totallyRED

Have you ever left your car in the work carpark, thinking its safe especially with 24hours security? Well, some of us learn the hard way. This morning it was discovered that large stones had been thrown over the security fence in my work carpark from the adjacent woodland, which has damaged my pride and joy. The damage caused is a smashed sun roof and quarter light and numerous hits to the bodywork.So what help is the company I work for providing? Well, that’s where it gets interesting. I spoke to the Legal and Insurance teams. There is no insurance policy that covers the damage done to my car (parked on company property) whilst away on business at a different site. However, an ex-gratia payment can be made at the manager’s discretion. Interesting…

Problem 2, which manager? With the modern way organisations are set up I have an assignment manager and a career manager, the cost center is central and so who makes the decision? No one knows. My assignment manager is now getting HR and Resource Manager involved, I have a funny feeling that Project Management Practice Manager will also get involved. I know that my assignment manager would do anything to help but the rest, only God knows.

Watch this space, I’ll give you an update when possible. I’m not going to sit quietly as I believe the company should help as it was for work and not pleasure that I had to leave my car behind. 24hour security, what security? the main infa-red camera does not work, is there a third party liability/negligence case to answer?

Feel free to comment…

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Project manager is responsible for making a project happen on time, within budget, with required scope, and quality. I see project management is 5 steps, Initiation, Planning, Executing, Controlling and Closure. The middle 3 steps are required for every phase of the project this could be Planning development, Executing development, Controlling development in any type of project from IT to construction.

If you follow the ’science’ of Project Management i.e. what you’re told you should do then it would really be very tedious and delivery on time to budget questionable. However, mastering the art of project management i.e. what you actually need to do can make life much simpler and ensure that you are really managing a project rather than paper pushing.

The following are simple tasks that are required for manage a project using the art of Project management.

• Initiation - Initiation Document
• Planning - Project Plan, Risk Management, Issue List, Change Request Management
• Executing – Let the experts get on with the job in hand i.e. let the developers do the development
• Controlling - Stakeholder Reviews, Progress UpdatesClosure - Close-out Meeting, Service Level Agreements, Training Plans

Hopefully, this will be covered in more detail in the future.

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Apart from project scope or schedule, all projects irrelevant of type or size need funds to complete the work. Every project has costs associated with them, which could be anything from labor to raw materials and someone, somewhere has to pay for that. What happens if you don’t have the correct amount of funds to complete the project scope? Your project is doomed

How do we know what a project will cost? We really don’t, until the project is complete. I sound more like a billing company than a project manager, we will tell you the cost after you have used the service but the truth is we can’t know the final project cost until the project is complete because we can’t accurately predict the future. An old Muslim proverb describes this perfectly

Tie your camel (first), and then put your trust in Allah

What we can do is create an estimate. An estimate is more than pulling a random number out of the air, adding 20% for good measure (contingency), and then saying, “that’s the budget.” A real estimate changes, as the requirements become clearer. Project estimates start out broad, and as the project deliverables come into focus we’re able to more accurately define the estimates.

Each estimate should provide an acceptable range of variance, the conditions of the estimates, and any assumptions made by the estimator.

There are three major estimate types that project managers should rely on

• The ballpark estimate is also known as the rough order of magnitude (ROM). Range/confidence factor –20% to +75%
• The budget estimate (or top-down estimate) is a bit more accurate. Range –20% to +20%
• The definitive estimate (or bottom-up estimate) is the most accurate of the estimate types, but takes the most time to create. Range –10% to +10%

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Some reasons why Projects go wrong include:

• scope/objectives are unclear;
• lack of buy-in from key players - or no clear understanding of what the Project is trying to achieve; 
• Inappropriate optimism when drawing up plans. Beware, it is human nature to be over-optimistic; 
• Under-resourcing the Project; 
• Too much reliance on one individual

These are only a few reasons, the list could go on and on and on…

Just remember; ensure everything agreed is documented. Any changes in requirements/scope comes via a change request and do not get over-optimistic especially if you are the Project Manager as if it all goes wrong, you will be the one feeling the strain.

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Generic Approach
- Experience is essential in other environments such as for a technical project manager to have an appreciation and capabilities of the technology.
- Getting the break.

Consider if you really want to become a Project Manaeger.
- Technical people do not have to move to Project Management to progress their career. There are other career paths that people can take. Research and ensure that this is the right move for you…

Key Skills for a Project Manager:
90% of Project Management is Communication. This can be reports, status and getting the information from technical teams and essentially reporting to the project board. Also, being a Motivator is essential to get the best out of your team. And finally, be Thick Skin’d as you will have to deal with people from all backgrounds and all environments. You will get the praise for success, but also the blame for failure (and yes customer failures too)

I love deadlines, I especially like the SWOOSHING sound they make as they fly past

(more…)

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Over the last month or so, I have gone through a lot of change introducing a new process of supply and demand. The workload has just been unbearable at times. To date I personally have completed 25 proposals of which I have received 11 work orders already and I expect to get the rest in the next few weeks.

Having raised the issue a few times, it felt as though no action was been taken. However, yesterday I had a meeting with my career manager to discuss the issue. It was highlighted at the meeting that I was not managing projects I just had too much to do and it felt that I was problem managing and churning out project proposals. In total I had 9 development deliverables, 2 business development approvals, 4 new proposals, the list goes on… in my portfolio

As they say

We make a living by what we get and if you don’t ask, you don’t get

What a result, I knew my programme manager was looking at the matter as he could see a colleague and I were way too stretched. Having spoken to my career manager, within 45 minutes I received conformation from the programme manager that I shall be getting another fulltime Project Manager and fulltime Project Support from the project support office.

Work life balance is essential. If your too busy talk to someone with authority, if you’re not busy do say.

Work is a two-way relationship, employers need employees, and employees need to build a positive working relationship with employers. If you do not have enough to do, ask for more and vise-versa.

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.

Alexander Graham Bell

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I have now been a Project Manager for 14 months and a PRINCE 2 Practitioner for 11 months. Over this period I have been asked numerous times what is Project Management? What is PRINCE 2 and what are its core principles? And last but not lest what do I actually do?

Hopefully, over the next few months I shall try and cover the core principles of PRINCE 2. In the mean time here are my answers to some of the questions.

What is Project Management?

In a diplomatically correct view

Project Management is the function of planning, controlling and evaluating a specific piece of change so that it is completed on time, within budget and to the agreed outcome.

In simpleton terms

The progression of projects from start to finish ensuring it moves forward in a timely manor, ensuring it is completed on time, to budget and to the required standard.

What is PRINCE 2?

Prince2 or PRojects IN Controlled Environments is a project management methodology. It covers the management, control and organisation of a project.

Tie your camel (first), and then put your trust in Allah

– An old Muslim proverb

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Have you ever wondered why the government is always over budget for projects? In business people have their necks on the line for project failure, however, in government you get promoted.

It’s hilarious the government paid a private company £400K to design the 2012 London Olympics logo. My kid brother who’s 12 years old could have done a better job, which would have been all singing and dancing Flash animated. Next time the government wants a logo designed, if it is to be at this standard, give the contract to my brother’s school who could do with the money. Oh, I shouldn’t have said that, there goes the income tax saving next year.

In the world of real business the marketing and brand managers would have been shot at dawn for such a ridiculous design, whom ever the target audience. Who’s been shot here? Many companies have initiatives targeting younger audiences. For example News Round by the BBC or the Urban Cricket brand at England npower Test Match Cricket.

Can you blame the marketing company? They probably recognised that there would be uproar and this will probably lead to another £400K for a redesign. As it’s a government project - Quid’s in. Another government project over budget. As taxpayers we are the real fools.

The government should be ran as a FTSE 100 company; the ministers should be ruthless shareholders and the project board responsible for their actions. As a taxpayer I want my money spent shrewdly and not wasted on failing projects.

Keep Britain tidy

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A report was published recently which found IT departments were not accountable enough and that many European IT workers are not being held responsible for delivering projects late.

It found that 51% of European IT professionals said there would be no risk to their job, compared 33% in Asia and 22% in the Americas.

The study was conducted by HP and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) which spoke to 1,125 professionals worldwide.

Read the full BBC article

The three most common causes for delay were outsourcing, changing priorities half way through a project and poor co-ordination between managers.

Personally they forgot to mention that IT professionals would prefer clarified requirements from the business and to leave the solution framework to the experts. My projects are usually delayed during the user acceptance testing phase when the business realise that what they asked for is not what they want.

A lead Business Systems Analyst also commented

the Lack of Requirements and Lack of clarity is a major issue too..

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Its that time of the month where highlight reports need to be completed. Tomorrow (the last Thursday of every month) I have a small (less than £100K) Project Board Meeting. When you have a large project and 9 small projects without any PSO support its a challenge to say the least.

It was funny today, we sent back a proposal with a decision for the business to make in prioritising 3 projects against this particular proposal. Rather than making the decision they started to blame IS for being late by a day on sending back the proposal.

The fact of the matter is this concept has been in circulation around the business since last November. IS got 5 days to do a project estimate (which is not an estimate as that will be the project budget) and they expect it delivered by July as its regulatory.

Isn’t it fair to ask for the business priorities when you already have resources working on other ‘business critical’ projects? It seems No, for the deficiency in the way the business operates it is always easier to blame others (especially if they are now third party). Where’s the NO BLAME culture? When will my customers learn? You have humans in IS not robots and ensuring you know what you want and when you want it in advance will ensure success.

However, it’s not all the businesses fault, IS have to take some blame. Stop bending over backwards and learn to say ‘NO’ this will ensure the business learn a valuable lesson in planning and prioritising.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

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