Best Practices_ Managing People_ Secrets to Leading for New Managers - Barry Silverstein [23]
You need to plan for the change from the outset and make project decisions in a way that leaves you wiggle room in case of snafus.
Specialists in project management have developed a methodology to handle this type of situation in an organized way that aims to minimize the excess cost and impact of changes, a process called “flexible development.” Consultants in the field can help you design a custom system as well as educate you, via private or public seminars, in the approach.
SOURCE: “Developing Products on ‘Internet Time’” by Alan MacCormack et al., Management Science (January 2001).
Scheduling. Set your start and end dates. Map out all the other milestones for the project from beginning to end. Include target dates for the completion of these milestone tasks that, in combination, will meet the final end date required for the project. Get the members of your team involved in determining milestones for their individual tasks and functions.
“The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost.”
—William Carlos Williams,
American poet
(1883–1963)
Reality check. Rethink all the details to make sure that your schedule is realistic and that your resources and budget seem adequate. If you suspect that the objectives are unrealistic for the resources you have, ask for more—money or time—or negotiate for a modified objective. Planning for contingencies early on can save you from disaster later.
Tracking progress. Manage your team, monitor the schedule, and keep written reports on progress. Carefully document any scope changes, then inform management and get changes approved as required. It is almost inevitable that some parts of your project will not go as planned.
Analysis of the outcome. A project isn’t completely finished until you review and assess how it was executed and managed and whether it successfully met its objectives.
The Right Tools
The right project management tools can minimize risk and help assure that a project will reach a successful conclusion.
Project management software is one such tool. Project management software can help you scope a project, schedule milestones, and estimate time, money, and resources. It can also help you manage all these elements continuously so that you can stay on top of scope changes, deadlines, and estimated-versus-actual requirements.
Project management software can also help facilitate communication about the project. Whether you use e-mail, written reports, staff meetings, or a combination of all these, it is essential to communicate updates or changes in the project’s status to both team members and company management on an ongoing basis.
The right tools can also help you standardize project management practices. If typical projects in your organization are fully documented, you will have the ability to study these projects, compare them to the project you need to complete, and see in advance what the scope included, how resources were managed, what issues came up, what unanticipated problems arose—and how each of these situations was handled. This will greatly increase your ability to complete your project successfully.
The BIG Picture
COMPANIES RATE THEIR SYSTEMS
When asked to rate the maturity level of their project management systems, most companies say they are not satisfied, according to the first global survey on the subject, undertaken by PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Interestingly, the survey showed that while senior management tended to blame project managers for poor results, the true reasons for failures lay in imbalances within the organization that was undertaking the project—situations that were clearly outside the direct influence of the managers of those projects.
The survey also found that failures in project management tend to take place more often in organizations with a lower level of project management maturity. Lower maturity means project management is not institutionalized and processes are informal.
Staff development