Project management
Project management transcends the fundamental mechanics of overseeing a project, such as structuring tasks, scheduling, and meeting deadlines. An exceptional Project Manager must also grasp the broader context, scrutinize assumptions, manage stakeholder expectations, protect the team, and alleviate stress through effective upward management.
1) Clear definition of a project (Project Charter)
The importance of a project charter is often underestimated and dismissed as mere bureaucratic formality. This can lead different departments within the organisation to interpret the project’s objectives and scope differently. Investing a small amount of time in crafting a well-defined project charter can prevent numerous challenges down the line. This proactive step not only clarifies disagreements at the outset but also serves as a safeguard against “mission creep” and provides a solid foundation for resolving future disputes.
Establishing Governance
Project governance structures various work and decision-making forums, delineating participant roles, responsibilities, and meeting frequencies.
Operational meetings for projects or work streams serve as venues for detailed discussions on action items at an operational level.
Core team meetings facilitate dialogue with other operational project managers to align objectives and identify potential interdependencies among various project components.
The Steering Committee (STC) functions as the platform where managers from different project segments or work streams present their progress, identify bottlenecks, propose solutions, and seek decisions. Interactions between project managers and stakeholders from diverse departments aim to uncover potential disagreements and formulate solutions for alignment.
The scheduling for these forums is designed for flexibility. Project or work stream meetings occur most frequently (weekly), followed by bi-weekly core team meetings and monthly STC sessions. Depending on project urgency, these timelines can be adjusted. Minimize bureaucratic tasks by providing teams with templates and scheduling meetings in a way that allows preparation for one to serve as input for another.
Identifying Work Packages
The process of identifying work packages varies significantly depending on the project. In straightforward cases, the work packages are readily apparent. However, in more complex scenarios, collaboration with the organization is essential to determine the scope of areas to be included. In either situation, it’s advisable to consolidate related sub-projects into larger work packages. Depending on the volume of these packages, segmenting them into multiple work streams overseen by senior managers can be beneficial.
Create a tracking process
There are many tools available to track project status. From more or less sophisticated Excel models to highly specialized project management software. This really depends on the specifics needs of the project. Personally, I like tools that require little work to update, don’t have a steep learning curve and can easily be managed by the organization.
Develop a phased plan
If you have a big project with many activities, work packages and work-streams you will also need substantial organizational resources. Often it is just not feasible to start everything at the same time. It is important to think about the priorities and then develop a phased plan that has a fair chance of succeeding because it also leaves enough time for the normal day to day work everyone will have to do as well.
Agree on needed resources
It happens to often that projects get started without a clear agreement on what is really needed resource wise to make it succeed. this is an important discussion to have before the project gets kicked off. If you don’t get the resources needed this will give you the opportunity to agree on the changes in timelines or a change in goals with the reduced resources.
Kick off (start) the project
Make it public, make it big and create some excitement around it. When the team commits itself publicly it helps everyone’s motivation to pitch in to actually make it succeed instead of having it wither away.
Schedule periodic reviews
Schedule your project reviews so that the core-team is slightly ahead of the Steering committee assuring alignment ahead of the Steering committee. This also allows you to reduce preparation time instead of having to redo everything if there are some weeks in between them.
Official close-out of project
When the project is finally done give it a proper send off. Celebrate the work that you have done together as a team and what has been achieved. Make an “after action review” to identify what worked and what did not so it works better the next time.