Posts Tagged ‘Planning’

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Planning the Project – how to massage the timeline

Saturday, December 10th, 2011

You have worked with the team and the sponsor to create the project WBS and finalize the scope. You’ve turned the WBS into a schedule and you’ve validated the estimates of duration. You look at the delivery date with confidence…your jaw drops. The project is going to be ready 6 months after the date you expected it.

What do you do?

A lot will depend on your team. Are they the type of people to be very conservative with their estimates? Are people in your organization used to beating deadlines?

If answering these questions doesn’t do what you need try these three techniques.

1 – look at your logic. Often there’s room to overlap tasks that depend on each other.  For instance, if you have to produce a marketing communication for a grand opening. You might have the following set up.

  1. Create draft plan for grand opening = 3 days
  2. Order supplies = 2 days
  3. invite attendees = 3 days

This gives you a total of 8 days if you do them end to end. But, if you can invite the attendees at the same time you order supplies, you’ve cut the timeline be 2 days. The caution here is to avoid overlapping tasks that end up overloading your team.

2 – check the relationship between end and start dates. Project scheduling software will assume you finish the task at the end of the day and don’t start another task until the next working day. If you have a lot of one day tasks, you can find weeks in the schedule by doing this

3 – walk through your dependencies.  Look at the logic and at the effect on the start dates for subsequent tasks. I often find a bit of faulty logic that pushes my timeline way out of whack.

At the end of this process, decide how tight you want to control the schedule. If you get it down too tight, you’ll spend too much time managing minutes. If you leave it too loose, you’ll find yourself scrambling for deadlines. Some projects, like construction projects, need to be scheduled to the day because of the logistics of supplies, but if you don’t need to do that, then don’t.

Hope this gives you some help.

Happy PMing,

Perry

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Planning the project – how much is enough? Part 2

Saturday, November 26th, 2011

So you have your WBS in place and you see it’s touching on every aspect of the project and you’ve talked it through with the stakeholders and sponsor. Great work! You may have also faced the question about how detailed it needs to be. Some people want everything on the task list and some don’t. But you need to be able to manage the project so you need to find a balance. That’s a topic for a later post.

At this point, I have usually worked with the sponsor to make sure we haven’t taken the project in the wrong direction during our planning session. And now I’m ready to turn the information in to a schedule. That means creating a linear order out of the hierarchy. I start by translating the tasks into a list and applying the obvious sequential logic then I go to the team members to get their expertise.

Step one, have them validate the order and add any detail they want (yes, I know you don’t want too much detail because it’s not manageable – trust me it’s easier to take things out than put things in later. I’ll give you some tips on how to make it manageable).

Step two, gather their estimates on the time they need to take to complete the tasks. I usually ask them for the duration. The passage of time from start to finish. If you ask for effort, the amount of time it will take without distractions or waiting times, you also need to know how much of their time is assigned to your project. The effort calculation can be very useful in large complex projects, but for beginners, duration will work fine.

Step three – and final for this post- put all this information into your scheduling tool to see how long the project is going to take.

Of course, it is normal for the first cut of the schedule to be too long. You will still have to work to massage the schedule to a more reasonable timeline. The next post will deal with that. And you need to get the detail to a level where you can manage it without micromanaging or losing control. The final post for planning will cover that topic.

In the meantime, happy project managing.

Perry

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Planning the project – how much is enough? Part 1

Saturday, November 12th, 2011

Last time I posted I gave some tips on getting the project initiated well. That leads us into some tips on planning. In my opinion, initiation isn’t complete until the plan is signed off. It seems that one of the lessons project managers take some time to learn is that phases aren’t usually cut and dried. You learn something every step along the way that opens up questions about the step before.

This isn’t a failure of the methodology; it’s reality.

To get your plan underway, you need a good understanding of the goals and objectives and you need to have discussed the scope with your sponsor. When you get together with your planning team, you will uncover more scope and find a few more goals that seem to make sense.

The trick to creating a Work Breakdown Structure in a  planning session is to let them get chaotic so people are bringing up ideas. Brainstorming is the time to let people think about what they need to think about. When it gets a bit quiet, you can start to corral the energy into organizing the chaos: grouping the work ideas, clarifying duplicates and asking if there is anything else that needs to be considered.

I like to end the meeting there. You have enough to put together your first work breakdown structure. You will need to add the estimates and assign owners and organize the work in logical order. But, first pull it into something people can understand. Organize all the ideas of what work needs to be done into a list of tasks. Do what you can to put them together in groups or phases.  Identify items that change the scope or the goals.  Meet with your sponsor and get the decisions you need on the new items.

Then take a breath.

The next steps are all about validating the plan. In the next posts we’ll talk about validating the content of your work breakdown structure, turning it into a schedule  with estimates and dependencies and knowing when it’s good enough to get going on execution.

The answer to the question in the title?

For this stage, enough is when your WBS looks like it at least touches on every aspect of your project.

Happy PMing

Perry

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5 reasons for business people to attend project managment training

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

Let’s be clear, I’m not asking business people to prepare for PMP or Prince2 or any other certification. I mean training on the basic skills, techniques and processes of project management.

Do any of these describe you?

  1. You have just been assigned a project off the side of your desk and have no idea how to start
  2. You have been picked as the sponsor of a project (big or small) and you don’t know what to expect from a PM
  3. Your projects (as a sponsor or assigned PM) are getting off track
  4. As the sponsor you have no idea if your projects are on track or not
  5. As a business leader/owner you have too many projects on the list and no way to prioritize

Whether you have to lead or sponsor the project, it’s important to know what to expect. How do you start a project so that it’s more likely to be a success?

  1. scope statements will detail what you will or won’t deliver
  2. success and closing criteria will help keep you on track
  3. good governance documented in a charter will help keep the project moving

How do you manage communications? Who get what information?

  1. status reporting will provide an overview for most audiences
  2. a communication plan will help identify who your audiences are for each communication
  3. a stakeholder management plan will help keep everyone up to date based on their needs.

Shameless plug

I have a course designed as a full day workshop designed for the business person that leads you through the process from initiation to project closure.

If you are interested check out my training courses or contact me directly perry@perryawilsonconsulting.com

Happy PMing

Perry

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Planning without a start date.

Sunday, September 12th, 2010

I’m sure most of us have been in the situation where a project needs to be planned before there’s any clear date for the start. Often the start date is out of the control of the client because someone needs overriding permissions before any part of the project can start: construction in a development with more than one developer for instance. The trick is, and the question for this week, how do you know when you’ve done enough planning with the limited information?

I have worked with teams to develop plans with little in the way of specs. We needed to do this to fill out information in the business case – true with lots of projects I’m sure. Without some concept of the cost, time and resources involved, the client doesn’t have a way to properly prioritize the project.

I’ve worked with teams to develop plans that result in an RFP – the only way to understand clearly enough what to put in the RFP was to develop a draft plan.

When I’m faced with this situation I usually start building a plan from the top down and from phase 1 forward. I don’t think this is agile, because we are working with a waterfall schedule, but it does give the client and the team the ability to provide details on what they know and not try to put details into the unknown.

Key to the success of this is communication and team leadership. Communicate frequently and clearly that the plan is draft so that you can minimize the expectations of the stakeholder. Keep the team excited about the possibilities so they don’t get tied to a solution that might not make the cut.

What do you do in this situation?

Happy PMing

Perry

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Mergers, successful transition

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

This blog was inspired by a LinkenIn posting.

I’ve worked on four successive credit union mergers and each time we developed looser success criteria. The reason we did this is integration and success on mergers is complicated and we found the tighter we tried to control it, the less successful we became.

At the beginning of the project, you may not know enough about the technical integration details to develop success criteria. I’ve found it much more useful to start with guiding principles and develop success criteria as knowledge grows.

The integration of the people is somewhat easier to plan – harder to achieve success. The key parts are communication, training, communication, training and transparency – oh, and communication.

Trying to achieve smooth people transition is a false goal. If you acknowledge that there will be challenges and hard times, it builds perspective. The difficult times will be difficult, but no one is measuring them against false promises of easy transition.

Guiding principles can be as simple as – minimize customer disruption, maximize employee involvement, transparent communication.

What this means is that you begin to set success criteria when you know enough to set realistic ones.

As and example, our transition date for the banking platform data was a key criteria.

By setting the date based on executive wishes,

  • we had to make changes to the date,
  • we had to reschedule training,
  • we had to re-communicate information to staff and members and
  • we had to work the team long hard hours.

By setting the date based on analysis of the banking platform, we were able to

  • pick a date we could stick to
  • initiate structured training and change management
  • clearly communicate the progress, and upcoming milestones
  • clearly communicate to the membership what was happening
  • identify innovative approaches to meet the guiding principles
  • let the people who were leaving know the date they could go on to their new journeys

Does anyone else have tips for project managers on mergers and acquisitions?

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How Project Management Can Help You With Any Business

Sunday, April 4th, 2010

Hi, this blog post is the first of what I hope are many guest blogs. In the spirit of open transparency, Jason is providing me licenses for MMPM. I’ll be offering them to my Twitter followers when I have them. If you don’t already follow me, you can find me at PerryAwilson.  Anyway, I’ll let you get on to Jason’s post.

How Project Management Can Help You With Any Business

No matter what business you are in, you have goals and intentions.  From the largest corporation to the smallest home-based business, projects are being started every day.  Without proper management of these projects, all the effort, time, and money are wasted.

The Changing Work Place

It is widely known that change is the only constant in the world.  We see changes in innovation and technology development daily.  People and companies are trying to keep up with all these new products and ideas, with some handling it better than others.

As organizations pursue their goal to reduce the cost of running a business, they are also trying to deal with the changes occurring all around them.  In misguided attempts to stay competitive, many companies are “downsizing” their employees.

For a company to survive the challenges of change, it must change as well.  New ways of looking at employees, new thoughts on preserving its business, and a new dedication to keeping in the forefront of its industry.

To survive a changing environment is only possible if we keep pace with and accept change.

An increasing number of employees are working from home instead of the office.  The use of computers and Internet technologies are a must not only for those working at home, but for every business that is trying to become or remain successful.  Vital for every organization is the technology of computers and the Internet.

The greatest challenges posed by the changing workplace are collaboration and communication.

One requirement of the changing workplace is that we need to be updated and well informed all the time.  Access to updated data and information regarding any business activity is a must.  Sharing information in real-time can guarantee success for organization and individuals alike.

Guarantee the success of organizations and individuals, by sharing of expertise and information in a timely manner.

How a Project Management System Can Help

Challenges in the changing workplace might seem impossible to overcome, but they can become simplified when a proper Project Management Plan is used.

The project management system may be the single best solution for the collaboration needs of any organization.  A project management system is multi-functional software that performs tasks like resource allocation, communication, budget management, quality management, report generation, cost and quality control.

Also, communication, information sharing and administrating are simplified and made much easier through use of a project management system.

Scheduling is an element of a project management system. According to the time limit and given resources the project management system divides the projects into a series of tasks and makes the handling of even complex projects very easy. It enables you to make the best possible use of time and resources.

Another great benefit provided by the project management system is communication. The project management system has a central database, which the permitted users can use to track the work progress and get updated information and data easily. It predicts any kind of problem that can arise in the project and removes uncertainties and ambiguities related to projects. From report generation to risk analysis, project management is very useful. It clearly defines the path to follow and contribution required at every level and from every employee.

These are just a few functions of a project management system. With proper implementation and use, it can help overcome great challenges that otherwise seem impossible. Thus, by making the collaboration, communication and working possible across the organization, the project management system helps the company meets the challenges of an ever-changing workplace.

Jason Westland has 15 years experience in the project management industry. From his experience he has created software to help speed up the management process. If you would like to find out more information about Jason’s  online project management software.

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Issue management or Firefighting

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

The challenge for Project Managers is to keep the project moving through challenges – or identify when the project shouldn’t keep moving forward. If the PM is skilled in issue management they can navigate the daily issues (or hourly issues) on any project. If they aren’t as skilled, the project goes into firefighting mode.

So, how do you know? As the PM how do you recognize the difference between firefighting and issue management?

What does issue management look like?

No matter how fast the issues come, the PM and the team can assess the issue against the goals of the project and prioritize the use of resources for resolution. The PM can make the distinction between real issues and things that will go away if you wait.

Issues are resolved based on the long view – the desired result, the alignment to strategy, the market place. Any number of criteria that drive the project. The PM knows what the project drivers are. What takes precedence, cost, time, or quality? Recommendations are aligned with that priority.

What does firefighting look like?

Issues come fast and frequently. The same issue keeps rising because it’s not resolved completely. Issues are resolved on the approach of “how do I get this out of my face’. There’s no consistent priority of resources to the issues. People are pulled from one to the other issue, working on the latest problem before resolving the current fire.

Projects overrun schedule and budget and don’t often meet the quality. Scope creeps, customers are unsatisfied.

So, Perry, don’t hold back say what you really mean.

I’ve been in both situations. In the firefighting project, the team was so stressed that I joked about having a counselling shingle hanging outside my door. No one ever knew they had done the right thing. The project was a success but at the cost of 12 – 14 hour days and quality all over the place. There was no clear understanding of what the criteria were for meeting a compliance standard. As a result, time, energy and money were spent meeting the highest overall standard when we only needed to meet the specific standards.

In a similar project that used an issue management approach we met the right standard, with fewer people and money over a shorter time period.

There were fewer real issues, and we knew how to deal with the issues that would go away with time.

In my experience, the keys to avoiding firefighting lie in the initiation and planning of a project. The PM and the sponsor need to clearly determine the priorities on the drivers to allow the project team to produce aligned recommendations when issues need to be resolved.

Clarity between the PM and the sponsor on decision making authority can alleviate the effort required to resolve issues as the project proceeds.

Close and frequent communication with the sponsor at the early stages of the project will build a level of trust between them. When there is trust between the PM and the sponsor, things go smoothly – well as smoothly as a project can go.

What is the one thing you would advise a PM to do if they want to get a better handle on issue management?

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Project Management Tools

Monday, January 18th, 2010

How do you evaluate project management tools? How many of the tools you find as a PM manage to fulfill all of your needs.

Let’s start with what those needs might be.

Are you looking for a tool that can express your project schedule in a way that you can understand and manage, or do you need to communicate the critical path to people who aren’t trained to read a Gantt chart?

Are you trying  to communicate the impacts of issues, or the challenges faced by your resource shortages? Do you want to be able to share status at the press of a button?

Until I can find my holy grail of project management tools, I keep trying the new toys.

When playing with the new toys, I think it’s important to remember that a project management tool won’t make you a successful project manager, the tool makes your job easier, it doesn’t do your job.

One old tried and true tool – Microsoft Project I learned how to use Project at the very beginning of my career. When you get comfortable with it, it’s a great tool for keeping track of tasks, resources, and budget. The upside is that Microsoft does continually upgrade and does as far as I can tell, each upgrade has been an improvement from the perspective of the project manager. The downside is that it has very defined expectations of how you will use it. Project doesn’t like it when you want to schedule the project by dates rather than dependencies and the default settings don’t like it when you add or subtract resources. I always feel like Project is keeping me on the straight and narrow when it comes to methodology.

One I recently checked out, and for the purpose of disclosure,  have joined their team of facilitators is Easy Projects. This tool is set up to allow the PM to do the usual things – set up activities, link dependencies, assign resources and set status. I also allows you to assign roles to the people on your project and give them permissions. You can set up notifications when someone adds, alters or deletes tasks. And, it has three types of activity, task, issue or request. This allows you to easily track client additions to the project and see the impact of issue resolution on your schedule. And, it has a dashboard function that works with multiple projects – getting close to status reporting by pressing a button.

Another tool that I haven’t tried but have heard a lot of good things about is Open Project. I’d love to hear about your actual experiences with this tool. From what I see online, it seems very much like Microsoft Project – except it’s free.

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Is a list of tasks enough of a plan?

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

When projects struggle with planning sometimes the teams create lists of tasks. To add detail, the lists contain names of people, they estimate how many days are needed for each task, and even list beginning and end dates. So what’s the problem?

If the project is simple and requires a small team of knowledgeable experts, this will probably be enough. I’m a supporter of doing the right amount of  planning rather than completing all the steps and forms.

The problem is when the project is complex. In one of my past projects, the team struggled with the concept of planning. I proposed the process of pulling together a team to plan and spend a day or two for the whole process. At the end we’d have a list of sequenced activities with clear milestones and a resource estimate.

Thinking it would be easier, the team leads sat down and started listing tasks and names. In their defense this was a project that required specific expertise and having the experts do the wbs would be a good approach.

Top three problems with the approach.

No milestones, no deliverables. The list of tasks didn’t lead to a clear deliverable that could be tracked. The team lead was never confident that the tasks listed were complete.

No understanding of overall resource usage. While we knew that Joe had to work a total of 12 days between start and end dates, it was difficult to align the start and end dates of each activity to make sure that the 12 days wasn’t actually over a 3 day period.

No clear reporting ability. When it came to reporting to the steering committee we had to manually pull the information and come to a consensus about status each time.

As a bonus problem – time! Originally I estimated a couple of days for the whole project activities list. It took a week for one part of it.

It’s one of those things that I think we as PMs struggle with all the time. What ideas do you have for selling the client on the process?

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