Category: Project Management

How To Develop A Successful Project Management Plan Poor project performance is costly for businesses. According to the Project Management Institute's 2020 Pulse of the Profession report, around 11 percent of business investment goes to waste when projects underperform. This is why it's the priority of organizations to determine the reason behind poor project performance. Project performance is largely dependent on its execution. Furthermore, how well a project is executed is dictated by how effective the project management plan is. What is a project management plan? [caption id="attachment_19210" align="aligncenter" width="2160"] What is a project management plan?[/caption] A project management plan (PMP) is a formally approved document detailing the steps to manage project execution. It documents the following actions: defining, preparing, integrating, and coordinating planning tasks. A PMP ensures clearly defined…

Project Management Tools Project management combines skills, tools, processes, and methods to lead a team and achieve goals. It is a process that many find difficult because it involves a lot of juggling and handling multiple tasks and many people. You have to assign tasks to different individuals and find a way to ensure that each team member carries out their job diligently and on time. Due to this difficulty, many tools are now designed to assist with project management. Many companies are discovering the potential of project management tools. A survey by Nemertes Research reveals that almost half of respondents plan to invest more money in collaboration software. This article will find a few of the best project management tools to make your work easier. What Are Project Management…

Project Charter for Community Projects is extremely crucial. Often project sponsors and managers will forego preparing a project charter and execute a very abbreviated version process for this crucial document. And this is because they expect to cover the more salient constraints, parameters, risks, and so on in the project management plan, which is feasible when dealing with typical projects. However, when dealing with a community-based project with diverse stakeholders with many competing interests and various levels of permitting requirements from public agencies, there must be a lot of upfront detailed research. And the best place to log, as well as assess all the research data, is by utilizing the project charter. The project charter, for example, contains basic project information, which allows an organization the ability to effectively evaluate…

Frequently Asked Questions of First-Time Project Managers, Answered Within organizations, project managers are primarily responsible for ensuring that current and future projects, as well as other related business services, flow smoothly for a successful completion that results in positive outcomes. However, several internal and external factors may influence a project manager's role. Whether you have been managing projects for years or have only recently been promoted to this position, you're probably aware that this role is one of the most complex and crucial business functions. And whether you're working remotely or regularly clocking in the office, project management demands great effort. Day in and day out, project managers must deal with various constraints such as budget, timeframes, human resources, and equipment. They must stay on top of just about everything involving…

Tips for Controlling Project Costs - Budgets and Actuals To paraphrase a famous and inspiring quotation from Thomas Jefferson” “Eternal vigilance is the price for a balanced budget.” Of course, Jefferson used the word “freedom” rather than “balanced budget.” Still, the phrase fits. And I say this only because I am always asked if there is some “silver bullet” or “quick fix” to keep projects under control; the answer is no. If it were that simple, going over budget would not be a common problem across all kinds of projects in almost all business sectors. In the construction sector alone, an estimated 69% of projects went over budget by more than 10%. And this can be estimated empirically as well since we can see that many high-profile, large-scale projects in…

Project Management in Grant Writing Although I have written many proposals together, grant writing is a skill I have picked up over the last few years, partly because I have pursued more and more grant funding for several of my clients. Therefore, I pivoted my proposal writing skills to preparing grant applications. In truth, the two are not that different. In both cases, you determine whether your work/project is appropriate to pursue and whether you meet the requirements. In addition, many grant projects require other conditions, such as hiring, results reporting, and inclusion of volunteer staff. That is why I always approach a grant application as a project, even though I do not necessarily prepare a project management plan. In general, however, I do include a schedule, since grant applications…

Seeing so many of my clients and peers not use timesheets is still interesting. As a consultant who has always worked in the private sector, timesheets were unavoidable and, in some cases, such as with public projects, mandatory. In some cases, when we had federally funded work, for example, our timesheets had to be visible on our desks and fill out daily, even though they were submitted weekly. And I am not saying that we have to become slaves to the timesheet and keep track of every 15 minutes (usually the smallest reportable timeframe) but rather as a way to help the project manager track the budget and the schedule baseline. In addition, the three-line graph, which we all know as PMPs, relies heavily on actual cost, and hours spent…

Even when I write my scope of services for various clients, I find so many things missing when I take a second look. And this is because I have been carrying out my work for so many years that I automatically know everything about it. For example, if someone tells me to open the door, that is all I need, unless there is a special trick to opening a particular door. Therefore, I always put myself in the place of someone who has no idea what they are requesting. And I return to my example of opening a door; you would have to describe the motion, such as gripping the doorknob, turning it right or left, and then pushing or pulling. This is too much information since a person will…

Since I am a civil engineer, I look at my project work through a very predictive approach, which includes well-defined objectives, even if they are not always met, and a "waterfall" approach where you start with a concept, then design, then construction. The construction phases are also pretty sequential: you excavate, pour the foundations, lay out some utilities, and so on. However, not all projects run the same way, so sometimes an agile (i.e., more flexible) approach is needed, even for construction projects. And this approach is even more essential to project success when it comes to projects that affect a community or neighborhood on a large scale. [caption id="attachment_19124" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Project Management – Hybrid Approach[/caption] Of course, to a certain point, all projects can impact a community, neighborhood,…

Even though I am a fan of project management certification, I don’t believe every project manager has to be certified or that all projects require a professional PM. However, I am forever amazed when I hear people talk about how they are officially project managers, which they become so by managing projects, even very small ones. However, I believe that these professionals are performing project coordination because as they discuss their work in more detail, I realize that they may develop and monitor the schedule, control the budget, and maybe even deal with change orders. Still, they have neither prepared a formal scope nor analyzed risk or provided the services that project management professionals do as second nature. I am a PMP and chose this certification above others because of…