Project management knowledge areas: master all them

Escrito por blogsrunrunitem 9 de setembro de 2014

Take your checklist. Time to find out if your company really know how to drive a big project. Besides you, your team may go crazy if it doesn’t master step by step what it takes to create a product or service from scratch. And it doesn’t help at all when the manager presses for a job well done if the most primary questions are not answered. Based on the “Project Management Body of Knowledge” published by the Project Management Institute, I summed up in this post the nine points a project management led by an effective team should touch:

Integration

Integrating the processes of everyday life is the role of the project manager to ensure that all parties work together from beginning to end. There are three main documents: the project charter that formally authorizes it; the scope plan, i.e., what’s expected to achieve; and the project management plan, which guides how to accomplish it and contains the necessary actions to define, prepare, integrate and coordinate all subsidiary plans.
By following the project management plan, you are able to guide the work to achieve the project requirements of the scope plan. To meet the performance objectives defined in the plan, check out this post with the necessary processes to plan, execute, and close a project.
Your final step in integrating is formally closing the project.

Scope

To manage the project scope, create a plan documenting how it will be defined, verified and controlled.
The ideal is writing a thorough and didactic statement of project scope, in which everyone can rely on to make future project decisions.
A tip: split big project tasks into smaller ones, to make it easier to manage the scope.

Time

With a schedule in hand, identify all the tasks that must be delivered to produce the several project milestones. Take into consideration that some tasks depend on the delivery of others, but not every one.
Now estimate the amount of resources required to perform each task type in the schedule. Estimate the number of work periods needed to complete them.

Costs

At this stage, gather in a spreadsheet or software all the costs or individual work packages to define a budget. And don’t forget to monitor the factors that create cost variances and changes in the budget.

Quality

Here it’s necessary to pinpoint the relevant quality standards for the project and understand how to satisfy them. Ensure that the project employs all processes needed to meet the requirements, by finding ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance procedures. I recommend that you read this section of our blog.

Human resource

Recognize and document the roles, responsibilities and hierarchy in the relationships, such as permission to receive and delegate tasks.
Hire or mobilize the team responsible for the project and make easier to them to improve their skills, by offering training or promoting interaction and dialogue with the more experienced employees.
A quick tip: the easiest way (not the only) to contribute to a better performance of your team still is feedback, individual and group.

Communications

Failed communication (excessive e-mails and meetings and difficulty of members to share knowledge) leads to failure of productivity and job satisfaction. So, it’s essential to provide a good repository of information and facilities to make communication quicker.
With reports of time and money spent or team effort, you can collect and disclose, individually, the numbers of each employee performance. If I may suggest an innovation, adopt a system of rewards and you’ll see the satisfaction multiplied.
Your role as a manager involves meeting the needs of the project stakeholders. Then, if you can’t be present, designate a support team within easy reach.

Risks

To facilitate opportunities and wane threats, build a team planning to know what risks might affect the project and how to approach them. Have ready answers and let all documented.
In a qualitative analysis of risks, you assess their probability of occurring and their impact. In the case of a quantitative analysis, translate into numbers the effect of the identified risks on overall project objectives.

Procurement

In the last step, list what must be purchased or acquired, how and when.
You should also plan for hiring and searching for possible suppliers, by quoting the offerings.
Negotiate all acquisitions by email or another document. Thus, there will be a basis for future relations, from changes in the contract to its closure.

Quite stuff, isn’t it? But if the project has quality, the control passes the scrutiny of an expert. And that, no doubt, requires hard work. So, to make the manager’s and team’s life easier and more productive, Runrun.it was created. We are the online project management based on the prioritization of tasks, which offers automated management reports. Learn more about and try it on for free: http://runrun.it

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