7 Important Project Management Mysteries

I am going to share with you some important mysteries in project management !

Here we go....The seven project management mysteries

 

The seven essential components of successful project management. The things a project manager should never forget to do on a project.

 

1. Define the scope and objectives
2. Define the deliverables
3. Project Planning
4. Communication
5. Tracking and reporting project progress
6. Change management
7. Risk management

 

SUMMARY

 

So, These best practices are the main things that I would expect all project managers to do. They are applicable on all projects big or small. Project management is not rocket science. Applying best practices on your project cannot guarantee that your project comes in under budget, on time and exceeds all the expectations of the stakeholders, but applying them will certainly give you a much better chance of delivering your project successfully than if you don't apply them on your project.

How Do You Control a Project?

That project caused a lot of pain and discomfort for senior management, facility management, and the facility. This was a serious case of an out of control project which leads to the question of “How Do

You Control A Project?”. In theory, it’s quite simple, you;

1. Define the scope
2.Budget and plan the execution of the scope
3.Execute the scope per the plan
4.Control the scope
5.Manage the budget variance

As you know, scope is the single most important variable in defining & controlling the cost of a project. As the with the above project, not planning and developing the scope lead to their downfall.
It’s Difficult! Like you, I know in practice developing the scope difficult to do. However, when it comes to managing a project, it’s “garbage in equals garbage out.”

Scope wrong = estimates wrong.
Scope wrong = schedule wrong.
Scope wrong - resource allocations wrong

The wrong scope can cause a lot of difficulty and discomfort to a project manager. I didn’t like it when I started out, so I took steps to successfully develop scopes for various size projects. So if you
are suffering the pain and discomfort from scope definition problems, and you want to sleep well at night, You need to put in the time, money and effort in determining your total scope.

Leadership Style

You need to know and understand the soft skills to get people to work for you. Some of the leadership skills you have to develop include:

1. Having the vision to plan, organize and set objectives
2. Being inspiring, making people proud to be on your team.
3. Being assertive.
4. Keeping calm during a crisis, avoiding visible panic.
5. Learning from your failures - this is where experience comes from.
6. Understanding the skills of your team and delegating tasks accordingly.
7. Motivating your team members.
8. Mentoring and coaching junior members of the team.
9. Providing constructive criticism.
10. Making logical decisions (need to know project management fundamentals to do this)
11. Persevering when things are not going well.
12. Being able to respond to changing situations.
13. Accepting responsibility for the mistakes and wrong decisions

What Is Expected Of You

As you are aware, if you don’t know what direction the team has to go in or how to get there, people will not follow you. You can have all the leadership skills but unless you know what comes next, what happens months or years out, you could lead the team in the wrong direction. As Seth Godin says, “Leaders take responsibility.” So, you need to know what your responsibilities are. No matter the size of the project, following is typically what management is expecting when they ask you to manage a project:

1. Developing and implementing the project execution plan and project schedule 
2. Communicating the project status to management
3. Contracting for engineering services
4. Project team leader for project contacts and organizing drawing reviews.
5. Responsible for reporting to management.
6. Manage engineering and procurement
7. Review construction bid packages
8. Coordinate construction contracting
9. Manage permitting
10. Provide constructability expertise
11. Assist field efforts during construction
12. Coordinate commissioning and startup
13. Coordinate all technical issues during construction
14. Handling project change and tracking change orders
15. Responsible for project close out.

As you can see from the above, being a project manager is not easy-peasy as there is a lot to know and understand in order to lead your team.  

Sample Delay Analysis

Hello Friends,

Try the following link for some sample delay analysis.

https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/3/3/506/pdf

Good Luck