Project Management Crash Course
Practice makes perfect! If you were a starring in a movie, you would have to practice your lines everyday, and when you are working on a project you need to break it into manageable chunks with clear deadlines. In this phase you will focus on each individual deliverable and how it will be completed, and you will create a timeline in which to complete them.
"Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised." - Denis Waitley
Additionally, you want an understanding of how you will determine if your deliverables are successful. What tasks need to be done when, and by whom, in order to meet your goals? The tasks should be recorded with your group members on the timeline.
Step One: Developing a Timeline
A project timeline is critical to any project. It helps you stay on track, holds you accountable, and ensures that everyone knows when deadlines occur. If you have a Time Manager, he or she can lead the development of the project timeline.
There are 6 steps to creating a timeline for a project and this can be done on the Timeline fillable document provided.
1. Establishing milestones - milestones are the significant moments or stages in a project's timeline that help you monitor if your project is on schedule, they are written as statements of what will have been accomplished by the end of the project, and the number of them varies depending on your project
2. Define activities - activities are things you need to accomplish in order to meet your milestone, leading to your deliverables, and there can be more than one activity for each milestone, depending on your project
3. List tasks - tasks are the "to-do" lists for each activity, and they can be big or small
4. Determine sequence - in order to determine the sequence, or order, of the activities and tasks you have identified, you will first need to identify which tasks are dependent and which are independent.
Terms to Know
Dependent - one activity or task must be complete before the next one can begin
Independent - the activity or task can be completed at any time and is not related to some other thing being completed
Sequencing can be done right on the timeline or on a flow chart graphic organizer, or on index cards, small sheets of paper, or sticky notes. Whether or not you need to sequence using this process depends on the complexity of the project and the number of milestones you have. If you choose to use the cards or sticky notes, you should
- write your milestones, then activities, then tasks on the cards
- record the major milestones of your project in one colour, and be sure to include a milestone for the final delivery of the project
- write the activities on different colour cards, and the tasks on another colour
- arrange the cards in a logical order
- note on the milestone cards any due dates you have set
- assign dates to all other milestones and write those on the cards
- review these regularly and add additional milestones if you find gaps along the way
5. Estimate time - this is more of an art than a science, which means it will not be exact, but you should do your best to keep it equal among all members. When figuring this out take in to consideration the elapsed time (this is how long it takes for an activity or task to be completed), and the work time (this is how long it will take you or others to do the work). Be sure to monitor this as you work through your project and adjust as needed.
6. Build, review, and revise schedule - With all of the above information organized, it is now time to build the schedule. Fill in the timeline provided with your information.
Step Two: Acquiring Resources
Resources are the things needed for a project, including money, materials, space, and equipment. Planning the resources is critical to ensure that everything can be acquired for the project - if not, this is the time to revise the plan.
- Go through your activities and create a list of resources that are needed to meet each milestone and list the resources in the chart. The Communication Manager can lead this.
- For each resource, determine how it will be acquired.
Step Three: Planning for Risk
It is critical to think about the things that might go wrong in your project. When potential risks are identified, the possibility of them occurring can be reduced, or at least their impact may be minimized. These challenges could have to do with time, other resources, going over budget, and so on. The Quality and Risk Manager should lead this.
Develop a risk plan and record it on the chart:
- Consider what might go wrong in the project
- Assess the risk level: if it did happen, does it impose a high, medium, or low risk to the overall project success? To determine this, consider the impact the risk would have on the whole project. How hard would it be to finish the project if this thing happened?
- Determine the are of impact. Would it impact resources? Timing? Quality? In order to address it do you need adjust your timeline, resource acquisition, or do you need to rethink the whole project?
- Consider how to prevent the risks and come up with some alternate ideas to help if things go wrong.
Monitor your Daily Practices regularly by revisiting your Timeline every two or three days to ensure you are staying on track.