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?

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).

Why? –  because these are the two that ensure nailing exactly what the project is going to achieve and how the output of the project is going to be assessed – i.e. the business case for doing the project in the first place.

Specificity in project scope definition

What do we mean by specific?

As an example, let’s take it that your business is looking at a new piece of software to help with a particular operational aspect.

The first question you will ask is why do we want to buy this piece of software and go through the hassle of a project to get it on board? And you should ask this question first and foremost.

Projects and change cost time and money – you need to see benefits at the other side. But this question needs to be further considered i.e. made more specific in nature. You may ask the following;

What are the benefits that we will achieve through the implementation? (in scope)

• Reduced time to market for our goods and services by 20%?
• Reduced costs and overhead by 35%?
• Introduction of a more formal process that we can then include in our value proposition to clients that will facilitate a 5% uplift in sales price?
• Simplification of a complex process to free up 3 people to focus on other things?
• …..

What do we not expect of this project? (out of scope)

• For the software to manage all aspects of our business.
• The management of, for example, a redundancy process for employees that are no longer required as a consequence of the implementation of the software.
• ….

For all of those items in scope, there is something specific that is being attained as a consequence of engaging in the business. Against these, the business case can be examined and an informed cost/benefit decision can be made.

Measurability in scope definition.

Using the above example, the measures are dictated by the specifics of the project goals. Based on these, the project can ensure that there is a measure of success being implemented as part of the project.

If we use the first example of a 20% reduction in the time to market the measure is how long it currently takes to get your deliverable out to your customer. After implementation, this is a tangible number against which to measure the success of the project.

Whatever the measure, the project should include the ability to track this improvement through effective reporting that allows the management team to immediately see the derived benefit of implementation. If this effective reporting does not exist in the operation today, then it can be included as a project deliverable.

Using SMART as a tool in the project scoping process will make a huge difference and ensure a “closed” scope that is understood by all.

Do you use SMART in your project scoping?

Photo: Rooneg

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.

What is a work package?

Work packages are used by a project manager to tell either a team or a team manager what is required of them. Depending on the nature of the project and also the relationship that the project manager has with the team responsible for doing the work, the instructions may be given verbally or more formerly in writing.

My own view is that written communication, backed up by a conversation to clarify any points, is better as it reduces the risk of misunderstanding among the project delivery team.

At a very high level, a work package should consist of;

1. Date the work package was agreed and the people involved.
2. A description of the work that is to be done.
3. Any processes, procedures, tools, standards etc that should be followed or used when undertaking the work package.
4. Any interfaces with other work packages, products or projects allied with this work package i.e. that will be affected by it or that may affect it.
5. Effort, cost and time determination including start and end dates.
6. Agreement on how the sign-off on the work package will be determined i.e. how will it be agreed that the work has been done.

There are other elements that can be included but to me, these are the key aspects that should be considered. Looking at the list, it may come across as being almost as cumbersome as generating a complete project plan for each work element. This is not the case and a work package is not designed to cause more work for the project manager.

The logic behind creating work packages as part of a project is obvious. It is breaking down what can seem like a monstrous task into small recognisable pieces.

The two impacts of creating work packages.

The first is that it makes it considerably easier for the project manager to manage the delivery. and secondly, perhaps more importantly, it allows the team members to see the results of their efforts more quickly and keep themselves motivated. This is particularly true when the project is running over many weeks or months. If their are not smaller goals to work towards, the team can lose sight of what they are trying to achieve and become despondent.

Work packages basically makes everything much more manageable and who wouldn’t want that?

How do you break down your projects to help with their management?

Photo: uzbeckistan

When creating the project board there needs to be representation from all three key areas.

Project Board Make-up

Business - the outcomes of the project are that it should meet a business need and present value for money. A representative from the business needs to form part of the executive to ensure that these outcomes are considered and monitored.

User - is someone who will be affected by the implementation of the project in some manner. For example, they could end up using the output of the project or may be impacted by they project outcome e.g. automation of a particular role.

Supplier - a representative from the supplier that is going to provide the necessary skills and resources to make the project a reality. These can be in-house or external suppliers.

For many smaller businesses, the business and user representative can end up being one and the same person. It is still important to ensure a distinction in terms of role though to ensure that both needs are met i.e. that the business is benefiting from the project and that the end-user considerations are being met.

For example, a business might benefit from implementing a new piece of software in terms of management visibility, but the effort involved in terms of operation from a user perspective might make implementation of that particular piece of software a nightmare to work with no matter how much value the business might derive from it.

Do you consider all three interests when delivering your projects?

Photo: Sunfox

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.

Once you have established what your baseline is, the next important step is to record it somewhere. If it is not recorded, then it cannot be assessed against and is effectively meaningless.  The project baseline can be recorded in software products or it can be recorded in written form in a notebook somewhere. The key is to make sure that you have it.

Can a project baseline change?

Ideally, once the project baseline is set, it should not be changed. However, this is sometimes inevitable due perhaps to a requirement to implement a major change to scope or, hopefully not too often, the project was incorrectly base-lined in the first place.

If this situation occurs, then you should keep a reference of why have had to change the baseline, create the new one and then measure the project against this.

So why do I need a baseline?

Basically it is to allow you to see how well your projects are running.

1. It allows you to measure how accurate you are in your time estimation and consequentially improve in the estimation of future projects.  Are you allowing enough time for each section of the project? Are you over or under-estimating the work effort required for some projects? Are you building in sufficient contingency for customer created delays?….
2. It allows you to measure your ability to estimate and manage project costs. As with time estimation, budgetary understanding and management are integral parts of any project and you can learn by understanding where the money is going to whether efficiencies can be determined for future projects.

By using a baseline, you can measure your overall performance. It allows you to have something against which to compare your actual time/cost spends.

Without a project baseline, you can never fully understand your project effectiveness nor make any improvements for future projects that your business is delivering.

Are you defining and understanding your business project baselines?