Project Management : The Power of the Checklist

Checklist

Good resource management keeps the project team running at full speed. Vendors and collaborators may change from project to project, and even from phase to phase, but checklists ensure your team knows the resources that are needed at any given time, and where to find them. Maintaining supplies, managing documentation and quickly locating a properly outfitted meeting space can all be facilitated through the use of checklists.

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The minimalist concept of a task list evolves handily into a running steady-state report when used in a project setting. Activity checklists that are continuously maintained can be vital resources in the event a team member is unexpectedly absent, or when clients or executives request an informal progress report. The project moves forward without interruption, your client receives information quickly, and the returning team member is immediately updated on the project’s current status.

Relevant and timely communications are a basic underpinning of a successful project, and effectively managing the flow of communications throughout your project’s lifecycle is greatly streamlined through the implementation of a few simple checklists. Uses for communication checklists include ensuring your project data reaches the appropriate people (and no one else), confirming that responses and required information are received as needed, and that follow-up activities occur in a timely manner.

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

Documentation Tips: Archival

Archival

At the end of each project, it’s important to ensure your documentation – including e-mails, invoices, contracts, schedules, diagrams and anything else related to the project – can be easily located, retrieved, searched and referenced later.

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Format and location

Transfer all project-related documentation into formats suitable for long-term storage, and identify a single location for archival of electronic records, with a corresponding physical location for hard copy materials. Store materials electronically where possible, and prepare hard copy materials in a medium suitable for archival (i.e., tapes, acid-free paper, etc.)

Originals

Some original documents, such as contracts, insurance policies and regulatory materials, may require archival in a separate location or indexing system from the bulk of your other project documentation. In those cases, once you’ve ensured the original is in the appropriate location, either place a copy in your main project file, or include a reference document that provides the location of the original.

Retention schedules

In all cases, it’s important to accurately label the material according to your organization’s document retention schedule. After you’ve determined the nature of each document, note the date the items should be reviewed and/or destroyed. Carefully label any items scheduled to be retained indefinitely, to prevent inadvertent destruction. Once a file reaches its scheduled review date, ensure your project management team makes sufficient time to review the documents prior to releasing them for destruction.

Purge

Keeping every scrap of project documentation isn’t efficient in terms of the space required to store materials, the effort needed to properly index and tag materials, or the time you’ll spend searching through materials later. Instead, carefully evaluate documents during the project wrap-up phase and determine what needs to be retained and what can be purged. Eliminate duplicate copies, rough drafts and any other items that are accurately and completely captured elsewhere.

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

Confronting Challenges by Adding a Project Management Consulting Firm to Your Team

ConfrontingChallenges

There are many reasons that corporate executives turn to external consultants to provide project management support for their projects. The challenges that organizations face include: sub-par project performance, the potential for lost credibility, lack of experience with a particular project type, and a lack of internal project management practitioners. Project management consulting firms can supply experienced practitioners that offer high-quality solutions to the complex issues facing project teams. Here are six ways that project management consulting firms are making a difference with leading organizations.

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Addressing Project-Related Issues

Often times it is the highly visible, at-risk project that drives management to recognize that a better project management approach is required. Frequently, project management consultants are brought in to address various project-related issues including: poor on-time performance (key dates being missed), unsatisfactory financial results (unnecessary expenditures to meet deadlines), dysfunctional team dynamics (poor communication, team in-fighting, and misdirection), and complicated team composition (multi-locational, language barriers, external partnerships, etc). By providing the right combination of methodology, project management training, resources and technology, project management consulting firms can help executives determine how to most effectively focus the resources they have available. They can also help preserve the integrity of project deliverables by ensuring that issues are identified in a timely manner and key dates are being consistently met. These tools and support solutions help improve overall project metrics, while enabling project teams to work more effectively and efficiently in high-stress environments.

Providing Advanced Analysis to Management

In many cases, upper management has difficulty evaluating project performance and making the best decisions because they lack visibility to key project information. A project management consulting firm can provide the necessary reports and analysis to equip managers with key information on upcoming obstacles, possible project pitfalls, and potential resource constraints. When this type of information is incorporated as part of a more encompassing project management approach, the consultant can convert standard project data from a reactive snapshot of historical information into a predictive project analysis tool.

Filling an Expertise Gap

Projects are sometimes launched without regard for the expertise and experience of the project teams working on them. Also, a project’s complexity, magnitude, and uniqueness may be a significant concern even for the most experienced teams. Finally, the project management proficiency required to lead major a project initiative may be unavailable or in short supply. In these instances, a project management consulting firm can provide the required expertise necessary to drive the project to a successful outcome.

Establishing a Proactive Approach

Many projects, by default are managed using a reactive approach to problem solving. This style of project management creates an environment where “fire fighting” is the norm and the latest project emergency demands the attention. A proactive project management approach enables project teams to identify obstacles earlier in the project,
which allows them to make better decisions and provide more cost effective solutions. By implementing the right mix of training, consulting and advanced tools, a project management consulting firm can establish an early warning system that provides management a forward-looking tool to ensure their project will be executed as-agreed.

Offering Short-term Support Solutions

The lack of qualified personnel to support a congested project pipeline is an ongoing concern to many organizations. Hiring and training full-time resources and mentoring them in the intricacies of an advanced project management approach can require more time than organizations have available. Project management consulting firms can fill the gap between the immediate need for project management support and the organization’s current capabilities.

Project Assurance

Some projects are so critically important to the success of an organization that failure is simply not an option. In some cases, a past project may have been so poorly executed that management wants assurance that future projects will be more successful. A project management consulting firm can assist in this scenario by helping to deploy advanced risk mitigation tools and providing expert scrutiny of existing project schedules.

Conclusion

Project management consulting firms can bring a combination of experience, knowledge and advanced tools that are not readily available in most organizations. By combining those capabilities with an understanding of best-in-class project management practices it is easy to see how the benefits realized from using a project management consulting firm can far outweigh the out-of-pocket investment.

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

Project Management in a Down Economy

downeconomy

Each year, companies execute projects for the purpose of improving their bottom-line and expanding their competitive advantage. The difference between success and failure often depends on how committed organizations are in utilizing project management to monitor and control schedule delays. Schedule delays are the villain in project management and are the biggest cause of budget overruns, missed deadlines, and poor quality. During good economic times, investing in project management is financially feasible and acceptable by most companies. However, during bad economic times, project management is considered an overhead cost and the tendency is to downsize. This paper discusses the importance of investing in project management to mitigate the impact of schedule delays in good and more importantly during bad economic times.

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Project Management Spending Patterns

Projects are performed by people, and since projects come in various sizes, complexities, and uniqueness; the level of project management expertise and the level of commitment will vary from company to company. Even within companies, this level of expertise will vary from organization to organization. Usually, companies only increase their project management investment after they have had a bad experience with a late project (e.g., incurred large budget overruns, lost market share due to missing promised dates or delivering poor quality, or paying late penalties, etc.). Then conversely, they decrease project management spending when organizations change leadership roles to individuals who have little appreciation for project management or when cost-cutting directives have been mandated. The spending decision many companies make during bad economic times is to reduce their project management footprint in order to decrease costs. The reason for this is two-fold; either they have reduced the number of projects in their portfolio and a proportional reduction in project management is warranted, or their previous project management investments have yielded poor results and managers are unable to justify the costs. The truth is; if project management is implemented and staffed correctly, it can protect a company’s investment in executing projects. Without it, schedule delays will go unnoticed which will ultimately erode profits, undermine morale, and delay the start of future projects.

The Ideal Project Management Infrastructure

Companies must be willing to invest in the infrastructure necessary to support sound project management practice. The ideal project management infrastructure can include:

  • Appropriate project management training to all levels of employees
  • A department or group of people that is dedicated to project management support (sometimes called a Project Office)
  • Consistent and standardized planning and control methodologies that are team-based and use industry best practices
  • Governance to foster best practices and to maintain a consistent project management approach
  • A system to monitor activity status, track progress, and communicate results on a regular basis for all projects within the company’s project portfolio.

It is important to note, project management is more than just software. Companies or organizations can not simply provide project managers with project management software (e.g., Microsoft Project) and expect them to produce favorable results. As a company’s project management infrastructure develops, so does its ability to complete projects on-time, within budget and at a high level of quality.

Project Management During Good and Bad Economic Times

Companies that invest in an ideal project management approach are better suited to avoid or control schedule delays. Companies without an ideal project management presence usually operate in the “firefighting” mode where schedule delays go unnoticed until it is too late and the solutions are very expensive. Companies who can’t control schedule delays pay for them by applying the “rob Peter to pay Paul” principle. In other words they use budgets or resources from lower priority or on-deck projects to finish projects that are overdue. In good economic times this is not a problem because company budgets are healthy, headcounts are growing, and the number of projects in the pipeline is numerous. However, in bad economic times this presents a significant problem because companies cut budgets, downsize staff, and cancel low priority projects. This leaves project teams with minimal recovery options to offset the impact of schedule delays and makes them vulnerable to reduced customer satisfaction, employee loyalty, and market share.

Conclusion

Schedule delays can cause budget overruns, reduced profits or revenue, and increased operating costs. They exist in good economic times and in bad. The difference, during bad economic times, companies have limited resources and budgets to recover from schedule delays that go unnoticed. Therefore, during bad economic times it is imperative that companies continue to invest in project management to ensure their projects are successful.

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

A Phased Approach to Project Management Implementation

PhasedApproach

Implementing a formalized project management process in an organization that does not have a history of using a structured approach to project planning and control can present significant challenges. A phased approach to implementation is a crucial element of a successful implementation strategy because…
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it helps overcome resistance to change, allows lessons learned in early phases to be incorporated in the systems installed in later phases, and ensures that a solid foundation of project-level data is available prior to rolling-up enterprise-level information.

Resistance to change is a well-documented phenomenon. And, we know from experience that the implementation of structured project planning and control techniques is a substantial departure from the norm for many companies. Therefore, resistance to change with respect to project management is something that should be expected (and even planned on). A phased approach to implementation can help overcome this resistance by allowing an organization to create success stories, provide the necessary communication (downward and upward), and build momentum prior to rolling-out the process to the general population. By taking a phased approach, we can dramatically increase our chances of acceptance by the organization and reduce the probability of a “program-of-the-month” fiasco. A project management system must be tailored to the organization. A “one size fits all” approach has a low probability of success because it does not recognize differences in project types, management and staff capabilities, and organizational culture. A phased approach to implementation allows time in the initial phases to gather first-hand information about project characteristics, personnel, and cultural nuances. Then, based on this information, a project management system can be designed and a roll-out plan crafted that maximizes the prospects for success.The later stages of implementation are focused on providing the enterprise-level tools that allow an organization to gain visibility to project schedule, resource, and cost information across the entire portfolio of projects. This information can be used to optimize business decision making given that there are constraints related to limited resources, limited budgets, and project priority. Unfortunately, enterprise-level decision making must be based on solid project-level information, otherwise, the decisions that are made may not be correct. A phased implementation approach allows time to ensure that sound plans for all individual projects are created prior to rolling-up enterprise-level information. Also, enterprise-level tools can represent a substantial financial commitment. A phased approach can coordinate the timing of the investment in these tools with the point of maximum usefulness.

The Four Phases of Project Management Implementation

PMAlliance utilizes four phases for the project management implementation process: Initiation, Project-Level Installation, Enterprise-Level Installation, and Maintenance. A description of each phase follows.

1. Initiation Phase

The purpose of the Initiation phase is to mobilize the organization, remediate any current at-risk projects, and set the stage for the Installation phases. Time is of the essence in the Initiation phase. Management “cracks the door open” with the organization by endorsing the process at kick-off and requesting the support and participation
of all employees. However, from the moment of kick-off, employee patience and willingness to participate is in jeopardy until success stories have been created and communicated. This is perhaps the riskiest of all of the phases of implementation because even small failures at this stage can fuel the arguments of naysayers, substantiate the fears of those employees “sitting on the fence” with respect to project management, and dissipate any momentum created by management during the kick-off process. For these reasons, the Initiation phase includes the selection of pilot projects that have the potential for near-term of successes and great emphasis is placed on creating and communicating those success stories to the organization.

2. Project-Level Installation Phase

During the Project-Level Installation phase structured project planning and control processes are implemented on all targeted projects, the project management infrastructure necessary to support the consistent, successful application of project management techniques by the Project Office on future projects is created, and Project Office staff are trained and mentored.

3. Enterprise-Level Installation Phase

The Enterprise-Level Installation phase creates the infrastructure necessary to support business decision-making based on schedule, resource, and cost information “rolled-up” from the entire portfolio of projects and transitions the day-to-day responsibility for developing and maintaining individual project plans to the Project Office staff.

4. Maintenance Phase

The purpose of the Maintenance phase is to transition the responsibility for supporting all of the project management requirements of the organization to the Project Office staff and to ensure long-term continuity by establishing project management as a core competency and an essential function within the organization.

Conclusion

In today’s economic environment it is absolutely
essential to ”get it right the first time” when it comes to making organizational changes. A phased approach to implementing project management can dramatically increase the probability of success because it helps to overcome resistance to change, creates an opportunity to incorporate lessons learned into the design of the project management infrastructure, and ensures that high-quality enterprise-level information is available to major stakeholders.

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