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My Project Is Not Failing

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013

Maybe we are all reluctant to accept that our project might be failing but with high project failure rates in many industry sectors we should make sure we are able to spot the main warning signs. And then act on them rather bury our heads in the sand and hope it will “be alright on the night”. That approach will never lead to a successful project or a successful career in project management.

Just because things might not be going to plan doesn’t mean a project is doomed – managing problems and risks is all part and parcel of a project manager’s role and a risk management plan should be in place that will help to mitigate the very risks that might be causing problems. If a risk plan has not been prepared, don’t worry it is rarely too late to review the real and potential risks that might be threatening your project and to deal with them effectively. Problems that materialise in a project, whether expected or not, are inevitable in many industries and with a controlled approach they can usually be mitigated.

The very fact that problems so often arise in IT projects, for instance, is what led, at the beginning of this century, to the creation of the Agile Manifesto, with its values and principles designed to help project managers work constructively to solve problems rather than either being defeated by them or trying to ignore them. An agile approach recognises that many projects are simply unsuited to the traditional “waterfall” approach and offers an alternative where deliveries are made in small stages allowing for user feedback to be incorporated into the next stage. Increasingly both waterfall and agile methods are recognised as appropriate for different types of projects and in some cases they are being combined on a single project.  All projects have their ups and downs so it is important to remain optimistic in the low periods and remember that things will change.

It is reassuring that the formalisation of project management methodologies over the past 20 years has led to a significant improvement in project success rates. Increased used of the internet has also helped by making status reports quickly and easily available so that problems don’t drag on undetected for too long.

 So what are the warning signs of a project that could be destined for failure? If your know how to spot these and act on them you already have the means to turn a potential disaster into a success. Warning signs of pending trouble are usually relatively easy to spot – here are some typical ones:

 1.      Lack of Buy-In

When those working on a project have been pressured into becoming involved they will never be fully committed to its success and will not give 100% of their time or energy to the project.

2.      Poor Communication

Communication takes many forms; there are the informal team discussions, regular meetings, emails, phone calls and various written reports and other documentation. If any of these areas are lacking then there is likely to be a problem looming.

3.      No Visible Progress

If it is not possible to see what has been achieved to date then it is difficult to convince stakeholders and the team that success is possible. A lack of visible progress (or “velocity” in Agile project management) is de-moralising for everyone involved.

4.      Long Hours

If the project team are having to put in long hours just to stay on top of the scheduled activities then this is a classic indicator that all is not well. Either the original estimates were badly wrong or the scale and scope of the work was not clear.

5.      Milestones Missed

Milestones should deliver manageable chunks of work to the customer on a frequent basis. If this is not being done, or the deliverables cannot be tested by the customer, there is no opportunity to get feedback for the next phase to know the project is on the right track.

6.      Changing Scope

Every project’s nightmare is scope creep – adding to the requirements during the project – it is usually an indication that requirements were not fully documented or the customer did not understand the aim of the project. But often a more serious warning sign is when features are being removed from scope and the end-product is being scaled back.

Remember that warning signs such as these give you the opportunity to rescue a project from failure so should not be ignored but treated as part of the project management process. By looking out for warning signs and using your experience and personal skills (supplemented with the right project management courses) a project manager can avoid project failure.

Author: Michelle Symonds

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Free directory of online courses

Thursday, March 7th, 2013

The project — http://www.onlinecourses.com/ — is a free and comprehensive resource that is a collection of open college course that spans videos, audio lectures, and notes given by professors at Harvard, Princeton and MIT. We offer highly relevant courses such as iPhone Application Development from Stanford and Cyber Humor from Oxford. This is something I believe would be a wonderful resource for those looking to explore additional educational topics and to see what college level course has to offer.

I hope that you will find this to be a powerful resource for anyone pursuing to further their education. Please take a look and let me know what you think.

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5 Key Components of a Project That You Need to Get Right

Monday, January 30th, 2012

There are many factors that contribute to the final outcome of a project, whether it is large or small, simple or complex. But just a few of these factors will determine the ultimate success of your project.

Projects come in all shapes and sizes such as straightforward improvements to products or operations procedures through to new product research or major software development. But the key components that contribute to the success of a project are the same no matter how simple or complex the project is and whether it is being run in a small organisation without any formal project framework or in a large organisation as part of a well-established framework in an ongoing programme of projects and with the support of a project office.

The most important factors that will contribute to a project being completed successfully can be broadly broken down into the following 5 areas:

Strategic Planning

Understanding your marketplace, the wider industry and your competition is necessary so that the specific business objectives of the project can be well-defined and, more importantly, meet a genuine need, or anticipated need, within the market to which the end-product will be targeted. For simpler projects in small organisations the “marketplace” may, in fact, be a small internal team or department but the concept of understanding them and their objectives is still the same and still just as important.

Developing the Product

Any new product, process or service needs to be developed or established solely to meet the defined business goals, which need to be articulated and documented at the very beginning of the project. Where a project involves a new process, it is important to prevent it becoming an opportunity to add or change related processes where they do not add real business benefit and do not affect the final outcome or contribute to the overall business aims.

Marketing

Focused marketing aimed at the right target audience is as vital for the simplest internal projects designed to change an existing operations process as it is to a new product with a global market. Of course, the realities of such marketing are quite different – internal projects are unlikely to have big-budget advertising campaigns for example – but it is still important to “sell” the product/process to those who will be buying or using it. In many internal projects involving major change to the status-quo the greatest challenge is to convince the end-users that they will be better off with the new process in the face of typical human reluctance to change.

Support

For the wide variety of projects that take place in organisations year-round, the provision of a support mechanism both before and after implementation is another key component to the success of the project. Support might come in the form of IT support (providing the right hardware and software), Human Resources for recruiting and retaining the appropriate staff, facilities for providing the necessary offices or other building space and any number of other support services relevant to the project.

People

There are different categories of people involved in projects and they all have different and specific roles to play but they are all stakeholders with a vested interest in the project being a success:

  • Sponsor:- The sponsor(s) of a project is often a member of the senior management team of an organisation but can also be someone from outside the organisation if a strategic alliance has been set up. Their role is to define the business objectives that are the driving force behind the initiation of a project, to ensure that adequate resources are made available to complete the project and to influence the completion date of the project by defining priorities. They will tend to have a good overview of the project but not become involved in any of the detailed aspects.
  • Project Manager:- A professional project manager has the responsibility of creating a detailed project plan that meets the budget, schedule and scope determined by the sponsors. They advise, teach and motivate team members; resolve conflicts and issues with deliverables and deadlines and have a good understanding of all tasks required to complete the project. They also aim to manage and control risks and changes.
  • Team Member:- These can range from a subject-matter expert through to a recently hired novice but all team members will have a contribution to make towards the end-product. Each will be responsible for completing individual tasks to a deadline, including resolving issues that arise related to their tasks. More experienced members of the team should help the less-experienced members by answering questions and giving advice to maximise the ability of the whole team to deliver projects successfully.

So if you can get these 5 components right you will be able to do the following on your project:

  1. Clearly define the aims of the project
  2. Stay focussed only on those aims
  3. Successfully “sell” the project to the end-users
  4. Provide support for the whole project team as required
  5. Select a committed team that will work co-operatively

This will go a long way to ensuring that the final outcome of a project is a successful one. Of course, underlying all of these components and driving the project to success will be professionals who have gained on-the-job experience as well as completing project management training in a recognised methodology such as PMP or APMP.

 

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Training for Project Managers and Why it is Important

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

All professionals who wish to be successful, in whatever field, needs to continually aim to improve their skills. As project management is becoming recognised more and more as a profession, project managers need to ensure they have the appropriate training to develop their careers and that they keep their skills relevant and up-to-date. Continuous professional development (CPD) has always been a recognised part of the career path of those in the well-established professions such as accountancy and law and is now being incorporated into training courses for project managers.

Project managers are required to fulfil an increasingly expanding and important role as projects become more and more complex with new technologies being developed ever quicker. They are having to find new ways of coping with increasing expectations from both clients and employers.

The right type of professional training course can equip a project manager with the skills to deal with these complexities and to plan and manage their projects efficiently, deal with risks and change effectively, and to deal with people at all levels involved in a project.

The benefits of professional qualifications and credentials to the individual can be a higher salary, better career prospects and improved job satisfaction so project managers themselves should need little encouragement to attend a training course. But employers also recognise the benefits of having a well-trained and motivated employee who can deliver complex projects successfully so most major organisations offer access to a training program.

For those project managers who are self-employed or employed by small companies without a training budget (or, worse, a company without the desire to train its employees) there are plenty of good courses aimed at individuals to help them gain recognised qualifications or credentials independently.

One of the unsung benefits of a training course (or at least, traditional classroom-based learning) is learning about the successes and failures of both the trainers and the other delegates. It is highly likely that there will be someone on your course who will have experienced, or is experiencing, the same issues as you. Being able to discuss these issues with others, in the company of a professional trainer, can be a good learning experience in itself.

So why is professional training worthwhile?

Planning and Managing

 Whatever approach you might take to planning and managing a project will be determined by the type of methodology you have learnt (PMP, PRINCE2, APMP etc.). But what is certain in all projects is that a schedule will need to be planned and managed. Depending on the industry, your approach to the schedule may be that it is flexible, adaptable and likely to change frequently before the project is completed. This particularly true in software development projects. Nevertheless, every project will start with some sort of schedule, and knowledge of the key areas of good project management will enable the well-trained project manager to develop a schedule that takes into account all necessary tasks, their interdependencies, estimations, milestones and resource tracking, whilst also being capable of flexibility, where necessary.

 Dealing with Risks and Change

 Methods can be learnt to better anticipate risks or deal with those risks that could not be predicted. A training course will also promote the importance of a good change management process, how to establish one and how to ensure it is followed so that the management of change requests does not become a full-time job and change requests do not obscure the original purpose of the project.

 Dealing with People

With the help of training, a project manager can learn team-building skills, including how to develop a motivated, committed team that will work co-operatively. And how to communicate effectively with everyone involved in the project, including the stakeholders. It will give him, or her, the confidence to stick with the plan when the plan is right, change the plan when it is wrong and be prepared to make unpopular decisions when necessary.

Finally, training will ensure every project has established and documented the criteria for success, which can be used to confirm that a project has been successfully delivered.

These are just some of the reasons why project management training is important, whatever methodology your organisation is committed to: PMP, PRINCE2 or APMP. It will help every project manager to develop fully, to be recognised as a professional and to deliver complex projects successfully.

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Professional Project Management and Why it is Important

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Project management has existed since buildings were first erected or ships first built but it wasn’t known by that name in mankind’s early history. It was with the development of Gantt charts in the second decade of the 20th century that the role of managing a set of inter-related tasks to deliver an end-product to a defined schedule started to emerge as the discipline we now refer to as project management.

The Gantt chart was developed by the engineer and consultant Henry Gantt (1861-1919) to visually show the scheduled and actual progress of a project, and was an innovative concept at the time. It was used on projects during the First World War and on the project to construct the Hoover Dam in the 1930s.

Today project management is an essential element of all organisations in a variety of industries: engineering, construction, defence, almost any industry you can think of will require projects to be managed at some time. There are a number of internationally recognised methodologies that can be followed to manage a project (such as PMP, PRINCE2 or APMP) each with a different approach and different terminology. But underlying these different methods is the common theme for all projects of the triple constraints of cost, time and scope, and the basics of professional project management.

So just what are the basics?

Initiation Phase: When the scope, objectives and end-product are defined, and the project is formally approved.

Planning Phase: When a set of plans is created to define the tasks necessary to complete the project, and to enable effective management of the schedule, budget, risks and change.

Execution Phase: When the tangible project deliverables are created. Other activities such as a change management process and quality analysis are also implemented during this phase.

Closing Phase: When the end-product is delivered to the client, documentation is handed over and resources are released.

And why is project management so important?

Professionally managed projects reliably and consistently ensure that projects are run efficiently and that they successfully deliver what the client expects in an acceptable timeframe and at an acceptable cost. They ensure effective communication so that the client and all stakeholders are well-informed about progress, changes and risks; that everyone involved in the project is aware of their responsibilities and that different departments work together co-operatively.
By managing risks the impact of predicted or unexpected risks occurring can be minimised by ensuring the schedule and resources are affected as little as possible. And implementing a sound change management process will ensure that the client objectives are reached.

A properly controlled project will also lead to a high-quality end-product, whether that is a feat of engineering such as a major dam or a feat of technology such as the latest microchip or the implementation of new software to improve the efficiency of core business processes.

So whatever methodology you choose to follow, a knowledge-based one such as PMP or APMP, or a process-based one such as PRINCE2, professional project managementis an essential part of the future success of every organisation from the corporate giants right down to the smallest start-up.

Project management has existed since buildings were first erected or ships first built but it wasn’t known by that name in mankind’s early history. It was with the development of Gantt charts in the second decade of the 20th century that the role of managing a set of inter-related tasks to deliver an end-product to a defined schedule started to emerge as the discipline we now refer to as project management.

The Gantt chart was developed by the engineer and consultant Henry Gantt (1861-1919) to visually show the scheduled and actual progress of a project, and was an innovative concept at the time. It was used on projects during the First World War and on the project to construct the Hoover Dam in the 1930s.

Today project management is an essential element of all organisations in a variety of industries: engineering, construction, defence, almost any industry you can think of will require projects to be managed at some time. There are a number of internationally recognised methodologies that can be followed to manage a project (such as PMP, PRINCE2 or APMP) each with a different approach and different terminology. But underlying these different methods is the common theme for all projects of the triple constraints of cost, time and scope, and the basics of professional project management.

So just what are the basics?

Initiation Phase: When the scope, objectives and end-product are defined, and the project is formally approved.

Planning Phase: When a set of plans is created to define the tasks necessary to complete the project, and to enable effective management of the schedule, budget, risks and change.

Execution Phase: When the tangible project deliverables are created. Other activities such as a change management process and quality analysis are also implemented during this phase.

Closing Phase: When the end-product is delivered to the client, documentation is handed over and resources are released.

And why is project management so important?

Professionally managed projects reliably and consistently ensure that projects are run efficiently and that they successfully deliver what the client expects in an acceptable timeframe and at an acceptable cost. They ensure effective communication so that the client and all stakeholders are well-informed about progress, changes and risks; that everyone involved in the project is aware of their responsibilities and that different departments work together co-operatively.

By managing risks the impact of predicted or unexpected risks occurring can be minimised by ensuring the schedule and resources are affected as little as possible. And implementing a sound change management process will ensure that the client objectives are reached.

A properly controlled project will also lead to a high-quality end-product, whether that is a feat of engineering such as a major dam or a feat of technology such as the latest microchip or the implementation of new software to improve the efficiency of core business processes.

So whatever methodology you choose to follow, a knowledge-based one such as PMP or APMP, or a process-based one such as PRINCE2, professional project management is an essential part of the future success of every organisation from the corporate giants right down to the smallest start-up.

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Free Microsoft Access Course

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Came across an online Microsoft Access course which is being run in October.  It is a free university standard introductory database course available from Stanford University.

Stanford Computer Science courses are joining Stanford University’s “bold experiment in distributed education” by presenting  Professor Jennifer Widom’s Introduction to Databases. http://db-class.com/

The Microsoft Access course runs from October 10 through December 12, 2011. During the course, the instructor will be available online.

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For and against using Microsoft Access

Saturday, September 3rd, 2011

We are often asked if Access is the best solution and the answer has to be “it depends”.  Access has a bad name in some areas but that is often due to amaturish attempts to build a database.  At a superficial level Access is easy to use, but so is a gun.  The value of Access databases is best realised by having them professionally developed. A professional Microsoft Access development company will ensure you have a robust solution to meet your needs.  More importantly, they will tell you when Access is not the right solution.

There is a good sucinct article on the pros and cons of using Access at this web address.

 

 

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Replacement for Powerdesk

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

I have been a devout user of Powerdesk.  For those who don’t know the software it is a replacement for Windows Explorer.  It has much more functionality.  One of my favourites is the ability to split the screen.  You can see one directory in one pane and another in a second pane.  You can drop and drag files between panes for example.  You can also visually compare files in different folders.  Unfortunately Powerdesk seems to have reached the end of it’s useful life.  I have had nothing but problems in Windows 7 and from various blogs, I am not the only one.  After upgrading from version 6 to 7 to 8, it is time to look elsewhere.

While looking through a few comments, I came across a recommendation for another piece of software called Xplorer2 Lite.  It does most of what Powerdesk does and some things it doesn’t.  Thought I would download and try it.  So far, very impressed and the bonus is it is free.  There is a paid version that I will certainly be buying for only $29:95.  It has some clever features such as having a panel you can dump various files and folders then do something with them.  I could imagine collecting a number of music files to put into a single folder, or documents from various folders to copy to a single folder.  Another nice feature I found was a big collection of videos that show you how to use particular features.

Before anyone asks, I have no financial incentive to promote this product.  I just think it is a great tool, and would like to offer my support.  You can find out more at http://zabkat.com/index.htm

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Outlook 2007 slow to change folders

Friday, December 24th, 2010

I have been chasing a problem with Outlook 2007 for a few days. Changing folders took about 5 to 10 seconds. Came across this post on another site which solves the problem. I am copying it here as it may help someone else.

MVP Susan Bradley has posted the following. See if it helps your issues:
A number of users are reporting performance issues with Outlook 2007
after installing update 2412171. Possible symptoms include:
* Slow performance when changing folders, especially folders that
are in different message stores.
* Loss of Archive functionality
* Errors receiving mail on accounts that use Secure Password
Authentication (SPA)

*How Do I Fix it?*

At this time the only fix for it is to uninstall update 2412171, which
you can do in one of two ways:

1. Control Panel> Add/Remove Programs (Programs and Features in Windows 7). In Windows 7 click “View
Installed Updates”, find KB2412171 and uninstall it. In earlier
versions just make sure the “Show Updates” checkbox is checked and find
the update on the list. This is the best way to do it, as a general rule.

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Point of Sale system in Microsoft Access

Friday, December 17th, 2010

We have done some strange Access development but this must be one of the most unusual. We helped a sandwich shop in Tokyo develop a Point of Sale system in Access. Just to prove it really happened, they sent us the before and after pictures.
This is what happened in the past. All the orders were handled manually.

POS system in Microsoft Access

This is the screen displaying each order, the quantity of sandwiches ordered and made for the day and delivery schedule.

POS System in Microsoft Access

The POS system also calculates total cost, generates invoices and lots more.  If you are ever in Tokyo to “The Earl” sandwich shop and see Microsoft Access POS system in action.

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