totallyRED

If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves - Thomas Edison

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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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