Effective Project Management in easy steps

John Carroll

• Publisher: In Easy Steps Limited
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781840785487
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Projektmanagement

Effective Project Management in easy steps will show you how to make sure your project is successful. It focuses on the key skills a manager needs to develop in order to make sure your project management approach is effective.It includes examples for most key documents such as the terms of reference, business case and project plan. It addresses team building and effective communications. It covers the typical project stages with helpful lists of applicable tasks and deliverables, which effectively provides a blueprint for planning an entire project.This up-to-date primer covers all key trends in project management including a chapter on Agile Project Management.If you're a first time project manager, let this book take you through the essential project stages in easy steps, and take note of the applicable tasks and deliverables. If you're an experienced project manager, this book provides a valuable source of inspiration for making projects even more effective. Covering risk-management together with insights on how to plan, lead, organize and control a project — simply a fountain of knowledge!

1

The Basics

This chapter defines what a project is, what we mean by effective project management, and what it requires to manage a project.

Introduction

What is a Project?

Project Management

Managing a Project

4 Steps to Success

Responsibility & Authority

Good Project Managers

Project Management Style

Summary

Introduction

Since the first edition of this book, a new approach to software development projects (Agile) has been gaining popularity and is even being used on other types of project. The main difference between this and the traditional approach to projects is that the requirements are allowed to develop and change during the project. Where agile methodology is being used, it will have an impact on project management and these instances have all been noted in this new edition.

Effective Project Management

Whatever type of project you are managing, effective project management is about completing the project on time, within budget, and with the needs of the business fully met. This book will show you how to deliver these desired results on each and every project. And it’s not rocket science, just common sense and some basic skills.

The four key skills a project manager needs to be effective are:

•Planning: a lack of adequate planning is the single most common cause of project failure

•Organizing: making sure everything happens when it needs to and not too soon or too late

•Leading: the people working on the project, together with all the other project stakeholders

•Controlling: in order to measure and report on progress, identify problems and other issues and deal with them

These are the four key skills every project manager needs to develop.

Follow the steps set out in this book to develop these four key skills and you will become an effective project manager.

What is a Project?

To start at the beginning, what do we mean by a project? Put simply, it is a series of tasks or activities that have to be carried out in order to bring about a change or achieve some other identified objective. The project could be a personal one, such as learning a foreign language, a construction project, like building a house, or it could be to implement some new business venture.

Key Characteristics

Whatever type of project it is, there are three key characteristics that can be associated with it:

It must have a goal (some sort of specific outcome), as there would be no point in carrying out a project if it did not achieve anything of benefit

It must be started or initiated, as projects do not happen spontaneously

It needs someone (the project manager) to run it and steer it through to the achievement of the goal

So a project is the implementation of a change, with a beginning, a middle and an end. It will also have a time frame, it will be unique (every project is different in some way), people are involved and it will usually have finite resources (people, time and money).

Every project is unique. Don’t assume it will work out exactly the same as the last one.

Project Life Cycle

The beginning, middle and end stages (or phases, as they are sometimes called) of a project all have their own characteristics. This book covers the complete project life cycle, starting with the correct way to begin a project (Chapter 2), through however many middle stages or phases there are (Chapter 10), to the final step of closing the project down and learning from it (Chapter 11). This whole approach is based on common sense and best practice developed over many years and countless successful projects.

Project Management

So what sort of skills does a project manager need and can anyone do it? In practice, project management requires many of the basic management skills that a line manager needs, but it also requires a different approach.

Project management requires common sense and a structured approach. This book will give you the structured approach.

Can Anyone Do It?

Project management does not require any magic gift, just some common sense coupled with a structured approach to things. Assuming that you, the reader, possess common sense (the purchase of this book would certainly suggest it!), this book will provide you with a structured approach to managing projects.

Line Management

Let’s start by considering what’s involved in traditional or line management. Typically, this would involve managing a department or a group of people, so first of all you need people to manage. Then you would need objectives for what you have to achieve with the group of people. Then you would need some sort of budget (expenditure for the people and other resources you will use and revenue or targets for the output of the group). Having these things in place, you can get on and manage the business process by allocating and scheduling people’s work, developing and motivating people, reviewing their performance and giving them feedback. It does not matter what the group is doing, the management process is the same. To differentiate this from project management, it is referred to as process managemen...