Secrets of Successful Project Management: 20 Tips and Process Integration
Secrets of Successful Project Management
20 Tips for Project Success
- Define Project Success Criteria: At the beginning of the project, ensure all stakeholders share a common understanding of what defines success.
- Identify Project Drivers, Constraints, and Degrees of Freedom: Balance functionality, staffing, budget, schedule, and quality objectives. Define each dimension as a constraint, driver, or degree of freedom.
- Define Product Release Criteria: Determine the criteria for product release early on, such as the number of high-priority defects, performance measurements, or fully operational functionality.
- Negotiate Commitments: Engage in good-faith negotiations with customers and managers to establish realistic commitments.
- Write a Plan: Invest time in planning, thinking, negotiating, and communicating to minimize surprises later in the project.
- Decompose Tasks: Break down tasks into smaller, manageable units called “inch-pebbles.”
- Develop Planning Worksheets: Create activity checklists and planning worksheets for common tasks to streamline execution.
- Plan for Rework: Allocate time for rework after quality control activities like testing and reviews.
- Plan Time for Process Improvement: Dedicate time for process improvement to enhance the team’s software engineering capabilities.
- Manage Project Risks: Identify, evaluate, and mitigate potential risks through brainstorming and planning.
- Estimate Based on Effort: Estimate tasks in labor-hours rather than calendar time for more accurate projections.
- Don’t Overschedule: Avoid scheduling team members for more than 80% of their time to account for task-switching overhead.
- Include Training Time: Factor in time for training activities based on team members’ typical annual training hours.
- Record Estimates and Rationale: Document estimates and the reasoning behind them for future reference and improvement.
- Use Estimation Tools: Leverage commercial estimation tools with project databases to explore schedule and staffing options.
- Respect the Learning Curve: Account for potential productivity loss when implementing new processes, tools, or technologies.
- Plan Contingency Buffers: Include contingency buffers in the budget and schedule to accommodate unforeseen circumstances.
- Track Actuals vs. Estimates: Record actual effort or time spent on tasks and compare them to estimates to refine estimating accuracy.
- Define Task Completion: Use clear criteria to determine 100% task completion, avoiding rounding up progress.
- Track Project Status Transparently: Foster an environment of open and honest project status reporting.
Process Integration in Business
A business process is a collection of interconnected tasks that address a specific issue. There are three main types:
- Management Processes: Govern the operation of a system, such as corporate governance and strategic management.
- Operational Processes: Form the core business and create the primary value stream, including purchasing, manufacturing, marketing, and sales.
- Supporting Processes: Support core processes, such as accounting, recruitment, and IT support.
Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
BPR focuses on analyzing and redesigning business processes to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Key characteristics include:
- Customer Focus: Processes are designed from the customer’s perspective.
- Cross-Functionality: Processes often span multiple departments or functions.
- Value-Adding: Each step in a process should add value to the customer or the organization.
By understanding and implementing these project management tips and process integration principles, organizations can increase their chances of success in today’s dynamic business environment.