Divide and Conquer

Project Management is all about dividing up a project into sections making it more manageable. No matter how complex a project may seem, the individual work-tasks are always easy to accomplish because it is a basic task. Let’s suppose you want to create an online coupon company in the hopes you get noticed and bought out by Groupon for several million dollars.

Where do we begin? The first thing you should not is that all projects should be divided into five main areas or processes, these are: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring/Controlling and Closing. Let’s look at each of these a little closer.

The Initiating phase as the name implies is where I start my project. This process starts very early and includes the decisions as to weather I should even do the project. Some of the questions that are helpful here are; what do I really want to accomplish? How much to I want to spend? How long do I want it to take? All this information helps us to develop the Scope (see my blog on scope).

Next is Planning, again as the label suggest this is where we plan the work. Here is where we divide the work and break it down into work-tasks. As with the house example, you work with an architect for the blueprints, and then you order the materials, lay the foundation; build the frame and so on. Each one of these is a milestone (a major portion of work) that is further divided into work-tasks such as excavate foundation area, level and fill where necessary, install rebar and pour concrete.

Now we are ready to Execute, no matter how good of a plan you have, it will do nothing for you if it is not executed. As the work is performed it is very important to Monitor and Control. For example if our concrete supplier can not get us the truck the day we need it we will have to make adjustments to keep the project on track, such as have the framing crew work longer hours to make up the time missed and stay on schedule.

Finally we have Closing; here is where we formally ask the stakeholder (person asking for the work) OK we have completed the work as you have asked us to do are you satisfied? Once the stakeholder is satisfied we closeout the project and go on to the next.

Do I really need project management?

Let’s continue with the house example except this time instead of being a homeowner I am a builder. Let’s suppose I am a small “mom and pop” and not Lennar. For several decades after the Great Depression and before the Great Recession small builder all across the Country would buy a lot, build a house and sell for enough profit to stay in business. These builders did not use project management tools to build these homes, they did not need to because they had experience and always made enough profit to get along.

Then came the Great Recession and many of them lost money or went out of business because the losses were too great. The ones that did survive and are still in business having been waiting on the sidelines, wondering is it safe to get back in the game?

You see in 2005 the builder had profits of 25-50%, he did not have to worry about details that much, everything “always” worked out in the end. But now his profit margin might be 7-9% if his very careful with expenses. 

This where project management comes in, not only can tools like Net Present Value or Return on Investment help you determine if you can make a profit with your next project but other tools that can help to manage Risk and Time to avoid costly mistakes or delays.

These tools primarily help you manage two this things, cost or time. I think cost is the easiest to manage because cost is usually fixed or accurately estimated. Time-lines on the other hand can be greatly affected by many things such as weather, supplies, and many other inter-dependencies.

In comes the Gant chart here we divide our project into segments using milestones and charting inter-dependencies that we can easily monitor. When a milestone is not met early in the project, we can easily make adjustments or corrections that keep us on track.

What do you want to do? Project Scope

I cannot over state how important this step is.

Before we begin a project we need to now what we want to do. Not just a general idea but very precisely what we intend to do or accomplish. In Project Management we call this Scope. The more detail we have the better chance we have of ending up with a product we and more importantly the customer will be happy with. Let's use the construction of a house as an example. I can say my family needs a house but this is extremely vague. I can say my family wants a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house. This is a little better. But what we really want is: I would like you to design and build a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house for my family. I would like it to be wood frame construction, in a bungalow style and the cost including land can not exceed $175,000. I would like it to have about 2000 square feet and a backyard large enough for a pool. Additionally it needs to be located in the 33155 zip code and I would like you to start construction within 30 days of my approval of the design and be completed in 120 days after the start. Please provide me a design within next two weeks, I will in turn return it to you within a week later with my changes if any. This is a good start but still in a real project I would want even much more detail, the more the better.....

Project Managments Basics Day 1

I just started this blog to share some of my experiences with art of managing projects. Project management is also a science which has many tools for handling project deadlines, risks, calculating costs and managing resources. I will be sharing these with you and hopefully you find the information beneficial, good night for now....