MyProjectTracker – The Blog

Any customer will deliver the above question on delivery of the first estimate for a project. The nice ones will give you a wry smile but most, if not all, will give you an incredulous look of disbelief at the outrageous estimate that you have just given them. How can what they’ve asked for possibly give them an estimate of this scale – the audacity of it all!

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.
(more…)

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.

(more…)

Project managers often have contention with line management when it comes to the allocation of project team members. The skill of the project manager to overcome this contention will directly effect the overall success of the project planning process and indeed the project as a whole.

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;

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.
(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.
(more…)

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.
(more…)