Is Your Project Missing A Management Stage?

What happens when you find a stage of the project management process has been missed? Here is some useful advice from EasyPM.

The scenario is the "project from hell". The one that everyone in the organisation knows and talks about. It has not been going well and you have been asked (let's say told) to take over the running of it.

Dark days indeed, as you see your annual appraisal and bonus slipping down the drain! No-one can turn that one around, right? So what do you do?

Here are three little things to consider that might help.

1. Ask yourself - Have the right questions been asked and answered?
2. Do you know if there are there techniques that can be applied?
3. What communications and follow up will be required?

Let's put some more detail around this using an example where the "project from hell" had a poorly managed start-up.

Questions you can ask:

• What is this project meant to deliver and can I see the documentation please?
• Have the project objectives document been agreed by senior management in the organisation?
• Is there a stakeholder group?
• Do the stakeholders all have the same expectations of the project?
• Are there inter-dependencies on another project that is causing constraints?
• What investment has been committed to the project?
• Are all the project issues documented, understood and prioritised - can I see that please?
• Who is responsible for starting the project without completing a proper start-up? (Useful to know!).

Techniques you can apply:

• Get the answers to the above questions and any others that help to fill out the project start up information. Do this quickly.
  
• Analyse the information gathered and be clear about the facts your answers present.
  
• Create a presentation that summarises the project status. The presentation should take the form of a simple highlight report that emphasises the difference in where the project thinks it is compared to where it actually is. I have a sample project status summary structure for this on my EasyPM google group - you are welcome to use it.
• Invite the senior managers and stakeholder to a meeting to present your findings.
• Leave the meeting with an agreed plan of action for go forward that provides you with the scope and time to remedy the situation that has caused the stage to be missed. In short ... ask permission to go back to that stage and do it properly ... including creating any missing control documents and getting them signed off! This may of course, lead to discussions on the viability of the project or required contingency planning but that is another story.

Communications you can ... communicate:

• Create a document that summarises the meeting and the next actions.
• Circulate the summary document to an agreed reader list that includes senior mangement, stakeholders, key users, suppliers (if there are any) and the project team.

What about follow up? It is a great idea to create a meeting no more than two weeks in advance to review progress on the agreed project actions. Then repeat the cycle on a weekly basis to get the missing stage back under control.

So what is the lesson here? Well, you wouldn't have a rock band without base or drums would you? You wouldn't build a house without foundations would you? No, of course not. So don't let anyone tell you ... ever ... that a particular project stage is not important or required.

Make sure as a project manager that you have the foundations in place to allow you to build to successful project delivery. Remember - projects are all so much easier to keep control of when everything is in the right place. Gimme a high five!

EasyPM Server Virtualisation Project Template

Project templates save time when you are planning a project. Getting up and running quickly is often key to demonstrating your project management crediblity to the masses.

There is nothing wrong in using templates to give a kick start to a project plan. I can assure you that 99.99% of the time a template is not going to be the finished project plan ... but it does help to layout your thinking and get you focused on the task in hand.

Being interested in, and having worked on, server virtualisation projects I picked up an article in the "Business Technology Roundtable" blog on key points for server virtualisation projects. It is an excellent article and draws the reader's attention to areas where there can be difficulties in this type of project.

I thought it worthwhile to post this example of a simple template I use for stepping through a server virtualisation feasibility study and add my own thoughts.

1. Complete a detailed assessment of the current IT environment by producing a document which summarises all of the servers you would wish to virtualise and the applications or services running on them.
   
2. For each application or service, produce a vendor response to capture any technical or support issues related to virtualising. If there are too many issues to handle within your project - remove them from the virtualisation list.
   
3. Confirm vendor support of the new configuration. You will need to get this in writing and you will want to make sure, or consider, that there is budget to engage the vendors for the migration.
4. Make a list of the licence costs for applications or services running on a virtual server. Note that costs may actually go up if the vendor charges on a model of available physical hardware!
5. Complete all negotiation with vendors to drive a new licencing model if necessary.
6. Produce a technical design of the new virtualised infrastructure - include hardware specification, memory allocation, storage requirement. Remember, initially, to keep within 75% of total computing resource available to cope with application growth or addition of users to a newly virtualised service.
7. Produce a forecast for expected upgrades required to each of the new virtual environments. If you don't expect at least 12 months shelf life on each, ask yourself why you are building in problems so early!
   
8. Complete a security review of the new virtualised infrastructures. Make sure that all user access and data management issues are understood and under control.
9. Complete and document an analysis of this study to identify which servers, applications or services may be virtualised.
10. Update the issues and risk logs.
    

This would complete the first stage of a virtualisation project where the information gathering would be done.

Then, just by adding these tasks to a plan and putting an estimate on the time it will take to complete them, you will already be up and running with the infrastructure virtualisation project plan. The complexity of the deployment would, of course, also need to be planned out and it would vary with the number of servers being virtualised. What this stage will get you though, is a picture of what infrastructure you currently have, where you want to take it and a good idea of the issues and risks you are already facing.

Before planning out the deployment itself, you could use the feasibility analysis produced to talk the virtualisation project through with senior stakeholders. Oh, and before you go in there ... make sure you have an answer to the big picture questions:

- What direct business benefits or quality improvements will server virtualisation bring?
- What will it cost?
- What are the risks?
- When can we get it?

But you had all of that already ... right?

Reference: How To Unlock the Power of Virtualisation
Useful links: Download a Free Copy of "Virtualization for Dummies" from Sun and AMD.

How to Use Project Initiation the EasyPM way!

To keep it simple - the purpose of project initiation is to draw up and agree a contract for the project. It is that easy!

The way to do this is to capture all of the known information about the project in a single document and get those who will benefit from, or are have the most invested in, its success to agree that document.

The document I suggest using is known as Project Initiation Document. Initially, all that you would be required to do is to work through the sections in this document and complete the information required.

Filling in a Project Initiation Document, or PID as it is sometimes known, will answer key questions such as what the project will deliver, how it will be done and at what cost, scope and constraints, risks, quality and controls.

By the time that you have completed the project initiation document, you will have achieved a good understanding of what it will take to deliver the project successfully. More importantly the areas that need to be managed and controlled more carefully to prevent completion of the project will also be clear.

If you would like a sample of the Project Initiation document that I use, it is stored in my EasyPM Google group. Take a look at it and you will get a good idea of the key information areas that must be understood as part of Project Initiation.

In summary, to initiate a project requires the following easy steps:

1. Gather all the known project information
2. Document it and communicate with project stakeholders
3. Agree what the project will deliver, when and at what cost

After shaking hands on all of that, you will be well set up to go off and create a detailed plan!

Easy Stages of the Project Management Process

So when starting out on a new project as the project manager, what should you be thinking about?

It is always a good idea, as in most planned activities, to keep the end in mind and to think through the high level structure the project will take.

Many project management methods describe the procedures they will use to deliver the end result using in the following high level definition:

1. Initiation
2. Planning
3. Execution
4. Control
5. Closure

Make note the neat loop between planning, execution and control. This is a feedback loop that allows all projects to remain on track or identify and make modifications to the planned delivery based on actual outcomes within the execution processes.

Phew getting a bit technical there ... sorry! At this point, and for the purposes of this post, these processes are fairly self explanatory. So let's for now keep it simple and say only that every project should have them.

For each of these processes there are documents and techniques to ensure that the project is delivered how it was meant to be delivered. We can, and shall, cover some of that detail in other articles.

Should Project Managers Lead Business Change?

An interesting thought occurred to me while reading an article posted on Relationship Economy dot com.

It asks the question about whether social media users gathering followers are leaders themselves or just followers and are those gatherers really extraordinary people?

It made me think about how this applies to project managers. Good project managers will gather followers and, of course, they will lead the good fight to create "a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen".

And is that not what projects are all about? A project should be managed by a leader, someone who will set the course and chart the path to success. The final quote that struck me in that article was "followers will take you where they’ve been while leaders will take you where they are going". How apt for project managers.

The whole article can be read here at this link : Relationship Economy

Easy Project Management Journal Day2

Day2:

Created a draft post, yet to be published, on the key areas of learning for use of Microsoft Project.

Modified the html in http://easypm.blogspot.com to feed information into Google's Webmaster analysis tools.

How did I do this?

1. Signed into Google (you need an account to do this, easy enough right?).
2. Click on Google Webmaster Tools.
3. Click the little "Add a site..." button.
4. Enter the full URL of your site.
5. A page is displayed with "NOT VERIFIED" fairly prominent. This means you need to copy the meta tag they have provided into your site's html code. Follow the instructions provided by Google and it is fairly easy, making sure that you copy and paste their code in the Head section of your site.
6. Once you do this, and have saved the new source code into your pages, go back to the Webmaster verification page (you kept that open right?) and click on the "Verify" button.
7. That's it, your site will now be crawled by Google bots.
   

Completed Day2 journal

What is a Project Initiation Document?

A good document for managing the start of a project is called the Project Initiation Document - shortened to PID for those in the know :)

What is this project initiation document then? Very simply it is a definition of what has to be done, how it will be managed and how you will know when you have completed the project.

It is used to ensure that the project sponsor's requirements have all been captured and delivery is agreed BEFORE launching the project. Once the project is running it is a great reference document against which progress can be measured and overall status communicated.

For example, the Project Initiation Document can be started before the project has even been signed off. When you as the "project manager to be" have been asked to asssess the feasibility of solving world hunger and maybe have it done in the next two months, you can:

• open up a project initiation file and
• as you define the key deliverables, you can capture them in the PID and also
• lay out the schedule in report format that is easy for your project sponsors to read.

Once the project is understood, everything that helps to define it should be in the PID. This is important as the PID becomes the equivalent of the referee later in the project when you are arguing about - sorry discussing - what has still to be achieved.

If you want a look at the type of things that should be in a PID document, drop me an email and I will send you a template. Alternatively, you cna download a PID template from my Easy Project Management Google Groups site.

What is the point of Project Management?

Well - ask yourself the question - What is the point of project management?

I like to think it is a simple question of economics.

Imagine you owned a small shop selling confectionery to local kids. You decide that as you you have some extra space in the back of the shop that you can install a couple of tables and start selling ice creams too.

The benefits are obvious in that you expect to make additional revenue. The costs are easily identified because you have a quote for the re-decorating that must be done and also the costs of the tables and ice cream maker. You may need more staff but that will come from an expansion in sales and you can make do with current staffing levels for now.

Do you see where this is going yet?

So imagine you kick off this new endeavour and before you know it the decorator calls off, just after you accepted a delivery date for the new tables and chairs.

The question now is do you still feel in control?

Are you wondering if the delivery can be postponed? What if it cannot and the tables need to be put outside to allow the decorator to complete his job?

Will the tables be safe out on the street? Is there space to store them there? Will this impact the existing confectionery sales in a bad way?

Too many questions begin piling up and not many answers are available to reduce your stress levels. And that is just a simple little example with minimal complexity.

The point of project management is to keep control of changes.

As all change usually involved a cost of some sort, a managed project will ensure that:
- spending is done in the right sequence and
- jobs are completed correctly and
- on time to a given schedule
- that doesn't prevent the existing business from being carried out.

Simple isn't it?