Project-Planning | Haobin Tan

Project Planning

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Kicking off the planning phase
Setting and reaching milestones and identifying tasks
Budgeting process
Identifying and planning for risks
Documentation

Begin Planning Phase

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

- Begin planning phase
 - Benefit of project planning
 - Launching the planning phase
 - Schedule
 - Budget
 - Risk management plan
 - Project kick-off meeting
 - Attendees
 - Agenda
 - Best practice
 - Defining tasks and milestones
 - How to set milestones
 - Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Understanding the Planning Phase Components

Benefits of project planning

Planning

helps you map out the full project
helps you understand the work needed to achieve your goals
helps coordinate efforts and timelines with other teams, contractors, and vendors
gives you time to identify and prepare for risks that could impact your project
gives you the chance to brainstorm ways to mitigate or address those risks
helps you get “buy-in” from key members of the project team
demonstrates to stakeholders that the team is taking care to start the project with a detailed plan
teamwork

Launching the planning phase

Project plans don’t have to be perfect the very first time. Even if you do a great job with your plans the first time around, it’s likely that the plan will change as the project evolves.

Big things are worked out during this stage

Schedule

Project timeline, which includes the start date, the end date, and dates for events in between.
Example

Assume that you are the lead project manager for project Plant Pals, a new service that will provide top clients with desk-friendly plants. You want to launch the service by the end of the year, so the planning phase for this effort should include a number of key dates. Those dates might include when you’ll request proposals from plant vendors. They might also include the date you’ll kick off with the web designers and developers who are creating a new website for the service. It should also include important dates during the project execution phase, like when the plants need to be ready for delivery or when the new webpage design needs to be approved, and you’ll need to include the target date for the launch of the service.

Budget

Account for the total cost to complete the project.
- Needs to be broken down to determine how much has to be spent on different elements of the project.
Example

For project Plant Pals, the budget will need to include items like the cost of designing and launching a webpage, the cost of hiring your plant vendor, and much more.

Risk management plan

Searching for possible problems and planning ahead to mitigate these risks
You’ll work with your team to consider answers to questions like
- Where might the schedule get off track?
- Where might the budget exceed your estimates?
and prepare a risk management plan based on whatever you discover.
Example

Let’s go back to the Office Green example. While putting together the initial schedule, you may realize that your estimates from your developers put you way beyond your launch date. To manage that risk, you might try to reduce or adjust the project’s scope to still meet your deadline or even negotiate a new launch date with your stakeholders.

Facilitating a project kick-off meeting

Project kick-off meeting: The first meeting in which a project team comes together to ground everyone in a shared vision, gain a shared understanding of the project’s goals and scope, and to understand each person’s individual roles within the team.

Who should be invited?

The team members identified in a RACI chart chart, created during the initiation phase
- During the kickoff meeting, team members will learn more about how they’ll contribute to the project and how they’ll gain a deeper understanding of how the team will work together to reach the project’s goals.
Project stakeholders and sponsor (so that they have a chance to understand the high-level plan for the project, can share their perspective, and you can ensure that everyone is on the same page. )

Why is a kick-off meeting important?

When you’re kicking off a project, especially larger projects with multiple people involved, it’s important to get together to establish a shared vision, align on the scope, and build team rapport
An opportunity for teammates to ask questions and offer insights
A great time for you to set expectations with the team about how each person will individually contribute to the project

How to plan a kick-off meeting? (Agenda)

Brief introductions (~ 10 mins)
- Everyone in the group introduce themselves and their roles
- If time allows, share a fun fact to help build team rapport
Project background (~ 5 mins)
- How the project came to be
- Why the project matters
- Set a shared vision
Goals and scope (~ 5 mins)
- In-scope
- Out-of-scope
- Target launch date
- Milestones
Roles (~ 5 mins)
- Make sure that everyone is clear on what work they’ll be responsible for throughout the duration of the project.
Collaboration (~ 10 mins)
- Shared project tools and documents
- Communication expectations
What comes next (~ 10 mins)
- Set expectations with your teammates for what’s coming up
Question round (~ 15 mins)
- Gain clarity on meeting topics
- Hear from the team and ensure that the project is benefiting from diversity of thoughts, experiences, and ideass

Feel free to schedule as much or as little time for each agenda item according to the needs of your project and the team

Once you’ve finalized the meeting agenda, document this information into a meeting agenda template, and send it to attendees a day or two ahead of the meeting.

Best practice

Set the right time.

Choose a meeting time that works for everyone. Be mindful of time zone differences.
Set the right length.

Choose an appropriate meeting length—no more than one hour. You don’t want to waste people’s time, but you also don’t want to run out of time. Kick-off meetings work best when you first share key information and then spend any additional time on questions and team building.
Invite the right people.

Be strategic about including the appropriate people. The goal is to invite attendees who play a role in the development and execution of the project, such as all team members, stakeholders, and the project sponsor. You don’t want to leave anyone out, but you also don’t want to invite people who shouldn’t be there.
Designate a notetaker.

The discussion that takes place during the meeting is important. It is critical that you document any feedback, changes, or questions asked by attendees. If you are leading the meeting, designate someone else to take notes before the meeting starts. You can also use tools like Chorus Notetaker, Google Keep, Google Docs, or Microsoft OneNote.
Set the agenda.

To recap what we discussed in the video, a kick-off meeting agenda should generally include: introductions, the project background and purpose, project goals and scope, roles and responsibilities, the collaboration process and project tools, what comes next (expectations and action items), and time for questions and discussion.
Share the agenda.

Prior to the meeting, share the agenda with attendees via email and identify speakers for each topic. By sending the agenda in advance, everyone will have an idea of what to expect, time to prepare for anything they may need to present or discuss, and time to generate questions or ideas.
Stick to the agenda.

During meetings, discussions can sometimes go off topic or take longer than expected. As a project manager, it is your job to keep the meeting on track by redirecting discussions to the items on the agenda.
Follow up after the meeting.

After the meeting, make sure to send out a meeting summary featuring the meeting notes and any action items. In the follow-up email, also invite attendees to reach out if they have any additional questions.

Defining Tasks and Milestones

Understanding tasks andmilestones

Milestone: An important point within the project schedule that indicates progress and usually signifies the completion of a deliverable or phase of the project.

Significant checkpoints in the project
Keeping track of them helps ensure that your project is on schedule to meet its goals

Task: An activity that needs to be accomplished within a set period of time

The work of a project is broken down into many different tasks. In order to reach a milestone, you and your team must complete multiple tasks.

Example: If a milestone is completing the first draft of a report, the tasks required to get to that milestone might include hiring a writer, conducting research, and drafting different sections of the report.

The importance of setting milestones

Setting milestones gives you a clear understanding of the amount of work your project will require.

The act of setting milestones forces you to break your project down into more manageable chunks.
The further you go, the better you’ll be able to see how much work will be needed to meet the project goals.

Milestones can help keep your project on track.

When you set a milestone, you assign clear deadlines for when certain project deliverables need to be completed.
As you work through the execution phase, you can look back at these deadlines to make sure that the project is progressing at the right pace

Milestones help you uncover areas where you might need to adjust scope, timelines, or resources to meet your goals.

Reaching milestones can seriously motivate your team and illustrate real progress to your stakeholders

Milestones serve as a great check-in point to highlight your progress to stakeholders. It gives them the opportunity to see the work that’s been completed so far and lets them see everything is on track and up to their standards.

Milestones must be completed on time and in sequential order.

How to set milestones?

Evaluate the project as a whole -> It helps to refer back to your project charter to remind yourself of the project goal.
Make a list of what the team needs to do to achieve the goal
- The big items that indicate progress are your milestones, which are the key points within the project schedule that signify the completion of a project deliverable or a phase in the project.
- Smaller items, like any item that a stakeholder wouldn’t need to review, for example, are tasks. You’ll plan for these once you’ve separated them out from the milestones.
Once you’ve determined your milestones, assign each one a deadline.
- To make sure you give your team a fair amount of time to complete each of those tasks, you’ll need to space your milestones out accordingly.
- To get a good sense of timing, you can connect with teammates to discuss the tasks required to reach each milestone and get their estimates for how long these tasks will take.
- When determining deadlines for milestones, also consider the needs of the stakeholders.

Best practices

Set tasks to identify milestones
- Top-down scheduling The project manager lays out the higher-level milestones, then works to break down the effort into project tasks. The project manager works with their team to ensure that all tasks are captured.
- Bottom-up scheduling The project manager looks at all of the individual tasks that need to be completed and then rolls those tasks into manageable chunks that lead to a milestone.
Integrate milestones into your project schedule Try to set milestones for the most important events in your project. Review your project schedule and identify important moments or checkpoints.

Milestone-setting pitfalls

Don’t set too many milestones.
- When there are too many milestones, their importance is downplayed
- If milestones are too small or too specific, you may end up with too many, making the project look much bigger than it really is to your team and stakeholders.
Don’t mistake tasks for milestones.
- Remember that milestones should represent moments in time, and in order to map out how you will get to those moments, you need to assign smaller tasks to each milestone.
Don’t list your milestones and tasks separately.
- Make sure that tasks and milestones can be visualized together in one place, such as a project plan. This will help ensure that you are hitting your deadlines and milestones.

Creating a work breakdown structure

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): A tool that sorts the milestones and tasks of a project in a hierarchy, in the order they need to be completed.

It helps break down the sometimes intimidating challenges of a project into more manageable chunks.

One common way to create a WBS is to create a tree diagram of project tasks.

Example

while creating a work breakdown structure is a helpful exercise for visualizing the tasks of the project, you would NOT typically include this type of diagram in your official project plan. Instead, you’d input the tasks identified through this exercise into a spreadsheet or your chosen work management software, where you can more easily assign owners to each task.

After completing a work breakdown structure, you should have

A set of discrete project tasks that ladder up to each of your milestones You and your teammates will know exactly what needs to happen to reach your first milestone and the milestones after that.
Team members assigned to each task
- Each person should have a clear understanding of the tasks they own and the order in which they need to complete them.
- Tasks are typically assigned according to a person’s role in the project.
- To assign tasks between two or more team members with the same roles, you might take into consideration each person’s familiarity with the tasks at hand.
- When assigning tasks, you should also consider each teammate’s workload and keep everyone’s workloads balanced. Make sure that a single teammate isn’t assigned more work than others.

Steps to build a WBS

Start with the high-level, overarching project picture. Brainstorm with your team to list the major deliverables and milestones.
Identify the tasks that need to be performed in order to meet those milestones.
Examine those tasks and break them down further into sub-tasks.

For best practices for developing a WBS, check out: How to Create a Work Breakdown Structure and Why You Should.

Build Project Plan

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

- Build project plan
 - Project plan components
 - Tasks
 - Milestones
 - People
 - Documentation
 - Time
 - Scope and goals
 - Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
 - Budget
 - Management plans
 - Using estimation to set timeline
 - Making realistic time estimates
 - Time estimation
 - Effort estimation
 - Overcoming the planning fallacy
 - Capacity planning and critical path
 - Capacity
 - Capacity planning
 - Create a critical plan
 - Capture all tasks
 - Set dependencies
 - Create a network diagram
 - Make time estimates
 - Find the critical path
 - Forward pass
 - Backward pass
 - Getting accurate time estimates from team
 - Ask the right questions
 - Negotiate effectively
 - Practicing empathy
 - Use tools to build a project plan
 - Gantt diagram
 - Best practices
 - Carefully review deliverables, milestones, and tasks
 - Give yourself time to plan
 - Recognizing and planning for the inevitable
 - Staying curious
 - Championing your plan
 - Kanban board

Building a Project Plan

Components of a project plan

At the center of the project plan: project schedule

Most project plans contain five basic elements

Tasks
Milestones
People
- Each team member should understand their role and the tasks they’re responsible for completing.
- Make sure that everyone is clear on their assigned tasks frees you up to focus on managing the project and creates a sense of personal responsibility for members of the team
Documentation
- RACI chart
- Charter, which clearly defines the project and outlines the details needed to reach your goals
- Documents like your budget and risk management plan.
Time

In addition, you should also include the following components in your project plan:

Scope and goals (captured initially in your project charter)
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
- Breaks the work down into more manageable pieces
- The tasks should be visible in one place with clear descriptions, owners, and due dates. -> This will allow you and your team to understand who is responsible for which tasks and when each task is supposed to be completed.
Budget
Management plans
- E.g., change management plan, risk management plan, and communication plan

Using Estimation to Set Project Timelines

Making realistic time estimates

Time estimation: A prediction of the total amount of time required to complete a task.

Effort estimation: A a prediction of the amount and difficulty of active work required to complete a task.

Difference between effort and time estimation:

Effort quantifies the amount of time it will take a person to complete work on a task
Time refers to the overall duration of the task from start to finish. That includes inactive time.

Unrealistic effort estimates happen when you’ve underestimate the amount of time it’ll take to complete a task!

How to avoid making unrealistic or inaccurate effort estimates?

Communicate with teammates assigned to each task
- Your teammates will have the most realistic understanding of the amount of work required to complete a task and should be able to provide you with the best estimate.
Ask follow-up questions, or even gently push back on their estimate, as needed.
Add buffer in your time schedule
- Buffer: Extra time added to the end of a task or a project to account for unexpected slowdowns or delays in work progress.
  - Task buffer: Extra time tacked on to a specific task
    - Should be used primarily for tasks that are out of the project team’s control
    - Should be used more sparingly for tasks within the project team’s control
  - Project buffer: Extra time to the overall project schedule
    - You can add extra time as a buffer towards the end of your project schedule. Then you can use that extra time as needed throughout the project.

Key takeaway

Be realistic when estimating time and effort for a project.
Take the time to carefully evaluate potential risks and the impact on the work, and talk to your team members about these challenges.
Don’t be afraid to escalate potential concerns to management.
Optimism is a trait of a great project manager and leader, but it can adversely affect your projects when it comes to time estimation.

Overcoming the planning fallacy

The planning fallacy describes our tendency to underestimate the amount of time it will take to complete a task, as well as the costs and risks associated with that task, due to optimism bias. Optimism bias is when a person believes that they are less likely to experience a negative event.

The planning fallacy can happen to anyone, regardless of whether or not they have experience completing similar tasks. In project management, you may be brand new to this kind of project or you may have managed tons of similar projects before, you still need to be careful not to underestimate the time it will take to complete each task on this particular project.

As a project manager, you should aim to balance being aware of the planning fallacy with keeping an optimistic attitude about the project, even as things change. Be optimistically realistic: Push for the best outcomes while planning for the proper time it may take to accomplish each task.

Capacity planning and the critical path

Capacity: The amount of work that the people or resources assigned to the project can reasonably complete in a set period of time.

Capacity planning: The act of allocating people and resources to project tasks, and determining whether or not you have the necessary resources required to complete the work on time.

Critical path: The list of project milestones that you must reach in order to meet the project goal on schedule, as well as the mandatory tasks that contribute to the completion of each milestone.

Includes the bare minimum number of tasks and milestones you need to reach your project goal.

Example

Tasks on the critical path for launching Project Plant Pals might include hiring plant vendors, developing a new website, and fulfilling deliveries. A task like adding flowers to your product lineup is nice to have, but might not have much impact on the overall success of your project because this task isn’t crucial to your launch. These tasks aren’t part of the critical path.

To determine the critical path of a project

Start by listing all the tasks required to complete the project and the milestones they feed into, which is a perfect time to think back to your work breakdown structure (WBS)
Determine which tasks on the list absolutely can’t begin until another task is complete (“dependency”)
Work with your team to make time estimates for each task, and map each task from start to finish. The longest path is your critical path.

Factors that can impact capacity and capacity planning

Identify which task can happen in parallel (happen at the same time as other tasks) and which can happen sequentially (must happen in a specific order)

Example

A sequential task for your Plant Pals project may include needing budget approval before hiring a vendor.

And two parallel tasks might include hiring delivery drivers and the development of a website. These tasks have no relationship to one another, as they focus on different portions of the project, and can be completed by different members of the team. That means that one task can begin even if the other task hasn’t been completed, and so the work to complete these tasks can happen at the same time.

Determine which project tasks have a fixed start date
Determine which project tasks have an earliest start date
Identify if a task has float (a.k.a. slack)
- Float: The amount of time you can wait to begin a task before it impacts the project schedule and threatens the project outcome
- These are high priority tasks that have low to no wiggle room
- Task on the critical path should have ZERO float

Why the critical path is critical?

The critical path

Helps you determine the essential tasks that need to be completed on your project to meet your end goal and how long each task will take
Provides a quick reference for critical tasks by revealing which tasks will impact your project completion date negatively if their scheduled finish dates are late or missed
Helps you define the resources you need, your project baselines, and any flexibility you have in the schedule

Creating a critical path

You can think of the critical path as a framework that tells you, the project manager, where you are, where you are headed, and when you will get there.

General steps for creating a critical path that are applicable to most projects

Capture all tasks
- Use the key planning documents you have created (such as WBS)
- Main goal: make sure that you aren’t missing a key piece of work that is required to complete your project.
- Focus on the essential, “need to do” tasks, rather than the “nice to do” tasks that aren’t essential for the completion of the project.
Set dependencies
- Figure out which tasks must be completed before other tasks can start
- Ask:
  - Which task needs to take place before this task?
  - Which task can be finished at the same time as this task?
  - Which task needs to happen right after this task?
Create a network diagram
- The network diagram help visualize
  - The path of the work from the start of the project (excavation) to the end of the project (flooring)
  - Which tasks can be performed in parallel and in sequence
  - Which non-essential tasks are NOT on the critical path
Example: building the structure of a house
Make time estimates
- After determining tasks and dependencies, consult key stakeholders to get accurate time estimates for each task
- Time estimates can be reviewed and updated throughout the project, as necessary.
Find the critical path
- Add up the durations for all of your “essential” tasks and calculate the longest possible path, you can determine your critical path
- Only include the tasks that, if they go unfinished, will impact the project’s finish date
- Two common approaches
  - Forward pass
    - Start at the beginning of your project task list and add up the duration of the tasks on the critical path to the end of your project.
    - When using this approach, start with the first task you have identified that needs to be completed before anything else can start.
  - Backward pass
    - Start with the final task or milestone and move backwards through your schedule to determine the shortest path to completion.
    - When there is a hard deadline, working backwards can help you determine which tasks are actually critical.
    - You may be able to cut some tasks—or complete them later—in order to meet your deadline.

Read more about each of these concepts and critical path calculation methods in the following articles:

Getting accurate time estimates from your team

Use soft skills to gather accurate estimates from your teammates

Asking the right questions

Ask effective, open-ended questions that lead to the answers you’re seeking
- Open-ended question: A question that cannot be answered with a yes or a no.
- The answer provides the relevant details of what you need to know.
Example

You’ve discussed the design of the new website with your web designer, and you’d like to know how long it will take them to mock up designs for your review.

Asking question like, “Can you complete the mock-ups in one week?” is a closed-ended question and might elicit a simple yes or no answer, which doesn’t tell you much about the task of designing a website or about your teammate’s working style.

You might ask the web designer something like, “How long does it typically take you to mock up a website design like this one?” This is an open-ended question and is more likely to elicit a more detailed response. From there, you can ask follow up questions like, “how complex are the steps to complete this task?” “What are the risks associated with this task?” And, “when do you think you can have this ready?”
By asking your teammates effective, open-ended questions about their assigned tasks, you can learn more about how they work and what they do. As you have more of these conversations, you will develop a better sense of your teammates roles and their tasks, and you will be able to rely less on your team to make accurate estimates.

Negotiating effectively

Can help you influence a team member to make your project their priority, by collaborating to find an outcome that works for everyone.
Example

Imagine that the website designer estimates it will take them two weeks to mock up the website design for review. But perhaps you were hoping that the estimate might be closer to one week. To arrive at an estimate that works for both you and the designer, you might gently challenge the estimate by asking follow-up questions. Perhaps you’d ask if their estimate includes mocking up designs for multiple pages. If so, you might ask if the designer is able to share one or two pages with you sooner than their proposed deadline.
By negotiating effectively with your teammates, you can create a sense of shared ownership over the project outcomes and create a schedule that aligns with everyone’s workload.

Practicing empathy

Empathy: A person’s ability to relate to the thoughts and feelings of others
Practicing empathy at work can be a very effective way to build trust with your team
- When you’re discussing estimates with the team, you might practice empathy by asking each person about their workload, including work outside of your project and the overall work-life balance.
- You might also ask if they’ve scheduled vacation or leave during the duration of the project, or if there are crucial holidays in which they won’t be working
This can help you avoid assigning tasks when teammates are unable to complete them on time.

Utilizing Tools to Build a Project Plan

Developing a project schedule

An anchor of a good project plan is a clear schedule containing all the tasks of a project, their owners, and when they need to be completed. Once you have your project schedule, you can build a solid plan around that schedule using tools like spreadsheets and Asana.

Gantt chart: A horizontal bar chart that maps out a project schedule.

A highly visual representation of a projects tasks with clear breakdowns of who’s responsible for the work and when those tasks are due
Almost like calendars: Gantt charts feature the start and end dates of each task, and the bars align with how much time is devoted to each of those tasks.

Example:

A straightforward way to make a Gantt chart is using the spreadsheet.

Organize your left columns by items like task title, task owner, start date, due date, duration, and percent of task complete. Include relevant information in the rows below, organized by start date.
On the right side of your sheet, you’ll order your columns by the weeks estimated to complete the project from start to finish. In the rows below that, you’ll include bars representing the dates when certain tasks will take place.

Project plan best practices

Carefully review deliverables, milestones, and tasks

During the initiation phase, you’ll recall that you created a project charter with important information regarding your project, like your goal, scope, and deliverables. When a project enters the planning phase, your plans become more granular.

You’ll need to break down every deliverable into milestones and tasks to ensure that you and your team have a clear picture of what needs to be done to meet your project’s goals. Your plan revolves around completing each and every tiny task, so you should take your time to get this piece right.

Give yourself time to plan

Using the strategies like effort estimation and capacity planning can help you and your team get a realistic sense of how long the project will take and when you’ll be able to hit your milestones.
It’s also important to allow for buffer time, since projects rarely go exactly as planned.

Recognizing and planning for the inevitable: things will go wrong

Buffer is a helpful tool for mitigating issues related to slowdowns in progress

Staying curious

It’s so important to sit down with your teammates during a planning phase and ask lots and lots of questions
To keep the project running smoothly, it’s also important to understand the expectations, priorities, risk assessments, and communication styles of your stakeholders and vendors.

Championing your plan

To achieve buy-in from your teammates and stakeholders on your project plan, champion it! Tell your team why it benefits them to stay on top of the plan. By doing so, you may influence your teammates to stay on track and update the plan regularly.

Creating a project plan: Tools and templates

Regardless of what tool you use, be sure to include this key information:

Task ID numbers or task names You might end up with dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of tasks in a project. Assigning a task ID or name makes it easy to find and reference a task when communicating with team members and stakeholders.
Task durations A task duration is the amount of time you estimate that task should take. Adding task durations to your project plan helps you organize and prioritize the tasks in the project to help ensure you hit your goal on time.
Start and finish dates Including start and finish dates for each task helps you track whether you are progressing on time or not.
Who is responsible for what Including each team member’s role and responsibilities helps promote clarity and efficiency. As a best practice, assign an owner to each task, as well.

Using a spreadsheet to build a project plan

Spreadsheets are an excellent tool to use for project plans, particularly for projects that are less complex and that have a clear assignment of tasks.

Templates:

Smartsheet: Project Plan Templates for Microsoft Word
Smartsheet: Project Plan Templates for Google Sheets
Google Project Plan Timeline Template](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TauRTFipsWDWGqaw6tmqJeknKhVI5IjR5jJvBfVzfGw/template/preview)
Microsoft Gantt Chart Template

Kanban boards

Kanban boards are a visual tool used to manage tasks and workflows. Kanban boards can be created on whiteboards, magnetic boards, poster boards, computer programs, and more. Tasks associated with the project are written on cards. These cards are placed in columns, which represent the progress made.

Although Kanban boards are useful for all kinds of projects, they are typically most suitable for project teams working in an Agile project management approach.

Purposes

Give a quick visual understanding of work details and provide critical task information.
Facilitate handoffs between stakeholders, such as between development and testing resources or between team members who work on related tasks.
Help with capturing metrics and improving workflows.

Using a Kanban board

Before creating a board, it is best practice to gather the necessary information and lay out key elements, such as tasks, status, dates, and durations.

Example

Each colored rectangle is associated with a task. The tasks are represented horizontally across the effort timeline.
Each column represents where the task is in relation to its completion.
- So as a task is started, it will move from to do, to in progress.
- When the project is almost ready to be released or complete, it will move to testing.
- When it is tested and approved, it will move to done.

Creating cards

When using physical cards, teams often use both sides. Here is what both sides of the card should include:

Front

Title and unique identifier: Make sure you have a quick reference for tasks and ID numbers.
Description of work: Briefly describe the task to be accomplished. Remember that this is intended to be captured on something no larger than an index card.
Estimation of effort: Estimate the amount of work it will take to complete the task. For example, you can write “small,” “medium,” or “large” to indicate the level of effort you think that task will involve.
Who is assigned to the task: Indicate who is responsible for completing the task; ideally, one person per card.

Back

Start date: Include the start date of the task for use in metrics, tracking, and ensuring that your time estimate is accurate.
Blocked days: Indicate which days your task may be halted. A task can become blocked if it can’t continue to be worked on. For example, if you were supposed to receive a deliverable and it hasn’t been delivered yet, then your day may be blocked for this particular task.
Finish date: As with any plan, it is important to track when the task is supposed to be finished. This allows you to ensure that your project is still on track to reach the end goal.

Manage Budget Procurement

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Understanding Project Budgets

The importance of budget setting

Project budget: The estimated monetary resources needed to achieve the project’s goals and objectives.

When reviewing a project budget, you need to consider all of the potential and projected costs needed to complete the project.

You break the budget down by milestones and list activities and tasks alongside their associated costs. -> This ensures that you calculate the correct expenses for a particular period of time.
- This is considered a forecast, a cost estimate or a prediction over a period of time
You’ll frequently review your project budget and it will evolve throughout the project life cycle.
- These budgets usually contain items such as labor, operating costs and costs associated with obtaining necessary materials like hardware, software, or equipment.

The importance of a project budget focuses on more than just saving money. In project management, a budget is

a deliverable
a success metric
a tool to communicate exactly what is needed and when it is needed with stakeholders

Budget creation takes place in the initiation phase of your project. Keep in mind that the budget will be adjusted as needed throughout the lifecycle of the project. Depending on your role in the company, you won’t always be the sole creator of the budget.

The budgeting process usually happens in conjunction with the scheduling process, because the steps of the scheduling process are highly dependent on the costs.

Budgeting is one of the most important aspects of project management. When you start, to stay on budget is one of the trickiest tasks.

It’s important not to go over budget and cost the company extra money, and it’s equally important not to be under budget either since that might affect the company’s budget for the next year.
A project manager must show the requested amount of money was used in order to secure enough budget for future projects.

Key components of a project budget

When creating a budget, a project manager must account for

Understanding stakeholder needs

Budgeting for surplus expenses

Maintaining adaptability

Reviewing and reforecasting throughout the entire project

As your project continues along, you’ll have to review your budget and sometimes reforecast, which means creating a separate revised budget based on how your project is tracking. Keeping on top of the budget will help you stay organized, and reforecasting is a way to recalibrate the budget, if necessary.

There are several factors to consider when creating a budget

Resource cost rate

Example: labor, tools equipment, materialsm and software.

You’ll want to ask yourself: how much will each of these resources cost the company?

Reserve analysis

Performing a reserve analysis will help you account for any buffer funds you may need. A reserve analysis is a method to check for remaining project resources. In performing a reserve analysis, you’ll review all potential risks to your project and determine if you need to add buffer funds. These funds are necessary because new costs that you didn’t originally foresee will arise.

Contingency budget

Money that is included to cover potentially unforeseen events that aren’t accounted for in a cost estimate
Purpose: Compensate for the uncertainty that occurs in cost and time estimates, as well as unpredictable risk exposure

Cost of quality

All of the costs that are incurred to prevent issues with products, processes, or tasks
Includes prevention costs, appraisal costs, internal failure costs, and external failure costs

Project budgeting 101

Best practices

Reference historical data Your project may be similar to a previous project your organization has worked on. It is important to review how that project’s budget was handled, find out what went well, and learn from any previous mistakes.
Utilize your team, mentors, or manager Get into the habit of asking for your team to double check your work to give you additional sets of eyes on your documents.
Time-phase your budget Time-phased budgeting allows you to allocate costs for project tasks over the projected timeline in which those expenses are planned to take place. By looking at your tasks against a timeline, you can track and compare planned versus actual costs over time and manage changes to your budget as necessary.
Check, check, and double check Make sure that your budget is accurate and error-free. Your budget will likely require approval from another department, such as finance or senior management, so do your best to ensure that it is as straightforward to understand as possible and that all of your calculations are correct.

Categorize different types of costs

Categorize different types of costs in your budget so that you can ensure you are meeting the requirements of your organization and customer.

Direct costs: Costs for items that are necessary in order to complete your project. These costs can include:
- Wages and salaries of employees and contractors
- Materials costs
- Equipment rental costs
- Software licenses
- Project-related travel and transportation costs
- Staff training
Indirect costs: Costs for items which do NOT directly lead to the completion of your project but are still essential for the project team to do their work. They are also referred to as overhead costs. These costs can include:
- Administrative costs
- Utilities
- Insurance
- General office equipment
- Security

Develop a baseline budget

A baseline budget is an estimate of project costs that you start with at the beginning of your project.
Once you have created a budget for your project and gotten it approved, you should publish this baseline and use it to compare against actual performance progress.
It is important to continually monitor your project budget and make changes if necessary. Be aware that budget updates can require the same approvals as your initial budget.
You should “re-baseline” your budget if you make significant changes.
- Re-baselining refers to when you update or modify a project’s baseline as a result of any approved change to the schedule, cost, or deliverable content.

Perform a reserve analysis

Review all potential risks to your project and determine if you need to add buffer funds (a.k.a. contingency budget). These funds are necessary because new costs that you did not expect are likely to happen throughout the project.
Account for cost of quality in your overall project budget
- The cost of quality refers to all of the costs that are incurred to deliver a quality product or service, which can extend beyond material resources. This includes addressing issues with products, processes, or tasks, along with internal and external failure costs.

Managing a Project Budget

Creating a project budget

Research historical data

You can find out what past project managers did right and wrong.
The more experienced you become as a project manager, the more historical data you will have to draw upon, and the better your estimations will be.

Leverage experts

Gather experts’ insights to do something more effectively.
- Reaching out to colleagues who worked on a similar project in the past will be a great resource for you as an entry-level project manager.
- If you’re asking someone outside of your company for advice, be sure to avoid sharing any confidential company information with them.

Bottom up

Think about all the parts of a project from the beginning to the end, including making a list of every material, resource, contract worker, or anything that comes with an associated cost, and adding all of that together.
You should also ask the vendors you are thinking of working with for quotes, so you can get a rough estimate of how much their work will cost.

Confirm accuraccy

After you’ve created your budget with these resources, you’ll want to double-check everything to confirm accuracy.

Set baseline

Your baseline is the dollar amount that you’ll use to measure against, to find out if you’re on track or not, and to measure the success of your project. Once you’ve set your baseline, you’ll have to revisit that number and adjust it to match where the project is currently. Making adjustments in real-time is something you have to do a lot as a project manager.

Account for buffers and reserves

You’ll need to factor in unexpected costs that may come up later on. Be sure to leave yourself with some buffer room.
A standard practice is to choose 5% of the overall project budget as buffer. Depending upon how much detail you know about the project already, you can raise or lower your percentage for reserves.
You’ll want to include a planned cost versus actual cost column too. This way, you can keep track of your cost every step of the way. Your goal is to get your estimated cost as close to the final cost as possible.

Templates

Microsoft Excel Budget Templates
Microsoft Excel Website Budget Template (applicable to any project)
Google Sheets Budget Template

Maintaining a project budget

Monitoring the budget is crucial for a project manager to enforce accountability in terms of spending.

Milestones are a great opportunity to re-review the budget to identify if anything needs to be reset or revisited throughout the project.

You may have agreed in your contract that you get paid at certain milestones rather than at the end of the project.

Fixed contracts are usually paid for when certain milestones are reached.
Time and materials’ contracts are usually paid for monthly based on the hours worked and other fees associated with the work, like travel and meals.

Cost control: A practice where a project manager identifies factors that might impact their budget and then creates effective actions to minimize variances.

It is much better to be proactive with your budget than to be reactive with your budget.
- In order to control costs, you should establish a sign-off plan and inform the appropriate stakeholders of any changes that occur.
  - You’ll have to ask yourself which stakeholders or sponsor will be approving the contractor or vendor time sheets.
  - You’ll also need to make sure any changes within the project budget are agreed upon.
Manage changes as they’re made
Accept the budget misses will happen
- It’s your job to bring the expected cost overruns within acceptable limits. Before the project starts, collaborate with the project sponsors and key stakeholders to determine an acceptable limit.
Adequately account for, adapt, and manage your budget with that risk in mind

Overcoming budgeting challenges

Budget pre-allocation

Budget pre-allocation: budget is already set before you even start the project.

If you are given a pre-allocated budget

Work with your customer to set expectations on scope and deliverables within the allocated budget. To deliver a great product within your allocated budget will require detailed planning.
A pre-allocated budget should also be routinely monitored to ensure the amounts you have budgeted are sufficient to meet your costs.
- Be sure to carefully track all expenses in your budget.
- Regularly match these expenses against your pre-allocated budget to ensure you have sufficient funds for the remainder of your project.

Inaccurately calculating TCO

Total cost of ownership (TCO) takes into account multiple elements that contribute to the cost of an item. It factors in the expenses associated with a product or service over its lifetime, rather than just upfront costs.

Example

Let’s say you buy a vehicle for a certain price, but then you also pay for things related to the vehicle, such as license fees, registration fees, and maintenance. If you add all of this up, you have your TCO for that vehicle. So now that you know what your TCO is, you may consider those fees before you buy your next vehicle. For example, you might opt for a vehicle with fewer maintenance requirements than one that requires more frequent service, since you know that will save you money overall.

If you have a service requirement for a software technology that your team is using, for example, then it is important to budget for the costs of maintenance for that service. Additional types of costs you may need to account for when calculating TCO include warranties, supplies, required add-on costs, and upgrade costs.

Scope creep

Scope creep is when changes, growth, and other factors affect the project’s scope at any point after the project begins. Scope creep causes additional work that wasn’t planned for, so scope creep can also impact your budget.

There are several factors that can lead to scope creep, such as:

A vague Statement of Work (SoW)
Conversations and agreements about the project that aren’t officially documented
Unattainable timeframes and deadlines
Last-minute asks from priority stakeholders

Addressing these factors as you plan your project can help prevent scope creep from impacting your budget.

Budgeting terms

Cash flow

Cash flow: inflow and outflow of cash on your project

Cash that comes into your project allows you to maintain and compensate resources and pay invoices for materials or outside services.

In some cases, a project may start out with all of the cash it will receive until the end. If this is the case, it is important to monitor your outflow to ensure that you have enough funding to complete the project.

Monitoring cash flow allows you to have a reference point for your project’s health.

CAPEX and OPEX

Organizations have a number of different types of expenses. These expenses can be organized into different categories. Two of the most common are

CAPEX (capital expenses)

An organization’s major, long-term, upfront expenses, such as buildings, equipment, and vehicles. They are generally for assets that the company will own and keep. The company incurs these expenses because they believe they will create a benefit for the company in the future.
OPEX (operating expenses) Short-term expenses that are required for the day-to-day tasks involved in running the company, such as wages, rent, and utilities. They are often recurring.

You may need to account for both OPEX and CAPEX on your projects. It’s a good idea to talk to your finance or accounting department when you start working on your project budget to see how they determine the difference between OPEX and CAPEX. This will guide you in properly allocating capital and operating expenses for your projects.

Contingency reserves

One way to prepare for unplanned costs is by using contingency reserves. Contingency reserves are funds added to the estimated project cost to cover identified risks. These are also referred to as buffers.

To determine the amount of your contingency reserves, you will need to go through the risk management process and identify the risks that are most likely to occur.

Contingency reserves can also be used to cover areas where actual costs turn out to be higher than estimated costs.

Management reserves

While contingency reserves are used to cover the costs of identified risks, management reserves are used to cover the costs of unidentified risks.

For example, if you were managing a construction project and a meteor hit your machinery, you could use management reserves to cover the costs of the damage.

Contingency reserves are an estimated amount, whereas management reserves are generally a percentage of the total cost of the project. To determine a project’s management reserves, you can estimate a percentage of the budget to set aside. This estimate is typically between 5–10%, but the amount is based on the complexity of the project. A project with a more complex scope may require higher management reserves. Note that the project manager will generally need approval from the project sponsor in order to use management reserves.

Introduction to Procurement

Understanding procurement

Procurement: Obtaining all of the materials, services, and supplies required to complete the project

Vendors: Vendors are individuals or businesses who provide essential goods and services

Vendor management: procurement for indivduals or business

Covers the activities included in researching and sourcing vendors
Is often a matter of sourcing for a specific service or talent and then managing that relationship
- Sourcing talent: Includes researching and obtaining estimated costs from different partner companies you may use on a project
Entails
- Sourcing vendors
- Getting quotes for their work
- Deciphering which vendors will best fulfill your needs
- Negotiating their contracts
- Setting deadlines for them
- Evaluating performance
- Ensuring payments are made
- Familiarizing yourself with regulations

Not every project will require vendors or contractors, and so every project won’t require vendor management.

The procurement process

General steps of procurement process

1. Initiating: planning what you need to meet your project goals

The planning process of defining what help you may need outside of your current resources to hit the project goals. In this step, you will also make a case for getting extra resources via the procurement process.

💡 Tips

Figure out which materials, resources, and supplies you will need to get the job done
- Decide which items will be internally procured and which items will be externally outsourced
Once you’ve decided which items you need to outsource, compare each of those items specifications, components, quality measurements, standards, and characteristics with your project’s requirements.
- You may find that some of the items have features you don’t need. If you can identify those unnecessary features, you will know exactly what you want and don’t want in an item, possibly reducing your total cost.

2. Selecting: deciding which suppliers and vendors to use

Entails deciding what supplies you need and which vendors you’ll go through.

After you’ve identified your preferred vendors and suppliers, interview them to learn more about their products and services. If possible, make site visits to see exactly how each vendor runs their business in person.

3. Contract writing: developing, reviewing, and signing contracts

Requires excellent attention to detail, pay close attention to the inclusions and exclusions in the vendor’s offer.
- There may be some items included in the vendor’s price that you can provide in-house at low or no additional cost.
Sometimes, the vendor may write the contract. In this case, checking carefully for clarity and accuracy ensures that you know exactly what you are getting from the vendor.
Whether the contract is written by you or by the vendor, you will almost always want to consult with a legal and compliance team to ensure that everything in the contract is ethical and legal.

4. Control: making payments and maintaining and ensuring quality

Make payments, set up logistics and requirements to maintain quality, and ensure the service agreement is being met.

💡 Tips

Periodically review the performance and quality of each vendor
When communicating with vendors, remain professional but firm to ensure that all project requirements are being fulfilled and that all major milestones are being met on time and at cost.
Building and maintaining a good relationship with your vendors benefits the team and the overall project.
Taking certain measures, like conducting regular check-in meetings, will ensure that the work is being completed according to plan.

5. Completing: measuring your success

Measure the success of the procurement.

Ask yourself

Were the materials created good quality?
Were there any issues with labor contracts?
How were your relationships with vendors?

During this step, it is also important to document any lessons learned.

Different type of procurement

Agile
- More collaborative with both the project team and the end supplier than traditional approaches
- Emphasis on the relationship between these parties
- Project team plays a larger role in identifying what needs to be procured
- Tends to have a living contract that can be adapted based on the evaluation of the project
  - The team reviews the project or deliverables on a reoccurring basis and consistently addresses feedback.
  - The contract may need to be renegotiated at multiple points during the project. -> It is very important to have a positive relationship with the procurement supplier.
Traditional
- Focus on standard contracts with clear terms and deliverables
- Project manager may be responsible for end-to-end procurement instead of the entire team providing input
- The contracts may feature lengthy and extensive documentation that includes fixed requirements and comprehensive detail of the services and deliverables.
  - While this may appear more rigid, the benefit is you’ve outlined clearer workstreams and deadlines. -> You’re much more protected from unforeseen circumstances and may not have to pay for unpredictable changes.
- The negotiation process can be a little bit trickier. You won’t necessarily have the room to renegotiate contracts if something changes, so you may have to start the whole process over again. That’s why being as detailed as possible and spending more time in the negotiation phase is incredibly important in a more traditional project management approach

Common procurement documentation

Phase	Documentation
Initiating	Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA)
Selecting	Request for Proposal (RFP)
Contracting	Statement of Work (SOW)

Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA)

It’s best practice to ask external contract workers to sign an NDA
Purpose: Keep confidential information within the organization

Request for Proposal (RFP)

A document that outlines the details and requirements of an organization’s project to be passed on to vendors
RFPs are used to solicit bids from vendors so that you can then select which vendor might be the best for your project.
Typically includes an overview of the project, the desired outcomes, and goals, budget, deadlines, milestones, and contact information so each vendor can get back to you with a detailed proposal of how they plan to tackle the job.
When creating an RFP, make sure to add the following headers to your document
- Overview
  - What is the purpose of this project?
  - What problems will it solve?
  - What new doors will it open for the company?
  - Your goals.
  - What are some measurable results you can aim to achieve throughout the process?
- Scope of work
  - What are the specifics of the project?
  - How are you going to achieve those goals and make sure the project launches successfully?
- Milestones
- Submission requirements, e.g., “Please submit the RFP as a presentation and include three prototypes”. And the questions you’d like the vendor to answer as part of the process.

Statement of Work (SOW)

A document that clearly lays out the products and services a vendor or contractor will provide for the organization.
Provides a description of the contractor’s needs and requirements to properly perform the agreed-upon services.
An SOW is sent after the vendor is selected and evolves as the project goes on.

Creating a Statement of Work (SOW)

Although the SoW covers the customer’s needs, it’s equally as important to include the organization’s needs and the vendor’s needs too. It’s critical that all parties involved understand what is expected from each of them in order to deliver the best possible products or services.

The project manager is tasked with developing the SoW but often asks for input from subject matter experts or SMEs for technical expertise that the project manager may not have. Your organization’s legal advisors will review this document with you and may even be crafting it alongside you.

Steps to create a SOW

Include page headers with your company name, project, and creation date on them
At the top of the page, include important stakeholders like yourself as the project manager and the name of the sponsor
Construct a table for revisions
Create a purpose section where you will go into detail about exactly what the desired outcomes are. Make sure to include a section regarding your target audience and make sure it’s inclusive of everyone.
Scope section: include what the service entails
Mention what’s out-of-scope
Deliverable section: you’ll want a concise statement about what your project will deliver.
Include milestones
Add terms and conditions and any other disclaimers
Payment terms: outlines when your suppliers need to be paid

Navigating Procurement Challenges

Obtaining procurement support

The procurement process doesn’t end after you’ve selected vendors and signed contracts. You’ll use performance trackers and meetings like quarterly business reviews to track and evaluate overall performance to ensure that both parties are living up to their initial agreement. When there are contracts and paperwork with terminology that you may not be familiar with, you will enlist the help of a legal team. Depending on the company size, the legal situation may vary.

There will nearly always be laws in place that you’ll need to follow around topics like fair and ethical trade.

A team of people in the ethics and compliance departments are tasked with ensuring that the day to day operations are adhering to their value statement and governmental policies.
These team members will also be tasked with duties like working to prevent discrimination and making sure that the company is practicing adequate corporate social responsibility.

You’ll all need to be aware of any pertinent meetings regarding legal or compliance issues, and you as a project manager will have to remind the team about when those meetings are being held.

Ethics in the procurement process

Project managers have a big job when deciphering whether or not every aspect of their project is sourced ethically. It helps if the project manager thoroughly oversees the project to make sure the safety, economic, and environmental ethical risks are mitigated.

Steps to safeguard ethical procurement

Understand Legal and Ethical Requirements:
- Familiarize yourself with your business’s legal obligations.
- Refer to professional codes of ethics, such as PMI’s Code of Ethics, emphasizing honesty, responsibility, respect, and fairness.
Conduct Thorough Research:
- Assess vendors’ safety, economic, and environmental risks.
- Evaluate labor practices, ensuring fair treatment, good conditions, and adequate compensation.
Consult Experts When Needed:
- Seek advice from subject matter experts (e.g., legal team) when in doubt.
- Stay informed about international regulations, particularly in cross-border procurement.
Monitor Procurement Risks:
- Be vigilant about risks like bribery, corruption, or unethical sole-supplier sourcing.
- Justify sole-supplier decisions transparently.
Engage Ethically with Government Entities:
- Adhere to stricter regulations when working with state-owned entities or officials.
Evaluate Project Ethics During Initiation:
- Ensure the project aligns with your business’s and governmental ethical standards.
- Assess labor sourcing and environmental ethics early.
Scrutinize Suppliers Before Contracting:
- Vet suppliers for ethical practices and fair pricing.
- Gain a complete understanding of the supply chain.
Maintain Oversight Post-Contract:
- Conduct audits, enforce quality control, and review invoices to ensure compliance.
- Manage vendor relationships and monitor deliverables.
Rely on Judgement and Team Support:
- Trust your instincts—if something feels wrong, investigate.
- Collaborate with your legal team or stakeholders for guidance when necessary.

Avoiding ethical traps in procurement

Ethical trap: An ethical dilemma that causes us to make a certain decision without regard for our ethical principles.

Common ethical traps

Corruption and bribery
- When a vendor seeks to reduce the competition for a contract during the bidding process. A company may attempt to bribe members within the organization to sway their decision into a favorable outcome for the vendor. Bribes may include things like money, gifts, tickets to events, and more.
- Another type of corruption scheme is to offer a certain percentage of an awarded contract—also known as a kickback—to an official who can ensure that their company wins the bid.
Sole-supplier sourcing
- Having a vendor who a company is already familiar with smooths the procurement process and works well for both parties. Ethical issues arise when other vendors aren’t even allowed to bid for contracts for which they are similarly qualified.
- When the buyer’s organization decides to work with that vendor based on their previously-established relationship, that limits competition before the bidding has even begun. When this happens, companies and the public miss out on the advantages of competition, such as reasonable pricing, product quality standards, or speedy delivery options.
Interactions with state-owned entities
- There are some instances in which government agencies require an organization to adhere to stricter ethical standards than they might have otherwise.
- If you are unfamiliar with any governmental restrictions that may affect your industry, organization, or project, you could unintentionally fall into an ethical trap.

Avoiding ethical traps

Understand the legal requirements for your procurements.
- Every country has regulations to adhere to when conducting business in that country. Be sure to research the legal and ethical requirements based on your project and procurement needs.
- If your organization has a legal team, make sure to lean on them for support and advice.
Stick to your ethical codes.
- Honesty, responsibility, respect, and fairness are the values that underpin ethical behavior in the project management profession.
- The Project Management Institute’s (PMI) code of ethics provides detailed guidelines to help ensure you maintain ethical conduct in your projects.
Test your ethics.
- When you face an ethical dilemma, ask yourself questions in each of the following categories:
  - Shame: Would you be ashamed if someone knew what you did?
  - Community: Would you want your friends to know the decision you made?
  - Legal: Would you face legal action if you took this action?
  - Situation: Would your actions be justified in this situation?
  - Consequence: Would a negative outcome be worth your actions?

Manage Risk

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

- Manage risk
- Understanding risk management
- Importance
- Phase
- Identify
- Analyze
- Evaluate
- Treat
- Monitor and control
- Identifying and assessing risks
- Tools
- Brainstorming
- Cause-and-effect diagram (fishbone diagram)
- Risk assessment
- Probability and impact matrix
- Risk types
- Time
- Budget
- Scope
- External
- Single point of failure
- Dependency types
- Finish to Start (FS)
- Finish to Finish (FF)
- Start to Start (SS)
- Start to Finish (SF)
- Mitigating and communicating risks
- Strategies
- Avoid
- Accept
- Reduce or control
- Transfer
- Building a risk management plan
- Communicating risk to stakeholders

Understanding Risk Management

The importance of risk management

Risk: A potential event which can occur and can impact your project.

Issue: A known or real problem that can affect the ability to complete a task.

Risk management: The process of identifying and evaluating potential risks and issues that could impact a project.

Risk management provides and understanding of

What could go wrong
Who you’ll need to consult
How the risk could be mitigated

-> This way, if or when something goes wrong, you’ll have a plan prepared and ready to go. Part of being proactive and planning ahead is identifying potential risks and how to solve for them. This way, you’ll set up your project with better chances for success.

Failing to engage in meaningful risk management can have a few big consequences for your project

If you don’t plan ahead, you may put your project at risk of not meeting its project goal, its timelines, or success criteria.
By failing to plan for risks, you also fail to think through the many different ways that your project could pivot and still meet its goals.
Risks can affect projects in a variety of ways that are difficult to foresee.

Issues will come up throughout the project you did not or could not have planned for, and that’s okay. When these moments arise, it is important to keep calm, figure out the root cause of the problem, and come up with a solution.

Phases of risk management

Risk management is an ongoing practice throughout the life cycle of your project. It typically involves some variation of these five steps:

Identify the risk.

The first phase of the risk management process is to identify and define potential project risks with your team. After all, you can only manage risks if you know what they are.
Analyze the risk.

After identifying the risks, determine their likelihood and potential impact to your project. Serious risks with a high probability of occurring pose the greatest threat.
Evaluate the risk.

Use the results of your risk analysis to determine which risks to prioritize.
Treat the risk.

During this phase, make a plan for how to treat and manage each risk. You might choose to ignore minor risks, but serious risks need detailed mitigation plans.
Monitor and control the risk.

Finally, assign team members to monitor, track, and mitigate risks if the need arises.

Uncover opportunities using risk management

When identifying risks, it is important to also consider the good things that could happen, which are considered opportunities. An opportunity is a potential positive outcome of a risk.

It is important to recognize opportunities and to capitalize on them as they appear so you can reach your project goals faster, more cheaply, or with less effort. Some examples of opportunities include:

Completing a milestone ahead of schedule
Discounted materials
Availability of additional resources (people, investments, equipment)

Review the following article for further information on using risk management strategies to identify and take advantage of opportunities that may occur during your projects:

Identifying and Assessing Risks

Tools to help identify risks

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is one of the most effective techniques for identifying risks with the team because it allows groups to spontaneously share ideas without judgment.

As a project manager, you will be responsible for bringing a group of people together to imagine potential risks

Have your RACI chart at the ready to refer to when you decide who to invite to this meeting.
The best team for this task is a diverse one, which includes individuals from various roles, backgrounds, and experiences. Diverse teams bring different perspectives, experiences, and skill sets, and this may help you to identify risks that you may not have thought of on your own.

Tool: Cause-and-effect diagram (a.k.a. fishbone diagram)

Shows the possible causes of an event or risk
Can help identify all the ways that things could go wrong by identifying a potential risk, known as the effect, and working backwards to consider the potential causes of that risk.
By categorizing and breaking them down into further causes, you are able to identify areas that could lead to a potential problem, like exceeding your budget or allowing scope creep to impact your timeline.
Example

Risk assessment

During these brainstorming sessions, you might find that your list of potential risks is quite long (and that’s okay). How to decide which risks to focus on?

List the outcomes from the brainstorm in a risk register, a table or chart that contains your list of risks.
Adopt a risk assessment technique
- Risk assessment: the stage of risk management where qualities of a risk are estimated or measured.
- Qualities: how likely the risk is to occur and its potential impact on a project.
- Common techique: Probability and impact matrix (for prioritizing project risk)
  - Impact: The damage a risk could cause if it occurs, which is determined on a scale of high, medium, and low.
    - High: If the risk occurs, it will substantially alter the project.
    - Low: If the risk occurs, it will have a slight impact but it’s not likely to derail the project.
  - Probability: The likelihood that a risk will occur, could also be determined on a scale of high, medium, and low.
    - High: There’s a high likelihood of this happening
    - Low: A risk could happen, but but it isn’t likely that the risk will occur.
  - Inherent risk: The measure of a risk, calculated by its probability and impact
    - Low: You don’t need to worry too much about it.
    - Medium: you should focus on and create detailed mitigation plans for it
    - Certain low-level risks that could result in minor setbacks are much more tolerable than high-level risks that have the potential to completely derail your project.

How to create a fishbone diagram

Fishbone diagrams—also known as Ishikawa diagrams or cause-and-effect diagrams — are a visual way to look at cause and effect. They are called fishbone diagrams because they have a similar shape to a fish skeleton.

Fishbone diagrams help the team to brainstorm potential causes of a problem or risk and sort them into useful categories. These categories show the areas that you should focus on to mitigate that risk.
Fishbone diagrams are also very helpful in finding the root cause of a problem. A root cause is the initial cause of a situation that introduces a problem or risk.

Case study

Miguel is a project manager at Office Supply Inc. He is in the planning phase for an upcoming summer promotion project, which will include free delivery of products. In the past, the company has had trouble delivering its products to downtown office buildings on time. Miguel builds a fishbone diagram to see if he can identify some of the possible causes of this problem in order to mitigate this risk on the current project.

He follows these steps to build his diagram:

Define the problem

Miguel states the problem as “trouble delivering products to downtown office buildings on time.” Then he adds the problem to the head of his fishbone diagram.
Identify the categories

Miguel thinks of the types of categories that could be causing the problem. These categories will change depending on the type of problem or industry. Some common examples of categories include “people,” “technology,” “materials,” “transportation,” “money,” “time,” “environment,” and “procedures.”

For the delivery problem at Office Supply Inc., Miguel lists the categories “people,” “technology,” “materials,” “transportation,” and “environment” at the top and bottom of the lists to the left of the problem in his fishbone diagram.
Brainstorm the causes

Miguel has identified possible categories that relate to the risk, he brainstorms areas of concern within each category. He reaches out to his team for help in identifying these possible causes. Then, Miguel fills in the lists with some of the causes that could be related to each category.

Pro tip: Brainstorming should be a judgment-free zone. Encourage the flow of information related to the categories and try not to rule things out. When dealing with human factors, steer clear of naming individuals; instead, focus solely on behaviors.

Analyze the causes

Now that Miguel has discovered several possible causes for the delivery problems to downtown offices, he analyzes those causes. He needs to identify the root cause of the existing problem so he can figure out how to mitigate it for the current project.

Pro tip: Fishbone diagrams are tools that can be useful during any phase of the project. When you use them in risk planning, you are trying to identify the possible causes of a problem that may or may not occur. When you use them in the execution phase, you are trying to find the root cause of an issue that has already occurred.

Example

Cloche is a bakery that serves bread, pastries, and light meals. They’re introducing a new delivery service and want to anticipate potential risks.

Types of risks

Time risk: The possibility that project tasks will take longer than anticipated to complete.

Budget risk: The possibility that the cost of a project will increase due to poor planning or expanding the project scope.

Scope risk: The possibility that a project won’t produce the results outlined in the project goals.

External risk: Risks that result from factors outside of the company that you have little to no control over.

Single point of failure risk: A risk that has the potential to be catastrophic and halt work across a project 😈.

The risk that has the power to stop an entire team in its tracks, meaning that no one can make progress on their tasks until the issue is resolved.
Example: a power outage that takes down the internal database where every piece of information about the project is stored. Until the database is back up and running, your team won’t have access to any of the information they need to do their jobs. As a result, your team won’t be able to complete any of their assigned tasks.
Mitigation strategies
- Avoid: seeks to sidestep—or avoid—the situation as a whole.
- Minimize: trying to minimize the catastrophic effects that it could have on the project.
  - Starts with realizing that the risk exists (“Workaround”)
- Transfer: shifts the responsibility of handling the risk to someone else
- Accept: accept the risk as the normal cost of doing busines
  - Active acceptance of risk: setting aside extra funds to pay your way out of trouble
  - Passive acceptance of risk: “do nothing” approach (NOT recommended!)

Dependency: A relationship between two project tasks, where the start or completion of one depends on the start or completion of the other.

Because dependencies are the links that connect one project task to another, they are often a huge source of risk to a project. If you don’t plan for dependencies, you might risk and impact your budget schedule or project outcome!
Types
- Internal: Dependencies within the project that you and your team have control over.
- External: Dependencies that you have no control over.

Visualizing dependency relationships

Dependencies are a relationship between two project tasks in which the completion or the initiation of one is reliant on the completion or initiation of the other.

Type of dependencies

Finish to Start (FS)

Task A must be completed before Task B can start.
The most common dependency in project management. It follows the natural progression from one task to another.
Example:
You can’t start putting on your shoes (Task B) until you’ve finished putting on your socks (Task A).

Task A: Finish putting on your socks. →Task B: Start putting on your shoes.

Finish to Finish (FF)

Task A must finish before Task B can finish. (This type of dependency is not common.)
- Task B may start before Task A finishes, but it cannot reach completion until Task A is done.
Example: Earlier in the day, you baked a cake. You can’t finish decorating the cake (Task B) until you finish making the icing (Task A).

Task A: Finish making the icing. →Task B: Finish decorating the cake.

Start to Start (SS)

Task B can’t begin until Task A begins. This means Tasks A and B start at the same time and run in parallel.
Example: You need to take the train home after work. You can’t get on the train (Task B) until you pay for the train ride (Task A).

Task A: Start by paying for your train ride. →Task B: Start going home by boarding the train.

Start to Finish (SF)

Task A must begin before Task B can be completed.
Example: One of your friends calls to tell you he’ll be late. He can’t finish his shift (Task B) and leave work until his coworker arrives to start her shift (Task A).

Task A: Your friend’s coworker starts her shift. →Task B: Your friend finishes his shift.

Dependency graphs

Example

Imagine you are making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids who will be coming to your dinner, and you want to use dependency relationships to map your activities on a graph.

Break each task down to create your dependency graph:

When you start your sandwiches, you need to gather your materials: bread, knife, jelly, peanut butter, plates, and napkins (Task A).
At this point, you can put jelly on one piece of bread (Task B) and peanut butter on the other piece of bread (Task C).

Now you need to put both pieces of bread together (Task D).
Finally, you can put the sandwich on a plate and serve it (Task E).

Mitigating and Communicating Risks

Risk mitigation strategies

Avoid

Taking action that will eliminate the possibility of risk.

Accept the risk by accepting the possibility that this risk can happen.

Reduce or control

Determine potential options to address it.

Decision tree: A flowchat that helps visualize the wider impact of a decision on the rest of a project.

Transfer

Shift the risk from one party to another.

Building a risk management plan

Risk management plan: A living document that contains information regarding high-level risks and the mitigation plan for each of those risks.

Helps ensure that teammates and stakeholders have a clear understanding of potential problems and a plan to address them should they occur.
Should be updated regularly to add newly-identified risks, remove risks that are no longer relevant, and include any changes in the mitigation plans.

Communicating risk to stakeholders

Why should you as a project manager communicate risks to project stakeholders?

If you don’t tell your stakeholders about important risks, they may be less equipped to help you if an issue does arise.
Failing to communicate risks to stakeholders can erode thier trust in you as the leader of the project!

Communicate early and often with stakeholders about medium- and high-level risks.

How to communicate risks to stakeholders during the planning phase?

Depends on the severity of the risk.

Severity	Communication
Low	Email
Medium	Direct e-mail between yourself and the stakeholder in which you outline the risk with more specifics and provide a detailed explanation of your plan to mitigate the risk.
High	A thorough and direct level of communication

Organize Communication Documentation

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

- Organize communication documentation
- Creating an Effective Communication Plan
- Tips for effective communication
- Recognize and understand individual differences
- Brainstorm and craft the appropriate message
- Deliver your message
- Obtain feedback and incorporate that feedback going forward
- Starting a communication plan
- What needs to be communicated
- Who needs to communicate
- when communication needs to happen
- Why and how to communicate
- Where the information communicated is stored
- Developing a communication plan
- Who needs to be involved in the project communication?
- What's the best way to communicate?
- Why are you communicating?
- How often should you communicate?
- Documenting Project Planning Resources
- The value of project documentation
- Organizing project documentation
- Preparing for a Job Search
- Documenting experience in a resume
- Tailoring a resume for project management

Creating an Effective Communication Plan

Why communication is critical

Being able to communicate clearly and effectively is key to project success6. Without effective communication, the project is at risk of missing important opportunities or even failing altogether.

Communication: The flow of information and includes what is shared, how it’s shared, and with whom.

Good effective communication is clear, honest, relevent, and frequent (but not too frequent).
Tools of communication: Meetings, Emails, phone calls, writting documents, formal presentations, etc.
Needs to happen throughout the entire life cycle of the project

Tips for effective communication

Recognize and understand individual differences

Encourage open, inclusive communication by:

Not making assumptions about your audience’s backgrounds, identities, or experiences.
Being mindful of your own biases.
Using appropriate, professional, and neutral language.
Including, respecting, and being curious about diverse points of view.

Brainstorm and craft the appropriate message

Communicate the right message by thinking about your intended audience: With whom are you communicating?

In your communications, always be clear about your reasons for reaching out:

What channels can your audience use to contact you or the team?
Are you conveying information?
Are you asking for input?
Are you clarifying an issue?
Are you resolving a problem?

No matter your audience, you should be sure to identify the purpose of the message, state the information or request clearly and concisely, and stay on topic.

Deliver your message

As you craft your message, think about which methods are available and appropriate for communicating with various members of your team (in person, video conference, over the phone, Email, in a meeting, etc.)

Be sure to:

Avoid including any sensitive or potentially private information.
Assume everyone at the company will receive the communication.

Obtain feedback and incorporate that feedback going forward

Communication doesn’t end when you deliver your message, so be sure to follow up with your audience by:

Checking to make sure your message was clear.
Asking them for feedback.
Encouraging open communication.
Responding to questions quickly.

Starting a communication plan

Communication plan: Organizes and documents the process, types, and expectations of communication for the project.

Key elements:

What needs to be communicated

Include things like status updates, issues, feedback from users, daily check-ins, and other types of project meetings.

Who needs to communicate

Recipients of the information, like key stakeholders and the core project team.

when communication needs to happen

For each type of communication, record when to communicate. This includes the frequency, which is how often you’ll communicate, and key dates like deadlines or major meetings.
Not everyone needs to receive the same amount of information at the same time.
- Key stakeholders will get their information less often, like in a monthly, high-level summary, email, or project review meeting.
- Core project team could receive more detailed info through daily email updates or quick virtual check-ins.

Why and how to communicate

Include the goal of communication
- progress update, identify a risk, and address barriers?
- figure out next steps, detailed preparation plans, and reflect on lessons learned?
The goal of communication could be a combination of any of these or some other reason altogether.
Could be email, in-person, or virtual meetings, or a formal presentation.

Where the information communicated is stored

Relevant information should be easily accessible so that you, your stakeholders, and your team can quickly find the resources they need to make decisions, work on tasks, get caught up, or provide updates.

Benefit of commuincation plan

It allows for continuity of the project’s operations.
It helps with effective change management, the process of delivering your final project and getting it successfully implemented.

Developing a communication plan

Planning communications upfront

Improves the overall effectiveness of communication
Keeps people engaged and motivated throughout the project
Gets stakeholders involved in effective conversations

Consider

Who needs to be involved in the project communication?

It helps to look back to the stakeholder map and RACI chart again. Ask yourself

Who needs to be heavily involved in the details?
Who has high interest in the project?
Who needs only to be informed of major milestones?

What's the best way to communicate?

Feel free to refer back to your RACI chart and stakeholder map, which are tools that will help you figure out what type of communication might work best for each person, group, or role.

For busy senior executives stakeholders, who may not need day-to-day details, instead of daily meetings, it’s better to send a newsletter that summarizes key milestones and project progress to date.
The core team, may benefit from a daily stand-up, which is a daily meeting designed to bring everyone up to date on key information.

Tips for communicating with Emails

Adding a note at the top of your email, which will alert readers that some details of a long email may not be relevant to them.
Lead with key points and action items limited to two to three sentences. Then include a longer section at the bottom for those who want or need additional details.

Why are you communicating?

For high-level stakeholders, ask yourself: Why should they care about my project?
For core team: What information is going to help make sure they complete tasks on time and stay motivated?

How often should you communicate?

Senior stakeholders won’t be able to attend daily meetings and they don’t need every piece of information. -> You can communicate with a senior stakeholder on a weekly or monthly basis and you can focus on high-level status updates like overall progress, recent wins, or milestones reached, and current metrics.
When you work with your core team on a project, you need to get into more of the day-to-day details
- Check in regularly and ask how everything is going.

It’s always a good idea to check in with everyone to make sure communications meet their needs. A great way to optimize communications for everyone on the team is by sending a brief email or survey that asks three questions

What is working in how we communicate with you about the project?
What is not working or is not effective in our communications?
Where can we improve our communications with you?

Best practice

Identify, identify, identify

Before you begin creating the plan, answer these questions to ensure that you have all of the relevant information:

Project stakeholders: Have you created a RACI chart or stakeholder map of all your stakeholders? Who is your audience? Who will need to be informed at different points during the project life cycle?
Communication frequency and method: When and how often should you check in with your stakeholders? What methods of communication do they prefer? How much detail does each stakeholder need?
Goals: What is the goal of your communication? Do you need a response? Are you trying to encourage engagement or simply providing an update?
Barriers: Are there any time zone limitations? Language barriers? Do some stakeholders require time to reply or respond (e.g., an executive)? Are there any privacy or internet access issues?

Documents and develop

Add a column for notes.

Project management is not one-size-fits-all, and there are a lot of pieces that need to be tracked. Add notes to set reminders and any additional relevant details.
Use formatting to highlight any key details in the plan.
Ensure that the team can access your document.

Share the plan with your team. Allowing your team to review the document ensures that they are aware of the plan and gives them a chance to offer feedback. Sharing the document also serves as an extra check to make sure you aren’t missing any crucial pieces.
Test your plan. If you are sending a team-wide email or link, send a test email to yourself or a colleague. If you are planning a virtual presentation, be sure to test the visual, audio, and other technical aspects in advance. That way, you can minimize any technical problems.

Check in

Once your communication plan is out in the world, check in with your audience about the effectiveness of your plan.

Scheduling routine check-ins will help you understand what is and is not working so you can improve your plan.
You want to ensure that your communication plan gets the right information to the right stakeholders at the right time.
Make sure to double check that key stakeholders have not changed over time.

Evaluate where you may be over- or under-sharing information or missing stakeholders. You can do this through:

Anonymous survey forms
Polls or open feedback sessions during team meetings
One-on-one conversations and check-ins with key stakeholders

Example

Scenario

As part of the Plant Pals Operations and Training plan, your team will need to organize and host trainings for employees. You want to make sure that a majority of employees are properly trained to use the new software and equipment before sending the first round of Plant Pals test batches to customers. Because your employees will need to learn several different processes, training sessions will take place over a period of ten days. Your team has just over three weeks to prepare before the sessions begin.

As the Plant Pals project manager, you will work with your team to plan and execute the preparations for the training sessions. One of your tasks is to build a communication plan, which should include:

What you need to communicate (the goal of the communication)
Who needs to communicate
When information-sharing needs to happen
Why and how to communicate with everyone involved

As you begin planning the training sessions, you identify the key teams and stakeholders who will need to communicate about the event:

Core Team: Your core project team will lead the planning and task coordination. These tasks include communicating with stakeholders, preparing the schedule, reserving space and equipment, training the employees, and more.

The team members who are directly involved in organizing the trainings include:

An Administrative Coordinator who is responsible for scheduling and communicating with external vendors and Office Green teams (e.g., Facilities)
A Human Resources Specialist who manages hiring and develops training protocols (with the help of the Training Manager)
A Training Manager who reports to the HR Specialist, runs the training program on the established protocols, and refines training processes

The other members of your core project team (the Financial Analyst, Fulfillment Director, Quality Assurance Tester, and Inventory Manager) will attend team meetings and are available to pitch in if you need them.

Additional stakeholders with whom your team needs to communicate include:

Software and Equipment Vendor: Members of your team will need to meet with the vendor to learn about the software and equipment so they can create an effective training plan for employees. The team members responsible for creating and running the training program should organize and attend this meeting. Your team should allow adequate time to learn about new processes and ask follow-up questions. This meeting must take place before the end of the vendor’s SoW.

Human Resources: The Human Resources department can help your team as they develop the training plan. They will also provide support during the training sessions. Your team will want to communicate with them regularly (but not daily) and on an as-needed basis. The HR Specialist on your team is the point of contact for the rest of HR.

Facilities: Facilities will reserve and manage the spaces and equipment needed for the training sessions. They will need to review the schedule and understand your needs for each session ahead of time. A member of your team needs to keep them updated and informed of any changes to requirements.

Print Shop: The vendor who will install the software and equipment is also creating training manuals for your team. One of your team members will need to coordinate with the print shop to make copies of the manuals for each training.

Office Green employees: You will also need to coordinate with the employees who need to be trained! A member of your team should tell them where they should arrive, where they should go, what they need to bring, and communicate other necessary details. The same team member will also need to conduct the sessions and solicit feedback from employees through a post-training survey.

Your Office Green Manager: Your manager wants to be kept informed of your team’s progress but doesn’t need to know every detail. They can also be a helpful resource for the planning process, if necessary. You already communicate with them regularly, so you can update them at one of your weekly meetings.

Senior Leadership: Your manager asks you to let senior leadership know about the outcome of the trainings (and to copy them when you do so). The Director of Operations and the Director of Product (the project sponsor) want to be kept informed but don’t have much time for meetings.

Step-by-step instructions

Review the communication goals and recipients

The goal and recipient of each communication is already filled out in the template. Review this information and consider the people and teams you need to coordinate. Then try to think of some ways you can effectively communicate about each goal.
Determine communication types

How should you communicate about each goal? What type of communication is best for each recipient? Select one of the following communication types from the drop-down under Type of Communication:
- Planning Meetings: Standard meetings with team members or stakeholders to plan event details
- Planning Check-In: Brief meetings with stakeholders and support staff to discuss action items or check on task progress
- Training: Sessions for employees to learn about jobs or specialized tasks
- Informational update: Key details, instructions, and resources for trainees
- Status Update: Timely project updates for senior stakeholders to get high-level information, give feedback, and answer questions
Determine the frequency

How often do you need to communicate with each recipient? Consider each stakeholder’s level of involvement in the project when deciding how often to communicate. Select one of the following frequencies from the drop-downs under Frequency:
- Daily
- Weekly
- One time
Add the sender or owner

Who from the team should share or communicate about this information? Select one of the following options from the drop-downs under Sender/Owner:
- Project Manager (you)
- Core Team: Administrative Coordinator
- Core Team: HR Specialist
- Core Team: Training Manager
- Core Team: HR Specialist & Training Manager
Add the key dates

When should this communication happen? Are there important reminders or deadlines you should note? Consider how much time you have to plan the event and when it makes sense to communicate about each goal (e.g., early or late in the day or the week). Enter your selected times under Key Dates.

There are no right answers here, but try to be specific about times and dates—and make sure your stakeholders don’t need to be in two places at once!

Note: Your stakeholders’ schedules will vary, and it’s unlikely that they will all be able to make every scheduled meeting. Sometimes, you will need to decide whether you need to reschedule if a key team member can’t make it.
Determine the delivery method

How will you or your team members share this information? Should you meet in person or over the phone? Should you send a personal email or is a group message more effective? Select your delivery methods from the drop-downs under Delivery Method:
- In person
- Phone call
- Email (from individual address)
- Email (from company address)
Note: The best delivery method for each communication depends on the needs and preferences of particular stakeholders.
(Optional): Add resources and notes

If you’d like, fill in the Resources and Notes columns. You can consult the scenario for any important details or come up with your own.

Communication plan

Planning Meetings with the Core Team: Since the core team is directly involved in planning and executing the trainings, you want to meet with them daily and in person. The goal is to check in with each member about their progress, troubleshoot any issues, and make sure everyone stays on track. Your manager can also be a planning resource, so you make sure to schedule the team meetings later in the day than your weekly meeting with your manager. You make a note to check in with your manager with questions and link to the meeting agendas and notes.

Software & Equipment Vendor: Since your HR Specialist and Training Manager will plan and run the trainings, they will both need to meet with the vendor. They allow a half-day for this meeting, which will give them time to go over the training manual and ask follow-up questions. You link to the vendor’s Statement of Work and make a note to remind the HR Specialist and Training Manager to check in with relevant team members after the meeting.

Human Resources: Your HR Specialist owns communications with the HR department, and checks in with them weekly and in-person for project planning assistance. Since HR will also provide support during trainings, you’ll want to send them reminder emails as well. You note that more communications will likely be necessary on an as-needed basis.

Planning Check-ins with Facilities: Facilities needs to know the training schedule and requirements, but does not need daily updates. The Administrative Coordinator checks in with them weekly over the phone (but could also meet with them in person). You link to the forms you need to request rooms and equipment for the training sessions.

Planning Check-ins with the Print Shop: The Print Shop needs to know the details of the event, but you may not need to check in with them every day. The initial planning meeting is the most important, after which weekly check-ins (over the phone or in person) will suffice. Your Administrative Coordinator takes care of these communications. You link to the printing request forms you will use to order the training manuals.

Informational Updates for Office Green employees: You want to communicate with the trainees consistently so they remember when to arrive, where to go, and what to bring. Your Training Manager sends a group email from an official Office Green account each week and sends a reminder the day before each group’s training session. That’s a lot of messages to keep track of, so you make a note for the Training Manager to automate the reminder emails.

Training for Office Green employees: The Training Manager will also run the in-person trainings, which are scheduled each day for ten days, beginning at 10:00 AM. You make sure to link to the training schedule, so that it’s easily accessible.

Survey for Office Green employees: Once the training sessions are complete, the Training Manager will send the trainees a survey via email (with two follow-up reminders). You make a note to discuss the results at the next team meeting.

Status Update with your manager: Since your manager wants to be kept informed of your progress, you decide to update them at your weekly, in-person meeting. You make a note to come prepared with a brief update and specific questions for your manager.

Status Update with Senior Leaders: Since the Director of Operations and the Director of Product want to know how the trainings went, you send them an email update (and CC your manager) once they have concluded. You link to the resources you’ll need to create your report.

Documenting Project Planning Resources

The value of project documentation

It is importatnt for everyone to store their plans and reports in one centralized place.

Having plans in one place makes communication quicker, easier, and more streamlined.
Documenting and organizing plans also provides visibility and accountability.
Having up-to-date plans will help ensure there’s no room for misinterpretation or miscommunication.
Documentating plans in one place provides continuity.

Once you’ve created a centralized location for your documents, it’s time to think about managing permissions of your files and folders.

Not everyone needs full access to project documentation.
Make sure the people in relevant roles are granted access to those documents. So even if you’re not present, the project can carry on.

Knowledge management: A way of ensuring that project data can be accessed in the future by others who need it for informing decisions or planning similar projects.

If someone needs to review this project for making decisions or planning similar projects, they should be able to easily access the information they need.
It also helps set the tone for future projects and future project managers.
It’s also important to determine what kind of information to share with whom and when. Focus on the key information related to what specific individuals need to know.
Pro tip: Protect senstitive data from unauthorized viewers.
Need-to-know basis: Telling someone facts that they need to know at the time they need to know them, and nothing more.

Organizing project documentation

Goal: Have all of your project resources documented and linked in a way to where you or anyone on the project can access what they need quickly.

Handy way: Using a shared file drive (e.g., Google Drive) and creating one resource like a document or spreadsheet that links all of the files and resources that your project uses.

Preparing for a Job Search

Documenting experience in a resume

Items to include on a resume

Contact information
- Name
- Email address
- Other contact information
Current and previous work and educational experience
- Work experience
  - Employers and job titles
  - For each job: 2 -3 bullet points explaining job responsibilities
- Educational experience
  - High school and colleague
  - Online degrees, certificates and other professional development
Skills
- Skills that are relevant to the position you’re applying to
- Industry knowledge (e.g., experience with digital tools or software)
- Languages
- Hobbies

Tailoring a resume for project management

Tailor the content

Identify what is important to the potential employer.

Make sure that you carefully read the job description and notice which skills are mentioned.
You can also read several job descriptions for the same type of role to identify which skills and requirements show up frequently.
You should take note of these skills and be sure to highlight them using similar terms on your resume.

Create one master project management resume to edit and tailor to each job application.

Make sure that the order of your skills and qualifications matches the job description. In doing this, you are making sure that the things that are most important to the employer are at the top.

Match the language used in the job description.

Some employers use automation software to filter resumes. If the job description uses keywords like procurement and risk management, make sure your resume uses those keywords, too.

Use project management terminology.

This will help the person reading your resume understand how your past experience is relevant to a project management position.

Decide what <u>not</u> to include on your resume.

You may have some skills that are important to you, but those same skills may confuse or distract the hiring managers reading your resume.

Highlight how your past experience and skills are relevant to project management.

Choose an appropriate format

No matter what layout or template you choose for your resume, there are several things you should keep in mind

The design of your resume should be simple and easy to understand for both human and artificial intelligence readers. You don’t want your resume to be discarded before a real person has a chance to read it!
Your resume should be easy to read and should convey all of the important information in short bullet points.
Your resume should be one- to two-pages long and contain only the last ten to fifteen years of relevant experience. It is appropriate to use two columns on a one-page resume, but if your resume is two pages, be sure to use the entire width of the page.

Update the relevant sections

Once you have determined the appropriate format for your resume, you will need to update each of your resume’s major sections, which include:

Contact information

our header should contain your contact information and should go at the top of your resume.

Your header should include the following information:

Your name in a larger font than the rest of your resume
The city and state you live in (you do not need to include your street address for privacy purposes)
Your phone number and a link to your email address
Link to your LinkedIn profile URL
Links to any other personal websites or portfolios, if applicable to the role you are applying for

Your header should be relevant, simple, and easy to read.

Example

Professional summary

Below your header, include a professional summary.

Use your summary to set the tone.
- Your summary should be one to three lines and should clearly state why you are the best candidate for the position.
- It should highlight the most important things you want the reader to know about you.
- Make sure you tailor your description of yourself to the role you are applying for.
Merge the description of the role you are applying for with your past experience.
Use keywords from the job description to describe yourself.

Once you have your professional introduction, your next sentence should explain how your unique expertise will make you valuable to the employer.

Don’t forget to use this section to highlight something that makes you stand out from other applicants.

Core competencies

Your core competencies should be a bulleted list of the most relevant skills applicable to the position you are applying for.

Scan the job description for core competencies you have gained during this certification, as well as your past experience, and use those skills as bullet points in this section.
Make sure to keep this section relatively short, with four to eight bullets.

Example:

Professional experience

The professional experience section of your resume provides a summary of the roles and positions you have held in your career. List at least three positions in reverse chronological order and only include what is most relevant to the position you are applying for.

Your professional experience will not change much from previous resumes, because you can’t change the past roles you have held. However, you can possibly rewrite some of your bullets to relate them to project management.

Pro tip: Make sure your resume conveys how your past accomplishments are valuable to the role you are applying for. Show the reader how you can make a difference in their organization. An easy way to remember this is through the P.A.R.I.S. framework:

Problem that needed to be solved
Action(s) I took
Result of action(s)
Impact on project (users, quality, etc.)
Supporting evidence (awards, bonus, etc.)

Education and certifications

You should include any degrees beyond your high school diploma in reverse chronological order. For each degree, list the degree you earned, institution, location, and date of graduation.
This section should also list any professional certifications or credentials you hold. It is here where you will list this new project management certification.

Pro tip: Resumes should be written in the third person and should not contain personal pronouns.