Best Practices_ Managing People_ Secrets to Leading for New Managers - Barry Silverstein [21]
Do create objectives that describe the specific outcome of the project.
Do get the project team involved in setting the objectives.
Don’t allow others to set objectives without your approval for projects that you will be responsible for managing.
Do establish criteria at the outset for measuring results, if need be.
Don’t set project objectives that you know are unrealistic or too aggressive.
Do accept that it may take several projects to meet a particular goal.
Do make sure that your goals describe the broader aim of the project and are in keeping with business goals.
Do take final responsibility yourself for achieving the objective.
Involving the team does not mean leaving the final decision to the group, however. Although you want to encourage the members of your team to participate in setting objectives, it should be up to you as the project manager to make the final decision. It is ultimately the success of the group in meeting the objective you’ve established that will be measured.
The easiest way to set an objective is to understand what the project must accomplish. A project is generally designed to change or improve something. The objective expresses a desired improvement, in terms of resources, time, or money. The objective should be realistic and achievable.
In addition, criteria should be established so that the project’s results can be accurately measured. You need to be able to impartially evaluate whether or not the project is meeting its objective.
Managing Project Milestones
As a manager, you should also establish project milestones—deliverables or checkpoints that occur at specified intervals on the project’s critical path. By reaching these mini-objectives on schedule, you and your team know that the project is on track. Missing a milestone can have a snowball effect on the entire project. Consequently, managing milestones is one way to keep a project on track and ultimately meet the project’s objectives.
It is important to note that project milestones may or may not be dependent on one another. Often there are constraints on resources, time, or money so that milestones cannot occur strictly in sequence. Some parts of the project may have to be done concurrently, and tasks may well overlap.
In such cases, you may feel as if you have many balls in the air at once as you manage the project. It takes a competent team of individuals with clearly defined responsibilities to make sure your critical milestones are reached on time.
Dos & Dont’s
MILESTONES MATTER
Once you’ve set your goals and objectives, it’s important to establish the deliverables or checkpoints that will occur along the way. Here’s what to keep in mind:
Do involve your project team when deciding on task checkpoints.
Do have team members manage their individual portions of the project.
Don’t fail to manage major milestones yourself.
Don’t expect all milestones to be reached sequentially—some may have to be concurrent.
Do take advantage of project management software to help you plan and manage milestones.
Quality, Time, and Money
Often, a project goal is to improve quality in some measurable way. A typical project objective is to do that on time and within a specified budget.
Quality, time, and money form a triangular relationship in the project management world. Many experts believe you can optimally achieve only two out of three in any project: You can’t obtain the highest quality in the shortest time frame at the lowest cost.
From a practical perspective, every project has some budgetary and scheduling constraints, so the real issue becomes the definition of “quality.” Quality, says the American Society for Quality, comprises the characteristics of a product or service “that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.”
Dos & Dont’s
THE SEARCH FOR QUALITY
Be sure to define the quality you want from your project from the outset.
Do recognize that the definition of “quality” can vary from project to project.
Do quantify the improvement in quality you’re seeking if you want to make