I have found that this is especially true if this is the first job a client has asked you to undertake or quote for. Those who have been with you before may challenge an estimate, but are more likely to accept it provided you have delivered for them in the past and gave value.

Project Estimation – Make It More Than A Guess!

Hand on heart, how many of us have given unsubstantiated quotations/estimates for work without doing a quick due diligence (quick being the time it takes to give a valid quote and not a guess!). I know that I have and have been burned as a consequence. I’m sure you have done this as well.

For me, the couple of times its happened (in fairness, early in my forays into the world of consulting) was because I didn’t fully understand the breadth of what was being looked for by the client i.e. the project scope. My fault – 100%. The client was trying to get good value and I didn’t validate my quotations by asking for the necessary information to make an informed decision.

Now I ensure I fully understand the scope of what is being looked for. This makes sure that I know what is being asked for and when I’m providing the estimate.

I break the quotation down into specific pieces so that the client understands what each element costs and what they are getting in that element.

I don’t try and pad the quotation to “cover” myself. A client will see through this very quickly and creates a sense of mistrust which does not work well for anyone.

If a client raises a concern, whether to chance their arm or out of a legitimate concern on a portion of the estimate, I make sure I’ve the facts to hand and discuss each element in turn.

If the client insists that the project is too expensive and won’t engage at the current price, then I discuss de-scoping or viable alternatives to the implementation options. I highlight the impact of such actions on their business. i.e. pointing out that if they don’t invest X now, then Y will not be able to happen and as a consequence that extra revenue or cost saving will not be achieved.

I will rarely, expect for strategic possibilities, engage in a loss-leading project. The only person that benefits is the client in terms of cash, but in reality the project will not be something that I will have been happy with because I will have done all that is necessary to mitigate the level of loss that the project will make. The client will almost certainly be unhappy with the project as well.  Bang goes a good reference and there is also a good chance that there will be no “word of mouth” work coming out of it.

So don’t be afraid of your estimates/quotations. Gather the facts to back it up. Face up to a challenging client and deal in the details. Show them why it is estimated in the way that it is. If they are reasonable, they’ll agree (or de-scope if they don’t have the cash). If they don’t budge and continue to make noise – are they really worth doing the job for?

How do you manage your client estimation process?

Photo: KevinDooley

The end of the project has been reached.

During the course of the project, things went well and things went badly. This is the nature of the beast.

There have been numerous meetings during the project and indeed after to reflect on what happened and why it happened in than way.

• Actions have been taken to address what went wrong.
• Actions have been taken to share what went right within the project with other project teams so they can benefit.

We’ve moved on a few months now.

• We are looking at what went well in the latest project.
• We looking at what went badly.

If we were courageous, we’d look back at the lessons from projects a few months ago and would see, almost word for word, the same points being made.

We have had lessons, but we have not learned anything.

Why is it that we, as project and business managers, rarely manage to take really valuable lessons from one piece of work or experience and apply it for the benefit of future activities?

The answer, I suspect, is that in order to introduce the necessary changes into a delivery methodology or perhaps to apply a brand new method of operation takes times and resource.

• The business has moved on.
• The next delivery is needed to go out the door.
• The bandwidth simply isn’t there to implement the necessary changes now to benefit the future work.
• Besides, we got the work delivered didn’t we?

Not good enough.

Management need to make time in any program of work to reflect and to work on the necessary changes.

Mistakes cost money and if the business is watching every cent (as they should be), then if its possible to absorb some cost now to implement necessary changes coming out of a “lessons” exercise, this should be done as it will save money in the future.

Sure, a practical analysis needs to be done to determine whether each lesson learned actually needs to be applied and whether its going to pay for itself in the medium term. But this exercise at least needs to be gone through for that determination to be made.

Management then need to get behind driving the lessons learned into other projects and operations.

Continuous service improvement is an exercise that should be undertaken by any business in project delivery. It needs to be driven as a management culture for it to be successful and to ensure the necessary allocation of resource.

In most instances, the long term benefit far outweighs the short term costs.

Do you learn from your project lessons? How do you drive that learning back into your project management discipline and your business?

Photo: James Sarmiento

So it is with project management.

We have a project to deliver. We understand what we need to do, what the budget is and when we have to do it by.

Like Inception, the project cannot become a reality until each sub-component within the main element are undertaken and completed successfully in their own right.

These are our work packages.

• Each piece must fit together to make the “whole”.
• They all require careful planning and execution.
• If one fails or falls behind – the same applies to the project and it all becomes unraveled.

Make sure you focus on each key part of the project as well as the overall end-game.

If the project manager can get a line manager “on-side” from the off-set through early engagement and active communication, in turn the line manager will ensure that the project manager gets the right information needed to resource plan correctly.

Why is this important in project planning?

Simply put, the project manager is reliant on the line managers resources to make the project a reality. The line manager understands;

1. The skills that are available within the team and consequentially who is best placed to deliver optimally for the project.
2. The availability of those resources over the expected course of the project. Team members go on vacation or have other commitments. Are there available replacements?
3. The operational constraints that the team members experience. Could they be called away at a moments notice to work on an operational issue? How can this be managed?
4. The standards and techniques that the teams applies to its day to day operations. These may impact the project estimates.

The above four elements are key for project managers to understand and to build into their planning process. Often, an inexperienced project manager will not consider the impact of these elements on the plan and produce a linear plan based on best case scenario.

Lets use resource availability and skill set as an example.

The assumption in the initial planning process may have been that a resource is available 100% of the time for a four week project deliverable.  However, early in this planning process, the project manager engaged with the line manager and discovered;

1. That the expected resource was on a weeks vacation during that four week period.
2. That there is another team member available to cover that week, but he is less experienced and it is likely to take longer for the work to get done.
3. That the team resources were committed to completing another project at the time.
4. That operational issues are at an all time high due to a problem with a key piece of IT infrastructure and this is taking more time than expected for the team. These issues look like continuing for the next number of weeks.

The project manager is now armed with totally different information against which the plan can be built. It gives options to him in the planning process such as;

1. Factor in the holidays and make an allowance of a couple of days for the duration of the activity to occur.
2. Request that the line manager take on contract resources at the expense of the project to cover the operational issues. Sometimes this may be possible and is worth considering.
3. To work with the project manager of the other project the team are engaged in to consider whether anything can be moved around to free up resource time.
4. Factor in an allowance within the timeline for the resources to work on the expected operational issues.

All of the above can have a significant impact on the planning process. Like anything, if the potential issues are detected early solutions can be found and the likelihood of success is dramatically increased.

Early engagement works for everyone.

Do you engage sufficiently early with key players to make sure your planning is as effective as possible? What works for you?

Project managers the world over, at some point, end up in conflict with the line managers of team members working on a project. This can be especially true when the resources working on that project are operationally focused.

A project resource could be scheduled to attend a critical workshop when suddenly, there is a production based problem and that person is called away to deal with it. The workshop is suddenly pointless and the project manager is aggravated!

When it comes to a “battle” between a project manager and a line manager, the latter will generally “win” when it comes to identifying where the resource ends up unless he or she is over-ruled from on high – which takes time and energy. The other issue for operational people is that, if they are called on for an operational reason, the chances are something is going wrong and customers are being effected so it will generally take priority anyway.

So how can a project manager plan for this?

To me, the issue needs to be resolved at a higher level than a project manager. The company needs to have a policy defined around the expectation regarding the amount of time operational staff are expected to be assigned to project or program work.

If it becomes part of a teams or particular resources performance plan that they are expected to work on projects for a percentage of their time, then the line manager of that team or resource is obliged to ensure their availability. The team or resource themselves also will start to manage their own work time more effectively and push their line manager to ensure that they are available for the work.

The issue then becomes one of resource planning. The project manager should have communicated the requirement for the resource in advance and the line manager then needs to ensure that there is sufficient coverage in place through other resources to cover while their team or team member are engaged in the particular project activity.

Operational resources should always be engaged in any project that is likely to effect them once it is implemented. By placing them on the project, they will understand both the driver for that project and the requirements that will be expected of them after implementation.

They can help shape the project to ensure that the cost of operations are reduced by sharing their understandings of how things work in the “real world” and to bring lessons learned from operations back to the project design team. They are a vital part of any project.

So rather than having the team split between two masters, plan your business so that the teams engagement level in projects is defined and then put the correct processes in place to ensure that they have that time to prevent contention.

What works for your business when it comes to project vs operations?

Photo: Helico

Where do I find my project sponsor?

Let us assume that you need a project sponsor for a program of work who is not the PM. Perhaps you are looking at replacing a financial system in your company and a project sponsor needs to be appointed.


The first point of call is to determine which part of the company is most affected by the project in question. With projects that involve a considerable IT, it can often be a senior member of the IT management team that is approached to be the sponsor. This is not necessarily the correct approach. In fact, it can be detrimental to the projects’ success.

In our example, with a financially impacting project, it would be relevant to appoint a senior member of the finance department as the executive/project sponsor. It is unimportant that they control the resources directly, but it is vital that they understand what the project is delivering and the benefits that it is going to bring the business.

With this understanding they can ensure they engage in their role and help to drive it to success.

So when choosing your sponsor, look carefully at who can be the biggest supporter of ensuring its success and capable of driving it throughout the business.

Photo: Jeff Sandquist

Whether you plan using the infamous gantt chart, write the plan down in a notebook, pop it into a spreadsheet or use a project management tool, the accuracy and detail behind that plan will determine how well you run your project.

Why have a project plan?

A project plan enables you to determine the following;

1. Is the end-game deliverable, along with the key time lines for critical pieces of work, actually achievable?
2. Who are you going to need and what materials are going to be required to deliver point 1.
3. What needs to actually get done from beginning to end of the project.
4. To identify any potential problems that may arise and to plan in advance how you are going to handle them.

It helps to avoid confusion during the project and gives you a baseline against which your project can be measured.

Regardless of the complexity of the project being delivered, it is advisable to ensure that sufficient time has been spent in the planning process.  When the plan is created and shown to the relevant parties, it is something that everyone can sign up to – customers included.

So what makes up a good project plan?

A project plan has to be more than a pretty looking gantt chart. It has to serve it’s purpose and so should contain other things beyond the simple targetted timelines for beginning and the ending the project. The plan should identify;

1. The person/people on the team who are going to make your project a reality for your customer.
2. The key milestones (main pieces of work) that need to be achieved and the order in which they are to be done.
3. A breakdown of the activities required to make it happen and their sequence – there is no point in building the walls if the foundations are not in place!
4. The budget that you are allocating to the project and how it will be managed.

The plan should then be backed up by an understanding and acceptance (preferably documented) for;

1. Any identified risks and constraints that may occur. E.g. if you are building a house and a full site survey has not been done, a risk might be the presence of an unknown cabling or piping layout on the site. This would have a significant impact on the ability to, for example, lay the foundations and will incur extra costs to resolve.
2. Any assumptions that have been made up to that point should have been agreed and signed off.
3. The basis for the approach that was undertaken to produce the plan in the first place and how it was structured.
4. The reporting structures that will be put in place to manage the project to the plan e.g. weekly updates with the client.

The above lists are just the basics but apply to any project in any business large or small. Project planning might seem like a boring task but it will help you deliver great projects to your clients.

How do you plan your projects?

When they do, you have to decide when to communicate the project issues out to the rest of the project team and/or the customer depending on whether this is something that will affect their view of the delivery.

If you communicate to early i.e. “cry wolf” and the project issue never occurs, then the team may not be as believing the next time an issue happens and you flag it. They certainly won’t be if this happens a number of times.

If you communicate to late then the team and most certainly the customer will ask you why you didn’t let them know if good time to see if the situation could be addressed. The customer is far more likely at this stage to push back very hard if the issue is going to cause a project change that is going to incur cost to them or a delay to the deliverable date.

So when is the right time to raise the project issue?

For me, it’s when the facts present themselves i.e. you can back up the suspicion of the project issue with hard, cold data that tells you there is a problem. If the data is not their to substantiate the claim or is insufficient then it is to early to communicate the issue to the greater project team.

This is why it is key to track your project in an accurate manner so that you do have the data when you need it!

Have you ever “cried wolf” on a project issue only for it never to happen?

Photo: Furlined

I am talking about the thousands of small and medium business owners who are delivering services or products to their customers. Most have no project management training, nor do they have the inclination to be called project managers. Does this sound like you?

What is project management?

Well if your business, here goes the definition part, is involved in running temporary endeavours to produce a specific result of objective then you are in the business of project management and consequently are a project manager (albeit not necessarily in name). Projects are different to normal day to day operations which tend to be generally amorphous in nature and are often repeated. Normal operations don’t follow the same set of practices engaged in as part of project management.

If this does describe you, then it is probably worth taking some time to do some reading on project management processes and practices to help you deliver better quality projects which, in turn, will lead to even happier clients. You don’t necessarily need to try and become a PMP certified project manager, but there is some really great practices that you could learn about and adopt with a bit of research.

The areas that you should focus on I would suggest would be;

1. Project scoping – get the scope right and this can/does solve a huge amount of pain. Go on, admit it, how many times have you found yourself in an impossible situation that costs either customer satisfaction or cash because what you were delivering was not “quite what the customer expected”!
2. Project communication – this might seem  a bit over the top, especially if you are a one-man band. It isn’t. From a customer perspective, it’s about how you will give them updates and progress reports. It’s about how you will communicate any changes that come up during the project. It’s about making sure they are in the loop and helping give them confidence that you are in control of what you are delivering.  From your perspective, it encourages openness with both the customer and the team and makes sure everyone is on the same page. (cringe – sorry about yet another over-used phrase there!)
3. Project reporting – this is all about how you are managing your project and being able to see how you are progressing. How’s the time going? Where’s the cash being spent? What is going well? What could be improved? Even if you are a one-man band and you “kind of know where you are at”, having robust and accurate reporting will only make things better next time you run a project. It gives you the big picture.

These are the three areas that I would start with.

Project management as an art covers a much wider variety than these three high level areas. But they seem like a good place to start to me.  Other areas that you may want to cover off might include;

1. Risk management.
2. Change management.
3. Quality management.
4. Defining and managing the business case behind a project.
5. Issue management.

There is lots of really great reading to be found on the internet. Project management, the chances are your doing it. If you are not trained or have not considered yourself as a project manager – then do that bit of research and make your projects just that little bit better.

What are your thoughts? Does project management apply to you? Project managers what are the areas you’d recommend for business managers to focus on?

Photo: Hiro Sheridan

Change management does not have to be scary.

Communication, openness, planning and team engagement will help ensure it’s success.

Do you engage the rest of your business when implementing change?