Project Management.....a 60 k feet view

Project Management – 60 k feet view….

Many people come to me and I am sure many of my audience saying “I want to see myself as Project Manager after couple years” with absolute or little clue on “What does a Project Manager do?”

Well, let’s see by definition,

Wikipedia Says:

“Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. It is sometimes conflated with program management, however technically a program is actually a higher level construct: a group of related and somehow interdependent projects.”

Project Management Institute (PMI) Says:

“Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet Project Requirements. It is accomplished through the application and integration of the project management processes of Initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing.

Well, big definitions but i can certainly say with my experience that they are so true.

After Studying and practicing Project Management since few years now, want to define Project Management in my own words for all my friends who are new to Project Management or want to get into Project Management in future.

Project Management for me at 60 k feet is to manage Schedule , Cost and Performance/Quality. Lets define it:

Stakeholder Management

Ever thought of running a project alone and aloof? No, it will be 100% failure. Project Success is a team   work where Project Manager need to manage all Stakeholders, External (Customer, Vendors, etc.) and Internal (Senior Management, Team, Peers etc.).

Quick Tips:

• Set Expectations
• Reviews
• Take Sign Offs
• Get Feedback periodically

Assurance Management

Being the Biggest Authority for Project, you need to assure all stakeholders of Project Success and their requirements/needs/demands to be met.

Quick Tips:

• Result/Outcome Oriented Approach
• Planned Vs. Actual Analysis

Communication Management

Most Focused area in project Management. Project should have set schedule of recurring status meetings, Status Reports and Dashboards

Quick Tips:

• Informtion Distribution
• Have 1:1 meetings & Team Meetings
• Performance Reporting & Status Reviews

Planning & Time Management

What you do, when you are given a project? Understand and execute certain things?

The first thing when you take a project is Project Planning.A project without PROJECT PLAN is just Nothing.

Quick Tips:

• Using Organizers
• Project Plan
• Follow Rule of Plan before Doing

Risk Management

Any project, professional or personal is just *impossible* without doing Risk Management. We do it everyday life consciously or unconsciously. Doing an organized and In time Risk Management helps catching the problems/issues proactively. It helps in not only mitigating the risk but to keep reserves for unknown risks.

Quick Tips:

• Identify Risks and record them
• Analyze Risks
• Brainstorm on Risk Mitigations
• Reserves for Unknown Risk
• Monitor & Track Risks

Finance Management

Budget and Costing are areas which add to Project Success or failure. A well completed project without considering cot can be a Project failure. In fact. a survey says that 80% of Project are terminated in middle or fail due to budget issues.

Quick Tips:

• Cost Estimation
• Budgeting and Track of Profitability Targets and Actuals
• Milestone checks & Control

Here are few Quick Tips to be a good Project Manager:

• Communication is the key: Spend 90% of your productive working time in communications. It can be mails, conference calls, discussions, brainstorming, reporting etc.
• Customer Focus: Whatever you do, however you do, the focus remains Customer Delight. Your *Exit Criteria should always be Matching Outcome to Customer Requirement
• Human Resources: Each individual has some qualities. Tri to recognize the right quality of resource and utilize it accordingly. Effective use of human resources definitely adds maximum to Project Success
• Self-Organized: A project can never be success if the Project Manager is not Self Organized. A Project Manager should maintain documents like Self Organizer, Project Issue log, Action Tracker, Project Plan

This is all for this article of 60k view of Project Management. Will write more on it.

Comments are welcome to encourage me and improve me on writing.

Happy Writing!!!!!

Signing Off for this article..

Reacha