Plan the plan

In most cases – before you start a project –  the level of planning has to be considered. Smaller projects will not need the same level of planning as significant projects.

Project management and execution can be divided into the following main topics:

• Integrated Project Management
• Stakeholders
• Project Planning
• Project Monitoring and Control
• Requirements Management
• Supplier Agreement Management
• Risk Management

So before taking off, I recommended giving the above issues some thought. Focus on needs and how you will need to to to conduct the project.

Integrated Project Management

The need for Integrated Project Management occurs because a project has its organisation. It is defined that way because it cannot execute its task efficiently and successfully within the existing organisation – but a project cannot live on an island. It is still a part of the whole business, and must interact with it. Projects seldom have a human resource department or bookkeeping section, so they must rely on these departments to recruit new staff and pay bills and payments. So before starting a new project, it becomes essential to clarify and document all these relations.

Stakeholders

Stakeholder analysis is an essential tool in this regard as it can provide answers on who should:

• be involved
• make decisions and give commitments
• be informed – and about what.

Project management in a larger organisation requires a solid insight into the organisation and how the project will affect it. Unfortunately, project managers sometimes overlook the importance of managing organisational change; consequently, the expected gains are never realised.

Stakeholder analysis is, in practice, a reasonably simple and powerful tool. It helps you create an overview, describe and group the many people interested in your project. And – most importantly – how you handle your stakeholders. There are the days when your project kicks off as a well-oiled racing bike. And there are days when everything messes up.

No matter what kind of project you manage, there will be stakeholders. They stand in line to receive the roses when things are going well, regardless of their efforts. But if the wind blows the wrong way, there will quickly be longer between those ready to take the garbage. – like JFK said:  “Success Has Many Fathers, Failure is an Orphan.”

And when the project runs into trouble -and believe me, all projects do –  it’s is extremely practical to have a stakeholder analysis with lots of input ready on how you handle your key stakeholders.

The stakeholder analysis also has a more practical purpose in daily project management. Here it contributes important input to:

• Communication of the intention of the project
• Project deliveries and scope
• Project success criteria
• Risk assessment in the project

Project Planning

A project plan is a central document in the project start-up. The planning includes:

• Estimating the attributes of work products and tasks
• Determining the resources needed
• Negotiating commitments
• Establish a schedule covering time, cost, and scope, including quality.

The project start-up phase covers from when the business case is approved until the project is ready to kick off. A project plan contains the considerations that the project manager and the steering committee have made before the project are started and therefore forms an essential part of the foundation for the project’s success.

In general, it is a phase of high activity for the project manager, where there are many activities in the air, all of which must land sensibly before the project is ready to start.

Unfortunately, this is also a phase that many projects spend too little time on. Because it does not immediately provide value to the end product, many projects will solve its purpose instead of doing analyses. It can therefore be tempting to skip easily and elegantly over this phase.

But some minimum requirements are needed; otherwise, monitoring and control will be impossible. But where to start, will somebody ask? My recommendation is to start with the high-level requirements – the epics of the project. The epics state the project’s essential goals that support the vision and strategy behind the project. The business has the primary responsibility for formulating the overall requirements – epics – and will have to commit to them in the early stage of the project; otherwise, it will be challenging to execute the tasks.

Setting up a milestone plan is essential for most projects because milestones in the project plan are the specific formulation of the intermediate results to be achieved in the project process and are valuable tools for the project manager in two ways:

First of all, it is a valuable tool for communicating with the steering committee. Second, it is a tool that helps the project manager focus on the work to be executed between the milestones, breaking the tasks down into work packages that can be delegated to task managers and other contributors.

Milestones should be decision points when entering a new or critical phase in the project process, ex.:

• Deliveries that are time-critical or associated with uncertainty.
• Coordination points where work in several areas needs to be completed at an expected time.
• Approvals, internal as well as external
• Assignments of responsibility to and from the project organisation

Monitoring and Control

Monitoring and control are essential. In many cases, this is only done in connection with the Steering Committee meetings. But it is recommended to do the follow-up on a more regular basis. This discipline is within IT projects often underestimated and not carried out with the needed accuracy when compared with construction projects or movie making. Monitoring and control can be carried out using different tools that investigate the nature of :

• Scope
• Quality
• Time
• Cost

An overall milestone plan is a valuable tool for establishing monitoring and control. In a milestone plan, activities are broken into minor tasks that are executed and monitored weekly as recurring activities. This work can be carried out using different tools you can find on the internet. One of the most commonly used is Microsoft Project. But can also for a small project be carried out in excel.

Requirements Management

A fixed scope is often the starting point for traditional project management but at the same time an illusion, as it is virtually impossible to determine all content and all activities at the start of the project. Therefore, you must be open to changes right from the start and set aside funds to handle these. It is also essential that a management regime has been established to ensure that all changes are in line with the project’s objectives. It is a task for the steering group to relate to significant changes and decide to what extent they should be included in the project.

Supplier Agreement Management

In most projects, you will find that many must contribute to success. It can be internal and external stakeholders and suppliers who have to deliver something, but for everyone, it must be that agreements must be complied with. Therefore, it is a good idea with written agreements that describe what is to be delivered, when to be delivered, in what quality and not least, the price.

Risk Management

The purpose of a risk analysis is partly to identify which risks there could influence the primary conditions of the project (the project triangle), and partially to describe how the project shall counter threats. The risk analysis will also indicate which risks are significant and the likelihood of the risk. In general, the project manager shall manage all significant hazards so the

When we examine risks, it is essential to look at both the project’s risks and the derivative business risks. A risk always consists of the probability of an incident and the consequence of that person’s incident. Therefore, a limitation of trouble can occur in prevention, so the incident becomes less likely or remedies, so the effects are limited.

An example of a risk is when an organisation cannot manage an operational impediment for a short period because it needs to convert to a new IT system. Here, a risk analysis will illustrate:

• How significant a production loss will be in the period
• How to handle the challenges for the operation in advance
• How to accommodate users or customers affected by the conversion

Employees who have insight into the relevant subject area should perform the risk analysis. Therefore, it may be the project group participants who must define the different risks. It can happen through subject matter experts from otter parts of the organisation or vendors. The risk analysis should be adjusted and adapted as the project progresses and increase awareness of risks and solutions.