MyProjectTracker – The Blog

A project sponsor is a prerequisite before embarking on any project in your business. In smaller businesses or projects, the project sponsor can be the project manager or business manager responsible for implementing the piece of work. This would be typically true in smaller consultancies.

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.

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Project planning is something that requires time and focus.  Effective project planning goes along way towards completing a successful project with a positive outcome.

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.

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Project issues are inevitable in any project that is undertaken by you or your business. You will have done your best during the project planning phase to mitigate against the risk of project issues, but they will happen.

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.
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For the dedicated project managers out there, this may seem like a bit of an odd question because you are! However, there are many out there who perform many of the tasks of a project manager but who do not equate what they are doing with being a project manager.

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.

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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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Another great Dilbert cartoon to drive home the point that it is vital to understand what someone is looking for in a project i.e. the project scope.

I’ll be writing more about project scoping in a future post, but this has helped me frame my thoughts so I thought I’d share it with you now.

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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