Introducing Project Management

Update December 2011

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Objectives

•Provide an overview of project management

•Explore project planning techniques

•Explore project management techniques

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What are the phases of project management?

•Initiating• Project charter

•Planning• Requirements• Schedule• Revised Risks and High Level Response to risks• Budget• Implementation Model

•Executing

•Closing

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Why is project management important to the team and customer?

A project plan is important to the team & customer because it helps us:

• Level-set expectations for project

• Complete deliverables accurately

• Helps meet deadlines

• Utilize resource efficiently

• Plan tasks accordingly & understand dependencies

• Communicate about the project

• Helps mitigate risk and develop contingency plans

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Why is project planning important you?

A project plan is important to you because it helps you:

• Manage your time

• Prioritize your tasks

• Manage competing priorities and “last minute” task requests

• Understand what’s being asked of you

• Understand & focus on the “big picture” of the project

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Kick Off Meeting

•Who should attend: – Client owner(s)– Your manager– Other key stakeholders in the project (who will be contributing or

involved in making decisions)

•Goals for the meeting:– Kick off the project– Discuss goals and purpose of the project– Gather initial stakeholder requirements

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Initiating

• Project Charter - the Project charter formally authorizes a project. It provides the high level description and characteristics, initial requirements and deliverables that satisfy the stakeholder’s needs and expectations, and the project approval requirements.

• Schedule Kick Off Meeting

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Planning - Requirements

Requirements

• Requirements are what stakeholders need from a project. Work should not be included in a project just because someone wants it. Instead, the requirements should relate to solving problems or achieving objectives. Requirements may include requests about how the work is managed or capabilities stakeholders would like to see in the product of the project.

• The high level project and product requirements should have been already defined in the project charter. These requirements should be specific. Missing requirements can be very expensive and time consuming or cause other problems later or even project failure.

• Most important: requirements should met project objectives and be prioritized.

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Planning - Schedule

Schedule

• Create a schedule with your team. It is really important that this is a collaborative effort with the team that will be doing the work as this makes the estimates more accurate and gets the team to buy in to the project and feel ownership.

• First, break down the deliverables into activities so they can be realistically and confidently estimated and completed quickly. Identify milestones (significant events within the project)

• Second, sequence the activities. Identify dependencies. Identify any leads and lags. A lead allows an acceleration of the successor activity. A lag directs a delay in the successor activity.

• Determine your critical path (the longest duration the project can take). This becomes your schedule baseline.

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Planning - Risks

Revised Risks and High Level Response to risks

• Review the risks from the project charter and add any new risks

• Perform qualitative risk analysis: the probability of each risk occurring (low, medium, and high) and the impact of each risk occurring (amount at stake or consequences positive and negative) (low, medium, and high)

• Perform quantitative risk analysis: determine which risk events warrant a response and determine overall project risks

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Planning – Risk Responses

• Responses: what are you going to do about each top risk?

• Strategies for threats are: – Avoid: eliminate the threat by eliminating the cause– Mitigate: reduce the probability or impact – Transfer: make another party responsible (insurance, warranties, or

outsourcing)– Accept: do nothing

• Strategies for opportunities are: – Exploit: add work or change the project to make sure the opportunity

occurs– Enhance: increase the likelihood– Share: allocate ownership to a third party– Accept: do nothing

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Planning - Budget

Budget

• A budget should not be completed without risk management activities and the inclusion of reserves.

• Contingency reserves are to address the cost impacts of the risks remaining during risk response planning. Some risks may require budget in order to respond to the risk.

• Management reserves are any extra funds to be set aside to cover unforeseen risks or changes to the project.

• The cost baseline contains the contingency reserves.

• The budget is the cost baseline plus the management reserves.

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Planning – Implementation Model

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Executing

Executing involves managing people, doing the work, and implementing approved changes.

• Remove obstacles and protect the project from changes

• Verify that quality and requirements are met

• Proactively anticipate risks and prevent them from happening

• Forecast budget and schedule- Compare your current status against your schedule and budget baselines.

• Measure project performance against known metrics

• Perform change management by reviewing all change requests, approving changes, and managing changes to the deliverables.

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Ensuring Accountability

As project lead, how do I make sure all team members do their part?

Tips:

• Meet regularly with team members to review the plan & progress.

• Clearly list owners on project plan & get all to agree on their tasks and timelines– Email project plan to team; in the email, list team member

names and their specific lists of tasks and due dates. – Request email confirmation from each team member that

they’ve read the plan and commit to the tasks and timelines.

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Ensuring Accountability (cont.)

More tips:

• Follow-up with people who are not providing statuses or are late on deliverables.– Do not wait for people to send stuff to you; if the deadline

has passed, continue follow-up until you receive an update. – If deadlines are pushed, consider the risks and make

people aware of the project impacts if the tasks continue to be delayed. • If it is a team member, inform them and their manager of the risks if deadlines keep getting pushed; develop alternate plan to get the task done.• If it is the client, inform them of the risks (possibly timeline or quality impacts) to the project if their task does not get done. Ask them to decide how they want to proceed.

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Closing

Closing involves finalizing all activities and getting formal acceptance of the project as a whole

• Formal acceptance - (ceremony)

• Re –state Life cycle – How long will this project or product get support by Intel or your team?

• Lessons learned and future opportunities – Are there plans for another phase, making the project/product global, etc?

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