It was all going swimmingly well and then suddenly out of the blue you've found yourself behind time, over budget with no clear end in site. To get back on track, you need to take these 8 steps...
Stocktake: The first thing you need to do is to work out how far off-track you are. Exactly how many days are you behind schedule and what is that, as a % of the project timeline? Also, how much over budget are you and what is that as a % of the overall budget?
Re-plan: Then review your Project Plan to see if you can make the time back, by changing your task allocations. First, see if you can reassign people to tasks in a smarter way that saves time. Then check out your task dependencies and see if there is a more logical sequence that completes the overall deadline earlier. Make sure you identify the critical path through the plan so that you know which tasks must be completed and which are a nice to have. Then assign your best people to the critical tasks and try and get those done earlier. Any time you can save through re-planning is precious.
BrainStorm: Sit down with your team and go through your revised plan and see if they can come up with new ideas for delivering the project earlier or save on budget. You might be surprised with what they come up with.
De-scope: The easiest way to get back on track by far is to de-scope your project. This means delivering less than you originally intended. List your project deliverables, prioritize them against the project objectives and see if there are any deliverables that you can ask your Project Sponsor to remove from the scope of the project, to help you get back on track. It doesn't mean that these deliverables will never be produced. It's just that they can be done as a separate activity once the project is complete.
Get Support: If your Sponsor won't change the project scope, then ask them for a deadline extension or for more budget so you can assign more resources to finish it on time. Get their buy-in and support by telling them why you're late. Be honest and upfront. Show them that you're willing to do whatever it takes to deliver on time, but you need their support to do it. With their support, anything is possible.
Control Change: You then need to tightly control change so that new features or deliverables aren't added without your approval. Change is common on most projects, so you need to control it to have the best chance of success.
Rally: Then meet with your team and explain why the project is late and how important it is to the business. Get their buy-in to working harder and longer hours to deliver the project on time. Remember that you need everyones understanding, buy-in and hard to work to deliver your project on schedule and under budget.
Communicate: Keep everyone regularly informed of progress . This will keep them focused and motivated to achieve the targets set.
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o succeed as a Project Manager, you need to “watch your projects like a hawk”. This means tracking every aspect of your project to ensure you deliver on time. To help you do this, read these 5 tips:
How to Track Your Projects
It’s a tough challenge; juggling people, equipment, time, money and materials to complete your project on time. To do it successfully, you need to keep an eye on 5 key areas of your project...
1. Time and Cost
Put an hour aside every week to determine if you are likely to complete the project on time. To do this, identify any tasks that are running late and determine whether they are likely to delay the overall project. Then look for ways that you can save time by; finishing tasks earlier, delaying non-critical tasks to after the project has been completed, or gaining approval from your Sponsor to remove tasks altogether.
You also need to review the total spend of the project to date against the original budget set. Identify ways to reduce costs by allocating cheaper resource, reducing the project scope, or boosting the efficiency of your team.
2. Resource Allocation
You need to keep a constant watch on the percentage of time that your team are allocated to tasks. If you have one person allocated to tasks 50% of their time and another 150% of their time, then you may not be working efficiently. Instead, balance workload fairly so that your team are kept busy 80-100% of their time, without being overloaded. If you intend to overload resource, then only do it for a short period of time, to avoid “burnout”.
As you reallocate work among your resources, keep an eye on the overall resource level. It may be that everyone is under-allocated and you can take a person off the project, saving on cost. On the other hand, if everyone is over-allocated then you may need to quickly allocate more resources to the project as soon as possible.
3. Progress and Efficiency
You also need to track the progress and efficiency of your team. ‘Progress’ means the percentage of tasks completed to date. ‘Efficiency’ means the number of tasks completed on time. You need to track these items to ensure that you are progressing according to plan and that your team are working efficiently in completing tasks assigned to them.
4. Risks, Changes, Issues
Every project encounters risks, changes and issues at some point. It’s often impossible to prevent them from occurring, so the trick is to resolve them as quickly as possible when they do come up. Throughout the project life cycle, you need to watch them closely. For each item raised, set a ‘target resolution date’ and track these dates carefully to make sure that they are adhered to.
5. Project Health
In addition to tracking the project at the micro level, you also need to stand back and take a look at the project from a helicopter level. You need to gain a clear view of the overall project health. You’ve already done most of the work by assessing the time, cost, resources, progress and efficiency of the project. By also taking a summarized view of the project each week, you can lead the project team towards success.
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Are you involved with projects?
If you are, then consider using a project methodology. It gives you a roadmap for delivering your project, saves you time and improves the quality of your work. So read, on to find out more about...
Using a Project Management Methodology
What is a Methodology?
A methodology is basically "a set of methods or steps that you use to deliver projects". The key point is that you repeat the same steps for every project you undertake, and by doing that you gain efficiencies in your work.
What will it do?
When you use a project methodology it gives you:
A defined set of steps to follow for delivering projects.
A set of templates to help you do things quickly.
A suite of case studies to help you learn.
The ability to customize the methodology provided.
The option to import your existing methodology into it.
What will it not do?
A Methodology is not a silver bullet. It will not fix your projects by itself. And it's fair to say that no methodology "out-of-the-box" will be 100% applicable to every type of project. So you need to customize your methodology to ensure it fits your project environment.
Why use a Methodology?
A methodology will help you by giving you a clear roadmap for achieving project success.
It will tell you and your team what has to be done, how it should be done and by when, to deliver your project on time.
Using a methodology you can:
Startup and plan projects
Monitor time, cost and quality
Control change and scope
Minimize risks and issues
Manage staff and suppliers
You can choose to use the elements of the methodology that are most suitable to each project you undertake. For instance, when managing smaller projects, you can use simple lightweight steps to deliver your project. And when managing large projects, you can use more heavyweight steps to monitor and control every element of your project.
By following the same generic steps for every project you undertake, you'll become more efficient, work smarter and reduce stress. You will also have a clear roadmap ahead, giving you the confidence you need to succeed.
1.Develop a solid business case for your projects. Where appropriate, ensure you obtain senior managers’ agreement before you start the project. Research points out that too many projects are started without a firm reason or rationale. Developing a business case will identify whether it is worth working on.
2.Ensure your project fits with the key organisational or departmental agenda or your personal strategy. If not, why do it? Stick to priority projects.
3.Carry out risk analysis at a high level at the initiation stage. Avoid going into great detail here – more an overview focussing on the key risks.
4.Identify at this early stage key stakeholders. Consider how much you need to consult or involve them at the business case stage. Seek advice if necessary from senior managers
5.Where appropriate, involve finance people in putting the business case together. They can be great allies in helping crunch the numbers which should give credibility to your business case.
Defining Your Project
6.Produce a written project definition statement (sometimes called PID) and use it to inform stakeholders – see point 13. This document is ‘your contract’ to carry out the project and should be circulated to key stakeholders.
7.Use the project definition statement to prevent creep. Use it to prevent you going beyond the scope of the project through its use in the review process.
8.Identify in detail what will and will not be included in the project scope. Avoid wasting time by working on those areas which should not be included – identify these in the PID.
9.Identify who fulfils which roles in your project. Document them on the PID. Include a paragraph to show what each person does.
10.Identify who has responsibility for what in the project e.g. project communications is the responsibility of AD. This helps reduce doubt early in the life of the project.
11.Think ‘Team Selection’ – give some thought to who should be in your team. Analyse whether they have the skills required to enable them to carry out their role? If not, ensure they receive the right training. Check they are available for the period of the project. NOTE: this includes any contactors you may need to use
12.Form a group of Project Managers. The Project Manager role can sometimes be very lonely! Give support to each other by forming a group of Project Managers.
13.Identify who the stakeholders are for your project – those affected and ‘impacted’ by the project. This should be an in- depth analysis which needs updating regularly.
14.Recogniseearly in the life of the projectwhat is driving the project. Is it a drive to improve quality, reduce costs or hit a particular deadline? You can only have 1. Discuss with the sponsor what is driving the project and ensure you stick to this throughout the project. Keep “the driver” in mind especially when you monitor and review.
15.Hold a kick off meeting (Start up Workshop) with key stakeholders, sponsor, project manager project team. Use the meeting to help develop the PID (see Tip 6). Identify risks and generally plan the project. If appropriate hold new meetings at the start of a new stage.
16.Ensure you review the project during the Defining Your Project Stage – involve your sponsor or senior manager in this process. Remember to check progress against the business case.
Delivery Planning
17.Create a work breakdown structure (WBS) for the project. A WBS is a key element you will need to develop your plan. It lists out all of the activities you will need to undertake to deliver the project. Post it notes can be a great help in developing your WBS.
18.Group tasks under different headings once you have a list. This will enable you to identify the chunks of work that need to be delivered, as well as put together the Gantt chart and milestone chart.
19.Identify dependencies (or predecessors) of all activities. This will let you put together the Gantt and milestone charts. Ensure you write them down otherwise you are trying to carry potentially hundreds of options in your head.
20.Estimate how long each activity will take. Be aware that research points out we are notoriously bad at estimating. You estimate a task will take 3 days. Identify how confident you are that you can deliver in 3 days by using %
e.g. I’m only 40% certain I can deliver in 3 days. You should aim for 80%. If you do not believe you can achieve 80% then re-calculate
21.Identify the critical path for the project. The critical path identifies those activities which have to be completed by the due date in order to complete the project on time.
22.Communicate, communicate, communicate! Delivering a project effectively means you need to spend time communicating with a wide range of individuals. Build a communication plan and review it regularly and include it in your Gantt chart.
23.Are you involved in a major change project? If you are, think through the implications of this on key stakeholders and how you may need to influence and communicate with them.
24.Conduct Risk Assessment– carry out a full risk analysis and document it in a risk register. Regularly review each risk to ensure you are managing them, rather than them managing you. Appoint a person to manage each risk.
25.Develop a Gantt chart and use it to monitor progress against the plan and to involve key stakeholders in the communications process.
26.Draw up a milestone plan. These are stages in the project. You can use the milestone dates to check the project is where it should be. Review whether activities have been delivered against the milestone dates and take a look forward at what needs to be achieved to deliver the next milestone.
Project Delivery – Monitoring and Reviewing Your Project (Project Governance)
27.Have a clear project management monitoring and reviewing process – agreed by senior managers - the project sponsor and the project Board, if you have one.
28.Ensure your organisation’s corporate governance structure and your project management monitoring and control structure are compatible. If you do not know whether this is the case then seek senior management involvement.
29.Be aware early in the project what will be monitored, how they will be monitored and the frequency.
30.Keep accurate records of your project not only for audit purposes but to ensure you have documents which enable you to monitor changes.
31.Use a Planned v. Actual form. It is easy to create – it allows you to monitor how you are progressing with specific tasks – time and money. Link these forms into milestone reviews.
32.Identify with your sponsor the type of control that is needed – loose or tight or a variation of these, e.g. tight at the start, loose in the middle, tight at the end. Ensure the system you develop reflects the type of control intended.
33.Agree a system for project changes – have an agreed system for monitoring and approving changes. Use change control forms and obtain formal sign off (agreement) by the sponsor, before action a change. Look for the impact of the change on the project scope as well as the “key driver” - quality, and cost and time.
34.Appoint someone to be responsible for project quality especially in larger projects. Review quality formally with the client at agreed milestone dates.
35.Make certain you have agreed who can sanction changes in the absence of your sponsor. If you haven’t agreed this, what will you do in their absence?
36.Set a time limit for project meetings to review progress. Have an agenda with times against each item and summarise after each item at the end of the meeting.
37.Produce action points against each item on the agenda and circulate within 24 hours of the meeting. Use these action points to help in the creation of your next agenda.
38.Review the items on the critical path checking they are on schedule. Review risks, review yours stakeholders and your communication plans and whether you are still on track to deliver on time, to budget and to the required quality standard.
39.Set a tolerance figure and monitor e.g. a tolerance figure of ±5% means as long as you are within the 5% limit you do not have to formally report. If exceed the 5% limit (cost or time) then you need to report this to the agreed person – probably your sponsor
40.Report progress against an end of a stage – are you on schedule? Time, cost or quality? Ensure that if something is off schedule the person responsible for delivering it suggests ways to bring it back on time, within budget or to hit the right quality standard.
41.Develop an issues log to record items that may be causing concern. Review at your project meetings.
42.See whether you are still delivering the original project benefits when reviewing your project. If not, consider re-scoping or if appropriate abandoning the project. Do not be afraid of abandoning a project. Better to abandon now rather than waste valuable time, money, and resources working on something no longer required. If you close a project early – hold a project review meeting to identify learning.
43.Produce one-page reports highlighting key issues. Agree the areas to include with the Sponsor before writing a report.
44.Use a series of templates to support the monitoring process, e.g. milestone reporting, change control, log, planned v. actual.
45.Apply traffic lights to illustrate how you are progressing – red, amber and green. Use these in conjunction with milestone reports.
46.Engender honest reporting against specific deliverables, milestones, or a critical path activity. If you do not have honest reporting imagine the consequences.
Closedown and Review
47.Agree well in advance a date to hold a post project review meeting. Put this onto the Gantt chart.
48.Invite key stakeholders, sponsor, and project team to the post project review. If the date is in their diary well in advance it should make it easier for them to attend
49.Focus your meeting on learning – identifying what you can use on the next project. Share the learning with others in the organisation.
50.Check whether you have delivered the original project objectives and benefits and not gone out of scope.
51.Make sure that you have delivered against budget, quality requirements and the end deadline.
52.Understand how well you managed risks and your key stakeholders. Use questionnaires to obtain feedback.
53.Prepare a list of unfinished items. Identify who will complete these after the project and circulate to any stakeholders.
54.Hand over the project formally to another group (it is now their day job) - if appropriate. You may need to build this into the project plan and involve them early in the plan and at different stages throughout the project.
55.Write an end of project report and circulate. Identify in the report key learning points.
56.Close the project formally. Inform others you have done this and who is now responsible for dealing with day to day issues.
57.Celebrate success with your team! Recognise achievement, there is nothing more motivating.
General Tips
58.But what is a project? Why worry whether something is a project? Why not use some of the project management processes, e.g. stakeholder analysis or use of traffic lights to manage your work? They key principle is to deliver the piece of work using the appropriate tools. We use the term project based working to describe this approach.
59.Get trained! Research points out that only 61% of people have received any project management training
60.Ensure you have the buy-in of senior managers for your project. You will need to work hard to influence upwards and get their support.
61.What about the day job? Projects get in the way and the day job gets in the way of projects! Many people have found that by applying project based working to day to day activities and by being more rigorous on project work, more is achieved.
62.Identify early on in the life of the project the priority of your projects. Inevitably there will be a clash with another project or another task. Use your project management skills to deliver and your senior management contacts to check out the real priority of the project.
63.Discover how project management software can help. But, you will need to develop the business case, produce a project definition alongside planning what will go into the software. Many project managers use simple Excel spreadsheets or charts in word to help deliver their project.
Before we help you find an answer to this question, let's define what a "methodology" is. A methodology is a pre-defined set of steps that describe how a project should be managed, from end-to-end. It sets out what needs to be done, by whom, when and how. It also describes how time, cost, quality, change, risks and issues should be managed to ensure that the project delivers on time and under budget.
It gives you a complete delivery roadmap so that you can manage projects in the same way every time, delivering projects faster and more efficiently than before.
So should you create this roadmap (or "methodology") from scratch, or should you buy it off the shelf? Here are the steps you need to take to make that decision:
Step 1: Analyze your Environment
How successful are projects in your Company? Which projects fail and which succeed? Why are project late? Which problems commonly occur? Do all teams use the same project processes? Which processes work efficiently and which need improvement?
By answering these questions, you can identify the common problems in your project environment and list the areas that need to be improved.
Step 2: Define your Requirements
After you've identified the problem areas and the processes that need to be improved, you're ready to define your requirements for a project methodology.
Define exactly what it is that you want from your methodology. Which processes do you require, and at which level of depth. For instance, do you need detailed processes to help you plan projects, or do you want procedures for contracting and managing suppliers.
Document your requirements in as much depth as possible and mark them as either mandatory or optional.
Step 3: List the solutions
Great, so you know exactly what it is that you want from a methodology. You now have 3 options ahead of you:
a) Create a new methodology from scratch.
If you have in-house project experts with the time available to create a new detailed methodology, then this is a good option for you. They will need to run workshops to define the overall project life cycle, reference best practices and standards when documenting the processes and implement training courses to roll out your new methodology for your organization.
It's a huge amount of work and will take considerable time, but it may be worth it.
b) Buy a new methodology off the shelf.
These days you can buy, download and implement a project methodology in minutes. The advantage is that it saves you months of work and energy rather than having to create one from scratch. The disadvantage is that it may not perfectly fit your project environment and you will need to train all of your staff in the new processes and procedures included.
This option is best for smaller companies running smaller projects, as they usually don't have the time to create a methodology from scratch and they need to improve their project delivery rate quickly, as their project success directly affects their company profitability.
c) Buy and customize a methodology.
If you already have some project processes that work for you, but you simply want to improve certain areas of your project environment, then the best option is to buy a customizable methodology, upload your existing processes and quickly create a new customized project framework that perfectly fits your environment
You will be able to immediately adopt new processes that are based on worldwide project management standards, while still using your existing processes that work well for you currently. It usually takes 1-2 weeks to merge your existing processes with the methodology your purchase, saving you months of hard effort and giving you a customized methodology which is a perfect fit for your environment.
Step 4: Rank the options
Once you've identified each of the potential options available, you will want to rank them in terms of their:
Total cost and effort required
Ability to meet your requirements set
Handling of different project sizes.
Step 5: Make your decision
Based on the amount of time, expertise and budget you have available, you should now be able to make a clear decision as to whether you should make from scratch, buy & implement or buy & customize a project management methodology for your project environment.
And just one further tip: If you decide to "buy" a methodology, then make sure that it:
Is completely customizable.
Is based on worldwide standards
Handles all types and sizes of projects
Can quickly and easily be implemented
Is simple to follow and adds real value to your projects.
So that's it. You can follow these 5 steps to make your decision on whether to make or buy a project methodology, to improve your success in delivering projects.
If you're starting a new project, then there are 5 steps that every Project Manager must take, to ensure it's successful delivery.
Step 1: Get the Vision
The first thing you need to do is to sit down with your Project Sponsor and agree on what needs to be delivered and by when. You need a hard and fast project end date. You need to understand why this end date is important to the business and the impact if you go past it. Only then, will you have a solid stake in the ground, against which you can measure progress.
Step 2: Hire the Best
Great teams deliver great projects. So it's critical that you hire the best people you can afford to bring on board. Try and "borrow" experts from within the business, and "beg" your Sponsor for more cash to recruit the best in the market. Don't fall for lesser skilled people that you can find more easily. It always takes time to find top people, but they will deliver better results in a faster period of time. And they will be easy to manage!
To hire the best, make sure you've clearly specified the roles first. Then advertise the roles widely within and outside the organization. Keep the initial interviews short (30 minutes) and interview as many people as possible. Put less than 5 people through to a second interview and only 2 on your shortlist, before selecting your final candidate.
Step 3: Set the Scope
With a great team and a clear delivery date, the next step is to define what it is that the project has to deliver. This is called the "project scope" and it needs to be documented in depth!
List every project deliverable and describe it in as much detail as possible. You need to work closely with your customer (or the business) with this, because the deliverables need to meet their requirements and deliver the stated business benefits.
Step 4: Determine if it's Feasible
Now you need to know if you can produce the deliverable with the time-frame and resource available. In short, you need to know if the project is "feasible" or not.
To determine this, you need to work out how long each deliverable will take to produce and how much resource is required to produce it. You then need to add up all of the time-frames and all of the resource hours and check that they fit in with your resource budget and project delivery date. If they don't, then you have 3 options: Get more time, find more resource or reduce the scope of the project. It's that simple!
Step 5: Take Control and run with it
If your project passes the feasibility test, then you're ready to go! You need to plan your project and manage it day-to-day.
