4 Ways to Stay Fresh During a Long Project

August 20, 2010 Leave a Comment

Long projects offer a unique set of challenges for your PMO team—deadlines are months or even years away, significant milestones are often few and far between, and the initial rush of “new project” enthusiasm eventually subsides. How do you maintain your group’s morale, encourage long-term innovation, and keep all eyes firmly on the project’s goals?

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1 – Maintain regular communication. Team members will have an easier time managing their own slow periods if they’re aggressively connecting with others in the group on a frequent basis. Team meetings help to focus attention on the project’s overall progress, members receive regular reminders about upcoming activities, and any issues brewing in one area can be tackled by the group’s collective expertise.

2 – Identify interim milestones. Critical path items are always at the top of the list, but don’t forget that many other mid-project deliverables are worthy of recognition, too. With the project’s final success a long way off, it’s important to show folks that today’s efforts continue to be important. Letting the team know that their hard work is recognized and appreciated offers a good morale boost.

3 – Remember what you’re improving. A glimpse at the problems or inefficiencies your project will address is often a quick way to give folks new enthusiasm. Whether it’s struggling with an outdated piece of software or visiting a too-small manufacturing facility, your team can once again see how their efforts will make a tangible difference.

4 – Consider shifting resources. If team members possess the expertise to contribute in different areas of the project as time and needs allow, it may offer a good way to minimize the use (and cost) of external resources, while also giving folks a taste of something new or different. Understanding your team’s strengths is the key to successfully mixing things up once in a while.

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: Checklists, PMO Development, Project Management, Project Management Lists, Project Management Tips, Project Office Tagged With:

6 Tips to Tame the E-mail Monster

August 16, 2010 Leave a Comment

Are you spending too much time on e-mail? If so, use these tips to turn the tables and make e-mail work for you.

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Compose — Respond — Send

1. Keep e-mails concise, clear, and relevant. By following these three guidelines throughout your communications, you’re less likely to waste time on overly verbose messages, or messages that require additional clarification (and composition time) later.

2. Whenever possible, respond to or forward an existing e-mail instead of composing your own from scratch. Leveraging the original sender’s text allows you to reduce the amount of time you must spend summarizing or restating information, without reducing the usefulness of your communications to your recipients.

3. Utilize distribution lists at every opportunity. Organize them by project, functional area, or reporting structure, and you’ll spend less time looking up who should receive each message. It’s also a method that prompts fewer interruptions later when you realize you forgot to include someone, and must now locate the e-mail and forward it to them.

Store — Locate — Retrieve

4. Create project-specific folders in your e-mail program to produce a framework for storing e-mails that allows for quick retrieval later. A logical and consistent structure will make the archival process more efficient, too.

5. Be judicious in what you save—electronic storage space seems unlimited, but documenting multiple projects can quickly occupy an enormous amount of server space. Duplicate information should be consolidated, outdated information should be made current, and extraneous information should be discarded.

6. Take the time now to become familiar with your e-mail program’s search function, so you can quickly and efficiently utilize it later. Narrowly focused searches will be faster and more fruitful; apply as many filters as possible, and target your key terms to return only those messages you’re most likely to need.

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: Checklists, Documentation Tips, Project Management, Project Management Lists, Project Management Tips Tagged With:

5 Ways to Defend Your Project Budget

August 12, 2010 Leave a Comment

Project budgets are regularly in the financial crosshairs. While careful budgeting is a priority for every project management professional, there will be times when others in your organization want you to cut costs beyond what you think is reasonable. If you find your budget is under serious fire, use these tips to defend your resources and protect the success of your project.

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Explain what your budget includes. It isn’t always obvious to those outside your core team exactly what’s included in a project’s scope. By showcasing everything your project will accomplish, both near-term and in the months or years ahead, you’ll demonstrate the true value of each dollar allotted.

Highlight costs you’ve already cut. Your current budget is better able to withstand scrutiny if you can name a number of costs your team has already chosen not to support (premium materials), or has skillfully avoided (expedited shipping).

Demonstrate your bargaining success. Were you able to negotiate better-than-market material costs? Use an industry group’s buying power to reduce labor expenditures? These savings show that your budget has already undergone the right level of value engineering.

Leverage third-party benchmarking data. Offering comparisons to past internal projects is helpful, but the objectivity of outside comparison data is an even more powerful persuasion tool. Information is generally available by industry, company size, project type, and region.

Show the consequences of additional cuts. Negative impacts to end users, the reduction of future cost savings, and the loss of your organization’s market position are all serious consequences—are the cost savings worth it? If your project will result in cost reductions (in manufacturing expenses, materials, energy consumption, headcount, or anything else), then now is the time to add up those dollars. Today’s financial impact may look more prudent when compared to reduced expenditures in the future.

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: Checklists, Project Management, Project Management Lists, Project Management Tips Tagged With:

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:

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.

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