helpful in creating order when things are busy. There are several common methods; choose the one that’s right for you:

  • Assign a different color to each project
  • Assign colors based on each project’s phase (pre-approval, active, punchlist)
  • Assign colors to different locations, departments, or project leaders
  • Assign colors based on the type of project (software, construction, training)

If color coding isn’t a viable option, then consider a naming convention that contributes to better organization. You may want to start all software project file names with SW, all active files with ACT, or all projects in New York City with NYC.

Prioritize your tasks

It’s important to prioritize your project activities – so that you’re always sure to be working on the tasks that are most important for moving your projects forward. However you choose to manage your task list, you should always be able to quickly sort all tasks by priority as well as by due date, project, area of focus, person responsible for the task, and the resources needed for completion.

Tame your information

Create files for each project, in both paper format (manila and/or hanging folders, binders, etc.) and electronic (folders in your e-mail, word processing, and spreadsheet programs). Once a new piece of information arrives, whether it’s an e-mail message, a memo, this week’s status report, or updated budget information, immediately move it into its proper folder.

Do the same for any shared documents—again, both paper and electronic—that your group may use. Be sure everyone on the team is using similar naming and filing conventions for anything that may be accessed by more than one person. If possible, assign someone to take charge of your group’s shared documentation to ensure it’s tidy, always current, and readily accessible.

Keep important information easy to find

Contact lists, budget data, and pending tasks should be included in your project folders, but this type of information should also be in your go-to place—pinned to your cork board, entered into your smartphone, or in a single file folder on your desk that you can quickly grab. This leaves you less to locate when an impromptu meeting is called, and ensures you have the majority of data you may need at a moment’s notice.

Schedule dedicated time

Blocking out time on the calendar for each project is a useful way to ensure you’re on track. While it’s usually most effective to group like tasks together (phone calls, filing, etc.), you may want to buckle down on each project once a week for some uninterrupted working time.

Create distribution lists

Remembering who should be copied on each project’s communications can eat up valuable time. Instead, set up a distribution list for each project. Creating and forwarding information will happen more quickly, and you’ll be sure that all the appropriate people have been contacted

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Filed Under: Project Management, Project Management Tips, Project Office Tagged With:

6 Project Mistakes Every Company Makes

July 20, 2010 Leave a Comment

Trace just about every project management war story back to its inception, and you’re almost sure to find one of the following six all-too-common mistakes.

1 – Not enough money. Budget and scope are related; it’s as simple as that. If funds are lacking, then the scope must be scaled back accordingly. Piggybacking on another project or tapping multiple too-small line items are rarely successful solutions.

2 – Not enough people. Project management professionals are the engines driving your project’s train. Whether it’s a misguided attempt to save money or simple naivety, assigning too few people to a project is a lose-lose situation. Your project’s objectives aren’t likely to be met, budgets will be blown, and your team will burn themselves out trying to take up the slack.

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3 – Not enough time. Planning, procurement, and execution take time. Everything that happens behind the scenes still needs to happen, even if senior management doesn’t see the machinations. Overlapping incompatible activities or hurrying key steps will only cause headaches later.

4 – Not enough information. Critical information isn’t shared with the right people, or too few data points are disseminated to the team. Project management professionals need enough information to make the best strategic decisions, and to execute the project in the best way. Assumptions often lead to budget-straining changes down the road.

5 – Micromanagement. The executive group thinks their involvement is helping, but in fact they’re often impeding the team’s efforts and progress—by demanding too much information too frequently, or by expecting to be too involved when they aren’t actively contributing to the project team’s efforts.

6 – Changing expectations or objectives mid-stream. Shifting priorities, scope creep, staffing transitions, corporate politics, and stakeholders’ personal whims are just a handful of triggers for this bane of the PM pro’s existence.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

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Why Consensus Doesn’t Always Equal Project Success (And What You Can Do About It)

July 7, 2010 Leave a Comment

Project professionals know that consensus among stakeholders is a critical component in moving a project forward and meeting final objectives. But consensus is just one component of many that must be addressed, and sometimes even the most foundational agreements are too flawed to withstand the future challenges that typically arise.

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How can you ensure that your project achieves the level of consensus it needs? Getting all involved parties to agree on something doesn’t procure the funding, timeframe, or other resources that are often needed to shepherd a project through to a successful completion. What happens when you’ve achieved consensus nirvana, and things still aren’t going the way they should? Original agreements sometimes don’t fully support the fundamental objectives your project is supposed to meet. Below is an overview of how the consensus phase sometimes goes wrong, and tips for steering it back on course.

What type of consensus have you reached? Beware the final agreements that required foundation-level compromise. If too much has been negotiated away, your team may soon be looking at a project that is so far diminished from its original scope or intent that it no longer meets everyone’s needs (and may, in fact, meet no one’s needs). Have you lost necessary support or resources? Have you agreed to conditions or objectives that leave no wiggle room for managing the occasional glitch? If you’ve finally reached consensus only after stripping the project to its lowest common denominator, chances are good that your project is lacking some critical pieces. Agreeing that you need additional manufacturing capabilities isn’t sufficient to clearly define your project’s objectives, let alone plan and execute a project that meets that goal. Scope, cost, impact, timeframe, and other factors must still be worked out. Reminding stakeholders that “this is what we agreed on” will not resolve the fundamental errors in planning or execution that may result from a poorly-supported consensus.

What’s still left to do? Especially when negotiations have been protracted or tense, it’s important to constantly evaluate the objectives of the project against the agreements you’ve been able to reach so far. Is the price your organization will pay—in terms of financial cost, impact to operations and personnel, market standing, and any other area which may be affected—still worth it when viewed against the project’s compromised objectives? Have your project’s objectives been chipped away to such a degree that your access to funding or other resources has been hindered? Have your stakeholders lost their passion for the project? Has the timeframe been compromised as a result of an extended negotiation or planning phase? Has your PMO lost key talent or expertise since the project’s inception? Ensure that your team is still capable of fulfilling its role, that needed resources are available, and that the scope continues to meet the necessary metrics to be considered a success.

How do you tackle a too-soft consensus? Your approach will depend heavily on the type of organization and complexity of the project you’re supporting, but some good first steps include returning to your project’s original scope and re-opening negotiations, conducting a new cost-benefit analysis to demonstrate any diminished ROI, gathering updated market data to reaffirm your need for additional resources or other support, and working with end users to highlight any potential negative effects of moving forward with your project’s current plan. You may also want to evaluate your decision-making team—if negotiations have in any way been based on a lack of proper authority to commit funds, staff, or other resources, then you may consider elevating the discussion to include individuals with increased authorization levels.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

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