For small the project management skills are required just to overcome the various situations that arise, and also ensure compliance with the objectives within the stipulated time.

Introduction

Projects by definition have a start and end date certain, as a scope, budget, specific results and resources allocated. Additionally, each project, they are similar activities and scope, they become different because circumstances change, and things are always different when dealing with people.

One of the primary functions of project managers is to manage the internal processes of the same where you actually do the work. For small the project management skills are required just to overcome the various situations that arise, and also ensure compliance with the objectives within the stipulated time. These skills range from project definition to the administration of measures to advance it. Additionally, it must incorporate techniques for managing contracts and supplier management. In this and subsequent installments will discuss what we believe are the 12 skills in managing projects, if executed properly will ensure the development of the project:
Project definition
Labor Planning
Contract Administration
Supplier Management
Roadmap Administration
Managing situations
Scope Management
Risk Management
Communication Management
Administration documentation
Quality Management
Management metrics
Before starting the explanation of each of these skills required, it is important to make a distinction between what is considered the project work and administration. The list above does not include the stages of analysis, design, testing or deployment and who have worked on projects know that at least include testing and analysis. However, these stages are clearly part of the project and not the administrative process. It’s often confused the project activities with the administration, making these stages are not included within the schedules.

The first two activities should be done in strict order and before the ten remaining to ensure the success of the project. Will skip them clear signal failures, either because of lack of focus or lack of required activities.

1. Project definition

Before starting the project, it is essential that the work is understood and that the perpetrators of both the implementation of the project and who will receive the results of it, have a clear view of the expected results, when completed, the cost goes, who will work as the work terminated, and what the benefits.

Small or large the project, defining its scope is vital tool for the Project Manager or the respective committees to make decisions in the administrative steps that will be mentioned later. Many of the decisions are taken and graded by assessment of the impact on the final result of it, because by this stage of definition.

The larger the project, the importance of letting this information explicitly stipulated increases. The result of this activity should be a document entitled “Project Definition” and include the information mentioned in the first paragraph.

Can be a bit difficult to determine which are the outputs of the project in detail, and can also be difficult to determine the total cost and completion date. In this case we recommend dividing the project into smaller projects. Be defined in detail the first sub in the schedule, and define the detail of the projects further afield when approaching execution. There will, in this case, to stop the project review activities to ensure that these definitions if they take place. Omitted from the plan of work, almost certifies that no will.

At the end of this stage, you should then have a document with the scope and expectation of it, as is measured, who will do it, and the cost. This document must be approved by all involved as they try to seek consensus on these issues in a project that already started is extremely difficult.

2. Labor Planning

When defining the project, you make sure you have a clear understanding with the sponsor of this Agreement on what should be achieved in the project. In the planning stage determines how it will perform the work. This then implies a plan for work. Different scopes are used, commensurate with the size of the project. For example, you can use from a sheet of paper for a small project, so systematized solutions such as Microsoft Project for more complex projects.

If you do not have a template for the work plan, we recommend using the structure of top-down analysis, a technique for looking at the project from a high level, and break the work into smaller components until it has the full picture the same. The entire team can collaborate in this task. Use caution with the level of detail because the project from small components can cause overly high costs of inefficiencies in its maintenance. My recommendation is to have activities in fractions of the total project size. For example, if the project lasts one year, the smallest task should be in weeks. If the project lasts for months, the smallest task should be days, and if the project lasts for weeks, the smallest task must be four hours. It makes no sense to incorporate activities of shorter duration to those provided here, unless they are milestones within the project.

Once you have the list of activities, the next step is to structure the dependence of them. Not everyone can develop in time. When you complete this process dependencies, is passed to allocate resources to each of the activities. These resources include personnel, money, and required elements. It is feasible, and usually common, resource allocation cause changes in dates, so techniques are used to set resource leveling work plan to the availability of resources.

It is recommended, especially for human resource, taking only six working hours per working day, and if you are working on Saturdays, not counting this time in the planning, but leave it for weekly adjustments to the project. When the calculation is very precise timing, is causing many adjustments to schedules and completion dates, which generally discourages this group.

3. Contract Administration

If the project does not involve external suppliers, so this piece like this can be skipped. However, given the boom in outsourcing, especially in the field of Internet software and implementation concerns, we include the two paragraphs as third and fourth skill required.

The contract is the document that governs the conditions under which a good is purchased and / or service. In the case of goods, it is much easier to measure the delivery of the acquired, making it more difficult situation when they are services. Therefore it is recommended to have a list of “deliverables” expected to be obtained from the services received. The more tangible deliverables, easier to manage compliance.

There are two key issues in the administration of a contract: the delivery of results (deliverables) and compliance dates for these deliveries. For both sets criteria and requirements that can monitor compliance with the two topics. Hopefully the payment is tied to the deliverables to the satisfaction by the contractor, which provides a motivating factor for compliance.

It is often forgotten that the contract is a legal document, governed by the Commercial Code of each country, so it is essential to know this code. Similarly it becomes necessary to know the management scheme of compliance policies, the institutions for implementation, and supporting documentation.

In short, contract management involves the control of the deliverables, payments, and time management of the project.

4. Supplier Management

During the project, the relationship with suppliers is very fluid, closely linked to the advance variation thereof. It is clear that early in the process, everything is like a honeymoon: the company just hired who is the best option in a selection process and the supplier has just acquired a new customer. During this stage, everything flows, decisions are easy to make, and really is not much suffering there is the stumbling block.

Once the project starts, they begin to detect differences in approach and scope for the deliverables. In the administration of contracts and the hiring process itself, we try to include everything that could be clarified in the management of the provider and its obligations, but often not enough.

As in marriages, the best remedy is the conversation, and if time, much better. It should set up regular meetings of both the contract and the activities of the supplier. The same recommendation applies to the preparation of the schedule, the meeting at least must be at least weekly, and monthly maximum, depending on the progress of the same.

Both the supplier and the customer sometimes establish mechanisms to stop this administration, so they usually end by establishing procedures for the execution of the contract. You need to have clear, for example, who bears the costs of travel and accommodation, how they relate within the project, what documents to enforce payment, and how often these payments are presented.

Similarly, it is imperative to establish how to handle failures, normal to some extent, among those originally programmed and what actually is delivering the supplier. There are two types of defaults: the specification or required function, and timing. Needless to say that a shortage, but on the due date, not a surrender to the satisfaction, and therefore leads to the violation.

One project, depending on the size, can have several suppliers interacting. The administration of this interaction can even another provider, or the company itself. It should also define the mechanisms of allocation of responsibilities so that there is no place to bounce from one provider to another, the solution to a problem.

It recommends the appointment of a third person as auditor of the draft so there is an impartial and supporter of the project itself and its objectives, and not the interests of customer and supplier. It is clear that the only defense that remains is the project, and the controller can do this task.

5. Work Plan Management

So far, there are already defined and planned project work. Likewise, if needed, are standing documents governing the relationship with suppliers. The deliverables of the project so far are: The Definition of the Project Work Plan, the Agreement, and Project Management Manual. Although some project managers feel that to overcome these steps already has surpassed the difficult part of project management, are mistaken.

The work plan is just one deliverable. Describes what to do, the order of work, the effort required and who is assigned to which task, but only represents the best estimate of how complete the work to be done at any given time of a project.

The more complex the project, the more changes occur in the work plan with the passage of time. The Project Manager shall review the work plans on an ongoing (weekly is recommended as a minimum) and determine the current state of the same.

It is essential the use of proactive management, so as to identify the activities performed in the near future, and based on these activities and their impact within timelines and project goals, make adjustments to the main objectives are met. Any changes in schedules, acceptance criteria and objectives set should be solved through a committee changes. It should be clear to everyone involved in the project, these changes affect the scope of the contract and therefore can not be taken unilaterally. This committee must, after analyzing the impact and assess risk, make the decision to allocate more resources, or delay compliance.

6. Managing situations

Usually a project is given in two instances: one at the level of project team and project manager, and the second level of company management. When suppliers are involved, it will also project manager for the supplier, and will also be assigned to the project manager for the firm’s management committee. In some cases, involves long and unproductive committee meetings. For purposes of this writing, the committee is a group of people with decision-making authority, requiring meetings or not to do so. Today, with the use of electronic mail and automated systems for managing projects, few required meetings.

A “situation” occurs when a problem may prevent or impede the progress of the project and can not be resolved by the project manager and project team without outside help. When this type of situations, there is no alternative to solve the problem.

It is recommended the application of techniques of handling situations, which has two components. The first is to have a process to find these situations and bring them to light, to determine its impact on the project, evaluate alternatives, and get people who make the best decision possible under the circumstances. This process should be part of the overall project management and must be defined before starting it.

The second component is to apply troubleshooting techniques to resolve these situations. This includes the understanding of tools such as fishbone diagrams, Pareto diagrams and cause and effect analysis. Knowing these tools allow the team to understand the reason for the problem, determine available actions, and what would be the best alternative to take.

It is important to realize that having a process to resolve situations is not the same as having the ability to successfully resolve them. In some cases there are better alternatives, and the work of the project group is to find and implement. In other cases there is a good solution for these situations. In this case we must take the decision to do less damage, or the “least bad” of the alternatives.

7. Scope Management

The scope of a project describes the limitations of that and what the project will deliver, what information is needed and what parts of the organization are affected. Given a set of resources and time, a number of things can be achieved.

Managing scope changes starts with the definition of what constitutes a change in scope. If the project manager has no well defined the initial scope of the project, will be tremendously difficult to manage this scope during the project. The purpose of the administration of changes in the scope is to protect the viability of the project definition as defined and approved. When the project was defined, were also defined and stipulated performance expectations.

During the project life is normal items require different or additional to those included in the original project. It should be clear to all parties to meet these new requirements with the same resources from the above definition, it is virtually impossible.

It is clear that the approval of scope changes must be made between customers and suppliers the same as it is the only way to mobilize the additional resources required and satisfy the expectations of those involved.

The administration’s scope is not always that easy. Common problems occur. One of them is to accept small changes that at first glance not much affect the project, and it is unknown the combined effect of many small changes. You can also make decisions that indicated a lower level, which implies that the “owners” of the result may not get it. To avoid this second problem, we recommend that changes to the deliverables may only be approved by management of each company. Usually these changes have increased costs and delay the delivery of the results, two issues that directly impact the company managements.

8. Risk Management

Risk is a future condition that exists outside the control of the project group, and may have a negative impact on the outcome of the project if it falls short of the condition. Administrators expect reagents to resolve the situation when this happens. Proactive managers seeking to identify and resolve potential problems before they occur.

The projects were small, short duration, do not give much room for the emergence of problems. By contrast, large projects are prone to problems waiting to emerge. We advocate proactive management, so risk management then define as the identification of all possible risks, determine how accurate this is that risk, and understand the impact on the project if they occur.

Once identified the risk you want to actively manage, there are five courses of action can be taken:

Do nothing. Nothing will be done if it is determined that the effect is negligible on the draft before the occurrence of risk, or there’s nothing you can do to serve you.

Monitoring. You will monitor the risk so that it can determine the likelihood of giving or not the risk as far as time goes on. If apparently increases the probability of occurrence as time passes, will be addressed at that time.

Avoid risk. This involves removing the condition that could cause the problem. For example, risks posed by a supplier can be avoided by hiring another provider.

Move the risk. In some cases it is likely that risk management is removed from the project administration and assigned to another entity or third party.

Mitigate risk. In most cases this is the measure to take. If a risk is detected, and is considering, can develop a proactive plan to ensure that risk does not occur, or if it does, its impact is negligible.

As with the administration of reach, there is nothing wrong with a project has risks. It is intended that a project has no risk, what matters is the response of project management risk. Ignoring the risks, they become situations and taking that time, fewer choices for their solution.

9. Communication Management

This is one of the critical activities in a project, and fundamental management objectives and the recipients of the benefits. It’s the best way to avoid surprises, an aggravating factor in the presence of the unexpected.

There are two levels of communication in a project. All projects must report the status. Additionally, if the project is complex or larger, you need a more sophisticated level of communication defined in a Communications Plan.

The status meetings and project status report is provided where project progress, problems, activities implemented, review cash flow and the proximity of the deliverables. At this level, making the formalization of risk management, situations, contracts and other project components. Usually we define a standard format report which summarizes the progress and are warning about possible problems.

When the impact of the project is large, it requires a communications plan that not only report on the project but to assist in the implementation of change. Usually this plan is armed with information being distributed at several levels. The binding, which includes the project status reports, budgets, and legal and auditing requirements. The information, which provides extensive information to those who require it. This information includes FAQs, a document library and a website for the project among others. Finally, is the type of marketing information that is responsible for creating enthusiasm for the project, and includes everything from the name of the project, delivery of testimonials from administrators, and stories of success in the project.

The communication must be handled proactively by the project manager, must be planned and executed with one purpose in mind.

10. Managing Documents

The administration of documentation is one of those activities that project managers take for granted, until they are awash in paper. For small projects there is no need for an entire administrative system, but to the extent that the scope of the project increases, it becomes necessary to have it. Although one of the tasks that can be assisted by technology as a document repository, these tools can be difficult to administer and incorporate major problems to the project.

Issues as simple as the encoding of documents and what types of documents are to be stored and for how long. Some prefer to organize by source of information, and others for the purpose of it. I have had very good experience classifying the general project information such as contracts, policies and compliance reporting in one group, the information on each achievement in another, and finally the consecutive records of the various levels of decision.

Another decision is the standard format for documents. We recommend using PDF for documents that will not change once available, and create a Web site for storage.

11. Quality Management

The quality of a project be measured by how close they are to meet the expectations and deliverables for the client, therefore the central objective of the project team is trying to meet and exceed customer requirements. There is a tendency to equate quality with the best equipment, better equipment and zero defects. However in most cases, the client does not expect and can not afford a perfect solution.

The purpose of the role of quality management is the correct definition of customer expectation, by quantifying something that was originally treated as subjective. It must break the term “quality” in a number of trappings that can define the quality characteristics in tangible form, and then see how they measure each of them.

Measuring quality is not an event but an ongoing process and a mindset. We recommend the use of the principles of quality circles to make this process effectively.

When defining the project, the working group should understand the terms of quality set by the client and be entered in a Quality Plan, which handled the acceptance criteria and correction of each deliverable. For example, software delivery, is known to be difficult to be completely free of flaws, so you can define which is for failures accepted form rather than substance.

The plan also contains two processes, quality control and quality assurance. Quality control ensures that project deliverables meet customer expectations. Quality assurance ensures that the process to create the deliverables are of high quality. An example of this second case can be a checklist of steps to ensure that the product is delivered complete.

One of the purposes of quality control is to detect errors as soon as possible in the life of the project, to reduce its impact both financially and in time for the same.

12. Measurement Management

Get the metrics of a project is the ability to more sophisticated project management, and can become the hardest. The metrics are usually difficult to define and collect, why are ignored or improperly handled.

It should define basic metrics to measure the effort, cost and completion times. It also should include metrics to determine how well they are meeting customer requirements and how it meets expectations. Depending on the results, take appropriate corrective action.

To set metrics for the project, it is suggested will identify the success criteria in terms of deliveries and execution, determine how to measure both progress and final achievement, select a balanced number of metrics, and collect information. It is vital to put parameters for comparison with the goals and metrics by itself does not say much.

In general, this process is of minor importance for small projects because there is not time to collect the values, and less to analyze and take corrective measures.

CONCLUSIONS

These twelve skills described as necessary to one degree or another to ensure the success of the project focused on process management. But there is another set of skills that are also required to manage people as leadership, listening and good feedback.

Some of these aspects of project management such as defining the project and manage situations, apply to all projects. Others like the handling of documentation and metrics become more important in larger projects.