Project Management is key to success for a business

Companies that are having a bad business record are now jumping on project management bandwagon and showing that how important project management is for the success of the business. In the today’s challenging economic world, the executive management needs to understand the important strategic role the project management is playing in the success of the business. If an organization wants to pursue their plans for the success and stability of their business so they need to know the worth of project management instead of considering them as a functional activity and they should place them at the core of their of business processes. At the same time, the responsibility lies with the project managers to engage better with senior management for the sake of the business. We are mistakenly thinking that project management is only important for industries such as engineering, construction, manufacturing. Indeed it is necessary for these industries but not only these. Project management requires a team of talented and skillful people. Those people are responsible for the planning and then executing that plan for the success of the business. The sound plan can mean a difference between the success and failure of the business.

Why project management is important

Project management deals with the unexpected before it becomes a bigger problem. It helps you to focus on the bigger targets of an organization, let them be more productive and allow you to spend less time on a low value-added task which allows you to concentrate on the high-value task. It leads to overall efficiency and if your project team is efficient and if it works efficiently so it will reflect all parts of your project. Project management team leads to better monitoring of the overall project, this overall overview, available activities, and resources helps you to make the right decisions. This helps you to use your resources to more ambitious projects. The most important factor is that Project management helps in enhancement of team management, as the human resource is the important asset of an organization. This allows your team to share knowledge and work in synergy throughout your business project.

It is essential for every business whether it is small or established. It helps the organization to reach the goal within the predetermined budget and time. It is a big challenge for the small organization as they have to deal with projects with limited resources. It involves the identification of the right project management and then applying it to the desired project.

Primavera helps you as a team of project management. You can rely on it for a project manager. Primavera personnel are experienced project management professionals having experience and leads your projects to the successful outcome. It includes planning, development, innovation, initiation, execution, and control. Primavera has a team of skillful and talented personnel that are having expertise in manufacturing, refinery, medicine, high tech industries, hospitals, aviation, office building, and renovations. Primavera has been supporting companies in long and short-term projects. It supports when your project is near the deadline with scarce resources, Primavera helps you with its highly experienced and qualified project management professionals.

When the Benefits of Your Recent Project Fades Away

benifitsThis is a thing which is not being paid due attention, for instance, let’s understand it with an example the project you were working on is complete you are busy taking your time out, enjoy success, celebrating with your stakeholders and other teammates. You are not following your recently completed project but somebody else surely is.

You even engage in some new assignment. But then the unexpected happen. Ad what it is?

The project you completed is not delivering results. At some point like the first six months or so of your project, you might even overhear what your project has been creating, a mess for others or let’s just say , not adding the right kind of value or expected value to the business of your customer or the organization you are working for. But once you find out the results are not as expected, next thing on your mind is how you need to carry out the amendments but firstly you get to know, what went wrong?

You start looking for clues and let us see, what can be the answers,

Your findings reveal that the related processes which are supporting your product are not aligned thus in return producing the loss. Which results in erosion of benefits or you can say with this the benefits of the product fade away.

Some of the factors are discussed below, which can be of great help for project managers, these factors will help you fill the loopholes when you work on your next project, so here you go.

  • Overtime
  • Regulatory fines
  • Overlooked tax deductions union disputes.

Discussing these in detail is important.

But first, understand is what your next step would be, focus on the assignment you are currently working on and ignore what’s been lacking behind or work on the solution involving your stakeholders, other project managers, and team in the process. The answer may differ according to the situation you are in, but one thing you need know, updating the project with lessons learned is important. And crucial to your success as a project manager, whether you are in the leadership role or not.

Regulatory fine:

The project processes do not provide the project report on time, regulatory reports to be precise. There is a lack of compliance, data requested by federal or local authorities is missing. This results in creating a lot of mess.

Overtime:

Lack of clarity about changes brought by your project and the changed processes caused the operational areas to work as usual. Producing the undesired results and the operational areas worked as usual, and the work had to be done again.

Union disputes:

The implementation of the new processes and project caused a change in union worker’s duties, which were caused due to not thinking about the minor aspects at hand, in the current contract, the new contract if done, would be on a larger scale with contemplating, each and every aspect.

Benefits Gain Profit Earning Income Hands Volunteer Concept

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

PSGINCS.COM – A HOME FOR BEST SOLUTIONS

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We address complex system of system challenges through tools , techniques and knowledge based system thinking while also recognizing that future systems require new thinking in complex domains such as cyber security, health care , data analytics, banking, transportation , government and aerospace.

oracle’s primavera portfolio solution is robust, easy to manage.

it’s key features include:

1. flexible user interface

2. team member interfaces for stating work

3. streamlined enterprise reporting

4. integrated risk management

5. resource management and optimization of views

6. workflow engine to automate business processes

the key benefits include:

1. unite project teams and stakeholders through collaboration and strong feedback methods

2. reduce the risk of costs and schedule overruns

3. optimize management of all resources

4. monitor and visualize project performance vs plans

5. confidently make and keep project commitments.

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT – MATCHING PEOPLE WITH PROJECTS:

Support both top down and bottom up resource request and staffing processes . primavera P6 EPPM makes it a lot easier for projects and resource managers to communicate their requirements and decision throughout a project’s life cycle. By providing a graphical analysis of resource and role utilization . PRIMAVERA P6 EPPM helps project team manages resources in dynamic environments.

This allows managers to see where resources are being used across all programs and projects as well as their forecasted future use . because all information is located is localized and centralized system. resource conflicts become apparent to project and resource managers , eliminating un expected delays and unforeseen resource limitations . in result of this, there is greater visibility into resource demand and capacity means maximized resource use.

BUISNESS VALUE:

Oracle’s primavera P6 ENTERPRISE PORTFOLIO ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION helps organizations complete projects on time and with in budget by enabling them to prioritize plan, manage and evaluate projects, programs and portfolios across the enterprise.

ENSURE PROJECT DELIVERY SUCCESS FOR ALL YOUR PROJECTS AND PROGRAMS:

Primavera P6 EPPM is an integrated portfolio management application that includes role based functionality to match each team members’s needs and responsibilities. It provides executives with a real time view of their

organization’s project performance equips project participants with the right blend of usability , power and flexibility to effectively execute projects and enable workers across all levels of organization to analyze, record and communicate reliable information and make timely decisions.

primavera P6 EPPM can easily scale from a single user on a small project to tens of thousands of users engaged in millions of activities across hundreds of projects . the solution is built on a robust and proven standards based java architecture and is designed to deliver high performance with tight security , flexible integration and real time reporting including the analytics.

PORTFOLIO AND PROGRAM MANAGEMENT – PRIORITIZING PROJECTS AND OPTIMIZING ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY: 

With primavera P6 EPPM project managers can be confident that their projects and programs are aligned with company’s strategic goals and objectives that are in line.

by providing a consistent overview and analysis of the portfolio and program as projects are added and removed , this module enables project managers to manage incoming demand and select just the right balance.

Process Improvement – Project Management

This article covers the organizational use of Primavera Software.

It mainly focus on the abundance of functionality in oracle primavera. unlocking and correctly using those capabilities is the key to maintaining a successful implementation.  PSG consultants have extensive experience in all functional aspects of the Oracle Primavera application suite.

Process-Improvement

Our consultants can work through your business processes to ensure that the functional capabilities provided by the Oracle Primavera suite are leveraged in a cost efficient manner and to provide benefit to your users specific to accuracy, time-saving, reporting and ease of use.

Our Experience

Demonstrations

The Oracle Primavera manuals are good but sometimes there is no substitute for seeing the tool in action.  Our consultants have demonstrated virtually every component of Oracle Primavera to audiences ranging from senior management to technical team members.

Process Design

To achieve an automated workflow that guides users through standard business processes, Oracle Primavera provides the mechanism to send actions to individuals to complete the steps identified.  Escalation and reminder conditions can also be placed into the process to prevent bottlenecks.

When data changes, processes can react to the data change, allowing steps to be executed in an automated fashion to notify and ultimately rectify.  PSG consultants have designed processes to aid in the compliance of many requirements (e.g. Sarbanes Oxley) to automate time approvals to facilitate conditional time approvals, define risk management processes, and outline project and program creation.

Financial Structure Maintenance

The financial capabilities within Oracle Primavera can appear to be complex in terms of all of the settings that need to be made, classifications to define, matrices, bill cycles,  charge backs, etc.  PSG consultants can work with your finance department to identify and install the financial attributes required to achieve a streamlined project accounting process.  Furthermore, our technical staff we can establish a link between Oracle Primavera and your finance systems to provide transparency into all your portfolio investments.

Security Structure

The security functionality within Oracle Primavera allow for multiple levels of granularity :

Instance Based – Where the user has a specific right to an instance of an object e.g. an individual project.

OBS Based – Allowing on the organizational structure that has been defined for your company and linked to the many objects within Oracle Primavera e.g. Projects, Resources, Processes.

Global – Allowing users access to all instances of a particular object or defines an area of the application they can see (e.g. Administration)

Additionally, there is financial security which is governed by the entity structure defined as part of the financial setup i.e. membership to an entity gives certain restrictions on what a user will be able to do such as. Post to WIP or Billing, etc.

PSG consultants are be able to aid you in defining a security model which can be adapted easily for future changes without complicating the business.  New users can then be identified by a particular role to be easily added to certain groups to enable set up and go on Oracle Primavera to ensure that the new starter process is more streamlined.

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