Project Management “in brief”

Life is full of projects – from family celebration parties and holidays to major house renovations and work challenges.  A project can be large or small; short-term or long-term; personal or business related. The same 7 good practice principles will help you to achieve success and avoid the pitfalls of poor planning and control. As the old saying goes, “Perfect planning prevents poor performance.”

1. What do you want your project to achieve?

Be clear about your outcomes (or your client’s) and the success criteria – why do you want to do this and what will be the benefits? What constraints and deadlines/milestones are there? What does success look like?  What would you be hearing? Feeling? Doing?

2. What resources will you need?

To achieve the outcomes you/the client want.  What do you have?  What can be found?  Are people available in the timeframe anticipated. Is the resource enough?

3.  Who has an involvement/will be impacted?

Identify who is in the project team (everyone who will contribute to the project) including suppliers with whom it’s important to have a clear agreement regarding what will be delivered and when.

Identifying “stakeholders” enables you to consider any potential help or hinderance that may impact the project and to plan communications to keep people informed and on side.

• What do they need to know and when?
• What other challenges/priorities do they have?
• What formal or informal contractual agreements would be helpful so everyone knows what’s expected.
• Who else will be impacted by the project outside of those working on it and the client (end users, the public, authorities, board/owners, etc).
• What do they need to know and when to get/keep them on-side?

 

 4. What can go wrong?

Identifying the risks – their likelihoods and level of impact – enables you to plan actions to reduce, eliminate or transfer risks or put in place contingencies.

5. What has to be done?

Break  down your project into the outputs it will generate and break down each into the related tasks.

• How long might each task take (and what contingency time might be advisable)?
• Who is responsible for it?
• What other tasks is that task dependent on?
• What can be done first, second, etc?
• When can things start?

Once you’ve worked this out you have taken the first step to putting a schedule together with a time line.

 

 6. Do it! Beat procrastination

Work with the schedule, monitor progress of suppliers, review timelines and adjust. Keep all project team and stakeholders informed as appropriate. Time management is crucial. Remember: there is never enough time to do everything – but there is always time to do the most important.

7. Review and learn

At the end review the outcomes achieved against the plan and give thanks and recognition where deserved to those who have helped. Note any learnings from the project:

• What went well?
• What could have gone better?
• What would we do differently next time?