When it comes to information technologies, Mahirul Chowdhury is frequently assisting teams during major software upgrades and integration projects. Project management becomes a crucial part of an organization’s ability to remain competitive in their industry.
Additionally, organizations grow and need to be able to scale properly. Technology plays a key role in a business that is sustainably achieving that scale. That’s why organizations hire project managers — to ensure that any major undertaking occurs on budget and within time constraints.
There are many different approaches to project management (such as agile and lean), but they all have certain aspects in common.
Establishing Goals and Objectives
Before launching a major project, the project manager needs to understand the organization’s desired end state. Further, all stakeholders must identify and manage their expectations. This is easily done by proper stakeholder management plan.
Mahirul Chowdhury explains that ambiguity kills productivity and increases the likelihood of damaged professional relationships. Establishing specific goals and objectives for a project helps all project teams understand the big picture.
It is often helpful to use a project management tool like a GAP analysis. While a GAP analysis is most often associated with “righting the ship,” it is also a great tool for identifying where the organization is currently, where it needs to be, and how the project will get it there.
Taking Stock of Resources
After defining goals and objectives, the project manager must take stock of the resources available to him/her. In a matrix environment resource pool is assigned by the functional manager depending on the project scope and schedule. In addition, project funding is a key criteria for defining resource assignment.
The critical statement of financial resources is the budget. Often, the project manager receives a set budget amount and must break down the budget by projected expenditures.
Additionally, project managers must assess the core competencies of their team. If current team members lack critical skills for certain stages of the project, the manager must use part of the budget to outsource those tasks or expand the team.
Lastly, project managers must take project duration into account. The project cannot go on forever, and thus, time is also a finite resource. This is especially true when the organization clearly defined its timeline and there is a set deadline.
After taking stock of these resources, the project manager needs to know how to make accurate projections. Underestimating the number of resources that a project takes might mean major project delays or even complete project abandonment. New project managers often must lean upon historical data or veteran team members.
One way or another, project management takes all resources into account and plans accordingly. Sometimes, it can be a challenging puzzle to solve. But once the project is underway, it is usually too late to make major adjustments.
Project Milestones and Timelines
Typically, the planning phase breaks down each task required to complete the overall project. By taking stock of all available resources and making reasonable projections, the project manager then builds out a model, often known as a breakdown structure.
Mahirul Chowdhury notes that project management software includes platforms that allow managers to build their breakdown structure visually, subdividing each main task into its many smaller tasks.
By identifying every small and large task, the project manager can assign the right project team members to these tasks. When this is done, the manager can begin to get a sense of how long each phase of the project will take.
The completion of each task marks a milestone, and project managers can use milestones to track overall progress related to the assigned deadlines.
Interestingly, some milestones can occur simultaneously, so long as there remains the available personnel to achieve two or more tasks at once. More importantly, some tasks have contingencies — that is, one task cannot be completed until a preceding task is done. By running two project teams (or team members) in parallel, there is the minimum idle time between milestones waiting on their respective contingent tasks.
To place these milestones in the correct order — and to identify which tasks may run simultaneously — many project managers build their timeline backward from project completion to start date.
Agile Decision-making
Mahirul Chowdhury notes that when establishing timelines between milestones, most project managers set a best- and worst-case scenario. Using ranges to project milestone completions allows managers the flexibility to reallocate resources, as necessary.
For example, some milestones can usually be completed on the lower end of the range. If milestone X had a projected timeline of 5-8 days, and the team completed this task in 6 days, then that leaves 2 extra days.
If another task (milestone Y) appears to be running behind schedule, it essentially can use those 2 extra days earned from milestone X and still not threaten the overall timeline of the project.
Further, unexpected issues do come up during the project. Project managers must, therefore, know how to make quick adjustments along the way. Oftentimes, it means that the manager simply reallocates resources, as described in the example above.
In more seriousness circumstances, project managers must know when to contact decision-makers above them and discuss adjusting everyone’s expectations.
Mahirul Chowdhury concludes that project management works best with great planning but also allows for flexibility in the plan to help the organization achieve its objectives in the most efficient way possible.
