Practical Project Management

Chinese Proverb: Pearls lie not on the seashore. If thou desirest one thou must dive for it.

Yesterday two significant things happened, Firstly I registered for the PMI Global Congress in Washington in October, and secondly I had a very nice Chinese meal at my local restaurant to celebrate my birthday (celebrating the event you understand rather than the increasing number of years).

Now my local Chinese restaurant has, in case you were at all interested, 192 menu options and 14 set menus on offer. I strongly suspect that your own local Chinese restaurant will have a similar number of good things to eat on their menu.
PMI Congress has, again if you were at all interested, 160 sessions that I could attend if I a) wished and b) could time travel in order to be in parallel sessions and c) could survive.

Recently, I downloaded the 14 day free trial of Method123's project management methodology system, called MPMM.

25Mb zipped file, no problem, double click and off it goes, automatic installer does what its supposed to do and hey presto, the opening flash screen.
It’s for PC users only. Sorry no MAC version yet.

Project management templates are an easy way to take the hassle out of planning and managing projects.

Instead of spending hours on developing planning and tracking tools you can put your skills to good use managing people and tasks.

There are usually three objectives required to successfully complete a project. The outcome must be delivered on time and on budget. How do you set out all the information needed to manage a project in an easy to use and follow format? You don't have to spend hours developing a format for your plan there are templates available for download online.

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I suspect that you will all know this story:

Six blind men were asked to determine what an elephant looked like by feeling different parts of the elephant's body.

The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe.

A wise man explains to them: ‘All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all the features you mentioned’.

This is a good story which shows that to explain and understand something that is complex requires the full picture. Each of the blind men was correct but together they had the greater understanding.

Seems Peter Bergdahl, our project management guru, received many questions after publishing his video on creating a work breakdown structure using mind mapping techniques.

So, what did he do?
He recorded another one.
This time focusing on the principles behind creating a practical work brekdown structure

Our good friend and project management guru, Peter Bergdahl, uses mind maps when he creates work breakdown structures.

And he has published this video.

One natural application for the Internet and Web 2.0 is ‘Software as a Service’, commonly referred to as ‘SaaS’.

And one very useful example of SaaS is hosted project management.

 Already there is a proliferation of websites offering hosted project management services.

Much of the marketing hype focuses on improved productivity and communication.
For me the benefits are more aligned with ease of use and not having to host your own company wide application on your own IT infrastructure.
Because it is a hosted service, there is no need to buy or install expensive software. And no need to maintain it.

There's an ongoing discussion over at the PlanningPlanet. com newsletter about the usefulness of the Start-to-Finish logical activity relationship.

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner. English Proverb

Project management is fast becoming the preferred way for companies to get things done.  In a global economy project management will make a company more competitive than the traditional methods of managing work.
So for all managers there is now the need to understand the dynamics of projects together with the skill and process of project management in order to make the most out their organization’s investments.

The Question

Is Project Management therefore no longer a niche capability, the home of project management office members and external contractors; is it now a core skill that all executives and senior management need to understand?

In a recent survey conducted by Peter Taylor (www.thelazyprojectmanager.com) through a LinkedIn survey (poll)¹
That very question was asked,  ‘Is Project Management a core skill and no longer a niche capability?’ to see what a wider community of business people thought.
347 people responded to the survey and I am grateful their time and consideration, as well as the follow up comments that many people left for me to review.

Anyway these are the results:

Document templates - the project manager's 'Tools of the Trade.'
"What can we do without them?" Some ask. Others ask "What do we do with them?"
Well the answer maybe the project management template suite from Method123. 

Either you have been missing something, or nothing has really been going on.

Welcome back to the world of ‘Productive Laziness’, a world that will help you focus on what really matters and still deliver the results that you and your sponsor demands.
Here we explore the often forgotten part of the project, the very end, that point in time that is usually rushed or ignored in favour of far more attractive offerings in the shape of ‘the next big project’.

But this is a point in time for one last effort, to make life easier in the future.

The Lazy Project Manager’s Theory of Projects, from a Productive Laziness aspect states:
'All projects are thick at one end, much, much thinner in the middle and then thick again at the far end.'

Now is not the time to declare the project a success and rush off for a Bloody Mary  at the bar. ¹
No, now is the time that you can apply a small and final amount of effort but gain enormous amounts of knowledge so that future projects are likely to be even more successful and potentially with even less effort. And by less effort we know that means so much more time in the ‘comfy chair’ being lazy but in a productive way.

‘The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.’ Ivy Baker Priest

Okay, so maybe you have the large projects nailed in Microsoft Project, but what about the smaller ones that, in reality, make up the bulk of your portfolio?  Are you just "winging" those, using status emails and Excel spreadsheets to manage them?  If so, you could be making a great mistake.

Small projects, while often overlooked, are still crucial to a company's success.  Since they might not involve large sums of money, many companies do not worry as much about them, but all of these small projects can add up to some major costs if managed improperly.

Communication is one of the most significant manageable risks in any project – large or small. KPMG research shows that 20% of projects fail due to poor communication.

Other studies and experience show that failure to communicate effectively - internally, with suppliers, the community and customers will affect the both the outcomes of projects and the bottom line of companies.

Project communication is an all-encompassing discipline, but communication specialists are a relatively new addition to project teams. In part this is because communication is so fundamental that project leaders have taken it as a given. People talk to each other all the time, send e-mails, memos and reports, while notice boards are festooned with important stuff. In many projects, most of this just seemed to happen.

Everyone uses sports analogies at times. FedEx even ran a series of TV commercials poking fun at football analogies in business. This article takes the analogy process a step or two farther (admittedly farther into the absurd at times), and takes a somewhat lighthearted look at how project management is like a number of sports. Some are pretty obvious (like relating the PM to a quarterback) and some are a stretch. While this isn’t a serious comparison, there are grains of truth scattered throughout and might even give you something to think about.