Project management best practices – Part 2
In part 1 of this blog series, we discussed project management, selecting the right approach for project management, and project management standards. In this blog post, let’s dive deep into project charters, the constraints of PM, critical path analysis, and best practices for managing project changes and resources.
Best practices for project charters
The project charter is arguably the single, most important project-management artifact – yet most projects proceed without a clearly defined charter, leading to a host of problems later during delivery. As one might imagine from the name, the primary stated goal of the project charter is to grant authority to the project and project manager to drive change on behalf of the organization. This is important because it establishes the legitimacy of the project effort and serves as a foundation for developing support for the project across an organization.
The value of the project charter does not end with establishing the authority of the project manager and project team. A clear project charter provides clarity of the project scope, timelines, and constraints, which can serve as the basis for project planning and avoid potential confusion about what changes the project is expected to influence.
Avoiding conflict
Having the project scope clearly defined in the project charter helps avoid conflict amongst project team members and stakeholders. Ambiguity breeds discontent; and even well-meaning stakeholders are likely to develop opinions contrary to the intent of the project.
The first line of defense against scope creep
In addition to defining what the project is intended to deliver, the project charter also provides clarity to the scope boundaries of the project – what it is NOT intended to deliver. This is helpful as future scope interpretations are made and change requests are evaluated.
Cross-functional relationships
Many projects require the involvement of multiple teams or functions – each potentially having their own priorities and directions from management. The project charter articulates a “common goal” to which the entire project team can align.
Directing project resources
Project managers must often direct resources from other parts of the organization. This includes financial, intellectual property, technology, and human resources. The project charter provides the project manager with the authority to direct and consume resources on behalf of the organization.
Establishing success criteria
The project charter begins the process of describing the success of the project. Defining the finish line for project activities and the desired outcomes is essential to ensure projects are executed both effectively and efficiently.
Project management best practices suggest every project should have a clearly defined charter at the onset and this document be reviewed periodically when either significant changes are considered or at key project milestones. The project charter is the “North Star” project managers, project teams and stakeholders can use to guide their evaluation of the project’s course and whether it is progressing towards the intended project goals.
The triple constraint of project management
No discussion of project-management best practices would be complete without a mention of the triple constraint. The triple constraint is a best-practice construct that depicts the relationship between scope/quality, resources, and time within the context of the project. One or more factors, often two, constrain all projects and project success and can only be achieved by balancing these 3 factors. For example, if the project is given a fixed timeline and a limited set of resources, then the only factor that can be adjusted is the scope and quality of what is delivered. If a project receives a scope-change request, then it can only be accommodated with a change to resourcing (adding more people), a change to scope (removing another element), or a change to time (extending the delivery date).
Each project is different, and the triple constraint often weighs heavily on a project manager’s selection of a project management approach. Timelines that highly constrain projects, but with scope flexibility, are often well-suited for Agile methods. Projects with constrained scope/quality are often better suited for waterfall-type project-management approaches.
The triple constraint also impacts decisions about project deliverables. Resource and timeline constraints can lead project teams to de-scope key features, accept defects, forego non-functional requirements, and scale back supplementary deliverables, such as product documentation. As one might expect, the project’s risk tolerance and the risk-management approach also influence these kinds of trade-off decisions. Project managers often struggle with explaining the impact of trade-off decisions to project sponsors and other stakeholders. The triple constraint is a tool most stakeholders can intuitively comprehend, so its use has developed as a key project-management best practice.
Critical-path-analysis best practices
Project management is the orchestration of project resources and project activities. One of the key activities of the project planning process is developing a critical path for the project that outlines the key sequence of activities that must be performed to reach the project’s stated objective. Where the product-breakdown structure depicts the end deliverable, the work breakdown structure, activity map, and critical path depict the activities that must be resourced and completed.
Together, these planning artifacts provide the project team with a clear picture of where they are headed and how they will reach the endpoint. Critical-path analysis is not just a best practice, it is an essential project-planning activity. A well-articulated critical path will help the project team:
Avoid distractions – The project may have many activities, but not all of them are critical.
Allocate resources efficiently – Critical-path activities often are assigned to the strongest project team members.
Track project progress – The critical path provides a reference point for tracking progress towards project completion.
Deliver confidently – Team members who understand the critical path can clearly see how their efforts contribute to project success.
Critical-path analysis is often performed as a part of a project’s planning stage. It is not uncommon, however, for the critical path to change as the project proceeds. Best practices suggest the critical path be reviewed as a part of reviewing each change request and project milestone to understand if a change to the critical path has occurred and if changes must be made to the project plan.
Best practices for managing project resources
Resource planning is one of the most time-intensive project-management activities. Project managers are responsible for directing financial resources, intellectual-property resources, technology resources as well as the human resources assigned to the project. Much of this is basic scheduling, budgeting, and administrative work that is not very complex or difficult. Human-resource management (coordinating people’s activities) is where nuances and challenges often occur. Project-management best practices suggest 5 areas where project managers should pay careful attention when managing project resources.
Estimating overhead activities
Most project managers underestimate the percentage of each team member’s time that overhead activities consume, either directly connected to the project (status reports, project meetings, documentation, etc.) or related to their day job (staff meetings, performance reviews, etc.). During a typical project, overhead activities consume 30–45% of a resource’s time before he or she begins to work on project deliverables.
Managing turnover
During projects lasting more than 3 months, project managers should expect at least some resource turnover due to natural attrition and people changing job roles. Best practices suggest turnover should not be avoided (e.g., contractually locking resources into their role on the project), but rather mitigated through cross-training and maintaining enough schedule reserve to accommodate resource changes.
Understanding skills and capabilities
Many project managers overestimate the skills and capabilities of project team members and underestimate the learning curve for achieving peak project productivity. This can lead to unrealistic expectations and project team members working overtime to achieve project expectations.
Planning for disruption
A big mistake inexperienced project managers make is developing resources plans based on best-case scenarios and failing to plan for an expected level of project disruption. Risk-management processes provide a structure for evaluating both known unknowns and unknown unknowns in a project. Unknown-unknowns are where the biggest issues occur.
Managing competing priorities
It is very rare that a project is staffed with a team of people allocated 100% to project activities. More often, resources must balance project activities with other projects and/or operational activities outside the project manager’s control. Understanding competing priorities and capacity limitations will help improve the quality of resource estimation for the project.
Best practices for project-change management
Most projects don’t have the luxury of occurring in a static environment – the organizational needs, business environment, technology landscape, and resource profile are constantly changing. One project manager described this as “trying to change a tire on a bus as it is driving on a road.” Although not all changes can be anticipated, project-management best practices suggest there are 4 key factors that can help a project manager anticipate how much their project may change.
Length of the project
Shorter projects tend to be more stable while longer projects have a higher likelihood of significant changes occurring that must be managed.
Stability of the environment
Some business environments are more stable than others. In highly dynamic organizations and industries, the project environment is likely to be more volatile.
Easy-to-use software promotes adoption
People will naturally try and do their jobs in the easiest way possible. Since most project-management activities can be done manually, software must be simple and effective and achieve the specific results the user is seeking.
Versatility of resources
Human, technical and financial resources that are highly versatile can insulate the project from many changes and avoid disruption. Projects staffed with specialists are prone to change-related disruption.
Not all project-management methodologies address changes the same way. Agile and rolling-wave methods excel at managing change and, in some cases, are optimized to anticipate and embrace change. Waterfall methodologies and projects with rigorous compliance requirements often struggle to adapt to changes and, in some cases, even a small change can cause significant rework and/or project abandonment.
Project-management best practices suggest the best method to approach changes in a project environment is to apply continuous-improvement approaches. Instead of assuming the project team is all-knowing and every facet of the project plan has been determined in advance, project managers should plan to learn as they proceed by continuously surveying the environment both inside and outside the project for opportunities and threats. When they are identified, the project manager should carefully consider the impact of the change, leveraging risk-management techniques and the triple constraint when formulating a response. Many changes lead to requirements refinement, adjustments to project plans, and/or identification of potential defects to the product being developed. By being adaptable and refining the project based on changes, opportunities, and threats, project teams will not only be able to achieve the objectives stated at the start of the project but also, more importantly, deliver the outcomes at the end of the project the organization actually needs.
