Project planning procedures for small projects

Then purpose of this document is to explain the processes that needs to be followed by Link Technologies consultants when handling small projects. This procedure is intended to be a cut down version of Project Management which contains the bear minimum processes that needs to be followed in order to reduce administrative and project costs at the same time achieving the project objectives.

Project management is required for every project.

Project Checklist:

Two documents need to exist for each project:

1. Project Plan is the report containing stages 1, 2, 3 and 4 below. This report will be built throughout the stages of the project and needs to be circulated to the project team before the next stage starts. You should not start stage 2 (Project Control) until stage 1 (Planning) is documented and initialled by the project sponsor

2. Project Status Report. This is a weekly report that summarizes the following:

• Project summary (5 to 10 lines explaining the purpose and state of the project)
• Tasks completed this week (Table showing percentage complete and the resource)
• Tasks to be done next week (Table showing percentage complete and the resource)
• Project statistics (Percentage completed, budget spent/available etc). This is required even if the project is a FIXED PRICE Project
• Risks and issues (Table showing Date, Risk, Status[High, Medium, Low], Resource, Mitigation)

The Project Plan

The project plan is a document that explains all 4 stages of the project. The stages are detailed below.

Stage 1. Planning

The planning stage is all about understanding what has been agreed on and how the project will be implemented before we start any work. This is an important step as it contributes significantly to the success of the project.

This stage must be completed, documented and circulated before commencing the project. You may use helpdesk Case management to handle complex/critical tasks. Below are the key items:

1.1. Define success criteria – What the customer views as the objectives of this project. This is what the customer agrees to achieve in order to go live.

1.2. Identify the list of tasks that needs to be performed to implementation the system. Resource names, dates, effort needs to be allocated. Effort must be entered in a minimum of 1 hour blocks.

1.3. Define test plan – What tests needs to be performed by the customer once the system is set up

1.4. Identify the project sponsors – Who will receive/sign-off the system. Names, Email, Phone.

1.5. Identify the communication strategy – Usually weekly status report, weekly meetings (or conference calls) and project plan

Stage 2. Project Control and Implement

2.1 During execution, you should mark each item in Stage 1 with their status.

2.2 Changes must be marked clearly on the project plan. Create separate tables for changed items so that they can be compared with initial scope. This is critical to justify any cost changes.

2.3 Weekly Status report must be sent out before 10am every Friday or as agreed in the project control. There must be contact with the customers at least once a week. Communication details needs to be in the status report. Status reports must raise concerns and these must be discussed with the customer and attached to Link-CRM under the customer’s profile.

Stage 3. Evaluate

3.1 Ensure that the customer has signed off on the key objectives defined in 1.1 above. Project should not go live without customer verifying that the key objectives has been met and that the system functionality has been verified in the test environment.

3.2 Project should be signed off at the end of the project, usually 2 to 6 weeks after go live. This signifies the completion of the project and support handover needs to happen on the next working day (see item 4 below).

3.3 Evaluate if the project has been a success and what could have been done to improve in the next project. The lessons learnt should be added to this thread. Please ensure that no customer specific data is recorded as this is a public thread.

Stage 4. Support/Maintenance

4.1 By now you have the completed and signed off the project plan. Handover is simply going through these documents with the team so that they can support the system.

4.2 Create a task in Link-CRM called Support Handover under the customer record and enter all the necessary details on this task. Attach the completed project plan.

4.3 It is the implementation consultant’s responsibility to ensure the customer is aware of support case logging procedures and understands the importance of logging cases on our helpdesk.

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In version 8.0 of Helpdesk, we have introduced project management tools to help group project tasks and assist project manager's produce project status reports. The project management system in HELPDESK gives you the following capability:

1. Manage project budgets, hours used and overall project progress
2. Manage project tasks, assignments and effort against each task and the impact on the project
3. Manage project risk and issues
4. Document notes and attachments for the project
5. Coordinate multiple tasks for a project and manage the process
6. Send task reminders and a summary of outstanding tasks to managers and resources
7. Project costs and billing
8. Project status reporting

A new menu option for Projects (figure 1) allows you to create and manage your projects. Detailed description on how to use the project system is shown on our helpdesk user guide.

Figure 1: Project Management. (1) Project menu. (2) Maintenance form for projects

Once a project is created, you can create and allocate tasks. see figure 2 below.

Figure 1: Project Management (1) filters on projects. (2) Project tasks