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IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT
PRIYA KUMARI
HPGD/OCT16/2377
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT
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There are plenty of software solutions to help you manage project tasks but
what all functionalities one would need for managing projects is debatable.
There are basic task management tools, some advance scheduling & resource
planning tools, some are extremely complex but enterprise solutions while,
there are tools for specific purpose like
Issue tracking,
Risk management,
Time tracking,
Project budgeting and
Cost management,
Resources planning, etc.
Of all these features that project management tools offer, project managers
should understand what kind of project management software will be useful and
effective for the project team as well as management.
After years of project delivery cycles using conventional tools and techniques,
businesses realize that they need to a project management software to
streamline project planning and delivery process. Okay, I hear you. Let’s pause
for a moment and let’s understand what do you really mean by project
management? Do you simply want to do task scheduling and assigning
activities to team members or want greater collaboration or also do resource
planning, project budgeting & tracking cost or tracking time, managing
documents, tracking incidents & risks or scheduling project meeting, managing
change requests, managing project scope, collaborating with clients as well as
sponsors or more. You may need few of these capabilities or many or all of
these.
Though there are plenty of variations in their answers but for the simplicity of
reading and understanding we grouped project managers’ expectation to seven
different aspects of project management software. Let’s look at those project
management aspects, different tools they used and their experiences/opinion
about those tools.
This is one of the most common perception about project management – task
scheduling. And the most commonly used tools are spreadsheet like Microsoft
Excel®, Microsoft Project®. Typically there are basic expectations like to be
able to create tasks, assign to a team member(s), set timeline (start date, due
date), tracking when it got actually completed.
Microsoft Project offers more advanced as well as complex capabilities for a
project manager to create project schedule. The biggest disadvantage with cost
conscious use of MS Project® or MS Excel® is, lack of real time update or
collaboration. There are many copies of project schedule and team members get
confused, updating schedule is manual, laborious activity that often leads to
errors.
On the other hand there is a crowded market of online project management and
project collaboration tools that offers task management features e.g. Asana,
Smartsheet, Basecamp, Podio, Central Desktop, Zoho, Deskaway, Producteev,
Trello, Task Merlin, ToDoist, HiTask among many others.
Of these some solutions are good ToDo list and collaboration software such as
Basecamp, Asana, where as Zoho, Podio are not limited to task management.
Again some of these are positioned for specific purpose like digital marketing,
digital project management, etc. You will have to understand that since these
web based task management tools have fewer features, they are simple to use.
As your project complexity increases, you will face the trade-off between ease
of use and number of project management features.
Project documents are integral part of every project. There is project charter,
scope document, team information, documents related to project tasks, issues,
risks and discussions, financial documents, project reports, etc. The
conventional way of managing project documents has been a common/central
folder and everyone accesses project documents by navigating to the folder
location either on intranet computer or on cloud. Document sharing certainly
helps in project collaboration, in its basic form. However common folder
location turns out problematic if you have geographically dispersed project team
or clients are locate elsewhere. Though some customers said they used emails to
share documents, knowing that, it is one of the least collaborative option.
Nowadays size of email attachment is not any deterrent factor but how many
times can you send project documents, to how many people and waste
everybody’s bandwidth.
Tracking whether things are falling in place as planned is also vital to know
efficiency and effectivity of your planning as well as project resources. If you
have planned 40 hours of work for couple of resources and if it is taking more
than 60 hours to complete in reality, then you should take cognizance of the
same and make the planning better. The direct implication of such variation
(between planned resource hours and actual resource hours) is your bottom-line
or margin will get hit. Hence there are tools that offers way to track resources
assigned across projects (actual assignment verses actual hours spent in doing
the work). It will be a mix of resource planning and tracking resource load,
resource time tracking.
Now there are plethora of time tracking software some of them are purely time
tracking tool such as Toggl, Timecamp, Harvest, Tsheet, Replicon, OpenAir,
Freckle, TimeDoctor, Officetime, SlimTimer, eBillity, actiTime, Timewriter,
RescueTime, ClickTime, among others. On the other hand there are tools which
sometimes offer integrated or extra/add-on with basic project management like
Atlassian Jira, Asana, Bascamp, etc.
There are good number of tools available for issue tracking: some of those are
installable such as Fogbugz, Redmine, Trac, MantisBT, BugZilla, BugGenie,
where as others are cloud based such as Jira, YouTrack, Zoho BugTracker,
Airbrake Bug Tracker, Bugify, ASITrack, Bontq, Bug-Track.com, BugAware,
Bugclipper, BugHerd, BugHost, Bugrocket among others. One of the
confusions project coordinators have regarding the issues are treated in tools
such as Jira, they consider issue as task. Project issue is a project issue is a
project issue. Whether it can become a scheduled activity or not, is a project
manager’s decision based on many other factors (project cost, resource
availability, timeline impact, budget approval, client approval, etc).
Issues/bugs are often considered the disputed area between vendor and
consumer organization. To streamline the issue reporting process, to track issue
lifecycle, to bring transparency in dealing with issues, project managers require
issue tracking tool. More often than not, project team end up working on issue
resolution, sometime client pay for the issue resolution work. There are project
management tools that allows tracking time not only against tasks but also
issues and risks.
When a project manager tracks project financials it comes down to five main
aspects
When projects are delivered on time and material basis, it is necessary to track
project cost. There are project management tools which help project manager in
managing project cost. Microsoft Project can help in project cost estimation,
Ecosys, Replicon, Cost Management, HardDollar, MPower, Abak 360, Deltek,
Uniphi, Pronomics, Galorath, ProjStream, SIS among others.
While looking at or evaluating any of above tools, one must keep in mind that
as project team members work on activities, update progress, fill in timesheet,
submit expenses: the software should update cost information automatically. If
you had to update project cost information separately, it will lead to confusion,
error and frustrating conversations.
You may find such tools that provide all of above functionalities but there will
cost you a bomb. These tools requires heavy customization, extensive training,
and significant change management drive. But finally what is important is the
adoption of the tool and in turn RoI.
Of course one can find such ultimate project management software like
ZilicusPM. ZilicusPM has
If you do not wish to track team members’ time, disable time tracking
module,
Not ready for risk management now, disable it till you get ready
One should also keep in mind that there are no free lunches but having said that,
ZilicusPM is pretty reasonably priced such that it provides enterprise grade
project management capabilities in the most cost effective manner.
Concluding Remark
As you will start researching for the “best project management software” for
your company and when someone asks you, “what do you mean by the best
project management software”, this article will help you answer the question.
But let me reiterate, the tool that works for your team, has optimal functionality
you need and available cost-effectively is your best tool. After all, any tool will
not have some or other feature which will be present in other tool. Your choice
of project management software should be of a tool that will centralize your
project management processes, project management artifacts, something that is
easier to use for everyone, keeps then engaged in multiple channels like web,
mobile, email and deliver faster performance.
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Project Health – Schedule
If your project has resource being used for their 30% of allocated time, that
would be very difficult to justify in today’s competitive world. Especially if
your projects have contractors and if you don’t assign them enough work, they
it adds to cost without significant benefit to the project. Resource utilization is
very important project KPIs not only from team perspective but also whether
project manager is able to do justice to its role. ZilicusPM let’s you clearly and
transparently track resource utilization KPIs.
Project Health – Issues
How far a business can allow project progress to fall behind schedule? Different
businesses have different measures, metrics e.g. usually in engineering
procurements and construction (EPC) projects lag behind schedule in the early
phases, so some clients understand it. In such cases slippage in early phases of
such project my be acceptable say 20%.
Project Budget Utilization
Tracking this KPI PM would expect that actual cost of the project is still within
the budget and you don’t have to go for increase-the-budget approval
Project Budget vs Estimated Cost
If project’s estimated cost is lesser than budget, it should raise warning sign.
That’s a common sense. But how much lesser is acceptable is a project KPI
thing.
Project Budget vs Estimated Cost KPI gives absolute picture whether project
estmated cost is overshooting budget or project maanger would have revise
budget and get the approval. ZilicusPM has these comparison chart presented
for project managers to easily and clearly understand the true picture of project
budget-estimated cost.
Definition
More recently, the project management triangle has given way to a project
management diamond - with cost, time, scope and quality as the four vertices
and customer expectations as a central theme (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: The project management diamond
No two customers have the same expectations. You must ask, explicitly, about
each customer's expectations. If you don't know what those expectations are,
you have no hope of meeting them.
Project Phases
The role of the project manager is one of great responsibility. The project
manager's job is to direct, supervise and control the project from beginning to
end. Project managers should not carry out project work - managing the project
is enough. Here are some of the activities a project manager undertakes:
No project ever goes quite as planned. Project managers must learn to adapt to
and manage change.
Leadership
People management (customers, suppliers, functional managers and
project team)
Effective communication (verbal and written)
Influencing
Negotiation
Conflict management
Planning
Contract management
Estimating
Problem solving
Creative thinking
Time management
Today they play a far broader role. In addition to the traditional skills, they need
to have business skills, customer relations skills, and political skills.
J. Davidson Frame
Many things can go wrong in project management. Any barriers, risks and
issues can affect every phase and process of project management. Here are just
some of the things that can possibly go wrong:
Poor communication
Disagreement
Misunderstandings
Inclement weather
Union strikes
Personality conflicts
Poor management
Poorly defined goals and objectives
A good project management discipline will not eliminate all risks, issues and
surprises - but it will provide standard processes and procedures to deal with
them and help prevent the following:
In Summary
Project management is all about creating an environment and conditions in
which to achieve a particular goal or objective - in a controlled manner with a
team of people.
When you're familiar with what project management entails, from the process to
mitigating all that can possibly (and often does) go wrong, you affect the end
result - whether you're engaged in a project methodology for the first time or a
seasoned pro.
1. Planning
2. Scope
3. Requirements
4. Time/Schedule
5. Costs
6. Resources
7. Communications
8. Logistics
9. Procurement
10.Quality
11.Risk
12.Integration
13.Change control
14.Ethics
15.Governance.
Each discipline may require measuring, reporting and adjusting to ensure the
project stays on track. The degree of effort each discipline deserves depends on
the type, size and complexity of the project.
Project planning
Planning is about how to capture, document and maintain data on each of the
disciplines. Ideally, your project management office (PMO) will have
guidelines, standards and templates to assist with this. The data must be
summarised in a regular project status report.
The scope is what is in this project and what is not. Scope creep (the clandestine
addition of activities without re-evaluation of impact) is one of the greatest
killers of projects. Make sure that the project is not undertaking any activity that
is not in its charter to do so, and list all of the deliverables.
Requirements
Create and maintain a 'requirements register' that shows all of the identified
requirements — who requested them, when, priority, how will they be
addressed or are they superseded?
Time/Schedule
The time/schedule is the work breakdown structure (WBS) that shows all of the
activities that have to be performed to meet the requirements and create the
deliverables of the project. How long will each activity take and what are the
dependencies between them? This is where Microsoft Project comes to the fore.
Costs
Resources
Communications
Logistics
When it comes to logistics, ask yourself: Are all the components at the right
place at the right time? How do components move from where they are
constructed to where they are needed? What is the cost and time involved? Can
it physically be done?
Procurement
The project will require elements and services that are easier to purchase than to
construct specifically as part of the project. It’s important to think about the
right time to buy, contract management, finding the best price and ensuring you
get what you paid for.
Quality
When it comes to quality, ask yourself: Will it have the capacity, availability
and strength that are required? Decisions elsewhere in the project may impact
on the quality, and hence the value, of the product outcome.
Risk
Murphy’s Law can be applied to risk and how to manage the unexpected. Is risk
likely to happen? What will be done if it does happen and how to prevent it
from happening? Is there any contingency allowed for? Can the project
activities be scheduled to tackle the high risk activities first (risk-driven
scheduling)?
Integration
No project runs in isolation. It’s about managing the impact of other projects
that are happening in conjunction, and what to consider when integrating with
these other projects. Will it affect the critical path?
Change control
All of the above elements of the project will change over the lifespan of the
project. Requests for change to the elements must be tracked and their impact
managed.
Ethics
When it comes to ethics, ask yourself: Does the project comply with good
corporate citizenship? Are we treating those impacted by the project fairly?
Have we engaged the unions, civil authorities, government, environment and
other interested parties?
Governance
I have yet to see a juggler manage 15 balls at once. This skill is reserved for real
project managers so next time you ask, “How is the project going?” remember
the full scope of that question.
Many times we do complete projects but still feel unsatisfied with the way the
targets have been achieved. I feel the value that the project brings apart from the
margin should be quantified and communicated to team members well in
advance so that every body can work and achieve both tangible and intangible
gains from the project. Organizations should concentrate on achieving internal
deliverable (values) as much as on satisfying project stake holders by delivering
the project within triple constrains. Organizations must establish procedures to
ensure that the value delivered by the project is assessed, verified and improved
upon on subsequent projects. Any organizations that strives to excel in
delivering projects must ensure that the project managers and project team
members are adequately trained in project management skills. Handling
multiple projects with limited resources is the need of the hour, which requires a
highly competent project managers and proven systems within the organization.
Any organization whose top line is driven by projects cannot afford to have just
good project managers with out imparting necessary skills to other functional
managers. A project manager can never work in isolation and all functional
managers should be trained to respond to the needs of the project. In order to
derive value from projects it is imperative that certain projects be implemented
within the domain of functional managers some good examples are
implementation of ERP system within the organization, enterprise wide project
management tool, Quality Management Systems etc. These projects will impart
on the job training to functional managers and help functional managers
understand various complexities involved in delivering a project within the
constraints.
The project Manager is not just a person coordinating activities among various
departments, handling communication among project stakeholders or handling
mundane tasks like organizing meetings and sending reminders for not meeting
the target deadline. However project managers have a much larger role within
the organization, a competent project manager needs to demonstrate a business
manager like mindset with key focus on customer satisfaction, delivering
projects under unpredictable economic scenarios and also drive business and
growth in challenging market conditions. A project manager must treat his
project
Make sure you have all the details in front of you before you start. Get
everything in writing so that a detailed timeline and a realistic budget can be
drawn up and agreed on by stakeholders. Having this at the beginning, will
make you instrumental in choosing the right team for the project. You will be
able to select members whose skill-sets are right for each task. It also helps you
avoid ‘scope creep’ when the client wants little things added here and there.
When this happens, suddenly the project can look very different than how it
started. Even though it’s likely that the project will change slightly before its
completion. When you outline clear project goals at the start, you will maintain
control of the project.
2. Be Dynamic
Once you have your plan in place, remain flexible. All sorts of things can
happen which could change the plan slightly. But if you can anticipate these and
are ready to act when they come up, you will find yourself better equipped to
deal with them. Before your project starts think about potential issues that could
arise, how to prevent them, and, if they arise, how you will resolve them. You
need to fulfill your role as a team leader in these situations and deal with these
issues confidently and calmly.
3. Communication
You need to ensure your team clearly communicates with one another. Make
sure that everyone knows what the aims of the project are and how to achieve
them. Any change to plans need to be understood by the team members and
they must be able to discuss any concerns freely. Short and regular meetings
keep everyone updated, instead of long and infrequent ones. In doing this, you
will be able to spot any problems emerging more quickly. Therefore, having
meetings frequently, you will maintain a high level of motivation and morale
within the team as it helps everyone feel included and promotes a good group
dynamic.
Make sure you’re communicating with the client. Keep them updated on
progress or any potential problems and of course listen to their feedback. This
way, you won’t run the risk of them becoming unhappy with any steps you have
taken.
4. Stay on Track
One of your main tasks as project manager is to make sure that the team is
working well together – that they are on the right track and sticking to the
schedule. There is project management software which can help you track the
progress your team is making. Online Kanban boards, even a physical one in the
office, helps you visualize your workflow, facilitating efficient use of time. If
everyone in the team has access to the board, they can update their progress,
making status-update meetings quicker. Gantt charts also work in a similar way,
helping you to visualize the tasks that need to be done against the time they are
likely to take for completion.
To finish, when the project is over it’s imperative that you examine what you
did during the project and learn from your actions. It’s important to work out
exactly what worked well and what didn’t. In order to make sure your company
maintains its edge over any competitors you must always seek to improve.
Encourage your team members and clients to give you feedback to help with
this. Stay up to date with what’s going on in your company and any new project
management theories between projects. Project management is a continuous
process of analyzing, prioritizing and reviewing in order to make right decisions
quickly. Final tip, stay focused and organised at every stage and you will do
great work.