Project Management Essentials For Dummies, Australian and New Zealand Edition. Portny Stanley E.

you start to think too deeply about running a project, check whether it really is one. Consider these three things:

      ✓ Is it a one-off job or something that’s ongoing? If the job is continuous, then it’s business as usual, not a project.

      ✓ Does the job justify project controls? Project management means incurring some overheads, but some jobs are so straightforward they just don’t need that degree of control.

      ✓ This last one may sound a little weird, and it certainly doesn’t fit with the formal definitions; it’s the question, ‘Do you want to handle the job as a project?’ You may choose to deal with a block of work as a project, but we wouldn’t – sometimes you have a choice.

Grasping the four control areas

      Projects, large or small, involve four areas of control:

      ✓ Scope: What the project will deliver

      ✓ Time: When the project will deliver

      ✓ Quality: So often forgotten, but an essential dimension

      ✓ Resource: Necessary amounts of people, funds and other resources, such as equipment, that the project needs

      

You need to balance these four control areas for each project. Many projects get into difficulties when these areas don’t gel. For example, say you look at a project, think about the four control factors and think to yourself, ‘They want that scope, to that quality level, with just that resource and by then? They’ve got to be joking!’ Strangely, organisational managers often commit projects to failure by insisting on unachievable deadlines or unrealistic resources. What’s even stranger is that those same managers are surprised and even angry when the projects get into difficulties and fail.

      

Although many other considerations may affect a project’s performance, the four areas of control are the basis of a project’s definition for the following reasons:

      ✓ The only reason a project exists is to produce the results specified in its scope.

      ✓ The project’s end date is usually an essential part of defining what constitutes successful performance.

      ✓ The quality requirement is a vital part of the balance and may be the most important element. What’s the point of delivering an unusable heap of garbage on time and within budget?

      ✓ The availability of resources can affect which products the project can produce and the timescale in which it can produce them.

Recognising project diversity

      Projects come in a wide assortment of shapes and sizes. For example, projects can:

      ✓ Be large or small:

      • Building a new railway link to the airport in Melbourne, which will cost around $11 billion and take years to complete, is a project, perhaps linked to other projects to form a programme.

      • Preparing the annual report for the department, which may take you six days to complete, may also be a project.

      ✓ Involve many people or just you:

      • Training all 10,000 of your company’s sales staff worldwide in using a new product is a project.

      • Redecorating an office and rearranging the furniture and equipment is also a project.

      ✓ Be defined by a legal contract or by an informal agreement:

      • A signed contract between you and a customer that requires you to build a house defines a project.

      • An informal agreement by the IT department to install a new software package in a business area defines a project.

      ✓ Be business related or personal:

      • Conducting your organisation’s five-yearly strategy review is a project.

      • Preparing for a family wedding is also a project – and a much more pleasant one than the five-yearly strategy review.

      The Project Manager’s Role

      The Project Manager’s job is to manage the project on a day-to-day basis to bring it to a successful conclusion. Usually, as Project Manager, you’re accountable to a senior manager who’s the project sponsor, or to a small group of managers who form a project steering committee or project board. The Project Manager’s job is also challenging. For instance, you’re often coordinating technically specialised professionals – who may have limited experience working together – to achieve a common goal.

      The Project Manager’s position is a role; it’s not about status. In Chapter 9 we explain why team members and the Project Manager must understand their responsibilities and authority within the project, independent of organisational grade or rank. Similarly, if you’re doing team work as well as project managing, you must be clear about both roles and only wear one hat at a time.

      

The Project Manager’s role requires hard skills such as planning and costing, but also soft people skills. Your success requires a keen ability to identify and resolve sensitive organisational and interpersonal issues.

Looking at the Project Manager’s tasks

      Your role as the Project Manager is one of day-to-day responsibility for the project. Whether the project is large or small, the responsibilities are the same; it’s just the scale and complexity that are different. You’re required to:

      ✓ Sketch out initial ideas for the project and outline costs and timescales.

      ✓ Plan the project, including mapping out the controls that will be put in place, defining what quality the project needs and how it will be achieved, and analysing risk and planning control actions.

      ✓ Control the flow of work to teams (or perhaps just team members in a smaller project).

      ✓ Motivate and support teams and team members.

      ✓ Liaise with external suppliers.

      ✓ Liaise with management staff if the project is one of a group of projects being coordinated as a programme.

      ✓ Ensure that the project deliverables are developed to the right level of quality.

      ✓ Keep track of progress and adjust to correct any minor drifts off the plan.

      ✓ Keep track of spending.

      ✓ Go to others, such as the steering committee, if things go more significantly off track (for example, the whole project is threatened).

      ✓ Report progress, such as to the sponsor, steering committee or project office.

      ✓ Keep track of risks and ensure control actions are taken.

      ✓ Deal with any problems, involving others as necessary.

      ✓ Decide on changes, getting approval from others where you don’t have personal authority to make a decision (for example, when changes involve very high cost).

      ✓ Plan successive delivery stages in more detail.

      ✓ Close the project down in an orderly way when everything’s done.

      So, the tasks will keep you very busy but they will also be very enjoyable if you’re a Project Manager at heart.

Avoiding ‘shortcuts’

      The short-term pressures of your job, particularly if you’re fitting in project management alongside other work, may tempt you to cut corners. That’s not the same as adjusting the project management needs to the project, but rather missing stuff out altogether that you really should have done.

      

Resist the temptation to cut corners, because usually doing so comes back and bites