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Adopting a Project Methodology
Projects have a sequence from the first idea through to closure, and the rest of this chapter provides you with a simple, clear structure. If you want to move on to a more detailed approach, you can use a structured project methodology such as:
✓ PMBoK (Project Management Body of Knowledge): Developed by the US Project Management Institute, PMBoK has ten knowledge areas, including scope and contract management, and focuses on the Project Manager working through project and stakeholder requirements.
✓ PRINCE2 (PRojects IN a Controlled Environment): Developed in the UK and often used by government departments, PRINCE2 is a scalable project management method based on principles, themes and processes. It allows higher level management and control of projects. (Find out more in PRINCE2 For Dummies, published by Wiley, written by Nick Graham, co-author of this book.)
✓ PRIME (PRoject Implementation MEthod): A business-focused project method that Nick helped to produce. For more info on the PRIME project methodology, check out www.prime-project-method.com.
Other well-known methodologies include Agile, Lean and Waterfall. Methodologies may be associated with tools (like Microsoft Project, which uses Agile) or developed by major consultancies for use with their clients. In all cases, methodologies offer a structure that takes you through your project. In contrast, this book sets out the work of project planning and management in a simple and linear way.
Understanding Project Stages
Just about all project management approaches break projects into stages, or you may know them as phases. The four main stages in any project are:
✓ Starting the Project
✓ Organising and Preparing – the project planning
✓ Carrying Out the Work
✓ Closing the Project
Of these stages, the third one – Carrying Out the Work – can repeat, so you can have more than one delivery stage. In a small project, you may decide on a single delivery stage, but in most projects you have several. You can see a project example with two delivery stages in Figure 1-1.
Figure 1-1: The stages of a project, with two delivery stages.
Breaking a project into stages has many advantages, such as:
✓ Stages allow everyone to concentrate on one part of the work at a time.
✓ By breaking up the detailed planning into convenient blocks, you can plan each delivery stage in detail just before that stage starts, using the latest information.
✓ The sponsor or steering committee can stay in firm control of resources by authorising one stage at a time.
✓ Each stage includes a clear end point, usually called a stage gate (see Chapter 7), for checking that the project is still in control and remains viable.
How many delivery stages should you have? Well, it depends. Delivery stages are not all the same length or timed units of, say, one month. Rather, delivery stages reflect:
✓ Blocks of work that are cohesive and belong together
✓ Amounts of work that the sponsor or steering committee is willing to authorise at a time – the amount may vary at different points in the project according to, for example, the degree of risk in that part of the project
The end of each stage is marked by a stage gate meeting with the sponsor or steering committee. The gate is a useful control point to take stock and check that the project is on track.
Breaking the Project into Stages
The remainder of this chapter focuses on each of the stages in turn, looking at what you need to do at each stage and the main project management documents you deal with.
Here are three reasons for including a Starting the Project stage:
✓ You need to know whether the project is worth doing. Unfortunately, not all ideas are good ones. Rather than rushing into full planning, first look at whether the idea makes sense before committing more to it.
✓ You need to get basic information together. You won’t find it easy to plan the project if you haven’t established, at least in an outline, what the project is, what resource is available and any constraints, such as on delivery dates.
✓ You can sketch out the idea for the project and get agreement before going on to full planning. If you leap straight in to full planning, you often discover that disagreement arises when people check the plans, because they have different ideas about the project even though they’re using the same words.
✓ Objective: What exactly is the objective of the project? To save money perhaps, or speed up ordering procedures? You need to ensure your objective(s) are clear, so that the project can be agreed on.
✓ Scope: What’s the project intended to cover and, usefully, what won’t it cover if some areas are unclear? What will the project finally deliver?
✓ Resource: How much do you expect the project to cost? Be realistic here. How much staff resource will the project need, and will it require particular skills? The resource figures are very much ballpark ones at the moment because the planning has yet to be done.
✓ Time: How long is the project likely to take, on the assumption that resources can be provided when needed? Again, this is a ballpark estimate.
✓ Justification: Why do you want to run the project? Perhaps this is a no-brainer because the project is mandatory – head office has instructed that each regional office runs a project to review its local client base. Normally, though, the project is justified because of benefits, such as greater market penetration, lower costs or faster customer service.
✓ Constraints: Will anything influence the way that the project is run, or even what it delivers and when? For example, it might be time critical. You should also think about the required quality level of the project, such as whether it’s ‘quick and dirty’, safety critical or, usually, somewhere in between.
To document the Starting the Project stage you put the information you find out in a Project Outline that others (such as steering committee members) can read and then approve or reject. However, don’t get too detailed. Although the information is in a document, you might discuss the content in a meeting or give a short presentation to the decision-makers and hand out the document as a backup.
Ah, so the members of the steering committee loved the idea, did they? Well done on your presentation of the Project Outline. Okay, on with the next stage then: Roll up your sleeves and get down to the real work of project planning.
The Organising and Preparing stage gets you ready for the delivery stages of the project. It covers the overall planning of the project and also the detailed planning of the first delivery stage. If the sponsor or steering committee says ‘go’ at the end