Measuring Project Progress

The post is made possible by the great people at Seavus, creators of online Project Management tools such as ProjectOffice.net, Project Viewer, and Project Planner.  Please visit their site for more information.

A section of Eric Verzuh’s book “The Portable MBA in Project Management” provides the basis for much of this article.

Measuring Progress

The key to finishing a project on time and on budget is to start out that way and stay on track throughout the project. When project managers start with challenging schedules and then fall behind, even by a little, they spend the rest of the project trying to catch up. Other projects, however, seem to have a self-correcting process built into them; if they fall behind a little, the problem is quickly identified and dealt with immediately. Progress measurements are the tools we use to identify problems when they are small and there is still time to catch up. Because cost and schedule progress comprise two-thirds of the cost-schedule-quality equilibrium, they are the primary focus of progress measurement. Read more »

Maintaining Project Control

This post is made possible by the great people at Seavus, creators of online Project Management tools such as ProjectOffice.net, Project Viewer, and Project Planner.  Please visit their site for more information.

Information for this article is based on a section of Eric Verzuh’s book entited “The Portable MBA in Project Management.”

The Control Process

The project control process is designed to spot problems early, while they are still small enough to correct. It is an iterative feedback loop in which the project manager uses measurement and testing to evaluate deviations from the plan as to cost, schedule, quality, and risk. These deviations may or may not result in corrective action. The key is to monitor closely enough and often enough to spot such deviations before they get out of control. There are five steps in the project control process: Read more »

Five Indicators that Your Project May be in Trouble

The post is made possible by the great people at Seavus, creators of online Project Management tools such as ProjectOffice.net, Project Viewer, and Project Planner.  Please visit their site for more information.

The world of project management is not always black and white. Sometimes that’s good and sometimes that’s bad. Actually, there are some things that are cut and dried….

• You’re project budget is either green or red
• A milestone is either met or it isn’t
• A customer either accepts a deliverable or they don’t
• You either get to keep your job at the end of the engagement or you don’t

However, so many things in the PM world are not that clear. And you have to learn to look for the subtleties at times to gauge certain things about your project, your customer’s satisfaction level, your team’s focus, etc. New project managers won’t be there yet. Experienced project managers learn – over time – to look for certain indicators that will help tell them how things are going, how the project is being perceived, and if there are some corrective or evasive actions they may need to be taking.

Here are some signs I’ve observed in the course of my career in project management that usually will raise a red flag:

• Executive management has a sudden interest in your project. This one could be good or bad – but it’s usually bad. The project may have taken on a higher level of visibility within the organization due to many reasons or factors. However, it’s also very likely that your customer is troubled by something and has contacted someone higher up resulting in this new interest. This indicates both that your customer has a concern and that they went around you as the PM and discussed it with executive management without your knowledge. Not a good sign.
• New staff has been added to your project without you requesting them. When management starts to add staff to your project – look out. They are likely putting someone senior on the project to baby-sit it and the PM. I’ve seen it happen to project managers on projects. Somehow, along the way, confidence in the PM has diminished. It may be because of something the customer said or because of activities that have been observed, but it’s not usually a good sign. Requests for resources should always come from the project manager.
• Your PMO director has started dialing in to your customer status calls. A sudden interest in your project from the PMO director when they were hands-off before may be a bad indicator. Again, it may mean the customer has gone around the PM and complained about something, but for whatever reason the PMO director is indirectly expressing concern about the project status.
• Accounting is asking you about unpaid customer invoices related to your project. This one is bad because it means that, for whatever reason, your customer has become slow in paying their bills. It’s up to the project manager to engage the customer in a discussion about the outstanding invoices and possible discuss overall satisfaction. Only two things will slow a customer down in paying their bills and both are bad – customer cash flow issues and customer satisfaction issues.
• The customer has been less communicative / more distant. If the customer has been less involved, less communicative, slower in making decisions or you’re just sensing a lack of commitment to the project on the part of the customer, it may be a bad sign. What it can mean is that the project has lost priority on the customer side. Or that it has lost funding. Or that the customer team is about to be re-assigned elsewhere. No matter what the cause, it’s not a good sign because it may mean the project is going to be slowed way down or that it is going to be canceled completely. It’s a good sign that you should contact the customer project team lead and have a serious discussion about the project direction and customer commitment to finishing the project.

Carnival of Project Management #30

Welcome to the December/January edition of carnival of project management.  And for this, our thirtieth edition, we have taken a trip to PMTips.net who is guest hosting the Carnival this month.

So – here is the round-up of the best project management articles submitted to the Carnival this time:

My favourite post this time comes from Elyse Nielsen at Anticlue. Her post is called Taming Chaotic Project Management – Dealing with Changing Priorities posted at Anticlue, saying, “Prioritization is the art of choosing what not to do, and it is hard for organizations without good business governance to choose what not to do. If you find yourself dealing with changing priorities, here are 5 tactics you can deploy.”

Gilad Lev-Shamur presents What are the 5 basic rules of project management? at a relatively new blog called The Project Management’s Thinker.  Not a particularly grammatical title, but it’s good that there are new project management blogs entering the field, and this one looks promising.

Here is another relatively new site, aimed at contract project managers: Steve has been putting some final touches to Contractor Project Manager over Christmas, and the site looks great.  He submitted Advice on becoming a PMO/Project Management Assistant, so if any of you are looking for a career change in the new year, this could be a good starting point.

GeekMBA360 presents Is team work overrated in corporate environment? posted at GeekMBA360. A controversial post that I don’t agree with – in a project environment I believe team work is essential. Granted, there are always people who don’t pull their weight, but bad management (or absent/ineffective management) are equally to blame for allowing these situations to continue. Projects are done with teams, therefore teams are important.

SpiKe presents Productivity Down! An Emergency Response Guide posted at Organize IT. A good post on getting going again when you can’t get a grip on what needs to be done.

Finally, here are two posts about public speaking, which I thought were interesting especially as I have just read Scott Berkun’s excellent book, Confessions of a Public Speaker. First, GreatManagement presents How to use the audience for dramatic effect when public speaking posted at GreatManagement Blog, saying, “Many of us would love to start mastering public speaking.  One particular technique that works wonders in any public speaking engagement is to involve the audience.”  He goes on to discuss how this can be done.

Second, CA has The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs posted at Atlantic Canada’s Small Business Blog, saying, “The glowing feedback after my next presentation indicated to me that following the steps outlined in the book helped. If I can do it, so can you. Here are four tips that, if you adhere to, will ensure your presentation will be a success. To provide some context, my presentation shared the results of a project with senior management.”

That concludes this edition.  Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of project management using our carnival submission form.  The next Carnival will be the February/March edition (regular Carnival followers will know that we are down to bi-monthly Carnivals now) and will most likely be back at the Carnival’s permanent home, A Girl’s Guide to Project Management.  However, for this month, we enjoyed the road trip to another host – thanks for your hospitality!

Five Key Steps to Closing Down the Project

The post is made possible by the great people at Seavus, creators of online Project Management tools such as ProjectOffice.net, Project Viewer, and Project Planner.  Please visit their site for more information.

A lot of text and attention is given to how to start projects, and how to run projects. But process of properly closing down a project is overlooked. Why? Well, since I can say from experience that I’ve been guilty of this in the past, here are my reasons, at least:

• Implementation and transition to support happened so moving on seems reasonable
• Have 4-5 other projects I’m also managing
• Just received a new, hot project and I’m preparing for kickoff
• Problem-free implementation means no worries, right?

Look at that list…none of them are good excuses for just basically dropping the ball – and the customer – post-deployment. Things still need to happen, proper hand-offs may still need to be taken care of, information needs to be transitioned. It will happen anyway through frantic phone calls and emails, so why not take care of it in an organized fashion? Because we say we’re too busy…but that needs to change.

Here are my list of five key activities that should happen to ensure proper closure of the project you’ve just finished. Your list may differ and I’d love to hear from you if it does. Feel free to comment and share with our readers here on PMTips.

My list:

• Make sure all pertinent documents and deliverables have been signed off by the customer. You don’t want this coming back to you after the project is over – especially if there are any question marks our payments outstanding.
• Get a final signoff on implementation/solution acceptance. You may have the best relationship in the world with your customer, but don’t skip this step.
• Conduct a lessons learned session with the customer and your team. The information you glean from this type of session can be invaluable to you as a project manager going forward, to your customer as they go forth with the implemented solution, and to your tech support as they provide the ongoing support for the solution with the customer.
• Hold a proper handoff to tech support. Make sure they have all necessary information in order to properly support the client post-deployment.
• Keep in touch with the customer post-deployment. You may have a 30 or 60-day agreement to remain available to the customer and for your team to remain available before the formal transition to tech support. But don’t just drop them at that point, keep checking back. It’s good for your reputation with the customer and for your company’s reputation.