Project management is anticipating issues and mitigating possibilities before they occur. Successful projects are brought in on time, close to budget, and with features the customers want. How?
“Everything is easy, until you have to do it.” My crystal ball doesn’t exist. The future is hidden from us all. The only way a project works is deep research, asking tough questions, detailed work planning, and over-communicating.
Deep research is getting with sponsors to understand the purpose for this project? Increasing market share? Mitigating product weakness? Entering new market? Safety? Find the benefits: More income? Lower cost? Less weight? New market opportunity? Attracting new customers? Something is motivating the investment. How much budget are they anticipating? Where did the estimates come from? Which features are must and which features are nice to have? The charter must be explicit to prevent project scope creep. Adding work during the project blows budgets and schedules. Who makes the decisions?
Asking tough questions may not be popular, but necessary for success. Find out what is causing the change: Falling sales? Dated design? Poor quality? Losing existing customers? New competitor products/services?
At some point you have to look for other successes and failures to learn from. Have we tried something similar before? How did it work out? Why? How many design iterations were necessary? How long did the steps take? Did equipment or tooling cost more than expected? How over budget was it? Learn recent history from the people who participated.
Detailed Work Plans include breaking down individual steps and who is going to perform the work. Budget for more expensive talent to perform planning. Often less experienced people execute the steps, although sometimes it is the same senior people. Include feedback loops in your plan. Never had a product not redesigned after testing. The simple tool tested Friday was the result of 3 design iterations. When do we get user feedback? Sooner is better. How long does regulatory approval take?
Schedules are notoriously hard to plan. Everyone wants to add time in case. Ideally you set a plan for the expected and add 10-20% extra time for the unexpected. People can hate giving estimates. Ask 1stestimated time for the worst case, then the best case, and finally ask typical case. Add the worst case, best case and 4 times typical case, then divide by 6. The typical case is the estimate they want to use. Remember the goal is to bring the project in early and under budget.
Over-Communicating may feel like you are repeating yourself, but if you don’t someone will miss the message. Everyone is busy, distracted at times, and not always receptive. Advertising believes it takes 4 to 10 touches to get attention.
Weekly status meetings should be the norm, followed by an emailed summary. Daily stand up meetings may be necessary for work groups. Sponsors may prefer bi-weekly or monthly discussions, but include weekly status reports. Ask them their preference for communication.
When something is wrong, face to face may be preferable. My go to is writing the key points in an email, sending it and immediately calling. By writing the info down it is organized, and we are both discussing the same points.
Project management does feel like “Herding Cats” at times, but is rewarding work.
No comments:
Post a Comment