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7 Essential Project Planning Documents
Categories:
Project Planning
Categories: Project Planning
| Solid project planning is a prerequisite for project success. Poor planning, meanwhile, can lead to missed deadlines, budget overruns, poor quality deliverables, frustrated project teams and even project failure. In my previous post, I offered five steps to assist in planning the project-planning phase. One of those steps involved preparing planning documents. To foster a successful planning phase, here are seven planning documents I believe most project managers will find indispensable. This list certainly might vary depending on the project setup, project size, complexity and organizational planning guidelines. 1. Project management plan -- This is used as a reference index, encompassing all planning and project documents. 2. High-level project schedule plan -- This document captures high-level project phases and key milestones. It is the document most project stakeholders will see or want to see. 3. Project team planning -- This document provides a "who-is-doing-what" view of the project. This document fosters efficient project execution and effective project communication. 4. Scope plan -- The scope plan documents the project requirements, the agreed scope and the Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) summary. 5. Detailed project work plan -- This keeps track of the activities, work packages, resources, durations, costs, milestones, project's critical path, etc. It will be an essential document and work guideline for your core project team. 6. Quality assurance planning -- This document tracks the quality standards your project deliverables will have to align to. These may typically include product testing approach and tools, quality policies, quality checklists, deviations definitions, quality metrics, product defect severity grades, acceptance criteria, cost of poor quality, etc. 7. Risk planning -- This document contains the project risks and the related mitigation plans; as well as the project opportunities and the related exploiting plans. The importance of this document is one of the most underestimated in project planning. Be prepared to have a contingency plan in case something goes wrong or to take advantage of opportunities when they arise. Start with this checklist when you sit down to plan for your next project-planning phase. Depending on your project's needs, fine tune the checklist and tailor it by adding and removing planning assets, determining the planning time frame, the underlying details and rigor. Revisit this planning exercise, learn from it and enhance it, to continuously improve your project planning skills. What project planning documents do you find indispensable? See other posts from Marian. |
How to Manage Key Stakeholder Expectations
Categories:
Stakeholder Management
Categories: Stakeholder Management
| Successful projects meet or exceed key stakeholder expectations and requirements. How can this be done when working with the client, sponsor, senior management and users of the project's deliverables? The need to effectively manage stakeholder expectations is a consistent theme in the PMBOK® Guide. This goes beyond the simple delivery of specified requirements -- it covers all aspects of a project's work and the manner in which it's accomplished. The first element is to ensure the project's deliverables will actually meet the requirements of the project. Failure to do so means an unsuccessful project. Take the time to ask the right people the right questions -- after all, they expect your deliverables to work. The next step in building success is to map the expectations of the key stakeholders. Do you really understand what they expect from the project? Accurately mapping expectations requires skillful listening and the ability to decipher what's meant, not just what's said. Don't be afraid to enlist senior management to ask questions on your behalf. As you begin to understand your stakeholders' expectations, they will fall into two groups: realistic and unrealistic. Realistic expectations still need managing. Make sure you can fulfil them -- then make sure the stakeholder knows you are meeting them. Your communication plan must present the right information to the right stakeholder in the right manner. Unrealistic expectations are more difficult to manage. They are unlikely to be met, and when you fail to achieve the "impossible," the project will be deemed a failure. Fortunately, expectations are not fixed, but exist in a person's mind and can be influenced or changed. The key to shifting stakeholders' expectations is to provide new and better information. Developing a communication strategy that brings the right information to the stakeholder's attention in a believable fashion is a subtle art. This is particularly tricky when advising upward with the goal of changing senior managers' expectations. (I'll write more on this in my next post.) What challenges have you faced in managing key stakeholders' expectations? How have you found success in managing and meeting those expectations? See more posts from Lynda. See more posts on stakeholder management. |
5 Steps to Plan the Project Planning
Categories:
Project Planning
Categories: Project Planning
| There is a saying: "Every minute you spend planning will save you 10 minutes in execution." As a project manager, I've learned that along with communication and execution, planning is one of the three key ingredients for project success. Planning is not just a one-off activity completed in the early stages of a project. Planning is a process (or rather a group of processes), conducted throughout the project. And like every process, planning itself requires a plan and a setup, which defines the planning scope, details and deliverables. So how do we plan the planning? Here is my five-step approach: 1. Decide on the project management methodology, framework or practice you will use on the project. Depending on the approach, you might require different planning styles, deliverables, details or rigor. You might have to go ahead with a detailed planning process if you will use a waterfall approach. Conversely, you might have to keep the planning thin if you will use an agile approach, such as scrum. Or, your planning might be predefined and framed if you have to use your organization's proprietary methodology. 2. Plan project time for planning. In average, at least 10 percent of management time should be allocated to project planning. 3. Write down a checklist of all project documents you plan or need to deliver. The list will mostly depend on your project's complexity, organization and methodology. (More on this in my next post.) 4. Start planning early and continue planning throughout the project. Some of the planning documents, such as the high-level schedule or scoping documents, might have to be kept frozen upon sign-off. Other documents, such as the risk management planning or rollout planning, will typically require updating as the project progresses. 5. Continuously improve your planning. Improve planning by communicating the planning outcome with your project team and by collecting their feedback regarding your planning performance. You can use this feedback for continuous planning improvement. As the project progresses, keep a log of your planning issues to track gaps you encounter along the way. This is the "planning lessons-learned" document that you can also use for continuous improvement. What do you think? How do you plan for project planning? See more on project planning. |
Contribute to the Project Management Profession
| This weekend at PMI® Global Congress 2011--North America, I accepted the PMI Distinguished Contribution Award. As the first Mexican national recipient of the award, it's an honor and a responsibility. This award represents the global recognition PMI bestows upon individuals who contribute to the growth of the project management profession. In 2008, I joined a group of volunteers that acts globally and domestically. I learned about the extent to which PMI volunteers offer their services, including writing PMI standards, preparing questions for certification exams, organizing global congresses, and presenting at PMI events. My first official volunteer activity was as a presenter at PMI® Global Congress 2008--Latin America in São Paulo, Brazil. There, I had the opportunity to meet practitioners from different latitudes and to share my experience working on multigenerational and multicultural project teams. After the global congress, I had many more opportunities pop up to continue supporting PMI's culture of volunteerism and promoting the value of multicultural project teams. I seized the opportunity to mentor young project managers and create project management knowledge. I was able to impact society after I helped the PMI Madrid, Spain Chapter translate into Spanish the Project Management Methodology for Post Disaster Reconstruction. The final product was ready at the time an earthquake hit Chile. The local chapter and Chilean authorities used this document to help manage post-disaster projects. These opportunities have been excellent learning experiences that have enriched me personally and professionally. They've given me the opportunity to touch lives and persuade other colleagues to volunteer. I've been lucky that the team members noticed my volunteer efforts and endorsed my nomination for the PMI Distinguished Contribution Award. If you are an experienced project practitioner and would be interested to contribute to the profession you can:
See more posts from Conrado. See more posts from PMI® Global Congress 2011--North America. |
IBM's Watson Project a "Monumental Feat"
Categories:
PMI Global Congress 2011 - North America
Categories: PMI Global Congress 2011 - North America
| Earlier this year an IBM computer dubbed Watson trounced a pair of former champions on the TV quiz show Jeopardy! No small feat. It only came about after a complex project that resident Voices blogger Jim De Piante, PMP called the "single greatest challenge in the history of computer science." Mr. De Piante, who served as a project manager on the IBM initiative, talked about Watson's creation with attendees at PMI® Global Congress 2011 -- North America. The idea to launch the Watson project was spawned by the success of Deep Blue, IBM's chess-playing computer that won a six-game match against the world champion at the time. The project scope was deceptively simple: win Jeopardy! But this required "some serious science." The computer had to understand natural language be able to arrive at a single, precise answer to a question, which was often loaded with quirky clues. At the start of the project, IBM's technology could answer in about two hours and it was wrong about 66 percent of the time. Watson had to snip that down to three seconds and get it right 90 percent of the time. Through an exhaustive series of testing, tweaking, perfecting and testing again, Watson achieved its goal. Then the team had to figure out how to transport the 9-ton system across the country, from its home in upstate New York, USA to Hollywood, California, USA, where Jeopardy! is taped. For a number of reasons, Mr. De Piante's team changed its approach: Instead of Watson going to Hollywood, Hollywood came to Watson. IBM built a "studio" and hired an actor to serve as the host. In the studio, they held "sparring matches," where Watson practiced against IBM employees and former Jeopardy! contestants. In 55 matches against former Jeopardy! champions, Watson won 39 times. In the end, what began as an IBM researcher's far-fetched idea in 2004 was deemed an unequivocal success six years later. "Winning the Jeopardy! match isn't why our researchers created Watson," Mr. De Piante said. "The Jeopardy! match helped make us all aware of a technological marvel, which will radically change the way we interact with computers." Mr. De Piante's presentation also featured five project practitioners playing a round of Jeopardy! against a demonstration version of Watson. The humans were no match for the machine. See more posts from PMI® Global Congress 2011 -- North America. |