{"id":12546,"date":"2013-07-12T07:00:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-12T14:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=12546"},"modified":"2013-07-11T16:42:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T23:42:40","slug":"how-to-manage-a-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=12546","title":{"rendered":"How to manage a project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The essentials of project management in under 500 words<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>What\u2019s a project?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A project is any endeavor that takes time and involves more than one person. <\/strong> Typically, we don\u2019t call it a project unless it involves at least 3 to 5 people, and then we call them a team.  A project requires communication, collaboration and coordination.  A project also usually results in something being delivered to a 3rd party.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Five aspects of managing a project<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>1.\tDefining the parameters.<\/strong><br \/>\nWhat are the inputs?  What are the outputs?  What are the rules?<\/p>\n<p><strong>2.\tDiscovering the goals, limits and values.<\/strong><br \/>\nGoals include requirements for the outputs and other things that you want to have as a result of the project.<br \/>\nLimits include things like how much money you can spend, how much time you have, and who is allowed to do what.<br \/>\nValues include the priorities among time, cost and quality; and what the people in the project want to get out of it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3.\tPlanning the work <\/strong><br \/>\nPlanning includes setting your own expectations and the expectations of others; and being prepared to deal with unforeseen events.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4.\tReporting<\/strong><br \/>\nReporting means communicating about progress, problems, resources used, and results delivered.<\/p>\n<p><strong>5.\tInteracting <\/strong><br \/>\nInteracting with team members and stakeholders to facilitate, encourage and moderate. <\/p>\n<p><strong>What is a successful project?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A. A successful project delivers the right outputs on time.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>B. At the end of a successful project, the team is still improving<\/strong> and is ready to take on another project.<\/p>\n<p><strong>C. At the end of a successful project, we have learned something<\/strong> and improved how we define, discover, plan, report and interact.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How do projects fail?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A project that produces no output or produces the wrong output<\/strong> is a failure.  Examples include products that get returned or software that causes problems for the customer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A project that consumes excessive resources<\/strong> is a failure.  A project that does not deliver results in time to be useful or valuable is also a failure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A project that ends with a burnt out team<\/strong> who cannot take on another project is a failure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How to head off failure?<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Choose and keep the right team.<\/strong>  Select people who have needed skills and are good at being part of a team.  Remove people who don\u2019t get along with the team.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Limit the scope of the project.<\/strong>  Put your job on the line to keep the project down to a manageable size.  Break the project into phases to limit the scope of the current work.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Verify correctness of the outputs with the customer.<\/strong>  This means checking the requirements with the stakeholders at the beginning, and checking regularly that what has been done is still needed and expected by the stakeholders.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Iterate at regular intervals.<\/strong>  This means delivering workable parts of the output in small increments and then re-checking the scope and priorities for the next increment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Listen carefully at all times.<\/strong>  Don\u2019t presume anything without checking it.  Tell people when they\u2019re doing something right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The essentials of project management in under 500 words What\u2019s a project? A project is any endeavor that takes time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[852,7,8,846,5,10,20,6,1],"tags":[1016,1372,1373,1230,93,84,38,46],"class_list":["post-12546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pmbok-process","category-goals","category-priorities-2","category-scope-2","category-time-management","category-cost","category-quality","category-communications","category-miscellaneous","tag-burnout","tag-communications","tag-goals","tag-iterative-development","tag-listening","tag-management","tag-project-management","tag-teamwork"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12546"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12552,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12546\/revisions\/12552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}