3 months ago, I got my first assignment as a project manager for a MEP installations project for a medical devices company, leading a team of 4 contractors. The project had already started when I became PM and I am quiet new and inexperienced managing projects even though I finished my master degree in project management.
Right now I feel kind of lost in the project as no one has trained me for the position. I don't know the proper way to start, my responsibilities are not clear and the other team members are not used to project management methodologies and processes.
I don't feel confident about using proper management tools, good practices and documentation as I feel like the other members of the project will be adamant to follow through. Also, the client tends to be informal by making it's requirements and changes orally to the contractors instead to the PM, creating situations where the communication and task tracking is difficult.
Please, I need advice on what first steps should I take to control the project and do proper management.
If you need more information, i'll glady answer so you can better help me.
While folks in this group can certainly answer specific questions for you, in your case what you will benefit from is a seasoned PM who can act as a mentor to guide you through this first project. Ideally, that will be someone local or at least in your time zone so you can get support in close to real time.
As far as your question goes, it really depends on the context of the project. For example, what types of constraints or decisions are specified in the contract signed with the client as far as scope management, life cycle choices and so on?
Maintaining appropriate control over a project's execution requires us to compare what should be happening vs what is happening and the implications of that. If there aren't baselines established for scope, schedule, cost and quality, that would be one place to start...
As Kiron mentioned, the content of the project is very important. However, you have to review the project from different aspects. Create your own plan and start training people to work in the way that you like. It takes time. you should make a culture, so keep your time. Saving Changes...
Monitoring and controlling is very important function for your role to get the grip on project objectives.
Focus on constraints, Risk mitigations.. Saving Changes...
The first step is understanding the core business and what parts are problematic which drives the need for more robust project controls. Listen a lot more than you talk.
Trying to control the project before understanding what controls are needed is a major flaw in many project or functional managers who take on a new role and try to change everything to show how smart they are and to demonstrate their authority. Don't be that person. Understand what is working and what isn't before you start to try and change everything.
Medical equipment is a highly regulated domain, and product compliance is often an output of process compliance, so you need to learn the current processes. If the processes are informal, then you need to see if you can write them down yourself to define the current state. That usually starts to show where there are process deficiencies.
An easy place to start formally is moving into a 5S approach. That is the first step in a lot of change models. The terms may differ from place to place but remove the clutter, organize/affinitize, refine the processes, standardize the current best practices, maintain the improvements and focus on continuous improvement. You will build your own domain knowledge as you work through those steps.
Also remember that in any well performing system of any kind, control is worthless without feedback. Understand the metrics that drive the business, and use those metrics as your feedback loop to steer (control) the processes and projects to get the desired output.
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1 reply by OBrien Rolle
Jun 09, 2021 11:10 PM
OBrien Rolle
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I love this! Great stuff Keith, thanks for sharing.
The first step is understanding the core business and what parts are problematic which drives the need for more robust project controls. Listen a lot more than you talk.
Trying to control the project before understanding what controls are needed is a major flaw in many project or functional managers who take on a new role and try to change everything to show how smart they are and to demonstrate their authority. Don't be that person. Understand what is working and what isn't before you start to try and change everything.
Medical equipment is a highly regulated domain, and product compliance is often an output of process compliance, so you need to learn the current processes. If the processes are informal, then you need to see if you can write them down yourself to define the current state. That usually starts to show where there are process deficiencies.
An easy place to start formally is moving into a 5S approach. That is the first step in a lot of change models. The terms may differ from place to place but remove the clutter, organize/affinitize, refine the processes, standardize the current best practices, maintain the improvements and focus on continuous improvement. You will build your own domain knowledge as you work through those steps.
Also remember that in any well performing system of any kind, control is worthless without feedback. Understand the metrics that drive the business, and use those metrics as your feedback loop to steer (control) the processes and projects to get the desired output.
I love this! Great stuff Keith, thanks for sharing. Saving Changes...
