All too often, and especially in the advent of stimulus funding, we’re increasingly seeing technologists and engineers rushing to implement technology solutions without adequately addressing needs of their key stakeholder. This imposes significant risks on multi-vendor and multi-technology network projects. The science and art of Project Management may serve to significantly reduce risk and mobilize stakeholders around a common set of organizational objectives that enable strategic goals.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) provides an increasingly adopted framework for managing risks and resources on projects through the use of processes, skills, tools, and techniques. Small and large telecom organizations can benefit from using these frameworks as guidelines for their own practices for managing projects.

Project Management Distilled
The PMI’s project management body of knowledge (PMBOK) guide defines a project as “a temporary endeavour to create a unique product or service with a definitive beginning and an end”. Furthermore, the PMI states that temporary does not necessarily mean short in duration.

Every project is meant to create a unique product or service. The PMI distinguishes the unique characterization of a project and its corresponding project tasks from regular, ongoing repetitive work which are part of an organization’s functional processes. Project-related tasks, in contrast, have their own risks as well as value associated to them which are unique to a particular project.

Process Groups
The PMBOK classifies 42 logically grouped Project Processes under the following 5 Process Groups:
1. Initiating      2. Planning      3. Executing      4. Monitoring and Control      5. Closing

Project Phases
A project may be organized into Project Phases. Phases of a project are not to be confused with the process groups mentioned above. For example, Figure 1 shows that phases of a project may incorporate one or more of the process groups. Monitoring and Control process are applicable throughout the life cycle of the project.

Figure 1.

Project Life Cycle
Most projects follow a typical Project Life Cycle as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

The PMI guidelines deals with an exhaustive review of the project life cycle processes within the process groups. Each process within the process group has corresponding inputs and outputs, examples of which are illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Which Hats to Wear?
In these times of strained budgets and the lean enterprise it is also important to deal with the role of the project manager and the project team. All too often we hear of project managers who are not provided explicit authority to make decisions, or a project team that does not have clear reporting hierarchies.

Project organizations are typically classified as:

• Weak Matrix: where the PM’s authority is limited and project resources are mainly responsible for their day jobs and report to functional managers.

• Balanced Matrix: the PM enjoys moderate authority, and has a core team responsible for delivering project outcomes.

• Strong Matrix: is typically found within highly “projectized” organizations. The PM has significant authority and dedicated project resources.

It is essential for the project sponsor or the sponsoring organization to align the organization’s culture with the role of the PM enabled to lead the project.

We’ve witnessed PM roles that have blurred with the roles of Business Analysts, Solution Architects, and, yes, even roles requiring PMs to install hardware and software. While simple projects may get away with this, the expectation for project managers to wear a number of hats is a recipe for failure, in complex projects.

Projecting the Costs of Projects
Although monitoring the earned value of projects at any given point in time may require additional project management overhead, it can serve a very useful function to accurately measure current performance against plan, and to predict with some degree of accuracy the final schedule and costs of projects.

Figure 4.

Figure 4 illustrates using Earned Value Management (EVM) as a way to monitor the project. In this example, as of the status date, the project had planned to spend $250K. Using EVM calculations we infer that the project has spent $250K in actual costs but has achieved only $200K of value. EVM can serve as an early-warning system enabling a multi-faceted understanding of the project such as projection of future total cost of the project against a projected schedule.

The concept of using earned value methodologies in projects has many proponents as well as passionate opponents. Opponents of this concept are of the opinion that managing earned value in projects adds significant management overheard and provides little return on investment. Although the author agrees that the value of EVM for smaller projects is questionable, used in its simplest form, EVM can provide a powerful tool to effectively manage project expectations for larger projects.

12 Steps to Managing Projects from the Trenches
Many large telecommunications service providers, utilities, cities, and municipalities have project management offices (PMO) that serve the purpose of guiding and monitoring internal projects on well established methodologies. However, even in the absence of a PMO function, managing both simple as well as complex projects successfully requires the project organization to adopt some common-sense principles:

Step 1. Define the overall scope of the project, in writing, as best as possible. This may take the form of a Project Charter which can include or reference other documents such as business cases, statements of work, initial high level business requirements, etc.

Step 2. Get stakeholders to formally agree to the scope definition. Scope definition impacts the time and cost of delivering your projects. Scope, time, and cost are corners of the proverbial project management triangle. (See Figure 5.) Changes in any of these critical items will affect the Quality of your projects. The scope can be expanded and the delivery schedule can be compressed, however it will impact overall quality of the project.

Figure 5.

Step 3. Identify Stakeholders. Typical key project stakeholders include the project sponsor, users, functional business units, vendors, project manager, project team resources, customers, third party service providers, etc. We’ve all been in projects where the key users of the system were kept out of the project until the system was delivered for user acceptance!

Step 4. Communicate, communicate, communicate! Managing projects successfully involves managing stakeholder expectations on an ongoing basis throughout the life of the project. Know that stakeholders go through phases of satisfaction during the lifecycle of a project. Stakeholder expectations are typically high, with high levels of satisfaction during the initial stages of a project. Expectations and satisfaction can rapidly deteriorate during the execution phase of the project. Stakeholder satisfaction then returns to normal during the later stages of the project cycle, especially on the project nearing completion of key deliverables. Figure 6 illustrates this phenomenon.

Figure 6.

Step 5. Clearly define business requirements (at least at a high level) before starting out on the planning phase of the project. To paraphrase the Cheshire Cat: if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there!

Step 6. Project planning is iterative in nature. Plans can change based on project reality. Project planning and creating a project plan involves significant work. Planning includes creating work breakdown structures (WBS), activities, scheduling, resource planning and communications planning. A note on creating the WBS: keep it simple. Work breakdown structures should accurately reflect work packages that are aligned with tangible deliverables and milestones. There is not much value in creating an overly complex WBS that tracks every task minutiae.

Step 7. Establish tangible and realistic milestones for the project. Big-bang approaches are undesirable but sometimes unavoidable for strategic reasons. Try to ensure that each significant milestone or project phase can deliver tangible results and benefits to the organization.

Systems integration and end-to-end automation is the holy grail of many big-bang, complex technology projects. It can also be the Achilles' heel. There is no good reason why systems cannot be implemented as standalone systems in the initial phases of a project. Manual or partially automated vs. fully automated end-to-end solutions may be a good way to go initially in order to work out kinks in a new business process. Integration and automation can be delivered in well-orchestrated phases over a reasonable time period. Initial costs in taking this approach may be high. However significant cost savings can be realized over the longer term, in addition to reducing risk, and delivering immediate return on investment (ROI).

Step 8. Indentify and manage risks. Risk identification and management in projects can be overly complex for mission critical projects (e.g., the space shuttle program). However even projects that are not highly mission-critical can benefit from an understanding of the key risks. Create a table that identifies some key risks. Classify these risks as High, Medium, or Low. Develop a risk mitigation strategy for each identified risk. Use this as a guide as you progress through the project, identifying additional risks or lowering the priority of identified risks. The risk management plan is a valuable tool in communicating with key stakeholders at the beginning of the project life cycle versus constantly having to fight fires during the execution phase.

Be realistic with resource planning. Nine women cannot have a baby in one month. Throwing extra bodies at a problem many not solve the problem. At the same time, minimize the use of too few project resources performing multiple project activities. Ensure that project resource calendars are realistic and cater for national holidays, vacation days, and sick days.

Step 9. Manage the project Critical Path. The project Critical Path is a sequence of project activities which in total add up to the longest duration of the project. A project can have one or more critical paths. The critical path also determines the minimum amount of time required to complete the project. Critical path activities constitute project risk and therefore need to be monitored and managed extra carefully. Any delays in critical path activities will impact the overall project deadlines.

Step 10. Develop a quality management plan. Define how the outcome for which the project is undertaken will meet compliance and standards. As part of the quality management plan define user acceptance standards, audits, and test plans.

Make project reporting relevant. Ensure that key stakeholders and decision makers have enough data to make quick decisions. Maintain regular project meetings focused on communicating current statuses, highlighting any risks and resolving bottlenecks. Project management meetings should not end up being forums for technical, architecture or design discussions. Park these issues if they come up. Table separate meetings with relevant stake holders at the earliest opportunity to resolve these issues.

Step 11. Manage change effectively. Change management does not necessarily refer to project changes. Change management can also have significant impact on an organization's culture due to the introduction of new technologies. Develop an effective organization change management plan that addresses key internal as well as external stakeholders.

Step 12. Develop a project change management board. This board should have the overall responsibility and authority to address the impact of project changes to scope, time and costs. Changes that are managed on an ad-hoc basis can introduce scope creep and result in disastrous project consequences.

The purpose of this article is not to delve into rigorous review of project management processes and frameworks. This article encourages readers to give thought to how they may want to adopt and tailor formal project management process to mitigate risk and ensure success in their projects. For a more exhaustive review of Project Management, please visit the Project Management Institute (PMI) at www.pmi.org.

Endnotes: PMI is a global not-for-profit membership association for the project management profession, with more than half a million members and credential holders in 185 countries. Their worldwide advocacy for project management is supported by their globally-recognized standards and credentials, their extensive research program, and their professional development opportunities. These products and services are the basis of greater recognition and acceptance of project management’s successful role in governments, organizations, academia, and industries. For more information, visit www.pmi.org.

For more information, contact:
Project Management Institute
14 Campus Blvd
Newtown Square, PA  19073-3299 USA
Tel:  +1-610-356-4600
Fax:  +1-610-356-4647
Email: customercare@pmi.org
URL: www.pmi.org

About the Author
Sunil Diaz, P.Eng, PMP, Vice President, Global Business Development, Enghouse Systems Limited AMD, brings more than 20 years of experience in managing telecommunications transformation projects globally. For more information, visit www.enghouse.com.

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