MyProjectTracker – The Blog

Project scoping is a critical element in effective project management. The project scope can often be, if not managed correctly, amorphous in nature with scope creep being one biggest nightmares in any project that is undertaken. It kills budgets and timelines along with frustrating both the delivery team and the client.

SMART Project Scoping

One of the most effective ways to prevent creep is to ensure the use of SMART objectives at the project scoping/objective setting stage. Most of us have seen this mnemonic as it relates to performance management but it has also been used in project management for nearly thirty years.

While all elements are important, to me, the two most fundamental elements of SMART in a project management scoping context are the first two S (specific) and M (measurable).

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When delivering any piece of project work to a client, an effective project manager will ensure that the project is broken down into smaller pieces. In project management terms, this is called a work package.

In essence, it allows the project manager to create a piece of work that can be done in isolation and managed as such that will, in turn, make up part of the overall project delivery.

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A project board represents the interest in a project delivery. The project board needs to be made up of more than just the business and the supplier delivering the project. It should also encompass the user(s) who are of equal importance when ensuring that all interests are being met during project delivery.

When creating the project board there needs to be representation from all three key areas.
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A project baseline is a must if you wish to monitor and evaluate the success of your project. Without a baseline, you have nothing to measure yourself against either during or after the project is complete.

What is a project baseline?

The project baseline is, in essence, the projected values against which you are going to deliver the project.  While there are others, the most usual make-up of a project baseline is;

1. The budgeted cost i.e. how much you expect to spend in delivering the project.
2. The expected revenues i.e. how much you expect to make from the project including the profit margin. If the project is an internal/non-revenue generating project, then there is likely to be some other return that can be measured after implementation e.g. a new software product should result in time or cost efficiencies.
3. The project timeline i.e. when you expect to start and finish. This should be a combination of the whole project along with each major part of the delivery e.g. planning and design. Being able to measure the budgeting of time in each major project component allows you to see whether there are any problem areas in your projects generally that need improving.

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The next few pictures are my take on the more common view of what happens when project management is not used to ensure an effective delivery.

Scope As Described By The Customer!

Project management is about working with the customer to define their needs correctly i.e. scoping. Project management ensures that the project team understand what they are delivering and the customer understands what they are receiving at the end of the project.

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An understanding of project costs is a key part of project planning and building the supporting business case. The project costs create the project budget against which the project manager is expected to deliver. The scale of the project is immaterial, two people for a few days or a large team for a year, knowledge and management of the project costs are one of the key attributes for measuring success.

When project costs are being estimated for a new piece of work it can often be hit and miss when required early in the process.

If a similar piece of work has been done in the past, estimating the project cost can be an easier process and is more likely to be correct from the off-set.

For completely new project types though project costing can be a little like a black art and can, if incorrectly managed, create serious problems both for the project and the business.
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Don’t you just wish all your projects ran this smoothly?

Photo : Stevevoght

It is more than a little ironic that the initials of the company responsible for what is likely to be one of the greatest man-made natural disasters of this decade, is the same as the two that begin the phrase “be prepared” i.e. BP. They most certainly were not in this instance.
As each day passes, the scale of the problem facing the company and those in the path of this disaster becomes clearer and clearer. The PR machine is in full operation, country leaders are calling each other to pacify fears, engineers are working frantically to come up with solutions. Unfortunately, nothing so far is fixing the problem at hand and it will be some considerable time before it is brought under control.

Now I’m no engineering expert or oil rig risk analyst but surely someone, somewhere has asked the question “what do we do if there is an under-sea blow-out caused by..” and the answers have already been considered.

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Marketing blogs, they’re everywhere! If you do a review of the top 100 blogs in the small business section in Technorati approx 85% of them relate to marketing and social media. The top blogs are all marketing blogs (Mashable, Seth Godin, Chris Brogan and the rest). They are all full of very useful and offer relevant advice.

However, for those of us who are not marketeers by trade or have other views or opinions on other aspects of small business – it can be difficult to get noticed. Sometimes you’d have to ask yourself why you would even bother writing about other things as it can dilute any traction you gain by talking about the business of marketing in one or two posts.

This blogs greatest view numbers have been on posts that relate to social media marketing. If we don’t have a post that relates primarily to this space, the number of hits from the U.S. drops noticeably.
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Your business has survived the first couple of years and is still viable (well done, that’s a great achievement). You were a one man show and now there are three of you and the odd sub-contractor when things get really busy.

But, everything is still done in your head. Your business is still small, so you are getting by like this where you seem to intuitively know how things are going – what’s been done well and those things that perhaps aren’t.

You also know that it’s time to expand and perhaps keeping all of the business processes and operational information in your head is not such a good idea.

So, decision made, you need to put some decent business processes into place.
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