Project Management Scratchpad

Project Closeout

By Laura Bamberg - Global Sales Administrator

For project managers, one of their favorite processes is closing out their project. This can involve some celebration, especially if the road has been long and laden with pitfalls successfully navigated!

However, at the close of a project, how often do you get to say it was finished on time, on budget, with no scope creep or numerous changes? If I were to poll all of you, I would bet that doesn't happen often. Instead, it seems that simply closing a project within a few months of its planned closing date constitutes a success. So how can you make the project closeout phase help improve the success of future projects?

STUDY YOUR LESSONS

My first piece of advice is to study this scenario before you get to it, in the form of lessons learned or previous project audits. What happened with a similar project that led to problems with closing on time and budget? What could be done differently? If the same factors that negatively influenced that last project are immutable, what kind of work-around can be constructed?

Let's say one of the main issues with a previous, similar project was the failure of managing stakeholder expectations, in that the stakeholders wanted something that was impossible to provide, so they ended up taking what they could get, but only after compromising the project schedule. If you're working with the same stakeholders, chances are they are going to be just as challenging this time around.

Who could go to bat for you?  A trusted member of either your company or someone in the client's company, to explain the project needs in a way the stakeholders can understand, or at least advise you on how to do it? Did you provide enough information previously, or did you present it in a way that alienated them to some degree? Review what happened and institute better ways of managing stakeholders.

CLOSE PERTINENT DOCUMENTS

Michael D. Taylor wrote a recent blog post about closing contracts that project managers should read if they use the procurements process. I was reminded that some project managers fear contracted work because they fear the legal complexities involved. But I'm also reminded that this is the reason why their lawyers are involved to begin with. A brief meeting to ensure the contract is ready for closure is a good idea.

RELEASE STAFF

Taylor also wrote that a project's close involves releasing personnel to other tasks. However, if you do so without performance evaluations, you are missing a golden opportunity. Take this chance to re-evaluate who was used for what work. You may find that you made the wrong choice when you see how another team member could have done it better. Remind yourself to monitor performance next time in a case like this. Are you utilizing your team's talent correctly?

DOCUMENT YOUR LESSONS

Do you document lessons learned? If not, is it because it's not expected of you because your company, as a general rule, doesn't value them? Are they completed as rote? If so, take some time at the close of your project to run through it, start to finish, in your mind. Take this responsibility seriously.

It may be frustrating after months of documentation, and you may be ready to pop the champagne cork already, but lessons learned are valuable to you and to your team, as well as your company. If you want to present a better case to those stakeholders, there's nothing like a black and white reminder of why the project could have ended better!  Future projects will go better when projects are closed effectively.

Engaging the Team: Project Management Kickoff Meetings

By Laura Bamberg – Global Sales Administrator

How do you use a project management kickoff meeting to ensure your team effectively communicates during your project? Michael Sisco wrote that this is the single best occasion to give common goals to the team and to motivate them.

When I think back to all the meetings I sat through at previous companies, mostly I remember how useless many of them seemed. It made me think about what all those facilitators could have done to better engage us for the duration of the work ahead. A great kickoff meeting is simply a start to making this happen, but it is very important to set the right tone of this meeting and to cover as much of the “big” stuff as quickly but clearly as possible.

The more I learn about project management, the more I realize how important two things are – planning and documentation. Sisco recommends using a clear-cut agenda, and I would advise that you have it distributed before the meeting (but not more than a day or two so that it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle). Let everyone know that if they have something to add it will be addressed at your next meeting.

The length of the meeting depends on the magnitude of the project. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• If the team is newly put together, doesn’t know each other well, or if there are several new members to an existing team, explain everyone’s roles. If there is a high level of distrust, work on it now before it blows up in your face mid-project. Also identify stakeholders and brief the team on any necessary information regarding the stakeholders.
• If this is a new team, or there are several new faces, it's also a good idea to discuss your change request policies, and if you don’t use a change control board, explain what methods will be used to avoid deviating from these policies down the line.
• Review significant expectations, and let everyone know there will be time to discuss these in greater depth when the need arises so that you don’t slow down the meeting pace.

A well-run kickoff meeting doesn't guarantee the ultimate success of a project, of course, but it certainly gives the team a push in the right direction.

Delivering Project Plans to Your Team

By Laura Bamberg – Global Sales Administrator

Recently one of our salespeople was talking to project managers on the trade show floor at a conference and discovered that many of them still print their project plans to pdf documents and distribute to their team and stakeholders.

If you prefer to use a program like Excel, it's important to note that this is not helpful for delivering project plans over the long term any more than printing to a pdf. What if the team members need to add information to your project plan? This is not at all feasible for them. This reminds us that Steelray Project Viewer  saves project managers time and prevents the hassle of trying to print plans to a pdf or strictly using Excel.

It would be simpler and faster to send an e-mail to your team, telling them where the mpp file is located so they can see it. The team can open it with our Microsoft Project viewer, and there will be no problem trying to get it to print correctly to a pdf or making sure everything exports to Excel perfectly. It is almost the same as if you had created it in Microsoft Project.

What are some of the other ways that our Viewer can help?

• There is no need to update to a third-party server - instead, store it on your server, and there is no need to create a new pdf.
• A pdf gives you one view - our Viewer gives you a sight-line to overdue tasks, incomplete, and tasks beginning this week, as well as tasks assigned to a person and more.
• Filter and navigate your view. Drill down to all parts of critical project information.
• A pdf file limits your zoom levels because you only have two options - bigger or smaller. Our Viewer allows multiple zoom levels with different timescales.
• The Viewer is also a navigator - it allows you to search in the same way you would use a search engine on the web.
• A team member can send a status update to the project manager's email inbox.
• If you like using Excel and feel comfortable with it, you can use one of our Excel templates that's included with our Viewer. You can also export tasks to Excel, as well as html.

What holds you back from using a better tool? Could it be that there are many products that cost a great deal of money out there, each vying for your attention and budget? Some companies charge a monthly fee, which actually costs you much more than the cost of our viewer.

We love to hear your feedback, so keep it coming! We’ve enjoyed our conversations with you on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Project Management Metrics

By Laura Bamberg – Global Sales Administrator

As a measurement tool, metrics vary in complexity, and they are not always a one-size-fits-all solution. One way your company finds success might not work for another.  You should take into account your enterprise environmental factors to begin with, but you can complete a project (of any size and at any company)  better by incorporating them into your project.

Metrics can be used throughout several phases of your project.  Using metrics can ensure better project quality by helping you move forward faster with greater quality. The more information you can pin down and the more mistakes you can catch before they lead to other mistakes, the easier it is to complete your project on time, on budget, and with improved results compared to past projects. Here are some project components that benefit from the use of metrics:

Organizational Process Assets

In this tome (or database or dusty cabinet) lie answers to project questions you may not have even thought of, in the form of metrics. This is a good place to look before you even gather stakeholder requirements, especially if the information you need to present to stakeholders is still fuzzy – this will help that information coalesce.

Stakeholder Requirements

Lately, I’ve seen several posts on LinkedIn about best practices of gathering stakeholder requirements or what to do if you’re having trouble communicating with your stakeholders. In my last post, I suggested that project managers should be firm with their stakeholders and managing those expectations. Metrics are a very good way to do that – if you can't give a stakeholder something that can be measured, how can you promise an end result? For example, if you’re building an oven, how can a stakeholder require better cooking performance if you don’t know what this is to begin with?

Project Management Plan

Because the plan contains the blueprint for your project and it’s updated frequently, it's never too late to add metrics to the plan. For example – let’s say that a material you are now using to build that oven means that it can cook more evenly at lower temperatures.  Measuring this type of performance is an important metric, because it also means that cooking time is shorter than in any other oven your company has built – so you use this on your current project (especially when testing quality and performance), as well as future projects.

For more perspective on this, see a post by Suresh Malladi, PMP regarding ways to improve your projects.

Quality Control

Here is another great area where metrics come in handy. Quality is often about measurements, so using metrics makes perfect sense. Comparing the quality of deliverables in your project to previous project deliverables can provide an excellent source for metrics. This is not always an apples to apples comparison, because every project is different, but it is still an effective tool to help gauge a project's success.

Project Performance

If you’ve never used metrics as part of your projects, quality control or project performance are two places you’d automatically expect to see them. Adam Thody wrote a piece on using metrics during the project performance evaluation and made the case that “post-project performance reviews” are not the only times you should look at lessons learned. He wrote that unless you set up metrics that people will actually use, you’re destined to fail.

So, why do people dislike using metrics, especially if they’ve not been consistently used on projects or if they change and become a bit more difficult? The short answer is that people don’t always like change! They wonder if it will take more time out of their busy day, if the metrics will actually benefit the project, or just create busy-work.  Once you begin using metrics, you realize that even though they might not all be helpful, you still found measurements that provide overall value for your project.  So, on your next project, you have a better idea of what type of metrics are needed. In order to create metrics your project team will use, you must have insight into what works best for your company, and this requires a bit of planning, but once you put the appropriate metrics into practice, what a difference they can make!

The Economy

(Posted by Laura Bamberg, Global Sales)

Everyone is worried about the economy. Everyone watches anxiously, on a daily basis, to see what the market does, what the news anchors say – living in an almost constant state of fear. They drive in to work every day and worry their job won’t be there. Others are too afraid to “jinx” it - I bet a lot of people don’t even really talk about it. Even if their companies are doing pretty well, that terror that tomorrow might be different haunts them.

This is why I’m grateful for my job. Steelray Software has employed strategic, planned growth since it invented the Microsoft Project viewer, which results in less fear and worry for its employees. That translates into stability and trust for our customers. Rather than expecting a dismal future in 2009 and beyond, we’re excited about what we have planned.

Yes, I feel myself, at times, being drawn into the tension around me. I too read newspapers and listen to the television that warns me of impending disaster. Friends and family are talking about it too. “How’s your job going?” really means, “Do you think you’ll get laid off?”

I tell them not to worry. I tell myself, when the fear hits, not to worry. And most of the time, I don’t.  I don’t employ a stubbornly optimistic outlook. I do employ a realistic optimistic outlook. Yes, times are hard and according to all the experts, they’re only going to get harder.

It’s the second day of the new year and already another economic slowdown is on everyone’s mind. While I don’t see that as a never-will-happen event, I do see it as merely possible. Tighten the belts, rely on my childhood of frugality but fun nevertheless, and use hope and faith that over time, everything will slowly get better. I believe it will.