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Standardization and How it Effects a Project Manager’s Business?

project-managementThis article is written for the better understanding of how the standardizing of project management adds value to once business, in any industry, the growth is driven by standardizing project management across the organization.

Some key capabilities for standardization:

An enterprise must invest in standardizing, codifying and documentation of project management practices. It doesn’t mean one way of managing projects but a portfolio of consistent projects the enterprise.

Different business units and verticals may follow different methods or templates for following project management. Many variations are carried out in order to meet the needs of customers and specific markets.

For instance just think if standardizing is not done, it can reduce management’s ability to track and control price change requests and manage scope stuff, which may result in lower margins and increased project risks. Formalizing projects help scale your business. Fostering standardization of processed such as change management, scheduling, costing and project reporting is also very important.

Another major step in standardizing is consolidating and integrating project data. Project teams can also improve productivity and effectiveness.

Benefits of standardization are vast and far reaching, those organization that combined standardized project management processes with the right kind of technology get a significantly good result and successful projects. The outcomes include improved project team productivity, fewer project losses, the higher instance of projects that get completed on time, and are under their financial reachability.

Standardizing project management across an enterprise often encounters resistance. Because teams usually working as how they might be feeling but often you have to encounter adjustments one way or another. There is a positive side of creating consistent project management experience.

Standardization can have the following positive impact on a project manager’s life.

If you are a project manager, you can experience that your life may go from slow and steady to chaotic in a matter of seconds. , it is witnessed it would be helpful both for the leader and the teammates to work efficiently if you share a common way of working such as a framework or interface etc.

Considering an example, if the schedule of your project is built on the same tool as your teammate, it would be easier for you to grab what’s next on the to do list.

When hiring a new project manager, standardized project management, which is already implemented in the enterprise may help the new hiring in the understanding of how the work is done in that organization. Thus, drastically reducing the learning curve.

The cooperative continuous improvement is a very important thing and I have always been in the favor of improving. And the best way of doing this working along the other project managers, peers or pioneers both. This will help you in carrying out your tasks in more effective and standardized way. Thus making standardizing your tasks easier. Having someone to share your ideas and looking up to someone for some good experience is indeed a good strategy

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How Outsourcing Adds Value to Your Business?

outsourcingBefore pursuing to the understanding of adding value to your business, first, we need to understand what is outsourcing.  According to our very own Wikipedia, this term refers to a practice used by different companies in which they transfer a portion of their work to different external companies, this is a cost effective way but the condition is, it should be used properly. The external sources or service providers ought to be Specialists in their related fields.

Leaders choose out-sourcing to enhance business value propositions to stake-holders.

The question arises how and why the need arises, some of the processes are temporary and the company does not intend to hire a professional for doing that task.

However, before that, it is necessary that you should think and study about all the advantages and disadvantages of giving the resources and time of your business to a third party vendor, which is indeed very critical for your business.

As every other strategy related to business, there are many pros and cons to outsourcing as well. If not done right, it can bring down your business and create a lot of unrest.

Famous outsourcing business streams may include,

Pros of outsourcing

  • Swiftness and expertise
  • Concentrating on core process
  • Risk sharing
  • Reduced operational costs
  • Reduced recruitment costs

Cons of outsourcing:

The disadvantages include:

  • Risk of exposure of confidential data
  • Hidden costs
  • Lack of customer focus

How it adds value to your business:

When outsourcing, making a strategy which is effective in lowering the cost is very important.

Project managers can help make one.  Considering this three part structure,

  1. Assess the current state
  2. Consider the “to be” state
  3. Consider the governance require to sustain the future state

Project managers can avoid some common pitfalls in their outsourcing projects:

  1. Add a legal team, consisting of procurement and legal outsourcing experts which will help you in making the agreements.
  2. If you have any senior leaders around you, invite them to your project, in this way you can steer the initiative this will also help align it to the business mission.
  3. Gather some leadership support from your seniors; they might help you abstain from committing some serious blunders.

The things that count should be on finger tips of a project manager while handling a process with outsourcing aspects. Leaders can capitalize business value by keeping the right things in mind and if the outsourcing is done with a defined end.

Just to get an idea, consider that Assessments can be made on few things, such as

  1. Associate labor costs
  2. Labor expertise
  3. Value and non value support services
  4. Baseline of operational measures and service levels.

Project managers can help in many ways make an outsourcing strategies that trigger capitalization.

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Why Project Managers are Seen as Less Likeable for Businesses?

project-managersThe answer to the above asked question can be very simple, but first you need to understand the mindset of stakeholders who wants to get maximum results with minimum expenditures. Many people today see the project manager officials as providers of low value with high administrative cost. They also perceive that they are doing little to improve project delivery, which is indeed not true.

We will discuss the facts here.

The general state of the project management is not improving; the recent increase in project manager officials hasn’t changed the facts as well. According to estimation, organizations worldwide waste around US$122 million every year, this survey was done by PULSE, and was done according the expenditure of US$ 1 billion being invested for every project. The previous records show that it is the increase of 12 percent according to the gone years.

The question arises here, why there is a huge gap between the presence of project manager officials and the project success rate, as the success rate is declining, according to the stated facts?

Indeed the question is somewhere among the project managers.

Here are some of the reasons summed up for the failure of project managers and what the people in lead role of project management can do about it?

The first thing to ponder upon is repeated processes or redundancy over efficiency during project development lifecycle.

This can be explained by an example, let’s just take an example, in an organization there are multiple PMOs, functional PMOs, such as IT, business, finance PMOs etc. these multiple layers of PMOs will cost the portfolio manager an exaggerative cost, expenditure will be huge, excessive time, energy, utility etc in order to fulfill the requirements and requests of multiple functional project manager officials.

The thing that needs to be understood, there is more power and value in centralizing and standardizing portfolio information. The executives should have a clear insight into each and every part of the ongoing process to have a clear understanding of what and how the decision should be made.

Before appointing PMOS the things that should be taken into consideration is whether there are areas that have the same type of oversight and control.

Another major step is taking into account the difference between talent and template, how it is done is the next biggy.

The part where PMOS lack is they rely on templates rather than originating skillful teams. Teams that is skillful in all aspects.

In order to contribute to the project’s success, the portfolio management processes need to be repeatable. They should sustain for quite a good span of time. And need to be successful in demonstrating measurable impact; these all will clearly add value to a business by generating a successful project and making you and your team a success. The project manager leads lack when they try to enforce the process instead of having the right and skillful people at the place to help the success in project development and execution.

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Understanding Agile

A major thing when managing a project is understanding agile, which is very important for adding value to the business.

Agile + project management or project management + agile; as project delivery methods have evolved over the time. It has changed a lot of things; the special focus is now on leadership, different approaches have emerged. Such as hybrid approach, in which traditional waterfall approach and iterative agile approaches are used together. The reason is today the project managers need to contend with budgets, financial forecasts, release schedules, as well as business case benefits. Another big reason is aligning implementation of products with other projects across the organization.

agileSo one way or another, project managers today need to have a sound knowledge of what is agile and how it effects the product development phase. A frequent question that comes up is whether the industry needs a project manager who knows agile, or some agile leads who can handle traditional project management practices.  In today’s world we need both.

Agile development is an umbrella term for several iterative and incremental software development methodologies.

It should be kept in mind that a project manager will oversee an agile delivery process. So it is very important that a project manager start their journey with competency, this journey may include beginning with training in agile methods. As the journey continues shadowing an agile lead to see how the iterative process works is also very crucial.

As you advance in the process, you come to the understanding of terms such as agile metrics, alignment of agile both to testing and to release process. As well as the people factor, that is also very important.

Agile leads needs to understand project management as this may lead to more successful projects and adds value to business.

What’s your take on that? Do you think organizations today need agile leads who know project management?

As the journey continues, a project manager will soon see what sort of projects can be best delivered.

Regardless of the delivery approach, a linkage to enterprise approach is required. Experience with iterative methods used to quickly deliver and shape solutions. They have a strong business analysis background. That is majorly shown when defining user stories on the team member’s part. In the near past these abilities or skills were sufficient but as the time changes many of the things that were once part of the waterfall model, needs their agile counterparts. The things like schedule, budget, product quality, and business case realization are of great importance and are necessary tools in agile process. These include the complexities of the contemporary delivery.

These all things compels the people in agile lead role to acquire skills in traditional project management as well as agile methods in factors like estimation, forecasting, resource management, technical requirements, as well as testing and the development tool implementation practices. Developing these skills the people in agile lead roles to give better quality and successful projects that will enhance the business value.

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What Does Enterprise Function Support Means and Why it is Needed?

erpSome common enterprise functions of any enterprise involve the efficient management. The management of organizational resources, such as finances and other such entities. Other resources such as employers, suppliers, customers, and partners are also included. And assets such as equipment, material, parts, supplies and properties. While it can be safe to say that technology intensive systems,  such enterprise resource planning commonly known as ERP, have come to represent the most cost- efficient way, these are the functions that chief executives and business leaders turn to in the hour of need, widely known as ‘back office support functions’.

In what circumstances they are needed is a question, commonly asked, when the top priorities for an enterprise are cost containment, cost avoidance and efficiency improvement. These are the functions widely worked on.

Other enterprise functions may include,

Business value alignment, business process optimization, shared services and outsourcing advisory, information system for enterprise function etc.

The most important of these are information system for enterprise function; enterprise resource planning can be understood by these,

The first and most crucial one is business process re engineering and requirement definition.

Others may include steps like, project management of ERP implementation.

Enterprise architecture and technology integration consulting, organizational change management, transition to steady state operations.

Now the question arises why these enterprise functions are needed and how they have a big impact on project management, as discussed above the things like project management of ERP implementation is very important.

As the approach of hybrid product delivery is enhanced, the consideration of adding value to one’s business is widely implemented through alignment of resources. Most important of the considerations include, speed at which the iterations are produced by agile process, the other things include business and technology complexities, as well as the increasing expectations of customers.

The reason for their need is such enterprise functions are considered as the key to success by today’s agile heads. The enterprise functions as mentioned above, such as resource management and portfolio management etc. there are other traditional enterprise delivery disciplines that are considered as key to success. Other frameworks such as scaled agile framework commonly known as ‘SAFe’ are also considered key to success in today’s project management practices by the people leading the agile processes. The agile heads today are people who have sound and impressive knowledge of both new and traditional knowledge of processes needed for project management.

Talking about “safe” as the new big thing, it is indeed the nest generation thing for project managers and it has enhanced the prospects of managing processes. And why is that so?

The answer to this is it had identified the critical need to have all the enterprise functions in place. The enterprise functions are all engaged for all kinds of deliveries that are need of the existing hour.

Enterprise functions can be of great help for both project managers as well as people in agile leads by helping them in developing successful projects.

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Agility in Project Management

agility-in-project-managementAs the title of the article suggests, we will be talking about agile project management in this article. First we need to understand, what agility in project management is.

The agile movement seeks alternative to traditional approach in project management. The agile approach help teams respond to unpredictability through incremental, iterative, work cadences and empirical feedback. Agilest propose alternatives that are more fruitful for the project development phase.

The first step should be to make scrum practices the method for doing the work.

The main questions that arise here is

What is scrum?

Why is scrum?

Who is scrum for?

Scrum is an agile framework, which is consistent with the value of agile manifesto.

It is a team based approach used to deliver value to the business. Delivering value is the most important step. In scrum, team members work together to achieve a single goal. Which is a shared business goal; this framework promotes interaction which is effective.

The first step after selecting scrum is to get a shared business goal; further major steps are discussed below,

  • Figure out how to do the work
  • Does the work
  • Identifies what thing is getting in it’s way
  • Takes responsibility of getting out the things blocking their way
  • Focusing on the scope
  • Working with other parts of the organization to control the things which are not in their control.

This focus on scrum is considered critical.

A very important step is centralized collaboration, for example if your team consists of 30 members working in group of ten as three different team units, choose a single tool for communication such as Skype, line or Whatsapp, whichever is easy and accessible to all the members. And for documents, create Google drive or googleDoc, that would be of great help.

Creating a product backlog, which is a key reference tool for the committee or team involved in the development phase.

Planning how to perform the work is a crucial thing, the individual team members must be instructed to break their user stories into tasks that help them do their work effectively, it helps them feel ownership and make accurate tasks. For example, the tasks can be scheduled one day’s work over four sprints. This is in four weeks total. Allowing the team to get momentum and keep the flow going, this would a great step towards breaking down of the tasks in accordance with the need of the development phase, and acquiring the shared goal.

Scrum requires a working finished product goal after as the result of every sprint. A scrum’s team goal is to create a product increment after each sprint.

Meeting regularly with team leads, this will help you in ensuring whether the teams are working on the required tasks and in the required way, team leads should be asked such kind of questions,

  1. What has my team finished since last meeting?
  2. Are there any obstacles in the team’s way?

What needs to be done before the next meeting.

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Project Management for Newbie’s

project-maangementProject management is a serious business. The reason for using this title is I believe the new entrants to software development don’t realize or take it serious what a serious and stressful job project management is.

The newbie’s these days think that it is a cool job as in the TV series, “the apprentice” where in each episode each project manager is given a single task for a week but that is not the case in reality, the project management is far more adverse and hectic job. It is indeed a tough job, no matter how big or small the project is.

The most important key factors in managing projects are:

  • Evaluating what is done
  • Determining where you are on the way of getting things done.

When the project management was started in the early days, risk wasn’t the issue that was being focused on. Only focus was on time and budget, the job of it was just to deliver what was being asked by the stakeholders. But with the passage of time things have changed radically which is a positive thing and should be acknowledged. The process of risk management is given importance and the project evaluators as well as the stake holders give due importance to this factor.

The most critical and soft skill is understanding the psychology. Projects and most importantly successful projects are all about teams, successful teams make successful projects. And successful team is made by a project manager who very well understands the psychological needs of the members. Understanding the psychology is very important while dealing with the stake holders understanding the needs of the business sponsors.

Here I present an analogy, a lighter one for a better understanding of what project management is,

To understand this analogy let us compare IT with Golf;

There are four factors that are compatible between golf and IT.

  1. It looks simple but believes you me, it is not.
  2. A very little mistake can lead to major problem; an error is the last thing you might want to encounter.
  3. Second guessing others is easy, when it’s in your hands, its easy being an expert with hindsight.
  4. Very difficult thing to do is to sustain a consistent level of performance.

A very important question asked these days is where and how the education should be started these days as there are few industries where the project management  is taken seriously, to name a few, the sectors like banking, aerospace and pharmaceuticals are some. But there are still some smaller or bigger ones where the term project management hasn’t made an impact or the due importance is not given.

The questions arises from where the education should be started, the answer is from the stake holders, they should be made to realize not everything can be handled by the same

Old traditional way where everything was decided in a board room and people followed what was discussed , now every stage needs supervision.

PSGINCS

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Consultation Services for Primavera P6

consultingThere is a wide range of consultation services available for primavera p6. Solutions that are most critical to your project are offered.  Consulting while solving some ambiguous problem is a way to minimize the effort and work and go in the right direction while you still have time.

In this article we will provide you with some of the most successful and known consulting services providers related to primavera P6 portfolio management. This would be indeed of great help for companies who are still in deciding phase whether to opt for primavera services or not, whether they will be able to implement them successfully in their organization for their crucial projects. Would it be a source of uplift and progress with making the projects which are critical for their business, a success?

These all questions are definitely answered by consultations service companies.

Few of them are listed below.

CBA: critical business analysis inc.

A short about the company includes, that their history goes back to 30 years. Since then they have been committed to advancement of project and program management expertise.  Decades of real world experiences offering a wide range of professional services in a variety of industries.

CBA inc. is seasoned with professionals that provide you with the best of assistance. Giving you a variety of project management. The services and support is given with the best of knowledge. The expert knowledge comprises of portfolio project management. That is re enforced with real world experiences. Based on skills and aptitude of people involve in your project. The most important thing is their training services for primavera.

The processes they use include:

  • Business process development
  • Software implementation
  • Process documentation
  • Custom training development
  • Report writing

The people involved in consultation services are

CBA has been helping preventing project failures since the past 30 years of their services. A highly recommended one.

EBS:

With more than 12 years of experience, EBS gives integrated services for IT solutions and project management market. Part of the Insynchro group of companies, they have extended their operations across Asia pacific region providing services that range from complex implementations across the world.

Their expertise include oracle and Microsoft stack of project related solutions, services and trainings as well as their very own project centric board room solution also known as IXD.

The IXD is basically designed to serve the neglected project business stakeholders. Supporting large capital intensive projects in oil, gas, utilities, miming, telecommunications, aerospace, and infrastructure, transportation, public and construction sectors.

Their oracle product suite includes:

Their services include:

  • Consultations
  • Planning
  • Integration
  • Earned value management for primavera
  • Upgrade and installation for products.
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Why a Good Team is a Primal Virtue for Project Success

project-succssA team, a dream team to be precise is a quality that can defeat any obstacle or hardship experienced during project making. Yet more on the soft skills. It has always been impressive that how people work effectively if they are given confidence and respect, with these two powerful tools things can never get out of your hand. Project management is all about keeping things in your hand. What is happening and how things should go the right way is the primal virtue a project management should focus on. Knowing your stuff and being able to share your expertise while not being utterly persuasive or slightly dominating is a virtue for a good team, a capable team with the right professional attitude goes a long way.

A good project team is always better then a spectacular team. Micro managing a team is never a good step; it will always add mess and might deviate you from the right path where you need to focus on important basis. If you try to become a super star, micro managing everything, trying to get every little detail, interfering, dominating, the superstar will get carried away. You just need to be focused and humble at the same time. There’s a famous saying;

Fill your bowl to the brim

It will spill.

Over sharpen your knife,

And the edge will soon be blunt.

More on soft leadership, pushy project managers may think they are being effective but they are not. Believe you me they are just losing a member. Surely a bad impact on team. Better to be relaxed and go with the flow. For that way, the team will be positive and motivated. That’s not to say you can be incompetent and get away with it. The team will soon find you out. Just be fair, respectful and honest, and you might earn all the respect in the world.

A wise project manager will get all the respect. He must be like water who gets its way easily. And goes anywhere freely. It is yielding and flows naturally. He doesn’t push things or get carried away momentarily.

Enlightened leadership:

A leadership that is soft isn’t selfish and thinks of collective progress. A good team is lead by these. Continuing the theme of soft leadership.  The main quality is selflessness, a project manager who is selfish and thinks only of himself either alienate the rest of the team or worse the team that is the correct way. And start to behave in the similar way adapting to similar characteristics.

The reason is a good project manager who is supportive, builds confidence and makes space for other people to grow and progress as he progresses.

A famous proverb is;

Heaven and earth are long lasting

Why are they long lasting?

They use no personal agenda.

So they last long.

There are a number of courses available online on how to be a good project manager.

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Handling Your Nerves While Doing a Project

project-management-on-your-nurvesStaying calm while handling your projects is the most important thing. There can be a lot of pressure while handling project specially when the deadlines need to be met and resources need to be balanced. Other factors can be the nature, task or inter dependencies. Top management always want it quicker, is it isn’t cheaper and better.

Things are not well versed if the project manager responds to the management pressure by interfering with the team and pressurizing the team, the efforts and skills of the team gets demoralized. The lesson we learn from agile approach is to sit back and let the team do their work. While the pressure prevails. It helps a lot as the team gets confidence what they are capable of and results in a lot more motivation. If this isn’t done the pressure is build up and with tour interruption in pity things wile you lose your focus the team loses their way too. Even the scrum master is there to facilitate. The team gets motivated, the results are great and the projects gets successful, and what you get, satisfaction, a new energy to get things right as well as appreciation and support from the top management.

A wise project manager is guided by the way he feels. The most important of the factor is believing your gut instinct and not to get effected by what is happening around. Staying calm helps you focus and realize what’s going on inside your head and collaborating with your gut instinct. The rest of the team will get on it , pick up the pace and stay centered. The old thought which is practiced by every successful individual. Pause and take time to reflect, the way become clear, and acting the right way becomes easier. Agile project management is all about empowering your team, which is very much in line with the team. When the members of a project work together, there is a inner space created among them, the team then collaborate, grows, work hard, collaborate and make successful projects in that space, while doing this the only thing that matters and what makes it a success is confidence and believe on each other’s skills. A wise project manager always give importance to the silences, silences that prevails within the inner space of the team, which tells a lot about the happenings. It reveals team’s essential mood.

The most primal virtue is to not to take sides or getting involved in any kind of conspiracies. Squabbles are the worst thing that can happen to a team. A correct approach is also very important while resolving the issues or negotiating with people who are not motivated enough.

A leader is persuasive but not dominating, you can make other’s work for you only if they listen to you and not find your behavior dominating or interfering, they never like the project manager to take all the credit for their work, which is ethically wrong too.

PSGINCS

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