Project Management 2.0

Happy December & thank you again for being Members of the ProjectManagement.com community!

Download these quick before they're back in the PREMIUM library! These are all examples of premium content available 24/7 to our Premium Members. However, they are free to every registered member through Wednesday, December 18th. We hope these make your life a bit easier – helping us fulfill our mission of making YOU more successful. If you are not already a Premium Plus member but would like to be, Premium Plus membership is available at a $50 discount using the code "KEEP50".

The following premium templates are available to all ProjectManagement.com members until 12/18. We hope you find them useful. 

Project Sizing Template (NEW THIS MONTH!)
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
The purpose of project sizing analysis is to determine the appropriate level of formality for a project in regard to structure and tools based on four key criteria: Stakeholder Impact, Risk, Project Responsibility Level and Organizational Level Impacted. It is inspired by the article Determining the Appropriate Level of Formal Documentation with Project Sizing.

PMO Business Planning Template (NEW THIS MONTH!)
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
This template is intended to help the PMO produce its annual business plan. Ultimately, your organization likely has its own template that you need to comply with, but this template is intended to help with the thought process and ensure that all of the key elements have been identified. It is inspired by the article PMO Business Planning.

Business Case Review (NEW THIS MONTH!)
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This document is intended to help individuals generating business cases to validate their work using historic project information. It is inspired by the article BI and the Portfolio: Improving Annual Planning.

PMO Justification Checklist
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
If your company has a lot of projects going on, it's a good idea to have a central Project Management Office (PMO) to coordinate project teams and make sure everything gets done properly and on time. Use this checklist initially to assess whether you need a PMO. As projects progress, it can also be used to ensure that the PMO is effective.

Meetings Checklist
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If you're working on a project, you're going to hold meetings. Use this checklist to help you keep yourself and everyone else focused on the business at hand.

Quality Assurance Program Checklist
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
Quality assurance is a big part of successful software development. Use this checklist of eight questions to make sure you're producing quality work.

Project Continuation Checkpoint Checklist
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
Is your project accomplishing its objectives? Perhaps it's off track. Don't waste resources and money. Instead, use this checklist to see if it should continue into the next phase and what you need to do to ensure its success.

Sample Project Risk Register Template and Guide
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The risk register records details of all the risks identified at the start and during the life of the project, their grading in terms of likelihood of occurring and seriousness of impact on the project, initial plans for mitigating each high level risk and subsequent results.

Are You A Valuable Team Member?
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
Every project manager wants a dream team of competent, pleasant, reliable people who can be counted on to produce and work independently. Give your team members this checklist to monitor their own performance and inspire them to meet the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of doing the project well. (That includes pleasing you!)

Issue Tracking and Resolution Form
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Use this form to formally identify, track and resolve an issue related to a project. Complete directions are included.

The Seven Win Conditions
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Win Conditions address how success will be measured. How do you stack up when it comes to stakeholder satisfaction, your schedule, scope, quality, budget, ROI and team satisfaction? This templatehelps you rank priorities, and provides areas for metrics and descriptions.

Project HEADWAY Resource Management Plan
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
Estimating resources on a project, be it people, equipment or materials, can often be a difficult challenge for a project manager. The purpose of this template is to allow the project manager to identify, document and estimate the specific resource needs of the project along with detailing how those resources will be managed.

Project Viability Checklist
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
This checklist will help you decide whether your project is an idea whose time has come--or something better left undone. Call it a reality check!

Self-Assessment Checklist for Managers
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
It's time to be brutally honest with yourself and see where you can improve your skills as a manager. Take the test and see how you measure up. Go ahead, no one is looking.

How to Put Together a Zero-Based Budget
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
Use a zero-based budget (ZBB) to establish priorities and the bottom line for a changing project. Of course, we'll walk you through how to do this.

Have a wonderful holiday season & thank you again for being a ProjectManagement.com member! We sincerely appreciate your support and are completely committed to your success. If we can help with anything project related, please let us know at contactus@projectmanagement.com. 
 

I just stepped out of Bill Richardson's session at the PMI GC, called "The Power of Promise:What Every Project Manager Need to Know About Personal Branding". It was a great session because it was less about "why you should do it" and more about "how".

He began by describing what your personal brand looks like and walking you through each component. Here are the five things you need to know about your personal brand. For the sake of brevity I'm just listing the elements out here, but if you take a moment to think about each one - I think you'll get a lot out of it.

1. It all begins with a unique promise of value. What do you bring to the world that no one else does?

2. There are 3 aspects of your brand:

• Capability (Mindset, skill set and tool set)
• Character (beleifs, traits and values)
• Commitment (learning, mastery, and growth)

3. These imply questions that you should understand the answers to:

• What are you known for?
• What do you stand for?
• What are you capable of?

The answers here can be positive or negative, but you should know what they are.

4. These then map to your Conviction, Potential, and Reputation. These are the outer layer that people see most.

5. Your brand is a promise of value and it's an asset [that you must care for and cultivate].

So what do you do with that?

You begin by writing down your Brand Profile, which looks like this:

1. Vision
2. Mission
3. Needs
4. Values
5. Interests and passion
6. Strengths
7. Personality attributes
8. Goals
9. Unique Promise of value
10. Brand Statement

Then You Grow Your Brand

- Focus narrow and deep (making yourself more "special")

- No failure, just feedback (view your experiences this way)

And Protect Your Brand

- Confront Reality

- know Your KPIs

- Adapt or Die

Finally Promote Your Brand

- Share What You Know

- Pay Attention to What People Value and Need

- Express Yourself

- Deliver Change that Works

He closed the session with a really great statement, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." So once you've established a brand and are passionate about it - let people know how much you care and they will too.

I always say that if I can get one \good point out of a hour long conference session, it was worth going. I'm at the PMI Global Congress in New Orleans this morning. About 15 minutes late, I popped into the Agile UNConference session and was immediately asked to facilitate a breakout on "Tools and Techniques for Communication in an Agile Environment."  I held rapid-fire 10-minute sessions with three groups and talked about a lot of things that you might expect.

Part of each discussion was about software and I wanted to share two high-value points with you on which there was universal agreement. The first is about starting well. The second is about delivering status in a high-trust way.

The WAY you train the team on the software makes all of the difference
There is only one effective way to train people on tools. It’s using the tool, methods, and actual project data all at the same time (in a training environment where you can check understanding – not just on the job).  The folks who were anti-tool in these groups admitted they hadn’t done it that way. Those who did seemed to be universally successful.

So if you do this, you’ll know in intimate detail how the software, relates to the work you are actually trying to get done. If you have that level of understanding of what’s going on, then the next point makes a lot of sense…

Use the software to communicate with executives (don’t add another layer)
Use the actual Agile Software or Project Room Board (if there’s no software) to present to senior management. It’s what is really going on, versus yet another interpretation of what’s going on. This not only creates a window into the actual work that inspires trust from management, but also eliminates additional documentation (status reporting) to a large degree.

Have you found these to be true as well? Please share any experiences you might have...

Happy October & thank you again for being Members of the ProjectManagement.com community!

Download these quick before they're back in the PREMIUM library! These are all examples of premium content available 24/7 to our Premium Members. However, they are free to every registered member through Friday, October 18th. We hope these make your life a bit easier – helping us fulfill our mission of making YOU more successful. If you are not already a Premium Plus member but would like to be, Premium Plus membership is available at a $50 discount using the code "KEEP50".

The following premium templates are available to all ProjectManagement.com members until 10/18. We hope you find them useful. 

Sample Project Charter (NEW THIS MONTH!)
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
This is one of several Project Charter templates available on the site.
So you're starting your project...have you considered your communication strategy? What about project structure and steering committee/stakeholder commitments? These considerations--along with a more detailed RACI/RASCI approach to roles and responsibilities--infuse our newest sample Project Charter with even more for you to think about.

Cause and Effect Analysis (NEW THIS MONTH!)
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
Defining a solution to a problem without conducting a cause/effect analysis is like shooting an arrow without aiming. By utilizing this presentation, you are ensuring that the solution you define will hit the mark by getting to the root cause of problems and understanding their impacts.

External Risk Checklist (NEW THIS MONTH!)
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
When an organization undertakes a major initiative, there is potential for many different factors to influence the project. This checklist identifies categories of risk that exist external to the organization that may impact its ability to successfully deliver the project.

Business Case
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
Mission-critical projects need to be well-justified, with clear goals that can be referenced throughout the life of the project. This business case template offers an excellent approach to goal-setting and a way to communicate those goals effectively.

Business Case Planning Checklist
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
Formulating a business case and proposing your project to senior management for buy-in can be tricky. Don't dive right in and start writing. Begin with a solid checklist of guidelines to ensure a business case that's more than buzzword hype.

Business Case Development Project Plan
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
Getting off the ground starts with a business case. This project plan is the first giant step you'll need to move forward with your proposed project.

Are You an Effective Project Manager? (a quick self assessment)
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
How effectively do you manage your projects? Regardless of your score, this 50-point self-assessment will help you identify very practical areas to focus on and improve the skills you have.

Meetings Checklist
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
If you're working on a project, you're going to hold meetings. Use this checklist to help you keep yourself and everyone else focused on the business at hand.

Project Health Check
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
This checklist is designed to assist in the identification of areas where projects are strong or weak in project management. Ideally, the health check should be carried out at regular intervals, especially at major decision points to ensure no loss of expertise and progress in addressing areas of weakness.

Open Issues List
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
Good project management requires good record keeping. Track the status of all issues that arise and require resolution.

Project Closure Checklist
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
This handy checklist provides a fast summary of those project management items that need to be completed by the project manager before the project can close.

Project Lifecycle Map
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
This document gives you a view of a standard project lifecycle from a high level. This may be useful in the initial planning of a project. It compares such forecasting elements as resource usage, probability for success and allocation of key planning activities across the stages.

Project Post-Mortem
PREMIUM DELIVERABLE
This template is an excellent way to wrap up your project. It includes: post-mortem roles and responsibilities, a sample agenda, report outline and a written questionnaire outline.

Situation: Your team is getting pulled in too many different directions.

We often say that knowing the right questions to ask can be even more important than "knowing" what to do. For that reason, in Project Headway, each task level activity includes a section called "Questions that you ask of yourself and others". The section below lists out the questions we currently include in Resolving Resource Conflicts.  What would you add or remove from this list?
 

Questions to ask of yourself and others

Task Description

Settle conflicting resource assignments and allocations within the project team and across external projects. Ensure that the project‘s interests are protected so that the project may be executed as planned. This activity may arise at any time during the project.

Settle intra-team resource conflicts internally. Settle inter-team resource conflicts across external projects with the project sponsor and other development coordination organizations that exist within the enterprise. Projects may be related in several ways, through task dependency links or through the sharing of common resources. Consequently, events outside of the control of the project manager may affect the project, causing unexpected delays. Monitor these inter-project relationships carefully to ensure that the use of shared resources adheres to agreed upon allocations.

 

• Barter. There may be an opportunity to barter or ‘horse-trade’ with other projects or departments to ensure you get the resources you need when you need them. Other organizations may need something that you have or can facilitate getting. There may be an opportunity to share or assist each other, whether now or going forward.
• Consider escalation. In some cases, you may have to escalate resourcing conflicts to the sponsor. Part of the role of the sponsor is to ensure that your project receives adequate funding, schedule and resources. If you are not getting what you need, you many want to call in the sponsor to help.