I found out about this book like I do most of my reads, doing a search on YouTube for books to read in whatever subject I’m looking to research. Over the years in IT and Web, I’ve led several teams to success. I’ve built my own processes, templates and plans to help us get where we needed to be never really realizing that a lot of those things already exist for use. This book is a great resource for anyone interested in learning how to lead or help with a project.
Chapter One
We are all project managers. There are two types of processes in any work. They are projects – a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique project, service or result. And operations – ongoing activities that occur after a product is made. An example is sending monthly bills.
This chapter talks about why projects fail:
- Lack of support
- Unrealistic timelines
- Competing priorities
- Unclear expectations
- Unrealistic resources
- People pulled away from the project
- Politics
- Lack of a big picture
- Poor planning
- Lack of leadership
- Changing standards
- Lack of budget
Project management is broken into 5 process groups:
- Initiate
- Make sure everyone is on the same page
- Get your stakeholder list
- Clarify expectations
- Plan
- Figure out what needs to be delivered
- Create deliverables
- A well-defined budget
- Timelines
- Project schedule
- Execute
- Do the work
- Meet your team regularly to stay on track
- Monitor and Control
- Done in every phase of your project
- Make sure things are on track and correct when not
- Keep stakeholders notified
- Close
- Check the finished project against the requirements
- recognize your team
- Document lessons learned
Chapter Two
Project management is really about leading people. You can either be a boss or a leader. There are very clear distinctions between the two.
Formal authority – is where your title or position allows you to hold power over others. This doesn’t necessarily make you a good leader though.
Informal authority – means you don’t have a higher title over others but they want to follow you because of how you interact with them. Bosses threaten while leaders inspire.
Want to be a good leader? Follow these four behaviors:
- Demonstrate respect
- Listen first
- Clarify expectations
- Practice accountability
Chapter Three
Think of project management as a map for your team to the goal. Without it they can become lost very quickly and things will fall through the cracks. You need to make sure everyone has the same outcome expectations otherwise you are doomed to fail before you begin. It doesn’t matter if you complete all tasks on time and budget, if the final outcome isn’t what the stakeholders wanted then the project is a failure. Get their buy-in early and often.
Stakeholders – a person or organization actively involved in the project or positively or negatively impacted by it.
Brainstorming – a way of determining who the stakeholders may be. Make a list of everyone you feel might be impacted by your project. The more people you can identify, the less chance you will have issues later.
Key Stakeholder – any person who determines the success or failure of the project.
To figure out which stakeholders are key stakeholders use the DANCE method.
D – Decisions – those that make the decisions or influence the project budget
A – Authority – those with authority to grant permission for the project to proceed
N – Need – those who directly benefit from or are impacted by the project
C – Connections – those that are connected to the people, money or resources needed
E – Energy – Have positive or negative energy that could affect the project
Key Stakeholder Interview – template used to learn which type of stakeholder you have. Things like the following are noted.
- Project purpose
- Description
- Desired Results
- Exclusions
- Communication Needs
- Acceptance Criteria
- Constraints
Areas of Constraints include:
- Scope
- Budget
- Quality
- Risk
- Resources
- Time
Project Scope Statement – provides a detailed description of the work that must be done to deliver the output of a project on time and within the allotted budget.
Chapter Four
This chapter deals with actually planning your project starting with the scope statement and then moving into risk management.
Risk management includes the following:
- Identify the risks – basically making a list of things that could go wrong.
- Assess the risks – this is figuring out the impact of each risk to the overall success of the project.
- Use this formula:
- Impact x Probability = Actual Risk
- Taming risks – there are a few ways you can get a handle on known risks
- Transfer – shift it to a 3rd party
- Accept – deal with it if it occurs
- Mitigate – figure out how to reduce its probability
- Eliminate – make it go away
Risk Management Plan – systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and responding to project risks
You use the risk management plan to keep track of the following:
- Risk name
- Score
- Strategy for taming it
- Who will handle it
You are now ready to create your project schedule. This holds all the key tasks and milestones you need to complete the project. There are several great tools for building this already made such as Excel or MS Project.
There are several sections to creating your project schedule.
- Work Breakdown Schedule (WBS) – this is just a list of all your project deliverables and their components. This is the “what work needs to be done” of the project. It’s sometimes called decomposing the project.
- Sequence your activities – This is putting the activities in the WBS in order from the start to finish of the project. This step also allows you to figure out any dependencies between activities if they exist such as Activity B can not start until Activity A is complete etc.
- There are 4 possible sequences between activities
- Finish to Start – This is the most common type. This means the next activity can not being until the current one is complete.
- Start to Start – an activity must start before next can start. For example, laying of foundation pillars can start only after digging of the foundation has started
- Finish to Finish – an activity must finish before the next can finish. For example level concrete can finish only when pouring concrete also finishes
- Start to Finish – This one is hardly ever used. an activity must start before next can finish. An example is: install of new oil pipeline must start before shutting off the old pipeline can finish
- Identify the project team – This is just figuring out who will to each activity. Determining this can change the dates on the project. An example is having access to a senior developer rather than a junior etc.
- Estimate task durations – is the process of estimating the number of work periods needed to complete individual activities with estimated resources.
- Work – the time needed to finish a task.
- Duration – the time needed to get the work done, but adding in everything else (real life). Things like not working weekends, holidays or sickness etc.
- You want to add buffer or “float” into your project timelines to account for unforeseen things. It’s better to say three weeks and get done rather than say one week and explain yourself on weeks two and three.
- Find the critical path – the “sequence of activities that represents the longest path through a project, which determines the shortest possible duration.”
- Create a project budget – this should include both internal and external expenses.
Mindmaps – These are visual brainstorming sessions. Each starts with a central theme and branches off from there. They are extremely helpful in mapping out ideas. My favorite, free, online mind mapping tool is https://www.mindmup.com. Just go to the link and click the Create A Free Map to get started.
Parkinson’s Law – the time which it takes to complete a task and report its completion is not less than the amount of time that is made available for it. This just means if a task says three weeks to complete, usually it won’t get done before then.
Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) – a visual tool used in project planning. Using the technique helps project planners identify start and end dates, as well as interim required tasks and timelines.
PERT uses:
- Optimistic time – the shortest time an activity can be finished
- Most Likely time – the most likely time an activity will be finished
- Pessimistic time – the longest time an activity could take
Expected Time = (Optimistic + 4 x Most Likely + Pessimistic) / 6
E = O + 4M + P) / 6
4 is a weighted average balancing the tendency of making unrealistically short time estimates.
Milestones – mark specific points along a project’s timeline. They are checkpoints that identify when activities or groups of activities have been completed or when a new phase or activity is launched.
Communication plan – “the processes required to ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection, dissemination, storage, and ultimate disposition of project information.” In other words, this is just making sure everyone has all project communication they need in a timely fashion. You can do this with a Communication Plan template detailing who gets what, when and how they like to receive it.
Chapter Five
Executing the Project
This chapter deals with working with your team and stakeholders to make sure the tasks get done. You can either be a boss or a leader to your team. Leaders inspire while bosses dictate.
Team accountability – the obligation for an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and disclose the results in a transparent manner. Leaders take pride in their work and team and have high expectations for themselves and their teammates. They want their team to succeed and praise them regularly. They are genuinely eager to help their team succeed.
Team accountability session – this is just a set meeting where everyone discusses their progress and any issues they may be facing so everyone can help if needed. It lets everyone know we are in this together.
What happens when a team member seems negative and impactful to the project? Before making assumptions, try to find out what could be happening that is causing issues. They may have difficulties occurring outside of work that is impacting them. Use the following:
- Listen first – ask them why the task was missed and listen to what they say.
- Demonstrate respect – be empathic. You don’t know all their circumstances.
- Clarify expectations – let them know in a nice yet professional way that work can’t continue for others unless their task is completed and find ways to help them.
- Practice accountability – let them know everyone is counting on everyone else.
Chapter Six
Monitoring and Controlling – a process of measuring performance and taking corrective action to assure that the business is on track to meet its goals. … The purpose of this step is to develop a control process to take advantage of opportunities, while decreasing the need for crisis management.
This process group touches all phases of the project. It’s a proactive way to keep things from falling apart.
You want to provide regular status reports to keep everyone on the same page and keep track of any variances from the plan in order to get back to your baseline.
You should never keep people in the dark or sugar-coat things. Doing so can cause major problems later on and destroy your credibility. Instead you want to have transparent communication.
Project Status Report – a document that summarizes a project’s overall progress against the projected project plan. The goal of a project status report is to keep all stakeholders informed of progress, to mitigate issues before they arise, and to ensure that the project will land within the designated time frame.
Red, Amber, Green (RAG) status – a traffic light symbolizing the status of a project and tasks. Red meaning attention is required right away. Amber is more of warning. And, green is good to proceed.
Project status reports are not just there for crises. They also help with accountability.
Controlling scope creep – what happens when changes are made to the project scope without any control procedure like change requests. Those changes also affect the project schedule, budget, costs, resource allocation and might compromise the completion of milestones and goals.
You can’t always avoid changes to a project. In these situations you need a change request procedure.
Scope creep vs scope discovery – let’s say you discovery something that has a major impact on your project objectives. Since it was not known at the beginning and only after your scope statement had been completed, you now need to see how it affects the scope of the project. If the original scope statement needs to a major overhaul, then you need to do it. Your goal should be a successful project that the stakeholders need, not what everyone agreed on if that end result is no longer needed or desired.
Chapter Seven
Closing the project – the last phase of the project management lifecycle. During the project closeout phase, project deliverables are transitioned to the business owners. Before the project is officially closed, the project team must hold a stakeholder’s meeting.
This is the time to assess how the team did. You can follow a checklist to do this. You don’t have to do all these, it depends on the project.
- All task list items done?
- Project scope successful?
- Project change requests successful?
- End any procurements
- Document your lessons learned
- Give final status report to key stakeholders
- Seek feedback from key stakeholders
- Get all required sign-offs
- Archive project documents
- Publish success
- Celebrate pro close with recognition and rewards
Lessons learned – experiences distilled from past activities that should be actively taken into account in future actions and behaviors. … The experience may be positive, as in a successful test or mission, or negative, as in a mishap or failure…
Things to think about with lessons learned:
- What was done well
- What could be done better
- What unexpected risks did we have
- How does our process need to change to meet future goals
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