| Summary: | Project Management is one of the most important roles of a project. A project without a project manager is like a ship without a captain. The allocation of a project manager to a project is the responsibility of the customer and is a responsibility supported by vendors as the project success is bound to this responsibility. The project manager is ultimately responsible for the success delivery of the project and must ensure that the business objectives are met. It is important for customers to realize that successful project managers are those that do not have a bias towards the customer or vendor requirements, but a sole responsibility to ensure that the project objectives are met. Therefore it is important that this responsibility is carefully selected.
The 10 commandments of Project Management:
- Negative comments should not be entertained. The blame game has no place in successful projects and any one person making negative comments or compromising the project should be removed as soon as possible.
- Project manager must be qualified to handle resources and must have good management skills.
- Status reports MUST be sent out weekly as this keeps the project on track and in the spotlight.
- Financials is an important part of the project as most projects are constrained by budget. The success of a project also depends on the final delivery cost so having this information available weekly is crucial even for fixed price projects.
- It is highly recommended that the project manager keeps daily communication with the project team to keep a good handle on the project controls.
- User acceptance testing (UAT) is a crucial part of any project. Project managers must ensure that UAT plans are in place well before the UAT execution dates and that there is a clear set of instructions for testing and follow through.
- All system changes must be thoroughly tested before rolling out the changes in the production system.
- All projects must contain a test and a development environment to ensure production stability.
- Resource allocation to projects is essential. Project managers must ensure that resources are qualified to perform the allocated tasks.
- Sufficient time must be allocated to each project task. When rushing tasks, the only sacrifice is quality of delivery, documentation and user training.
While a project is in progress (NOT SIGNED OFF), the following tasks are mandatory:
Circulate the following reports to the project team and copy Sponsors and/or Project Stakeholders:
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Weekly Status report containing Summary of current status, completed tasks, remaining tasks, risks and issues and Budget Analysis
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Projected Schedule and a graphic representation of project timeline showing key sign-off dates
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Risks and Issues Register showing task status, responsibility and resolution date
The following tasks must be performed on a weekly basis:
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Project meeting (Weekly if there are any high risk items or Fortnightly is acceptable if project movement and/or changes is minimal)
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Constant communication between project manager and resources to follow up on tasks and issues
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Detailed logging of any issues together with prevention and resolution tasks
This link contains a template for the project status report.
This link contains a template for System Tests.
Sample weekly project schedule: this one is done using Microsoft Excel:
Figure 1: Sample Project Schedule
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