Project Management’eur

The other day I attended a presentation on Time Management offered by the local Houston chapter of the Project Management Institute. This was an overview discussing how to manage your time considering all aspects of your life from a unique and interesting perspective. What struck me was that there were several attendees who were noticeably stressed and distraught, seeking answers to these two questions:

1. How to I get all of these extra monkeys off my back? Even though I am already overloaded with work, my boss keeps handing off more to me.
2. How to I manage the multitude of emails that keep showing up in my in box in ever increasing volume?

The presenter acknowledged that these are common problems in corporate America and offered some advice for each.

For the first problem, the presenter suggested compiling documentation of all of the projects you are currently working and seeking a meeting with the boss to discuss them.  During the meeting, present this documentation in a positive manner so that the boss can see the reality of what is expected of you and in what time frame.  Then the boss can either prioritize the list and/or offload some of the work to someone else.  The boss’s expectations of you then become more realistic and your stress level goes down.

For the second problem, the presenter suggested that you must control how people communicate with you.  As an example, he noted that he only gives his cell phone number out to his family and close personal friends.  But in the work environment, everybody has your email address.  How then do you control communication with you at work?

Project Management for the Real World , an online project management application, can assist with both of these problems.

For the first problem, your project data can be gathered into a comprehensive printer friendly report with a few clicks and printed for your meeting.  Better still, you can set up your boss as a project owner user, giving him/her the ability to view all aspects of all of your  projects online at any time.  With this ability to quickly reference the detail of all your projects, the boss can better plan how to prioritize and add new ones and prevent the extra monkeys on your back problem to begin with.  For a large organization where the projects of multiple departments need to be tracked, and account can be set up for each department.  The manager who must track the work of all these departments can be given the appropriate permissions in each department’s account to enable an overall view of the projects in a company.  This data is presented in a hierarchical view so that the manager can easily drill down to points of particular interest at any time.

For the second problem, you need a way to control how people in your organization communicate with you.  Large volumes of email can be caused by redundancy of requests and responses for information.  This redundancy can be caused by not including everyone who has a need to be involved on a copy list, by the difficulty of organizing emails by topic or thread, by not communicating effectively or thoroughly in your emails, and by individuals loosing important emails.  To implement some control on this, use the project discussion area of Project Management for the Real World to host your discussions, organizing them by project and by task. Insist that this is the place for these discussions. Set up guidelines to make the knowledge base developed by discussion participation more useful; for example:

• Read your task requirements thoroughly first.
• Search the project discussion posts to see if some of your questions have already been addressed.
• Be thorough about including all of your remaining questions to date in your post. Avoid posting one liners when possible to reduce the number of individual posts making it easier for the team to find what they are looking for.
• In responding to questions, address all questions, even if you have to say you can’t answer some now and will post the answer when available. I can’t begin to count the times when I have sent an email with a list of questions and the response will simply not address some of them, causing me to have to send a follow-up email for all the questions not answered in the first email.
• If your post applies only to one or more specific tasks and not to the project in a general sense, link these task to the post.

Combining a centralized discussion area accessible at any time by team members and the intelligent, thoughtful use of the content of your communication can go a long way to solve communication overload in project management. It is easy for an overwhelmed manager or team member to be tempted to quickly fire off an email that just gives minimum attention to some particular hot button. But taking the extra time to be more thoughtful and thorough in your project discussions can save much time and confusion in the long run, helping your projects to be completed faster and more efficiently with much less stress on all participants.

This post will discuss the need to keep project stakeholders up-to-date during the life of a project, and how the web-based application Project Management Tool for the Real World can facilitate this process, which we will refer to as the application.   The attached video will demonstrate how to use the application for this purpose.

During the execution and monitoring of a project, a Project Manager must be sure that the stakeholders are kept up-to-date about project progress and any changes to the project, such as due dates, changes in scope, or any changes in the details. Everyone involved must have a clear understanding of the expectations in terms of what is to be delivered, when and at what cost.  At the start of the project these expectations may be set out in a Project Definition document.   This set of expectations may be used as the project description in  the application, and can be updated as necessary throughout the life of the project by the Project Manager.  If there is a Project Definition document, this may be uploaded to the documents section of the project, and new versions can be uploaded over the original as necessary.  This may be done by the Project Manager or another individual who is assigned to update the document.  In both cases, stakeholders who view these items in the application will be assured that they are viewing the current version of the expectations.  The Project Manager and/or the document author  must take care to be comprehensive, organized and clear in the presentation of this set of expectations, keeping in mind that people will be making decisions based on this information.  The expectations must be laid out thoroughly and in language that is understandable by the stakeholder audience.  Well though out Project Definitions can minimize questions and revisions, and ensure that stakeholders have the information they need in a timely manner to support their decision making process.

Alhough projects need to be somewhat flexible to be able to handle unforseen changes, the Project Manager must be mindful of excessive “scope creep”. An individual “minor change” may not be a big deal, but when compounded to excess it can grossly effect project completion time, project resources, and project budget.  Keeping all stakeholders in the loop from inception with effective communication and sharing of project details will help to mitigate scope creep.

In the application, when viewing a project description or a document record, the last updated date and time is displayed so that any stakeholder viewer can quickly see if there has been an update since his/her last view.

Based on the project description, the Project Manager will create tasks in the tasks section of the project.  These tasks can be assigned start dates and due dates, and have progress records logged to them, which are also automatically time-stamped.  Again, this progress log information should not be short and terse, prompting a lot of follow-up to determine what is really going on.  If it is believed that the task cannot be complete by the due date, this should be documented as early as possible to avoid the stakeholder frustation of having to make last minute adjustment decisions.  The project manager can then update the due date and  description, if rqeuired, reflecting the current conditions.

The task record allows for the updating of the task description, as may be required after a project description update.  It allows the storing of an hourly rate for the task.  When a task progress log is entered, the number of hours worked is also entered so that cost-to-date information can be calculated.  The percent complete can also be updated.

Task logs may be entered at any time, but it is recommended that this be done on a schedule, such as daily or weekly unless there is critical information that must immediately be disseminated.  Stakeholders will then know when to expect updates and view the updated status of their projects.  They may in fact wish to schedule meetings or teleconferences to discuss project status after the updates have been entered.  Every stakeholder will be able to view all aspects of the project that they have been given permission to view by logging on to the application during the conference.  Then in a coordinated fashion, with everyone having access to the same current project status information, they can make whatever adjustments are necessary.  The Project Manager can record changes in the project, tasks, or documents.

When viewing a task in the application, the percent complete is displayed graphically with color coding to indicate whether a task is proceeding on schedule, may be falling behind,  overdue, or complete, providing a quick indication of tasks that may need attention.

The Project Manager will have access to drill-down and printer friendly reporting that includes cost roll-up by task, project, and project owner (customer).  The drill-down report will help the Project Manager determine if all updates have been completed on schedule and show the color coded percent complete as described above to highlight tasks needing attention.  The printer friendly version may also include the detail of the task progress logs.  The printer friendly version is in HTML format and can be saved and emailed to stakeholders who desire a comprehensive report on the project status.  This will give a stakeholder a quick view of the cost-to-date that may be available before their internal accounting systems have produced the information. Learn more on managing project stakeholders with a 30 day free trial.