Project Management: By Islam Mahrous (Director of Six Sigma) and Amr Morsy (Director of Sales & Marketing)

A project is a problem scheduled to be solved

Project management is a highly demanding and complex task. It requires organizational skills, the foresight to anticipate the unexpected, and the ability to monitor progress and change course as needed.
In this topic, you’ll learn how to define the scope and mission of your projects, how to plan schedules, budgets, and tasks, and how to build in Plan B, so that your project can keep going even when you encounter obstacles

The project life cycle
A project is a set of interrelated activities, usually involving a group of people working together on a one-time task for a period of one to 18 months. Designing a new car is a project that requires a group of people to collaborate on design, building, testing, and modification. Once the new car goes into production, the project is over, and the responsibility for the car production is replaced by an ongoing department or business unit.
The life cycle of a typical project comprises four phases:
1- planning
2- build-up
3- implementation
4- phase-out

1- Planning
Uncover the real project
Identify the stakeholders
Set your objectives
Define the activities and estimate the time and effort involved

Uncover the real project.
Even when you’ve been given a project with very explicit responsibilities and expectations, it’s still a good idea to make sure you’re preparing to solve the right problem, or to meet the underlying need. The expectations can be clear, but still not go to the heart of the issue.
Here are some questions that can help you uncover the real issue at the core of your project:
– What is the perceived need or purpose for what we are trying to do?
– What caused people to see this as a problem that needed solving?
– Who has a stake in the solution or outcome?
– How do the various stakeholders’ goals for the project differ?
– What criteria are people going to use to judge this project a success?

Identify the stakeholders:
– A stakeholder is anyone who has a vested interest in the outcome of your project
– To help you identify all the stakeholders in a project, consider
what functions or people might be affected by the project’s activities or outcomes
who contributes resources—people, space, time, tools, and money—to the project.
– Once you have identified the stakeholders, ask them to spell out exactly what success on the project means for them. (Occasionally, it’s useful to have them actually sign off on what they expect of the project and are willing to contribute to it.) Because stakeholders’ interests vary, their definitions are likely to differ. One of your critical tasks in this phase is to meld stakeholders’ expectations into a coherent and manageable set of project objectives.
– Beware of "mission creep": As you find out each stakeholder’s definition of success, be careful about trying to accomplish too much. Don’t get caught up in trying to solve problems—even legitimate or urgent ones that your company needs to address—that lie beyond the scope of your project. Throughout the project, you must guard against mission creep—unwittingly giving in to pressure to do more than has originally been planned for. So be vigilant, especially as you are establishing a relationship with your stakeholders. Remember: it’s all right to change the project’s objectives midstream, but do so with your eyes open, not unconsciously—and only after making sure your stakeholders are willing to go along with the changes.

Set your objectives
– When defining an objective, think SMART. In other words, an objective should be
– specific
– measurable
– action-oriented
– realistic
– time-limited.
Time, cost, and quality are the three related variables that most often determine what is possible for you to achieve—change any one of these and you change your outcome. As you define an achievable objective, first consider these variables: ask yourself how the time and funds you have allocated will affect or limit the quality of the result.
Deciding whether and how to make tradeoffs between time, cost, and quality—this is the stuff of project management. It is crucial that you keep all stakeholders informed of any changes in your project’s objectives—and what the consequences of those changes will be in terms of time, cost, and quality. Whenever you’re making a tradeoff that reduces quality, make sure you’ve got your stakeholders on board. To do otherwise is heading for failure.


Define the activities and estimate the time and effort involved
– Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS is a tool that can help you develop estimates, assign personnel, track progress, and show the scope of project work. Through this tool complex activity is subdivided into several smaller tasks. This can be continued until the activity can no longer be subdivided. To create a WBS:
Ask, "What will have to be done in order to accomplish X?"
Break down your answer into components that cannot be subdivided by asking the same question over and over.
For each fundamental activity (that is, each activity that cannot be broken down further), estimate how long it will take to complete and how much it will cost in terms of dollars and person-hours.
– Estimating effort and duration. Once you’ve broken down the tasks, you can estimate how long each will take. Keep in mind the following:
– Estimates should be based on experience, using the average expected time to perform a task. The more familiar you are with a particular task, the more accurate your estimate will be.
– Estimates are just that—estimates. They’re not guarantees, so don’t let them be changed into firm commitments at this phase.
– When presenting estimates to stakeholders, make sure they are aware of all the assumptions and variables built into them.


2- Build UP
Assembling your team
Meeting as a group
Assigning people to tasks
Setting the schedule
Choosing the best schedule method
Using software for projects
Developing the budget

Assembling your team
The build-up phase begins with an assessment of the skills needed for the project. This assessment flows directly from your work on the Work Breakdown Structure during the planning phase, in which you developed your best estimate for the necessary tasks and activities. Depending on this assessment, your current team may not have certain requisite skills, and so you may need to recruit people who have them. Be prepared to fight to bring in people—either temporary workers or employees from within the organization—who have the additional skills the project needs.
On other occasions a team will be assigned to you, so that your task becomes one of assessing team members’ skills. You will make assignments according to the best matches between skill and task and then provide training for those people who need to acquire additional skills for the project. Don’t forget to budget time and money for any training you or your team may need to cover these skill gaps.

Meeting as a group
Having assembled your team, get them involved immediately at the first meeting. Go over the plan with them in as much detail as possible. Encourage people to point out where snafus may occur and where improvements may be made. Take all suggestions seriously, especially in areas where the team members have more experience than you do, and adjust your estimates accordingly

Assigning people to tasks
– List all the people who are part of the project team and then list all the skills that are required. Go through the lists, have people talk about their own skill sets and let the group assign tasks during the discussion. Or, if you have worked with these people before and know them well enough, make the assignments yourself.
– Doing this in a group setting allows everyone on the team to know what everyone else’s skills are; also, if someone encounters an issue that they don’t have the skills to deal with, they may know who else has them.

Setting the schedule
– While it would be nice to be able to say, "With the resources we have, the project will take this much time," the reality is that most projects come with fixed beginning and end dates. For example, although you would like to get started immediately, the people or materials may not be ready for another two weeks. However, the stakeholders want or need the project to be completed by a definite time. Scheduling is the classic problem of all projects and is also the problem every project manager must be able to solve.
– Two generally accepted methods of scheduling projects—Gantt Charts and flow charts—are designed to follow either the Critical Path Method (CPM) or Performance Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT). Both Gantt and flow charts can tell you what has to be done, how long a particular activity will take, in what order each activity has to happen, and who is going to be responsible for it

Choosing the best scheduling method
– The best method is the one you are comfortable and familiar with. Don’t be lured into using something just because "everyone else does" or because "it’s cutting edge." Take a hard look at how you like to work and use the schedule method that best fits your habits.
– To assess what method might suit you best, look at the system you use for tracking your own work and see how satisfied you are with it. That may be the way to go with tracking the entire project. But remember a tracking system’s usefulness comes from its ability to inform all the team members of what is going on and keeping them aware that they are part of a larger effort

Using software for project planning
– Any project planning software you plan to use should:
– Handle development of and changes to Gantt Charts and flow charts, including PERT diagrams and calculations of critical paths.
– Provide on screen viewing of information before printing.
– Produce schedule and budgets.
– Integrate project schedules with a calendar allowing for weekends and holidays.
– Create different scenarios for contingency planning and updating.
– Check for over-scheduling of individuals and groups.

Developing the budget
– A budget is not only a list of all the costs to execute the project, but also a look at whether the project’s benefits justify its costs.
– The first question to ask when developing a budget is: "What is it going to take to actually do the project?" To determine the costs of the project, break it down into the following categories:
Personnel. This is almost always the largest part of your budget and includes current and temporary workers.
Travel. Is everyone on site or will they have to be brought together at one locale?
Training. Does everyone know how to use all the equipment? Will training take place on site or will there be travel expenses involved?
Supplies. In addition to the usual computers, pens, papers, software, is there any particular or unusual equipment that will be needed?
Space. Do people have to be relocated from their current spaces? How much room will be required and at what cost?
Research. Will you have to buy studies on this subject?
Quality. It’s is in the eye of the stakeholder.

3- Implementation

Monitoring and controlling changes
Reporting Progress

Monitoring and controlling changes
– You will need to have a system for monitoring the project and controlling it as much as possible. Any project control system should do the following:
Focus on what is important. You will need to continually ask: what is important to the organization? What are we attempting to do? Which parts of the project are the most important to track and control? What are the essential points at which controls need to be placed?
Enable corrective action. Your control system should emphasize response. If control data doesn’t trigger a response, then your system is useless. Your system must use the information to initiate a corrective action; otherwise, all you are doing is monitoring and not exercising control. Be very careful, however, that control doesn’t lapse into the micromanagement of over-responding.
Emphasize timely responses. You need to receive information in a reasonably fast manner for your responses to do any good at all. The best case scenario is to get information on a real-time basis. In most cases, though, weekly updates will do fine.

Reporting progress
– Communicating the project’s progress to the stakeholders is a critical part of the project manager’s job. The best way to do this is to make an agreement at the project’s outset on how frequently updates are needed. As the project progresses, consult with stakeholders to see if either fewer or more progress reports are called for.
– Be aware of the tendency to downplay or hide problems as they come up. If you do this and the problems have a significant impact on the project (in the stakeholders’ eyes), your problem will be twice as large than it owuld be if you had alerted stakeholders to the difficulty in the first place.

4- Phase out
Evaluating the performance
– The final stage in the life cycle of a project is the phase-out, in which your and your team complete your work and evaluate the overall project. It’s helpful for the team to debrief at this point in order to gain the full benefit of "lessons learned."
– Evaluating performance
– In the best of all possible worlds, project evaluations would be conducted by an independent person who could objectively assess the information. Even when an independent auditor is not available, the evaluation must be done in a spirit of learning, rather than with an attitude of criticism and blame. If people think they’ll be punished for problems, they will try to hide those problems.
– An audit report must at a minimum contain the following:
Current project status.
Future status. What will happen to the project now that it has been completed?
Status of critical tasks. What is the current condition of on-going tasks that contain either a high level of technical risk or are being performed by outside vendors or subcontractors, over whom the project manager may have limited control?
Risk assessment. Identify any risks that could have a potential for financial loss, project failure, or other liabilities.
Information relevant to other projects. Indicate any lessons that can be applied to other projects either underway or being planned.
Limitations of the audit. List any factors that might limit the validity of the audit: assumptions that could be changed or information that is missing or suspect. Also note where anyone wasn’t forthcoming in providing information for the audit.