including mapping out the controls that will be put in place, defining what quality the project needs and how it will be achieved, and analysing risk and planning control actions.
✓ Control the flow of work to teams (or perhaps just team members in a smaller project).
✓ Motivate and support teams and team members.
✓ Liaise with external suppliers.
✓ Liaise with management staff if the project is one of a group of projects being coordinated as a programme.
✓ Ensure that the project deliverables are developed to the right level of quality.
✓ Keep track of progress and adjust to correct any minor drifts off the plan.
✓ Keep track of spending.
✓ Go to others, such as the steering committee, if things go more significantly off track (for example, the whole project is threatened).
✓ Report progress, such as to the sponsor, steering committee or project office.
✓ Keep track of risks and ensure control actions are taken.
✓ Deal with any problems, involving others as necessary.
✓ Decide on changes, getting approval from others where you don’t have personal authority to make a decision (for example, when changes involve very high cost).
✓ Plan successive delivery stages in more detail.
✓ Close the project down in an orderly way when everything’s done.
So, the tasks will keep you very busy but they will also be very enjoyable if you’re a Project Manager at heart.
The short-term pressures of your job, particularly if you’re fitting in project management alongside other work, may tempt you to cut corners. That’s not the same as adjusting the project management needs to the project, but rather missing stuff out altogether that you really should have done.
Adopting a Project Methodology
Projects have a sequence from the first idea through to closure, and the rest of this chapter provides you with a simple, clear structure. If you want to move on to a more detailed approach, you can use a structured project methodology such as:
✓ PMBoK (Project Management Body of Knowledge): Developed by the US Project Management Institute, PMBoK has ten knowledge areas, including scope and contract management, and focuses on the Project Manager working through project and stakeholder requirements.
✓ PRINCE2 (PRojects IN a Controlled Environment): Developed in the UK and often used by government departments, PRINCE2 is a scalable project management method based on principles, themes and processes. It allows higher level management and control of projects. (Find out more in PRINCE2 For Dummies, published by Wiley, written by Nick Graham, co-author of this book.)
✓ PRIME (PRoject Implementation MEthod): A business-focused project method that Nick helped to produce. For more info on the PRIME project methodology, check out www.prime-project-method.com.
Other well-known methodologies include Agile, Lean and Waterfall. Methodologies may be associated with tools (like Microsoft Project, which uses Agile) or developed by major consultancies for use with their clients. In all cases, methodologies offer a structure that takes you through your project. In contrast, this book sets out the work of project planning and management in a simple and linear way.
Understanding Project Stages
Just about all project management approaches break projects into stages, or you may know them as phases. The four main stages in any project are:
✓ Starting the Project
✓ Organising and Preparing – the project planning
✓ Carrying Out the Work
✓ Closing the Project
Of these stages, the third one – Carrying Out the Work – can repeat, so you can have more than one delivery stage. In a small project, you may decide on a single delivery stage, but in most projects you have several. You can see a project example with two delivery stages in Figure 1-1.
Figure 1-1: The stages of a project, with two delivery stages.
Breaking a project into stages has many advantages, such as:
✓ Stages allow everyone to concentrate on one part of the work at a time.
✓ By breaking up the detailed planning into convenient blocks, you can plan each delivery stage in detail just before that stage starts, using the latest information.
✓ The sponsor or steering committee can stay in firm control of resources by authorising one stage at a time.
✓ Each stage includes a clear end point, usually called a stage gate (see Chapter 7), for checking that the project is still in control and remains viable.
How many delivery stages should you have? Well, it depends. Delivery stages are not all the same length or timed units of, say, one month. Rather, delivery stages reflect:
✓ Blocks of work that are cohesive and belong together
✓ Amounts of work that the sponsor or steering committee is willing to authorise at a time – the amount may vary at different points in the project according to, for example, the degree of risk in that part of the project
The end of each stage is marked by a stage gate meeting with the sponsor or steering committee. The gate is a useful control point to take stock and check that the project is on track.
Breaking the Project into Stages
The remainder of this chapter focuses on each of the stages in turn, looking at what you need to do at each stage and the main project management documents you deal with.
Here are three reasons for including a Starting the Project stage:
✓ You need to know whether the project is worth doing. Unfortunately, not all ideas are good ones. Rather than rushing into full planning, first look at whether the idea makes sense before committing more to it.
✓ You need to get basic information together. You won’t find it easy to plan the project if you haven’t established, at least in an outline, what the project is, what resource is available and any constraints, such as on delivery dates.
✓ You can sketch out the idea for the project and get agreement before going on to full planning. If you leap straight
