Chapter 13 Review

Solving Common Project Problems


This chapter provides an overview of common challenges and recommends strategies for applying the tools presented in the text.

• Responsibility beyond your authority, use project document to substantiate your role.
• Charter
• Statement of work
• Communication plan - make sure this is a two-way medium so you'll know they are up-to-date and involved.
• Small work packages with strong completion criteria - make assignments easy to understand and track; involve the team in estimating the cost and duration of tasks and in defining the completion criteria.
• Network diagram - show how they fit in the project; emphasize the importance of their contribution.
• Project status meetings with an open task report - provide updates even during times that they are not directly involved.
• Sponsor - develop a strong relationship with your sponsor by keeping him or her informed of your plans and progress.
• Disaster recovery: the PM is removed and you have to pick up the pieces, what do you do?
• Statement of work - start at the beginning with the project. Prioritize the remaining scope, clarify the penalties for running over budget or missing the deadline.
• Project plan - using the work breakdown structure and critical path analysis figure out the best possible schedule scenario assuming infinite resources to determine the absolute shortest possible schedule. Then, negotiate for more resources, more time, or less scope based on your plan. Use your critical path schedule to show management which resources you will need to get to project done as fast as possible. Allow for project team learning time.
• Work package estimates - use the actual performance so far to create realistic estimates and include the team in the estimating process.
• Project status meetings - frequent status meetings focused on completing near-term tasks will keep you on top of progress and allow you to solve problems early. Use the open task report to keep your meetings brief and productive. Graph the process on the plan for everyone to see -- it's tangible progress. Celebrate small victories.
• Reducing the time to market
• Statement of work - getting agreement from all stakeholders will ensure you don't waste time with organizational battles.
• Fixed-phase estimating - no point in generating a detailed schedule from start to finish, instead choose several reveiw points where you can reevaluate the functions of the product against the available resources and deadline.
• Project plan - develop a detailed plan for every phase. Using a network diagram identify all concurrent tasks. These are places where adding people can compress the schedule.
• Completion criteria - build quality check into the project at every step of the way
• Project status meetings - be clear about the responsibilities and track schedule progress rigorously. Create a culture of accountability. Celebrate successes along the way.
• When the customer delays the project
• Network diagram - look for other activities that the team can shift its attention to; this is also the tool for assessing the impact of the delay.
• Change management - determine the costs and schedule impacts of the delay. Document the reason for the delay as well as the cost and schedule impacts and bring it to the customer's attention without delay. Show the unexpected delay on the project plan by adding a task to the WBS called "Delay due to ____" and insert the delay in the network diagram too. If the delay idles any of your team members you can start assigning hours to the delay task.
• The impossible dream: you've been handed a project with an impossible budget and schedule. What to do?
• Statement of work - be extremely clear about the project's purpose, scope and deliverables. Learn all the schedule and cost penalties.
• Project plan - develop at least three options for what can be done, you must be able to demonstrate the trade-offs available to the managers. Recommend the option that seems to match their cost-schedule-quality priorities. Determine the maximum number of people you can usefully apply to the project using the network diagram and resource spreadsheet. Look for schedule adjustments that will bring the greatest cost reductions. Use a crash table to analyze the most cost-effective tasks to compress.
• Risk management - perform a risk assessment at both the high level and the detail level to find your danger points.
• Status reports - don't give up on changing your stakeholders expectations. Let them know with each status report how diligently the team is striving to meet the goals and what the actual progress is. Raise the alarm frequently that if early progress is an indicator, actual cost and schedule performance won't match the plan.
• Fighting fires - no time for definition and planning activities
• Organizing for project management - get organized before the fire starts, a systematic method for using PM techniques will increase your ability to respond quickly to any situation.
• Managing volunteers - no authority over the team of unpaid volunteers
• Statement of work - build enthusiasm and common vision by focusing on the purpose and deliverables.
• Small tasks with strong completion criteria - make it easy for each person to succeed by giving everyone clear direction and little latitude for straying from the task.
• Project plan - be extremely organized and very aware of critical path and float. You will need to do some resource analysis.
• Communication plan - develop a method of staying in touch with everyone without a lot of effort or frequent meetings
• Status meetings - frequent status checks will keep you in touch with progress, but periodic meetings are an opportunity to energize the group, build relationships, make project decisions, and celebrate progress. Ensure that these are productive meetings that people want to attend.
• MANAGE PROFESSIONALS LIKE VOLUNTEERS
• Peter Drucker says they want the same things: interesting, meaningful work that is a good use of their time.
• Achieving the five project success factors
• Agreement among the project team, customer, and management on the goals of the project.
• A plan that shows an overall path and clear responsibilities, which is also used to measure progress during the project.
• Constant, effective communication between everyone involved in the project.
• A controlled scope
• Management support