Best Practices_ Managing People_ Secrets to Leading for New Managers - Barry Silverstein [24]
SOURCE: “Boosting Performance through Programme in Project Management,” PriceWaterhouseCoopers, www.pwc.com.
“It is well known that ‘problem avoidance’ is an important part of problem solving. Instead of solving the problem, you go upstream and alter the system so that the problem does not occur in the first place.”
—Edward de Bono,
motivational author
Assessing and Managing Risk
An element of risk hovers over every project. The potential for problems due to inadequate resources, budget over-runs, missed deadlines, do-overs, or the inexperience of team members is obvious.
Battle-tested project managers assess the potential snafus early in the game, before they derail the project. Risk analysis is often based on the execution of similar projects. Sometimes project team members and managers discuss possible problems, document their findings, and develop preventive strategies.
Behind the Numbers
TROUBLED PROJECTS
In a recent survey, senior practitioners with knowledge of their organizations’ management practices characterized 47 percent of their projects as “troubled,” “troubled and recovered,” or “troubled and failed.” Out of 3,874 projects that closed in a 12-month period, 1,830 were troubled.
Only 24 percent of the organizations surveyed had a standard process for recovering troubled projects, and 31 percent had no process at all. Organizations with a standard recovery process had more successful projects by 83 percent.
SOURCE: Troubled Projects (Center for Business Practices, 2006).
This is a smart way to keep projects under control. Taking the time early on to anticipate what could go wrong later is worth the effort. It lets you plan for contingencies—to build a schedule loose enough to accommodate potential delays, for example, or to have backup resources ready just in case.
If you plan in advance to handle such problems, you will have more options for dealing with them, which will lessen stress.
“A strategy enables you to fulfill your promises in the best possible way. And the only way to do this is through a system. As most managers have experienced but few have understood, there is simply no way in the world to truly manage anything without one.”
—Michael Gerber,
author of The E-Myth Manager
STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
If you are managing many projects on a continuous basis, you are managing a “portfolio” of projects. To do this effectively, you not only have to manage each individual project, you also have to decide how resources and budgets are split between projects in the portfolio.
In managing a project portfolio, you will typically find that resources such as people and materials are shared across many projects. This could require allocating the same resources to different projects at different times. Instead of estimating one project at a time, you should do multiple estimates at once and share data from project to project. Similarly, you will need to develop a standard project timeline as a template that you can then apply to multiple projects.
Dos & Dont’s
HOW TO JUGGLE MANY PROJECTS
When you have many projects going at once, bear these points in mind:
Do take a larger view by looking at projects as interrelated elements in a system.
Do develop a strategy to manage many projects at once.
Do manage how resources and budgets are split between projects.
Do plan on sharing resources across many projects and using the same resources on different projects at different times.
Do estimate multiple projects at the same time to share data from one to the next.
Dos & Dont’s
KEEP PROJECTS ON TRACK
The success of your project has every–thing to do with how you manage it.
Don’t create expectations that are so aggressive that you and your team will never be able to meet them.
Don’t overlook the impact of other projects on your current project, especially if several projects share resources.
Don’t overpromise or undermanage.
Do try to be realistic