Good project management is about much more then just the basic mechanics of managing a project (structuring, scheduling, adhering to deadlines etc). To be a great Project Manager one also has to see the bigger picture, challenge assumptions, manage expectations, shield the team and reduce pressure with proper upward management
Clear definition of the project:
This is a critical part of setting up any project properly and can easily be done via a project charter.
- The Project Charter is only a small time investment but is often dismissed as a bureaucratic exercise and not taken seriously.
- Rushing into a project without a clear definition of what is and out of scope and clearly defined and aligned goals will cause different parts of the organization to interpret the goals and the scope of the project in very different ways.
- The initial investment to align the most important project parameters takes only little time but will prevent lots of headaches later on.
- It is preferable to flush out disagreements early on rather then starting with the wrong assumptions.
- This alignment and documentation also helps to prevent “mission creep” and backs up the team when disagreements arise
Governance of the project:
- structures the different work and decision forums
- defines who participates
- agrees on what the responsibilities are
- ensures meetings are set up in the right intervals
Project and/or workstream meetings are the forums where different action items get discussed on a detailed, operational level.
Coreteam meetings are used to discussed progress with the other operational project managers. It is important to achieve alignment and understand potential interdependencies between different project parts.
The Steering Committee (STC) is the forum where the managers of different project parts of workstreams present their progress, highlight bottlenecks, propose solutions and ask for decisions. The intereaction between project managers and stakeholders from different departments is used to surface potential disagreements and propose solutions to create alignment.
The scheduling for the different forums is set up so that the Project or workstream meetings happen most often (weekly) with the Coreteam meetings every two weeks and the STC once a month. Depending on the urgency of the project these times can obviously be adjusted. Don’t forget to keep bureaucratic work to a minimum. Provide teams with templates and schedule meetings so that preparations for one can be used as input for the others.
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.
This depends very much on the project. In some cases it is very clear cut while in some others it is needed to first work together with the organization to identify all of the areas that need to be included. In both cases one should group related smaller sub projects together into larger work packages. Depending on the number of work packages it can be helpful to segment them into several work streams that are chaired by senior managers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.