Road Map to Project Success

A project is like a journey; it has a beginning and an end, undertaken with specific objectives.

The components of the vehicle are the nine project knowledge areas: Integration, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Human Resources, Communication, Risk and Procurement. These knowledge areas comprise a total of 39 sub-processes.

However, vehicles are useless without drivers. The PMBOK has identified five project management process groups: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Controlling and Closing. These serve as the driving forces of the knowledge areas.

What about the road map? If one creates a matrix with the knowledge areas as rows and process groups as columns, a very clear map is obtained which indicates what project management sub-processes and activities need to be done, and when.

"This is an ingenious, flexible approach as the processes can be applied to the life cycle of the project as a whole, or applied iteratively to each life cycle phase, no matter how many phases one has in the life cycle", says Terry Deacon, member of the Project Management Standards Generating Body (PMSGB) and CEO of ProjectPro Management Services. ProjectPro, a SAQA / Services Seta accredited provider of project management training from levels 3 to 6, has modeled their courses on the above approach.

This approach has been one of the inputs used by the PMSGB to identifying the project management unit standards and specific outcomes for the various NQF levels. It is also being considered as a framework for the NQF level 4 PM Learnership that is presently being developed.
 "One of the requirements of the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) is that our unit standards should be internationally compatible," adds Deacon. "The PMBOK guide is approved by the American National Standard Institute and is a de facto international standard. The International Standards Organisation’s ISO 10006 Guideline to Quality in PM is closely aligned to the PMBOK. Furthermore the Australian National Competency Standards for PM are based on the PMBOK’s nine knowledge areas."
The proof of the pudding is the fact that Southern African projects that have been managed based on the PMBOK, have on three occasions won the international Project Of the Year (POY) award since its inception in 1990. The POY is organised by the PMI based in the USA. The Project Management Institute South Africa organises the local stage of this competition, which is known as the Project Management Excellence (PME) award.
Terry Deacon may be contacted at ProjectPro tel. 012-346 6674 or 082-557 3119 for more information.

Project management can be organized into five Process Groups:

Recognizing that a project or phase should begin and committing to do so.

Devising and maintaining a workable scheme to accomplish the business need that the project was undertaken to address.

Coordinating people and other resources to carry out the plan.

Ensuring that project objectives are met by monitoring and measuring progress and taking corrective action when necessary.

Formalizing acceptance of the project or phase and bringing it to an orderly end.

How do we manage time?

Good time management techniques can save you one or two hours of wasted time per day, sometimes more. The value of time management is not about controlling time just so that you can pack more work into your day, but the ways you can use time to improve your life.

How many people on their deathbed wish they’d spent more time at the office? We shouldn’t just be competing with the clock all day. We should also get some direction from a metaphorical compass. In other words, what do we ultimately want to achieve in our lives?

This brings us back to the two "eff" words: efficiency and effectiveness. Do they mean the same thing? I think not. Efficiency is about minimizing waste and effort, following procedures, working against the clock – in other words "Doing things right". Effectiveness is about setting your compass at the outset to produce the desired results – in other words "Doing the right things". When we combine the two "eff" words we get high productivity, which is what Africa desperately needs right now to be globally competitive.

Time management has two dimensions: managing your personal time; and managing the time of others. An example of the former could be making sure you are on time for the theatre. An example of the latter would be a project manager making sure the team members finish their tasks timeously so that the project is completed by the deadline.

When time is badly managed it can cause stress, with negative effects on our health. Conversely, good time management improves the quality of our lives, and our value to our families, friends, colleagues and society.

I’d like to conclude with these thought-provoking words from Max Lerner, American author and columnist, "We all run on two clocks. One is the outside clock, which ticks away our decades and brings us ceaselessly to the dry season. The other is the inside clock, where you are your own timekeeper and determine your own chronology, your own internal weather and your own rate of living. Sometimes the inner clock runs itself out long before the outer one, and you see a dead man going through the motions of living".

To learn more about personal and project time management, join one of ProjectPro’s Seize the Day! public courses or we can present an in-house course. See training schedule for public course dates.

Project managers everywhere are increasingly called upon to finish projects earlier, within budget and with ever decreasing resources. With this sort of pressure on project managers to produce quality deliverables with ever decreasing durations and resources, we need to look at the survival tactics which should be employed to achieve project objectives

"Few PMs these days have the luxury of plenty of time to plan a project, as well as having ample skilled resources available to do the work", observes Terry Deacon, CEO of ProjectPro Management Services. "We are always spreading ourselves dangerously thin on the ground. So how do we survive under these conditions?"

Pareto Principle. Applying the Pareto Principle helps us to prioritise. This principle says that we should be focusing our attention and efforts on managing the critical few, rather than the trivial many. "By identifying those critical 20% of things, that I call the project manager’s Key Survival Factors, you should stand an 80% better chance of completing your project successfully", says Deacon.

What else should project managers (PMs) should "pack" into their project survival kits?.

Create a support system. Everyone turns to the project manager for help when they encounter a problem. But whom can the project manager turn to when s/he needs support? One of the major reasons for project failure is a lack of management support, so it is important that a senior management representative be appointed to ensure that the project stays aligned with the organisation’s strategy.

This person is called a project sponsor who acts as a crucial link between the project and the originating organisation. By virtue of their senior position, sponsors can help project managers to obtain scarce resources, remove obstacles, test ideas, and help solve problems.

It goes without saying that building a committed group of supportive team members is crucial.

Check, check and recheck. It’s been said that the three most important things to do on a project are to keep records, keep records, and keep records.

"That’s fine for winning your court case, but it won’t avoid crises or prevent wasting months (or even years) of time on litigation", says Deacon. "I prefer the pro-active approach to check, check and recheck. Help others to meet their obligations by checking regularly if they are performing to standard."

Learn from other’s mistakes. We all make mistakes, but it is unforgivable to make the same mistake twice. We should all be on a continual improvement crusade, preferably learning from the mistakes of others. So don’t be shy to document your mistakes and archive them at the end of a project, so that future generations may benefit from your experiences. It is a fundamental quality management principle that organisations must "get better or get beaten".

Keep It Straight and Simple (KISS Principle). We become too enamoured with unnecessarily embracing new and poorly understood technology these days (it’s called the bleeding edge). Keep the communication, methodologies, tools and techniques as simple as possible. When there are changes to the plan, complex systems can be laborious to modify. Getting back to basics is a good strategy to implement the Kiss Principle.

Back-ups. Projects are risky. No matter how well organized one is, things can still go wrong. So, back-up or contingency plans must be put in place before the risk strikes. A risk analysis with responses to mitigate the risk events is a Key Survival Factor.

Backing up your computer data regularly and storing it in a safe place (like a fireproof safe or bank vault) is a must.

Buffers. Don’t sail too close to the wind. Build in safety margins for time, cost and quality. On projects we have a budget contingency under the control of the project manager to cover poor estimates, mistakes, bad productivity, etc. The client should set up an additional cost buffer called management reserve (outside the control of the project manager) to cover scope changes and force majeure aspects.

The big picture. Raymond Ackerman, of Pick ‘n’ Pay fame, said in his book, "Hearing Grasshoppers Jump", that one of his survival tactics was to keep his ears so close to the ground that he could hear grasshoppers jump. This is important for gathering information on what’s happening around you, but how do you keep your eyes on the big picture if your ear is on the ground?

Project managers are usually so focussed on monitoring and controlling time, cost and quality aspects, that they lose sight of the big picture. Therefore, get some help from the project sponsor to scan the business, technological and political horizons to identify trends, opportunities or threats.

Sharpen the saw. The most valuable asset you possess is yourself. Make sure you are in the best possible shape - physically, mentally, socially and spiritually. Steven Covey calls this "sharpening the saw" which is derived from a story about a wood-cutter who was exhausted by using a blunt saw, but said he was too busy to take time off to sharpen it. Isn’t this typical - we can’t take off an hour a day to exercise, relax or meditate, but eventually we get laid low for months with a heart attack - or worse, buried! A sense of humour is a great stress reliever that helps us to survive when things go wrong.

"Every project manager should invest a few hours of their time in the earliest phase of the project life cycle to determine what the Key Survival Factors are", advises Deacon. "Do it as a team exercise, because through involving people, they become committed."

Armed with the above survival kit project managers should consistently achieve the project objectives.