Chapter 27
PROJECT MANAGEMENT

IN This Chapter
Elements of project management
The process of project management
Closing out a project
Project management tools

Introduction
Project management is a careful process of planning, organizing, staffing and resource allocation that facilitates the successful completion of project goals.
A project can be defined as a specific, unique event with a clear start and finish date, which always entails a degree of uncertainty and risk. Examples include:
Developing and introducing a new product
Opening a new division
Entering a new market
Greening your business
Choosing suppliers
Moving or expanding your office
Designing or upgrading a website
Seeking new financing
Launching a new ad campaign
Negotiating a joint venture
Writing or revising your NxLeveL® Business Plan
Bringing a project in on time and under budget is the holy grail of entrepreneurs everywhere. A good grasp of project management practices makes this goal much easier and safer to accomplish.
Elements of Project Management
Successful project management relies on four basic elements.
Scope is the definition of a project, including the required time and budget. If you fail to manage scope, you will inevitably fail to manage the other three elements. One of the most common and serious problems in project management is “creep,” which is what happens when the scope of a project expands without an equivalent increase in time and budget. Usually, creep occurs in the form of small incremental changes that eventually expand the project well beyond its original scope.
Time. It’s usually hard to estimate how much time each stage of a project will take. As a result, entrepreneurs often underestimate the time necessary for task completion.
Resources include all equipment, material, technology and people that must be brought together and managed in order to complete a project. In most cases, finding the right person for each task is the most important and difficult resource management issue.
Money. The estimated cost of a project is normally expressed in a budget that outlines expected costs, contingencies and profit margins. Defining resources in monetary terms will help you track progress and measure success.
…
When I first got the idea for this business, most of the details were vague. I knew there was an unmet need, and I knew there was a possibility of making a lot of money from it. But how to get from point A to point B was a mystery.
I didn’t know much about the Middle East. I didn’t know much about overseas sales. About the only thing I knew for sure was that I needed some help figuring out what to do next. That’s when I thought of Bill and Samir.
Queen City Exports was formed by three guys from Charlotte, North Carolina, who were lucky enough to stumble on an underserved market 7,400 miles away.
John Merky, Bill Voulangas and Samir Mahdawi had known each other professionally for years. They were all involved, one way or another, in the furniture business.
John was in furniture case goods sales. Several years ago, his company sent him to Dubai to open a regional sales office. John knew a lot about wood furniture, but very little about international business.
After a couple of business trips to Dubai, he realized that there was a huge market in the Middle East for someone who could package furniture into project bids for the large construction projects that were underway. Hotels, offices, retail spaces and infrastructure projects were being built by the hundreds, and all of them needed furniture and furnishings.
Beyond that, each construction site had a work camp to house and feed temporary workers who’d come from all over the world to work on these projects. These camps also needed furniture and furnishings.
I did a little informal research while I was over there, and I found out that the prime contractors for these projects needed full turnkey bids for everything from forks to sofas. That meant sourcing the products from lots and lots of manufacturers—most of whom I knew nothing about, unfortunately.
All the same, it was a start. It seemed very promising to me, but I wanted a second opinion, so I decided to run my idea past Bill and Samir as soon as I got back home.
…
Project Phases Initiation. A need or opportunity is identified, a project manager is chosen, a general plan is structured, and team members are chosen. Planning. Detail work is done on the project plan. Activities and tasks are assigned, money is budgeted and time is scheduled. Execution. The team performs the work under the guidance of the project manager. Close out. Deliverables are accepted and utilized by the stakeholders. Project reports are prepared in order to assess the efficiency of the process and identify areas for improvement.
The Role of Project Managers
The responsibilities of a project manager encompass everything involved in the project, including liaison with the organization from which the project originated; coordination and communication with suppliers, partners and other stakeholders; and leadership of the team members who were chosen to work on the project.
Project managers must be able to act in good faith while representing the interests of many parties who are directly and indirectly involved with the project.
A good project manager is:
Accessible and personable
Honest, open-minded and fair
Decisive
Empathetic and understanding
Inspiring, positive and enthusiastic
Able to live with uncertainty and doubt
Cool under pressure
Comfortable with change
In addition to these traits, a project manager must have certain professional skills in order to be effective, including:
An understanding of project management tools. Project managers should be familiar with standard project management tools, terms and techniques, including project management software. They should also know how to prepare a scope statement, a requirements document, project and action plans, and timelines and budgets.
Leadership skills. Leading, motivating, negotiating, delegating and communicating are essential to any project management venture. Common problems requiring strong leadership include unrealistic targets, inflexible time constraints, uncooperative team members, confusion over authority and responsibility, and communication breakdowns.
Technological abilities. A project manager should have a good working knowledge of the technologies at the core of a project, or the ability to learn quickly on the job.
Foresight and flexibility. It’s the project manager’s responsibility to expected the unexpected, manage risk and adapt when necessary to get the job done.
Duties
Project managers can have various duties, many of which will be specific to an individual project. However, the following basic expectations apply to most project:
Develop the scope of the project.
Outline a best-guess timeline for the work.
Screen and select team members.
Develop work processes and performance expectations.
Facilitate project meetings.
Manage conflict and motivate team members.
Communicate milestones and information to team members and stakeholders.
Protect the team from outside pressures and disruptions.
Keep the team on scope, on schedule, and on budget.
Reward high achievement and remove unproductive team members.
Close out the project and prepare the final report.
Coordinate rollout of project results when needed
Project managers should keep in mind that team members will naturally look to their leader for direction. Furthermore, all team members are not created equal, so each should be managed in a way that will maximize their talents and participation. It’s best to outline duties and expectations very clearly early in the project, and then do everything in your power to help team members achieve their individual and project goals.
Team Building
A project manager’s major contribution to any project is the ability to lead team members toward a shared goal. From the start, project managers must have a clear vision of where a given project must go.
They must also articulate this vision to team members. Good communication and motivational skills allow a leader to educate and empower team members, and to aid them in understanding what their individual contributions will mean to themselves, the team and the company.
As we explained in Chapter 22, Management and Leadership, the ideal project manager isn’t an authoritarian micromanager, but a facilitator, guide and teacher who helps team members reach their full potential.
Most of a project manager’s front-end work relates to initiating a project. The planning phase starts after all team members have officially come on board.
How and when should you choose a team? First, the project must be sufficiently fleshed out. You need to know the general direction in which you’re headed and have enough details to define who will do what. You can’t form an optimally effective team if goals are still vague or poorly defined.
However, too much detail may discourage buy-in from team members. Achieving the ideal level of detail is a balancing act that gets easier with practice.
Determining which employees and contractors have the right combination of technical skills and personal talents is usually the hardest part of any team-building effort. In most organizations, project managers look at a particular individual’s skill set and schedule, and weigh this against their department’s relevance to the results of the project. Assessing financial involvement and expected contributions should always be part of the selection process.
Assessing compatibility is also crucial. The goal is to find compatible team members who will be fully committed to the project goals. Consider these guidelines:
Do the candidates have the technical skills you’re looking for?
Are their interpersonal skills and problem-solving methods appropriate for the job?
Do candidates have the right personal traits for the job?
Are they committed to the project?
Do they have time to work on the project?
Have they worked on a similar project before? What was the outcome?
Why do they want to work on this particular project?
Clients
A project can be external (performed for the benefit of a client) or internal (performed for the benefit of your business). External projects are often easier to accomplish, because having an external client results in clearer lines of responsibility and accountability.
When launching an internal project, it’s helpful to remember that your business is the client for the project. If possible, give someone at your company oversight of the process in order to reinforce this understanding. This person should not take a direct role in the process; like an external client, she should track progress, get regular reports, and maintain project focus where necessary.
…
When I got back home from that second trip to Dubai, I went right over to talk to Bill and Samir. I honestly didn’t know how my idea would go over, but they were very interested. That was good to hear. I told them, “I just wish I knew whether this means I’m sane or all three of us are crazy.”
Crazy or not, I knew both of them had been looking to try something new, and they had experience that could be very valuable once we got off the ground.
Bill had been in the furnishings business for over 20 years. There wasn’t much he hadn’t worked with. Carpets, drapes, kitchen outfitting...you name it, Bill had done it.
Samir, who had been born in Lebanon and spoke fluent Arabic, was a purchasing and contract manager for a company that worked with hotels, restaurants, commercial laundries, and office parks. This firm specialized in everything from design to installation, and Samir had a good general knowledge of these issues, as well as an understanding of cultural and business expectations in the Middle East.
In short, both of them had a little international business experience and a lot of knowledge about their respective fields. And both of them felt that they could contribute to John’s business idea.
After a couple of meetings where they fleshed out the details of the business, they decided that before quitting their jobs and starting an export company, they’d take some vacation time and travel to the Middle East to do a market survey, talk to some prospects, and look for possible legal and logistical complications.
…
The Process of Project Management
Although each project is unique, there is a basic logic to project management:
Prioritize feasible projects.
Define the scope and outline deliverables.
Break the project into specific tasks.
Recruit and lead a team.
Organize the project plan.
Develop a timeframe from inception to completion.
Communicate goals and objectives.
Delegate responsibility for tasks, tied to specific timeframes.
Account for and document time and money.
Adjust to changing conditions.
Check, measure and reward performance.
Finish project by submitting deliverables.
Close out the project.
At the outset, the project team must prepare a project template that specifies the following details:
Clearly defined scope, purpose, deliverables, benchmarks and goals
An outline of project parameters (e.g., budgets, timeframes, authority, job descriptions, and—if appropriate—project management software selection)
Team guidelines for collaboration, decision-making and meetings
Clearly defined data-gathering, measurement and reporting standards
A list of potential project risks and problems, plans for dealing with them, and a system that will keep the project on track and within budget
Basic protocols for communication, giving and receiving instructions, lodging and resolving complaints, resolving conflicts, and solving problems
By working together to complete a detailed project template—including goals, principles and operating procedures—the entire team starts out on the same page.
Preparing a Project Plan
Three difficulties come to the fore at this point in the project. First, solidifying project goals usually entails a thorough and painstaking examination of what you want to accomplish versus what is achievable.
Second, the identification and sequencing of necessary tasks also takes a great deal of thought, not least because the tasks may be interdependent in complicated ways. Last, estimating the time each task will take to complete is never easy.
Regardless, all of these steps must be taken. Many projects are doomed from the start because the project manager and the team were not thorough enough in addressing these issues.
For some projects—such as the preparation of a requirements document for software development—this front-end work can take as long as the actual project. Smart project managers do not rush this part of the process. Taking the time to do things right at the front end will pay off at the back end.
Scope of Work
Defining the scope of work entails identifying the project’s purpose, its products or deliverables, its key milestones, and the time, money and resources required to achieve them.
Once you’ve identified a project’s major deliverables, you can create a work breakdown structure that details their smaller components and the activities and tasks required to achieve them. First, list the required components of each major deliverable. Then, break each of those components into activities and tasks.
The best way to do this is to gather your team members and have them work together to identify deliverables, activities and tasks. Each item can be written on an index card or a sticky note. From there, have them organize the deliverables, activities and tasks in logical order on a table or whiteboard. In order to avoid generating too much detail, have a cutoff point (e.g., the lowest task will entail no more than 40 hours of work and will be assigned to no more than one person).
As you drill down from major activities to the smaller tasks they entail, you can assign timeframes and dollar amounts to the work. (Remember: As scope changes, time and money must change as well.)
Once you’re finished, you can assign team members, equipment and materials to each activity and task. In this way, you will complete a logical work plan for the project, based on the crucial parameters of work assignments, schedule and budgeting.
Work Assignment
As a project manager, it’s your job to match each deliverable, activity and task identified in your work breakdown structure with people who have the appropriate skill set and technical capabilities to complete them. Again, finding the right people for each task can be difficult, but it’s critical to your project’s success.
Even a good project manager sometimes picks the wrong person. When this happens, it’s usually best for all concerned to find a replacement, if possible. Very few people enjoy working in a job they are not qualified for. If replacing the team member is not possible, the project manager may have to carry some of the load to help that team member complete his work.
In order to compute milestones and prepare a timeline for activities and tasks, the project manager must:
Identify activities that must be finished before others are started.
Identify activities that can be done simultaneously.
Prepare a time estimate for each item listed above.
Prepare a project calendar of activities and times (excluding holidays).
List available resources and other limitations on the above calendar.
Reevaluate the project calendar, accounting for resources and limitations.
Recalculate the project calendar, comparing the project required date to the actual date.
Make adjustments to resources or limitations where possible.
Prepare a final project calendar with the adjusted completion date.x
…
Our plan for when we got to Dubai was, we’d do some very basic market research. We’d talk to some people, ask some questions, get some leads, hand out some cards and brochures. Really basic stuff, with no expectations beyond learning enough to draw up a marketing plan.
The response was kind of amazing. We weren’t offering a sales pitch, let along a proposal. But evidently there was a strong need for a service like ours. A couple of the people we met weren’t just interested; they wanted it yesterday. We kept having to remind ourselves that hey, we’re not actually an official business yet. That was a tricky position to be in.
John couldn’t believe how fast things were moving. Their very first call on a prospective client resulted in an invitation to bid on a small construction camp job in Dubai. The project manager loved the case goods that John’s current employer sold. In fact, he had just bought a new bedroom set for his wife’s birthday. John assured him he would bid the manager’s housing project with the very same line of furniture.
By the time John, Bill, and Samir headed home, they had five prospective projects to bid on, even though they didn’t exactly have a company yet.
We got home and hit the ground running. We all agreed we were on to something big, but only if we moved quicker than lightning. So that’s what we did. We must have set some kind of record for getting an export business up and running. Unfortunately, we also set a record for cutting corners and overlooking details.
That whole first year, things were so hectic that we never found time to set up a good management system for bids, jobs and projects. We were winning more than our share of the bids, managing a dozen employees, and making more money than we knew what to do with. But once things started to go wrong, they went seriously wrong.
Some mistakes were minor and easily fixed. But some were downright embarrassing, and others cost them a lot of money to remedy. For instance, they would occasionally mix up line items from different bids, resulting in disqualification for that tender. Or their pricing and delivery terms would get mixed up from one project to the next. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was when they accidentally shipped three containers of materials for a contract in Egypt to Kuwait.
Fixing that problem cost them all the profit that was in the deal and then some. Worse, the client expressed his displeasure by pointedly not inviting them to bid on the next job.
Clearly, something had to change. It was time for John, Bill and Samir to take a step back and have a serious look at Queen City Export’s business processes.
…
The Execution Phase
After completing the planning phase, it’s time to publish the project plan and scope of work. It’s also wise to hold an operations kickoff meeting to set the stage for execution.
During this meeting, all team members receive their final work assignments and the job template is unveiled. Good project managers also use this meeting to energize their team, outline meeting agendas and frequency, and detail processes and expectations for communication and collaboration.
The execution phase is where the project manager’s leadership talents become vitally important. Throughout this phase, all team members must be guided and encouraged to focus their skills, tactics and activities on meeting project goals.
During this stage, a project manager’s key duties include monitoring the work of team members and being available to answer their questions. You may also need to help with collaborative problem-solving and conflict resolution, or with sourcing additional resources.
How the project manager approaches and resolves the problems that inevitably arise during this stage has a lot to do with the project’s outcome. Encouraging prompt reporting of problems, inviting questions from team members, and facilitating open communications are always good policies.
By demonstrating personal and professional integrity, the project manager ensures that the team will do the same. Talking behind a team member’s back, gossiping, and criticizing one team member in front of another are destructive practices that your team would do well to avoid. Instead, you and your team members should practice and promote positive reinforcement.
Project Control
When most people hear the word “control,” they associate it with power and authority. In the project management world, this term has more to do with guidance, shepherding and influence. The goal is to keep the project on track by examining where it is in relation to its scope and benchmarks, and guiding team members back on course when things start to drift. The main issues to consider are:
Budget. Are project costs on track?
Timeline. Is the project on schedule?
Deliverables. Do they meet the required specifications?
To identify variances (i.e., differences between planned and actual results), determine which data you need to gather and perform the following steps:
Develop a starting point for your data.
Have a standard method for data gathering.
Ensure that the data are reliable.
Have tools in place to measure performance and identify variances.
If necessary, revise the project plan.
During this process, you must pay careful attention to the reliability of your data. Almost all projects require some sort of data-gathering during the execution phase, so data quality is extremely important.
Sometimes, projects managers discover problems during the execution phase that can’t be managed within the framework of the project plan. Unrealistic deadlines and budgeting, understaffing, and unfeasible deliverables are good examples of problems that call for project changes.
When this occurs, the project manager will have to address one or more of the following problems:
Project delays. Too little time for too much work results in deadline renegotiation.
Budget shortfalls. Too little money for the scope of the project results in renegotiated budgets.
Overly broad scope. A scope that’s too broad—either because of poor initial planning or unmanaged “creep” during the execution phase—results in reduced deliverables or increased budgets.
Usually, these issues come to the fore only after a frustrating ordeal, as team members try to make the project work under the unrealistic conditions of the original project scope. If this happens in your project, it’s best to recognize these problems as intractable under the current project plan and take corrective action as detailed above.
Vendor Management
Today more than ever, projects are likely to depend on vendors and independent contractors. Managing these contributors can be one of the most challenging aspects of bringing a project to fruition. Differences in motivation, organizational culture, and resources can make it difficult to keep things running smoothly.
The best way to avoid these problems is to evaluate prospective vendors and contractors carefully. They should have a proven track record, and they should also have similar or complementary values, goals, processes and working methods to your business.
Having identified reliable partners, the next step is to establish contractual duties and obligations. Spell out deadlines and deliverables clearly, and make sure both parties understand them. Any misunderstanding of contract terms can have huge consequences for project completion. If an activity or deliverable is essential, it must be in the contract.
This is another area where communication is key. Communication between you and your vendors and contractors should use agreed-upon channels and methods, and it must be prompt, clear, professional and effective. Unclear or unreliable communications are a huge red flag when dealing with prospective vendors and contractors.
Quality Control
Client needs and expectations are the baseline for quality control. Obviously, this requires you to understand exactly what “quality” means to each of your clients. This is not something to leave to chance; understanding your client’s expectations is basic to project management. Your organizational goal should be to set higher, aspirational quality standards in order to exceed these expectations wherever possible.
Although quality control adds extra steps and expense to project management, the cost of these steps will rarely exceed the cost of failing to conform to the client’s quality standards. Checking and double-checking quality is usually less expensive than missing a deadline or falling short of some other contractual obligation.
Regular quality reviews will identify problems before they grow, and help to assure your team, your partners and your client that high standards are being met at every stage of the process. Preparing a quality checklist for each deliverable will streamline this process, and it will also ensure that each review is measuring the same variables.
Quality checks are especially important before each deliverable is due. Anything that your client will review should be checked carefully for compliance not just with the basic contractual terms, but also with your internal quality standards. Naturally, this includes deliverables from vendors and contractors. Don’t leave these checks up to chance, or try to squeeze them in between other tasks. Instead, assign clear responsibility for them, and include them in your project schedule.
Status reporting
Throughout the project, status reports will keep stakeholders focused and aware. These reports should be made on a strict schedule (e.g., once a week), and they should be easy to read and understand. Resist the temptation to overexplain; instead, focus on the most pertinent issues and explain them briefly and clearly. Long, convoluted reports are likely to be ignored or misinterpreted. Short, direct reports are best. If you lack this skill, delegate the task to a competent team member.
Note that status reports shouldn’t replace regularly scheduled meetings.
Handling Risk and Uncertainty
A risk management program is a necessary part of an intelligent project plan. This entails taking an inventory of common risks, such as:
Inadequate facilities or equipment
Conflict or poor communication between team members
Unproven technology, or technology with a steep learning curve
Unforeseen costs
Inadequate budgeting
Inadequate contingency planning
Overly optimistic assumptions
Unclear or ambiguous contract terms or expectations
Currency fluctuations
Cultural or language barriers
Project risks can be simply defined as “unknowns.” These can be positive (opportunities) or negative (threats). Project managers should accept and benefit from opportunities, and take steps to avoid or minimize threats.
Here is a proven method for anticipating and managing common risks that threaten to derail projects:
Have all team members make a list of likely risks, and consolidate these lists into a master list.
Prioritize each risk by its probability and seriousness.
Assign each risk to the most appropriate team member, and have that person track and report on it.
Prepare a list of reasonable preventive actions should the risk in question arise.
Take appropriate action when necessary to keep the project on track.
When risks arise, document them and communicate the issues to the appropriate team members. Monitor risks as needed, and note strategies used to mitigate or resolve them.
…
Looking back, it wasn’t just the need to move quickly that messed things up for us. I think we also felt like we were on a new frontier and could make our own rules. Things moved so fast, and success seemed so close, that we got into a little bit of a cowboy mentality. Our attitude was, it’s fine for you management types to sit in your cubicle counting beans and plotting graphs. But out here in the real world, we’ve got money to make.
It was new to us, so we thought it was new, period. But it turned out that the basic laws of business weren’t going to be repealed just to keep us happy. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Dubai or Dubuque; sooner or later, a badly run business is going to hit a brick wall.
With the future of Queen City Exports at stake, John, Bill and Samir decided they needed to bring in another partner—someone who had a lot more experience in international business than they did.
Enter Tim McCarty. He came to them from a big construction company that was a former client of theirs. Tim had an MBA in international business and had worked overseas for most of his career. Most important, he knew a lot about project management.
Tim spent the first few weeks just observing the way things worked—or didn’t—at Queen City Exports and taking copious notes. After that, the partners held a conference, away from the office and all the other employees, to review Tim’s findings.
Tim laid it all out for us in sort of a “tough love” session. To an extent, he told us what we already knew, which is that we didn’t have any project management systems. What was harder to hear was that we never, ever should’ve started a business of this type and complexity without them. As he saw it, the fact that we weren’t already out of business was just dumb luck. In fact, he was shocked that we hadn’t had more and worse disasters.
It wasn’t the happiest meeting I’ve ever had. But Samir found one bright spot. He said, “Well, at least we can start from scratch and get things right the first time. We don’t have to fix a broken system, because we don’t have any system at all!”
…
Closing Out a Project
Projects come to a close in many different ways. Some are successful in meeting deadlines and deliverables. Others are terminated early because the team discovers the project will not be beneficial to the company, costs too much money, or will have to be completely restructured.
Team members often see the early termination of a project as a failure, and sometimes it is. But in other cases, the project should be terminated, because completion is not in the best interests of the business. This is a good thing, as it usually saves time and money that could be used to better effect in other areas of the company.
How do you close out a successful project?
Make sure the project has delivered everything it promised. Often, a handful of sticking points must be resolved toward the end of a project. Pushing these troublesome elements through to completion often requires spending extra time working with the responsible team members.
Make sure that the client’s acceptance of the project is formally documented. The client’s acceptance should indicate that all specifications and obligations have been met. Once this is done, send out any final invoices and schedule followup meetings, if necessary.
Analyze variances. At this stage, most effective project managers will compare budgeted results to actual results. Which targets did you meet, and how? Which did you miss, and why? Discussing these issues with your team can be a good introduction to a more general performance evaluation.
Evaluate performance. Rather than singling out individuals, have your team evaluate performance from a group perspective. Does everyone feel they performed to the best of their abilities? What would they do differently next time? What are they proudest of? What was the most important thing they learned? If you need to address problems with a specific team member’s performance, this should be done in a private meeting.
Bring your team together to celebrate the success of the project. Not only is this essential to acknowledge and reward your team for a job well done, but a formal project ending will bring a sense of closure and prepare your team to move on to the next job.
Prepare a final report for all project stakeholders. You should also prepare an archival record of the project from start to completion, including the final report and all associated documents. Successful and unsuccessful projects are valuable learning and teaching tools, so it’s wise to keep an archive of completed projects for future reference (or to use as a template for a similar project).
Project Management Tools
Many projects undertaken by small businesses can be managed with relatively simple tools. This includes writing the NxLeveL® Business Plan.
More complex projects require more complex tools. There’s often a correlation between the size of the budget and a project’s complexity, so this is one method of determining what type of tools you’ll need. Other pertinent factors include:
The number of deliverables and team members
The time budgeted for project completion
The interconnectedness and interdependence of project elements
Risks and risk management strategies
The financial impact on the company
NxLeveL® Action Plan
The NxLeveL® Action Plan, which you’ll find in your Workbook, is a simple but effective project management tool. It allows you to enter and track the following data:
Project (describe the task)
Team (choose a team leader and team members)
Resources (identify necessary equipment, materials, technology and people)
Budget (what will these resources cost?)
Budget variance (were actual costs higher or lower than budgeted costs?)
Success indicators (define your benchmarks)
Next steps (what must you do to move forward, and who is responsible?)
Schedule (estimate the timeline in weeks)
Schedule variance (was the actual time more or less than the estimated time?)
One way to prepare such a plan is to utilize a workback schedule. You do this by starting from the date on which the project should be finished, and outlining deliverables, activities and tasks in reverse order with due dates for each. Then, you can develop team assignments and budgets. Last, you can develop an appropriate timetable by plotting the important milestones on a timeline.
Gantt Charts
Gantt charts are used to plan and analyze more complex projects. They delineate the timing of activities and tasks as they occur. Gantt charts can help you plan tasks, determine when they must be carried out, allocate resources, and work out the critical path from inception to completion.
To complete a Gantt chart, take these steps:
List all activities and tasks, and provide a time estimate to completion (including whether they must be undertaken sequentially or in parallel to each other).
Develop a graph with a header measured in days, weeks or months.
Plot activities and tasks on the chart, and arrange them sequentially.
Redraw the chart to show how activities link together, demonstrating a critical path and outlining costs.
Above is a simple Gantt chart for the introduction of a new product, with a three-month timeframe that has been broken down into week-long blocks.
Critical Path Analysis (CPA) and PERT Charts
CPA is a means of plotting out and managing project activities that must be completed on time if the overall project is to meet its deadline. It’s often used to calculate the minimum time necessary to complete a complex project. CPA is also a very useful tool for schedule and resource planning.
“PERT” stands for Program Evaluation and Review Technique. This is a method of analyzing the elements—especially time—required to complete a project.
The basic premise of CPA is that you cannot start certain activities until others are finished. It includes these steps:
List all activities and milestones in the project plan, showing start date, time to completion, and whether it must be done in sequence or in parallel.
Use sequentially numbered circles for milestones, and arrows for each task that must be completed in order to reach each milestone. Write the necessary task on one side of the arrow, and the amount of time the task will take on the other.
Link activities in sequence where one must be completed before the other.
Chart sequenced activities that must be run in parallel.
Make adjustments when the critical path is not on schedule.
Project management software simplifies this process greatly by converting tables of task and sequence data into a network diagram. This diagram shows the project’s critical path and demonstrates problems that must be corrected to stay on schedule. Here’s a simplified PERT chart.
Again, the circles represent project milestones, with numbers to indicate sequential order. The arrows represent the tasks that must be done between one milestone and the next. They are labeled with letters. An associated key would normally be used to identify each task by name (e.g., A = Perform competitive analysis). The notation opposite the letters is the estimated timeframe for each task. For example, t=3 mo means that it will take an estimated three months to get from Milestone 1 to Milestone 2.
Project Management Software
Keeping track of projects is much easier if you choose the right project management software. There are hundreds of these programs on the market, ranging from systems that allow complex collaboration among virtual teams with hundreds of members all over the world, to a simple system for a couple of team members working in one location. There are also systems designed for specific fields, such as marketing or construction.
As with any software, it pays to do your research to make sure it matches your needs, your existing systems and your culture. Rather than forcing you to learn an entirely new way of doing things, good software will integrate with your current methods and make them easier and more efficient. If project management software doesn’t simplify your work and increase real-time communication and collaboration between your team members, it’s not the right program for you.
Last, and perhaps most obvious, it should be scalable. As an entrepreneur, your goal is growth; your software should help that process, not hinder it.
…
After the meeting, the first thing Tim did was install project management software and set up teams to work on current projects. These one-time teams were created specifically to respond to the relevant contractual requirements for each tender. Tim was careful to choose people who had the right skills for each project.
Going forward, each tender for bid Queen City Exports received would create a separate project team, each of which would have a single project manager.
The team would track benchmarks, deliverables and critical path with project management software that Tim had selected for its intuitive interface and seamless integration of communications, bidding, purchasing, shipping and project closeout functions.
When Queen City Exports won a bid, a new team was created—and a new project manager was assigned—to ensure that they performed to the highest standards of contract management and that each deliverable was met on time and on budget. This newly created “award team” used the same project management software and files that were initiated and utilized during the bidding phase to manage the project during the execution phase. Prizes were awarded to teams that performed in an exemplary way, and everybody enjoyed the friendly, competitive relationship between the various project teams.
I thought Tim’s new system was terrific, and so did Bill and Samir. Sure, there was a learning curve, and we had some hiccups along the way. But the great thing about Tim was, he always made it clear exactly what problems we were solving, which really motivated us to sit down, shut up and learn. He’d say, “Remember how you guys messed up that Egyptian order? Remember how mad they got at you? Well, here’s a system that will keep that from happening again.”
It wasn’t just about avoiding problems. Tim also made a lot of things easier. One time, I was wishing there was some way to handle the tender document from receipt all the way through to installation and project closeout, while measuring progress at each step along the way. And of course there was, and it was fairly simple to implement. It’s just that we’d always done things the hard way by default because we didn’t know any better.
Now, we do know better, and that means we can take on bigger projects and get them done faster and better. Right now, we’re looking at expanding into a couple of Asian markets, which could mean a lot of growth for us. That wouldn’t be possible if we hadn’t made the decision to bring in Tim and get his advice on how to run our projects. We did a lot wrong early on, but we did one thing right, and that made all the difference.
…
Conclusion
Learning to use project management tools and practices doesn’t just pay off for large-scale projects. It will also help you to improve the everyday management of your business. Many of the problems entrepreneurs commonly face are best resolved through an informed and disciplined approach typified by project management skills.
Team building and leadership are critical to completing a successful project. Finding the right people to lead and work on a team is not easy, but it will pay huge rewards.
Along with the right people, you need the right tools to run a project. These tools should integrate with other office systems, and they should be used consistently.
Good project management skills will position your business for profitable growth.

Laborepuda de delectur aspis et debitemolor ad quat dolor maiosam es endandant quis et dem samus voluptatem

Simple Gantt Chart

Tasks | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | Cost
Perform market analysis |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | $  400
Design product |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 250
Choose and test materials |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 300
Find suppliers |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 25
Develop marketing plan |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 1,800
Secure funding |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 200
Create prototype |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 750
Manufacture product |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 2,700
Advertise product |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 1,400
Introduce product |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 400

4

t=1 mo

t=3 mo

F

D

E

1

A

3

t=2 mo

5

B

C

2

| NxLeveL® TECH TIP BUSINESS RESOURCES AND THE WEB
Choosing Project Management Software Looking for project management software? Popular commercial programs include Basecamp, Clarizen, Microsoft Project, LiquidPlanner, Smartsheet and Project Insight. It’s a good idea to investigate multiple programs to see which one works best for your business. You can also try free, open-source software like GanttProject (www.ganttproject.biz), iTeamWork (www.iteamwork.com), and Task Juggler (www.taskjuggler.org). Different companies have different needs, but here are some things every business owner should consider when choosing project management software: Compatibility. The software should be compatible with or customizable to your existing recordkeeping, reporting, calendar, spreadsheet, word processing, filesharing and storage, and communications systems. Usability and learning curve. Always get team input when choosing project management tools. Software that isn’t suitable for your team probably won’t get used correctly. Look for a clean, intuitive interface; controls and functions that are similar to those of familiar programs; crystal-clear training materials and tutorials; excellent customer support; and an engaged online user community. Deployment. If team members will be working in your own facility, and you have significant security concerns, an onsite system may be preferable. If you will be collaborating remotely with teams, and security is less of a concern, you will probably want a cloud-based service. Hybrid systems are also available. Notifications. Your software should be able to send alerts to team members as needed. Alerts should not be tied to a single medium, such as an RSS feed. Look for email and text messaging capability as well. Document management. Version control ensures that all team members are working with the most recent revision of a document. Obviously, this is a crucial feature that you should be able to understand and use right from the start. Audit trails keep track of user access and updates. A good system will also archive documents and allow full-content searching. Accessibility. Do you need team members to be able to access project information from mobile devices? If so, you’ll need to make sure not just that the program has this feature, but that it will keep pace with evolving mobile technology. Also, consider platform issues. A program that’s tied to PC or Mac will be less flexible and scalable, particularly if you will be using outside contractors. Remember: This software is designed for collaboration; it makes little sense to limit access to a specific group of users.