Project Management Steps to Take For Success

Identify Stakeholders and Sponsors

Identify the project's stakeholders and sponsors, in addition to a project champion in top management. Mainly because most projects require time resources and cooperation from people in numerous numerous areas of the business, using a champion in top management will insure that the project will be taken seriously, and is going to be a priority for those working on it.

Create an Objective Document

Create an objectives document, that will define the project's scope, requirements, and constraints, as well as a clearly defined list of deliverables. Requirements needs to be realistic and deliverables need to be tangible and measurable. The objectives post stands out as the project's principal top-level documentation to your duration from the project.

Develop a Project Plan

Develop the overall project plan with the objectives page as a guide. Identify the many tasks that ought to be achieved, then break them down into tiny tasks that are simpler to track and measure. Assign 1 owner for each task, whilst numerous people may well end up working on it, because it is important to obtain a single individual who is ultimately responsible for the completion of each task. Accurate time estimates and projected prices for each career must be determined. Order the tasks to create the best use of resources and time, placing particular emphasis on tasks that are on crucial paths for your project. Make note of any possible risks and point these to the plan. Measurable milestones must be set, and if it makes sense to your project, control the project in phases. A phased technique will enable separate evaluations and sign-offs to occur as the project progresses. Back-out plans ought to also be created if necessary. It is essential for project managers to individual the planning process, as the accomplishment or failure of any project is ultimately the responsibility on the project manager.

Assemble Project Resources

As component in the development the project plan, determine if the correct resources exist for successful completion on the project. If not, determine what methods could be needed to procure the required resources. Insure that cost estimates do not exceed the overall project budget, and that prohibitive time constraints do not exist for people assigned to tasks. Assemble one of the most team possible, keeping in mind that most team members will have other work responsibilities in addition to working on the project. Team members need to be chosen not merely for their expertise, but also for their capacity to jobs effectively on the team and get jobs done with a minimum quantity of supervision.

Procure Project Approval

Participate in any needed reviews to get approval to move forward on the project plan. All stakeholders and sponsors need to sign off on a project plan and schedule ahead of any jobs is started. If any difficulties from the overall project plan or schedule are noted, make the required adjustments until approval is obtained. By no means begin a project with out full approval.

Monitor Project Progress

Once the project is underway, always monitor the progress of the project, doing certain how the milestone dates are becoming met. If ability difficulties are encountered, analyze the problem, get suggestions if needed, and then right the issue. Resolutions should be discovered simply to avoid compromising the overall project timeline. Communication from the team members and people assigned to person tasks is critical.

Develop a Reporting Structure

Decide on the reporting procedure and stick with it for the duration on the project. The progress in the project ought to be continually measured against the overall goals and schedule for your project. Preserve careful tabs on the progress of each team member, as most times the tasks of one person will depend heavily over a successful and timely completion of prior tasks inside project's timeline. It's specially important not to allow the schedule slip for tasks that were determined being on the project's important path. Implement status meetings, daily or weekly progress reports, or other reporting processes as required to monitor the progress with the project. Particular attention must be paid to project milestones, being a failure to gain a milestone is usually an indicator of the serious problem, which need to be evaluated and addressed immediately.

Measure Project Final results and Progress

Measure the outcomes against the objectives and evaluate the deliverables that are getting produced as the project progresses. If a phased process is getting used, get stakeholder approval and sign-off quickly on every phase ahead of the following phase is started. Pay particular attention to any deliverables that could affect the overall project timeline. Evaluate the overall success from the project at the end of each phase or important milestone, and make adjustments if necessary to preserve the entire project on track. Don't wait until it is too late to deal with problems, and ask for aid or suggestions if needed. Hold careful records and write-up everything as the project progresses. If adjustments or changes needs to be created during the project schedule, everyone on the team ought to be made aware of them.

Project Completion and Sign-off

As the project nears completion, evaluate the deliverables to produce certain they meet the overall goals and objectives on the project. Complete any diagnostic tests or evaluations that could be required for ones project, and address any training needs that could possibly be component in the process. Purchase approval and sign-off inside the project stakeholders and sponsors. Produce a project closure report, which documents the entire project and the deliverables that have been produced. At this issue the project is also formally regarded to become complete, and is also handed over on the help team if appropriate. Overall project feedback need to be provided to all team members at the conclusion in the project.

Effective project management is crucial to the success of any project, regardless of the size and scope. Very good communication, planning, organization, teamwork and assist are essential in order to maintain a project on track. A thorough understanding the project could be the very first step in project management. With out a clear understanding of the goals and objectives, any project can be tough to control and complete successfully.

Web Based Project Management System

However, these days significantly web-based project management software program is obtainable inside market. There's no must procedure info manually. Everything is computerized; managers just have to enter the straightforward details into the system. Nowadays, a lot of project managers are opting for web-based project management systems. They have access towards the web-based project management software's, and tools.

Using a web-based management procedure has many benefits. Project managers can reach their computers from anywhere, not just computers, but they are able to also contact their team members and verify the progress of work. Discussing any issues that arise on the team is often a good deal easier. Team members can also interact with each other through e-mail.

Project scheduling stands out as the easy solution of web-based employment management plan in a big organisation. In quite a few methods a web-based physical exercise management plan can support your managers attain optimum results. Regardless of whether a project is based on finance, marketing, construction, or details technology (IT), and web-based project management plan can support t.

Web-based workout management plan helps managers to generate a proper scheduling plan with the project. Web-based software program has several tools which assist in managing time, and activities. The computer software includes spreadsheets, network diagrams, or Gantt charts to control the employment management scheme.

In project-management scheme, HTML, ASP, or PHP are the supported languages coded into the software, and browser. The team can entry it through a net browser. Moreover, primary software package is installed on towards server for several clients.

Project management scheme helps managers to supervise all the team easily. If the manager finds any team member late inside the completion on the task, he/she can track the problem, and improve that member, thus, avoiding any delays.. Web-based project-management-system enables the mangers to distribute the workload in accordance with the capacity of human resource (HR). In addition, he/she can monitor the performance of every individual involved inside the completion of the job. This web-based project management technique also enables the manager to measure the achievement, and performance with the team in accordance towards the strategy chalked down for completion, or achievement on the target.

Web-based project-management procedure keeps the human resources satisfied in the issue of view that whatever performance he/she is given is getting registered, and isn't more than looked. If, a business is with a custom-made programme, that's flexible to a variety of projects, it remains cost effective, and is not a burden on the bottom line. For a variety of projects, which have a variety of dynamics, companies may possibly need a tailor-made programme for them, This really is a smaller costly, but it ensures better management, appropriate monitoring, and timely completion of tasks, ultimately ensuring beneficial performances. Nowadays, this web-based project software package is a incredibly essential tool for your management of any project. Furthermore, with the appropriate project management scheme, and software, can aid managers to manage their project smoothly, and effectively.

Every project needs a big variety of individuals to your completion of any task. Projects are of quite a few kinds, and there ability level can also be variant. In order to help the managers control all tasks, management system was introduced. Project management program is utilized to build the managers believe easy. The first kind of a project management system is manual.

The Beauty of Project Management

Project Management Made Simple

First, project management is a methodology. At its core is a framework that allows for efficient use of time, but more importantly this methodology/framework helps ensure that the goal of the project is actually achieved. Second, it must be understood that to be considered a project, there has to be a specific "start date" and "end date." If the project has no official beginning or specific date to end, by definition it is a process. It is important to differentiate between the two. A project is undertaken to meet a specific goal or requirement, within a specified time frame. For example, if you are planning a wedding you would want to use a project management methodology. This is because if certain things aren't pulled together by the wedding day, proverbial heads are going to roll. A process, however, could be thought of as a repeatable group of activities and tasks that will be done over and over again. Making coffee would be a good example of a process. Coordinating everything to pull off a successful wedding, however, is a project.

There are a few project management methodologies, but for our purposes we will look at the basis of good project management. Our goal is to apply the principles of solid project management, rather than try and memorize a particular methodology.

In my experience, it is often thought that projects need to be somewhat complex in nature in order to use project management. The beauty of project management though is that even if there is little complexity to deal with, these principles will still be of great value to the individual applying them. At its core, project management is as much about efficiency as it is about bringing to fruition something that does not currently exist. Let's get started by defining a few things.

There are typically 5 phases to any project. Some phases may only have a couple of things that happen within them, but there are about 5 phases nonetheless. The phases are Initiation, Planning, Executing, Controlling and Closing. We'll take them one at a time, and remember, it's more about the methodology than anything else. Effective project management always seeks to break down the enormity of the project into manageable parts. These manageable parts are called phases.

One more thing before we begin...sometimes it's easier to apply a scenario or hypothetical situation to help us understand a concept. We will use "Planning a Wedding" as our scenario to help us understand various points or concepts.

The Initiation Phase

Project Charter

This is a very important component of the project that is often overlooked. Think of the Project Charter as your "Permission" to continue. Why do you need permission you may ask? Because 80% of project failures occur from a lack of communication. Have you ever had your boss tell you what they needed from you and then ask you to something completely different? I'll bet that not only did you clarify exactly what they wanted, but you spent an enormous amount of time creating it. Only in the end to have them tell you that you must have misunderstood. A Project Charter is really your protection against this type of mismanagement and miscommunication.

What you put in the Charter is essentially the objective of the project, the scope of the project, what things will be done to complete the project, and who it is that needs to formally authorize the project. And, the best part of the Charter is that if it isn't in the Charter, you can't do it. This keeps your boss and others from continuously changing their minds and not letting you finish what you started.

So far as the mechanics of the Charter, here are some definitions. The "objective" is really just stating what the project should accomplish. The scope of the project is simply defining the parameters or boundaries of what will be done to accomplish the project. The things that need to be done to make the project a success are called deliverables. These are packages of work that need to be done, either individually or collectively, for the project to move along as planned. Finally, the authorizers are the ones that have the authority to say yes or no to the project and ultimately the ones that are going to pay for it. The authorizers are also called Stakeholders...not because they love beef, but because these are actually the people that have the highest "stake" in the project being done right. Sticking with our wedding planning theme, the stakeholders might be the Bride, Groom, Parents and the minister.

The Planning Phase

This is the very beginning of the project where you begin to brainstorm about what you think will need to happen in order for the project to come together. For example, using our wedding planning theme, we know that there are several things that need to occur in order to make this wedding come together seamlessly...so you begin listing them. There must be somewhere to have it, someone to open and close the facility, catering must be determined, what is the anticipated budget or cost that the family is looking to spend, etc. In fact, this can just be a list of items or bullet points that you know will need to be broken down more granularly later. Remember, this is just brainstorming to see what the main "things" are that need to occur for the project to be done correctly. This is where we look at how to begin adding shape to this wedding. We need to somehow bring it from conceptualization to reality, from thought process to paper. This is the rough framework of what we know will happen or at least what we think needs to happen. The planning phase is critical for getting started, but not critical for being 100% correct. We will refine as we go.

The planning phase is really just getting the major people together that will own part of the project work and planning how they will do it and what they will need to get it done. In the business world, these are the Subject Matter Experts. A project manager does not need to be an expert in everything, but the project manager does need to find those that are and get those Subject Matter Experts on their team. This phase is also where you assign starting dates and ending dates to particular tasks. This is crucial to the project's success. There will be tasks that can happen at the same time that may or may not be related. But, some of those tasks will end later than others because they will simply take longer to complete. Start and stop dates also give you a way of ensuring that everything gets completed on time. This makes sense because the project has a specific stop date (otherwise it's a process), so all tasks have to end sometime. A word of caution, you are still in the "planning" phase here. Don't get overwhelmed with the lack of details. Every home needs a frame before it can be built. But, before the frame is constructed there is a rough idea of the total square footage of the home, how many rooms, bathrooms, etc. that there will be. That's what the planning phase if for...to determine how this thing should look.

Activities and Tasks

Project plans are created to track activities and tasks. It may be easier to think of a project plan as an Excel spreadsheet with as little as 4 columns (Task Name; Start Date; End Date; Assigned To). This gives each activity and task the ability to be formally tracked and completed. You may be wondering what the difference is between an activity and a task. Simply put, an activity is the culmination of 1 or more tasks. As an example, let's take drinking a cup of coffee in the morning. If you like coffee, drinking a cup in the morning is an activity you enjoy. However, for that activity to occur, you must complete several tasks. For example, you need to clean the coffee maker; put in the coffee filter; scoop in the coffee; fill the coffee maker with water; get a clean cup...you get the idea. Now, just because there are numerous tasks in making a cup of coffee doesn't mean that you need to include them all in a project plan. You need to go deep enough into the activity to ensure it gets completed on time, but you don't need to list all 15-20 tasks to make a cup of coffee. Remember, these are tasks and not procedures. The final rule of thumb is that tasks should always be able to be accomplished...yes or no items...did you do it or not? This means that tasks are intentionally named using action verbs. So, the activity is making a cup of coffee. The tasks that make up this activity we've already discussed. We could name one of these tasks "Scoop the coffee into the filter". Now we have a task that is action oriented and can be tracked.

Milestones

This is a way of rolling up or categorizing activities and tasks into their highest component. For example, maybe coffee is actually a part of a milestone named Provided Beverages for All Age Groups. The milestone is there to ensure that all of the beverages are bought and ready for when the guests arrive. Within the "Provided Beverages for All Age Groups" milestone then, you may have activities and tasks for Water; Punch and Soda, Iced Tea, Coffee, and Ice. Together (once purchased, delivered, and ready to be served to the guests) they complete the Provided Beverages for All Age Groups milestone for the project. Milestones give you the ability to track project completion at a higher level. This makes it easier for both reporting and tracking purposes.

The Execution Phase

This is where the activities and tasks are being completed according to the start and stop dates. You have moved out of the planning phase and into the executing (doing) phase. Here is where you, as the project manager, track others progress in completing their assigned tasks. Remember, even though you are not responsible for completing the tasks themselves, you may need to do some hand holding to help ensure that others are completing their tasks accordingly. Completion of the tasks, activities, milestones, and ultimately the entire project falls on you.

The Controlling Phase

Once you have begun to execute the project tasks and activities, you will begin controlling the work and the times it takes to complete it. Controlling the project is not as difficult as it sounds if you have good management support. Again, try and remember that your resources (those doing the work) are responsible to the stakeholders and management to ensure that they are completing their assigned work, on time. Your role is to ensure that everyone knows what tasks and activities they are supposed to be working on and tracking that completion on the project plan. From there, at regular intervals, you need to report progress to management. Management won't typically want to know every task that is being done, but they will need to be apprised of what tasks are behind schedule. You always need to have a "point of escalation" plan in case things go south. It is a good idea to also set up a weekly meeting with all of your resources to discuss tasks, completion, issues and other items affecting the project. This becomes your leveraging tool for managing people not in your area and not under your direct management. This also allows a forum to be in place so that everyone is on the same page when issues or questions arise about tasks and activities.

The Closing Phase

Think of this as the winding down phase. Tasks, activities, and milestones are almost all completed. The project is officially coming to an end...maybe there are some tasks still being performed to ensure that everything is running accordingly, but for the most part the project is coming to a close. This will usually be a fairly low resource constraint for you. You will be updating any necessary project materials and making sure that the deliverables match the Charter that you defined this project by. This is also where resources will go back to their usual daily activities as was normal before your project began.

No project should end without a close out meeting where people are praised for their efforts and thanked for their project dedication. This is a tag-team effort and everyone deserves credit.

Lessons Learned

Other than the Charter, lessons learned is probably the other most neglected part of a project. It is reasonable to think that since projects are new there will be unanticipated obstacles that you run into. Those obstacles, no matter how small, will somehow be resolved. Lessons learned is your opportunity to capture what the Subject Matter Experts learned to resolve or look out for when working on the project. These should be documented and given to management, as well as kept for yourself. From a reasonableness perspective, you may manage a project in the future that has similar characteristics of the project you just finished. How inefficient would it be to drive a project team into the same issues and obstacles that you already encountered and make the new team come up with their own resolutions? Lessons learned becomes the project FYI that can help a new project team plan better and be more efficient because they are aware and have planned for certain obstacles ahead of time. All this because you were wise enough to capture this information from past experience.

In conclusion, while there is much more to formal project management and the memorization and application of proven methodologies, it is the author's hope that this will benefit you to some degree and that maybe you will even have a take away to apply to your own project. I wish you all the best in your project management endeavors.

Project management is a term that in some respects appears ubiquitous, yet in practice, it seems to still be relatively confined to big business. While this may be the case, the underpinnings of project management are actually quite simple and can be adapted by virtually anyone. But, before we get too far down this path I think it is important to look at what project management is...and what it is not.

 

Getting Started in Project Management

Project management, the process of guiding a project from the beginning through the middle to the end is indeed very taxing. This is because the project manager coordinates other professionals to achieve results. It is therefore a big intellectual relief that Paula Martin and Karen Tate, two project management experts, have proffered a solution in this text entitled "Getting Started in Project Management".

Martin is the chief executive officer of MartinTate, a management consulting and training company. Martin is the co-author of six books. She works with project teams to help them improve on performance. Martin has been a consultant on issues related to improving organisational performance for more than ten years.

Tate is the president of MartinTate as well as a project management professional. She has more than 20 years of project management experience and teaches project management to teams in organisations around the world. According to Martin and Tate, project management is a valuable component of both professional and personal life.

They educate that whether you are working on an international project for a Fortune 500 company or organising a family reunion, project management is essential to ensuring timely and efficient completion of any project.

Martin and Tate remark that if you are new to project management, you are definitely not alone. They say lots of people are discovering that project management is a tool that can help make their projects more successful.

These authors illuminate that for many people, working on a project can be frustrating as team members refuse to agree on what should be done or how to do it and deadlines are missed. Martin and Tate however stress that projects can be both fun and successful if you use an effective method for helping your work through the steps of the project.

Using their Collaborative, Open architecture, Results-oriented and Easy-to-use Project Management methodology called "CORE Project Management methodology" for short, these authors offer a foundation for anyone willing to learn or enhance his or her project management skills.

Martin and Tate identify four phases of project management as project initiation, planning, execution and close-out. They say besides outlining the project management process, this text teaches you how to utilise the tools that drive it.
Martin and Tate submit that you will also learn in this text, the seven keys to project management success; different approaches to the process; how to assess risk and avoid pitfalls by identifying them early; scheduling and budgeting techniques that will keep your project on time and on the money.

Structurally, this text is segmented into 14 chapters. Chapter one is entitled "The basics". According to these authors here, before we can begin our journey through the land of project management, we need to cover a few basics. The first question we need to address is, "What exactly is project?" In the words of these authors, "For example, is building a custom house a project? What if you're a developer and you have a crew that builds a standard house over and over again? Is that a project?"

Martin and Tate say obviously, projects and business processes are not the same thing. They educate that project management is a set of tools, techniques and knowledge that, when applied, will help you produce better results for your project. Martin and Tate add that trying to manage a project without project management is like trying to play football without a game plan. "The coach would get the players together and say, 'How should we play this game? We're supposed to get more points than the other team and to do that we have to score goals. Now everyone go out and do what you think needs to be done in order to win'," stress these experts.

Chapter two is based on the subject matter of initiating a project. Here, these authors educate that the first phase of a project, which is called "initiation", begins after management decides to authorise the project. According to them, the goal of initiation is to set the direction for your project and define any constraints on the project.

They add that both project direction and constraints should come from the sponsor, because the sponsor is the management person who is accountable for ensuring that the project meets the strategic goals of the organisation and that the benefits of the project outweigh its costs. Martin and Tate say the direction and constraints for the project are outlined in a document called the "charter" and this document is the responsibility of the sponsor.

They add that however, many sponsors either do not know how to write a charter or claim not to have the time to do so. Martin and Tate say as a result, it is very probable that you will find yourself writing the charter for the sponsor and then have the sponsor review and approve it when you are through.

These authors stress that in the customer-needs section of your charter, you are trying to define the real reason why the project is being undertaken for the customers.

In chapters three to nine, Martin and Tate examine concepts such as leading the project team; kicking off the project; planning the scope; organising the project; assessing risk; developing a schedule and developing a budget.

Chapter 10 is entitled "Assembling the project plan". According to these authors, after the planning activities, it is time to assemble the plan. Martin and Tate add that the project plan is the output of the planning phase. They educate that it captures the information you have compiled with the team and lays out how the project will be executed. In their words, "If the charter represents the expectations and wishes for the project, the project plan represents the projected reality. Therefore, it's the plan that you will use to guide the project as you move forward into execution."

These experts also discuss the scope plan. They educate that the scope plan defines what will be produced for the customers, adding that in order to produce the final deliverable, you have to organise the work of the project. Martin and Tate say you need to break down the final deliverable into interim deliverables and someone in the team is assigned accountability for each one.

They add that then, you define the sub-projects and assign each deliverable to a sub-project. These experts guide that finally, you need to make sure you have the right people in the team. They stress that you now assess the skills you need to create the deliverables and review your list of stakeholders to make sure they have representation in the team or a team member liaison assigned to keep them involved in the project.

In chapters 11 to 14, Martin and Tate analytically X-ray concepts such as team-based tools; executing the plan; closing out the project and summing up.

Stylistically, this text is fantastic. The language is simple, embroidered with standard punctuation while the 14 chapters are brilliantly handled. What's more, Martin and Tate make use of an acronym by collapsing their Collaborative, Open architecture, Results-oriented and Easy-to-use Project Management Methodology into CORE Project Management Methodology for short. This is a conceptual amplification and creative structural compression. They employ graphics, especially the one on the outside front cover, to achieve visual enhancement of readers' understanding. The layout of the text is also visually appealing.

However, some concepts are repeated in this text. Probably these authors deliberately use this style to create emphasis and ensure long memory on readers' part. It is also written in Standard American English. That is why you have "...someone on the team..." (page 156), instead of the Standard British English "...Someone in the team...", etc.

On a note of analytical finality, this text is intellectually revealing. It is a must-read for those who want to achieve success in project implementation.

Tips on How to Become a Good Project Manager

Project manager is a challenging yet exciting role. A good project manager should have a great sense of urgency and be good at prioritization; at the same time, he/she needs to be flexible in accommodating changes at any one time.

A project manager skill-sets and experiences are the end results of many years of project management and exposure. They learnt best by managing the issues and problems that exist in the project themselves, and understand what are the critical success factors for each project. Of course, with the appropriate educational qualification, such as having a 'Project Management program Certificate' will be a good thing as it tells your employer that you got what it takes to manage a project, and the PMP certification process actually provides all the necesasry insights into the theoretical aspects of project management.

a. Before getting into the real world of project management, look out for working opportunities, especially those dealing directly with the customers. You may volunteer yourself to work in call centres during weekends attending to call-in customers who called in for assistance. Occupations which request direct communication with customers is very tough and challenging. However, by learning how to deal with customers well is indeed a valuable experience as it gets to build up the confident level for anyone to deal with many different people in the real society later.

b. A good project manager is always there to secure a good working atmosphere for his team members where they can facilitate internal organizational communication well. Team members will open themselves more willingly to share views and ideas effectively with the leader and other team members in this friendly atmosphere. The end result is with a strong and cooperative team, projects can be managed more successfully as compared to where the team members have conflicts of opinions and fight among themselves.

c. Also, the project manager needs to consistently provide positive encouragement, encouraging the team members to voice out their ideas and suggestions at anyone time. He should also endeavor to provide prompt and constructive feedback to the team members necessarily for their continue progress and career development. Building good rapport and understanding among the team facilitates the progress of any project as their shared the same objective and direction.

d. A good project manager needs to always motivate and inspire his team. This is to secure the strong bond within the whole team. Issues are discussed openly and the team members are allowed to provide their suggestions and feedback in the meeting. The sense of belonging among the team members grew as they felt their importance when they have the opportunity to voice out and share their thoughts.

e. The ability for the Stake-Holders to build their trust and faith on the project manager for the project is a major accomplishment of the project manager. Only with strong support and trust from the Top executive, the project manager can earn his authority and power to drive for the success of the project.

f. Equivalently important, the project manager needs to be sharp and observant when it comes to analyzing an issue or problem. He also need to be a fast thinker to propose for possible workarounds promptly during emergencies. He need to understand the priorities of the project well to make the right call in time of crisis.

Project Management - The Basics

There was a time when the corporate culture did not recognise the need of project-management as a separate field. However, with the passage of time and gaining experience of corporate firms, the demand for project-management as a separate field has generated. To lead the firm towards attainment of it objectives in an effective and efficient manner, it is essential for it to ensure that project-management is taking place.

To understand the fundamental information regarding project-management, it is of immense significance to first fully comprehend its meaning. Project-management is the exercise or task that requires planning, organising, and managing resources to consequent in a successful accomplishment of a particular project's aims and objectives.

A project is an impermanent endeavour, which has a specified commencement and closure bound by a date. In some cases, the constraints might include funds or deliverables. These constraints are mentioned to accommodate certain aims and objectives. This attribute of the projects being temporary is about the business operations.

The basic idea of project-management is to ensure that all the objectives are met while keeping in the boundaries of the mentioned or specified constraints. The most common limitations that are used about project-management are scope, time, and budget. Furthermore, project-management requires incorporation of proper distribution of inputs, which are needed to meet the pre-specified objectives.

The initiation of project-management is done by first establishing the aims and objectives; these may include project requirements and specifications. The project manager determines these requirements. He will be responsible to make sure that the project is completed within the specified time, budget and at the pre-determined quality.

He will also be liable for communication between stakeholders to teammates. The project manager next assembles the resources. These may include people and equipment to complete the desired objectives. The project manager should next keep the track of project. He can do so by ensuring that the deadlines are met and lessons are learned for the next project.

There are five stages which project management incorporates.

The first is the initiation, goals are developed and respective people are told the scope of the project.

The second stage planning requires you to arrange all required things that will ensure that the goals and objectives are met.

The third step is called the execution or implementation. This stage is where the project tracking software is used. With the use of appropriate software, you can decide if you have over allocated or under allocated.

The fourth step of project management process is called the monitoring and controlling process. This step often asks the project manager to rework the plan and execute again unless the problem is identified and is controlled accordingly.

The fifth and the last step of this procedure is called as closing, this requires the project manager to submit detailed summary reports including costs and resource work to the respective people.

Flexible Project Management Using Web Based Project Management Systems

The web based project management system is the compilation of methods, and processes used to deal with extensive, large, and multiple projects. It includes programming software that lead to the proper scheduling, and calculations of the critical paths of the project. It is like a toolbox that can help you in the organisation of multiple projects with one single account. It substantially improves the efficiency of the project.

There are many problems and shortcomings related to the project management. The projects may exceed the estimated time limit, or budget. The success of the project is wrongly estimated. There may be many excuses related to such a failure. The excuses include the failing of stock exchange, and unexpected changes by the customer. However, excuses can never bring back time and money.

Wining a project is not a big achievement. The achievement is the completion of the project within the time, and budget limit according to the expectations of the customer. In all these circumstances, the web-based software of project management helps you in the flexible project management. The project management programmes help you out in the risk as well as time management.

The software works by making task lists, and managing resources. This is accompanied with the documentation, and administration systems. Through efficient project management software, you can develop an efficient timing plan. When you enter the data in the software, the system gives you a time limit after calculation of the events. It provides the data in clear and understandable charts.

The system is very efficient, as it controls every step of the project. Any fault during the project is instantly detected. Therefore, these faults can be accounted, and solved at the instant. In the absence of the product management, the fault is detected after the completion of the project. Thus, the system is essential to save time, and money.

It is an efficient system in the management of budget. It applies a process, and combination of processes that governs the budget of the project. It estimates the budget at each level of the project, so each step of the project is accountable. It plans the route of action in advance. It highlights all the possible disturbances, and discrepancies on the way to the completion of the project. Thus, it suggests a workable risk management programme that helps to lessen, or avoid the consequences completely.

The project management system ensures a well structured process with all the key elements. It helps to assign the tasks to the users. Various task groups are assigned with their respective tasks. Thus, the project is divided into phases, and modules. Moreover, the system determines the urgencies related to the project. The priorities are set for quick and proper completion of the project.

The efficiency of the project is the blessing of the communication system offered by the project management systems. It offers a centralised data. All the resources can visualise their tasks on the daily basis. They are updated about their tasks, whereas the team leader has the complete control and check over the performance of the workers. Thus, with the help of the web based project management system, all the projects can be easily managed.

Remarkable Project Managers - Gen Leslie Groves

Throughout the ages there have been project managers who, through their flare for organizing work, drive, and leadership, have led some of the world's most remarkable achievements. This article looks at one such extraordinary person, the leader of the Manhattan project. The Manhattan project is my personal favorite in terms of demonstrating project management skill because it contains all the elements required for a remarkable effort. It delivered a product that changed the world, it met a challenging deadline, and it was done under some very trying circumstances.

The Manhattan project was successfully led by General Leslie Richard Groves. General Groves had previously managed the project which built the Pentagon, a significant achievement on its own. The project had actually been started in 1941 under the name "S-1" and was being managed by a civilian project manager, Arthur Compton. The S-1 project was charged with delivering fissile materials, with the ultimate goal being a nuclear weapon. The project had already engaged most of the famous scientists who would produce the bomb for General Groves, but it was decided to change the scope and deliverable of the project to a nuclear weapon. With this change came a demand for a military project manager who was experienced in large industrial projects: General Groves

General Groves succeeded in resolving several issues in just two days which had stymied the project for months up to that point. He was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General immediately thereafter. In fairness to Compton, Groves had military backing and authority that Compton didn't. Exercising the authority that his position provided is not what makes his accomplishments remarkable. It is the way in which he exercised his authority, and even exceeded it.

To give you some idea of the project's introduction to Groves, let's look at his first 10 days on the job. He assumed the role on September 17, 1942. On September 18 th he purchased 1250 tons of high grade Belgian Congo uranium ore and had it stored on Staten Island. On September 19 th he purchased 52,000 acres in the Nevada desert, the future home of Oak Ridge, the future site of the Manhattan Project. On September 23 rd he was promoted to Brigadier General, and on September 26 th he received the highest procurement level in America. Now you can imagine the impact this whirlwind of activity must have had on a team used to seeing Compton tied in red tape and rendered pretty much ineffective.

Groves was considered by his friends to be pushy and over-bearing. He was generally hated by the scientists who formed the core of his project team, but Groves wasn't interested in winning popularity contests. He wasn't given the project to become popular with the scientists; he was given it to push the scientists to deliver to the utmost of their abilities and then some. He was given the project to succeed.

Although the project team actually peaked at 175,000 members, the core group was the scientists and mathematicians whose intellectual efforts were responsible for producing the plan which harnessed the power of nuclear fission for the bomb. The scientists and mathematicians were the best and brightest in the world and included such luminaries as: Robert Oppenheimer, Philip H. Abelson, Hans Bethe, Niels Bohr, Sir James Chadwick, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Otto Frisch, George Kistiakowsky, Ernest Lawrence, Philip Morrison, Seth Neddermeyer, John von Neumann, Rudolf Peierls, I. I. Rabi, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Stanislaw Ulam, Harold Urey, and Victor Weisskopf. Five of these folks had won Nobel prizes in their field and 3 more would go on to win Nobels after the project. The advantage of having this talent on the team is obvious; the drawbacks may be less obvious. These men were all used to being leaders in their own countries and spheres of influence. Now they were suddenly being treated as just another member of a team and there was resentment at the change

Richard Oppenheimer had some success leading teams of scientists during the S-1 project so General Groves made him the team lead of the scientists and mathematicians on the Manhattan Project. Groves worked on developing a good working relation with Oppenheimer so that he could hand off responsibility for the scientific work to him and concentrate on overall project goals and objectives. He did this by taking responsibility for the fissile materials program away from the Manhattan team and handing it off to the Dupont and Kellog corporations. By this time the pressure to deliver the project as soon as possible was about as intense as it was possible to get. The Germans were working on a nuclear weapons program as well and it was obvious that the first team to succeed in producing a usable nuclear weapon would have a tremendous advantage in the war. Groves responded to this pressure by crashing the schedule. He ordered construction on the fissile materials plants to begin before the drawings had been completed! How could he possibly begin construction before the construction team knew what they were building? Groves went with what was known about the plants at the time: their foot prints and the site preparation work. This approach to building plants was relatively unknown at this time and you can bet that Groves needed all his pushiness to overcome resistance to proceeding this way.

On October 15, 1942 (remember that Groves has been on the job for less than a month at this point) he makes Oppenheimer responsible for sub-project Y, building a central laboratory for weapon physics research and design. The site for this project was Los Alamos, New Mexico, the site where the first nuclear weapon would eventually be built.

Without getting into the details of how nuclear weapons are produced (I have no idea), the project required the team to produce three key deliverables: the fissile materials required for bomb making, a working bomb using those materials, and a weapons delivery system. By December of 1942, the team working on fissile materials had produced the combination that they deemed suitable for bomb making. At a certain point, the mixture of uranium oxide, uranium metal, and graphite will produce materials capable of achieving a "critical mass". Critical Mass is the smallest amount of fissile material necessary to achieve a chain reaction.

Plutonium is an essential ingredient in the process of nuclear bomb making and in January of 1943 Groves acquired the Hanford Engineer Works, 780 acres on the Columbia River, Washington, for the project. He immediately organized the construction of plutonium production at the Hanford site, and a uranium enrichment plant at the Oak Ridge site. He organized the construction of a graphite reactor at the Los Alamos location to provide experimental quantities of plutonium at the same time and by November of that year they had their first success with a small quantity of plutonium. It wasn't all smooth sailing for the project by any means. The first attempt at large scale uranium enrichment at Oak Ridges failed completely in the fall of 1943. Groves responded immediately by changing his project plan to completely rebuild the facility. That same fall, work was begun on project Alberta, the sub-project that was to produce the weapons delivery system. This sub-project included weapons delivery tests, modification of existing aircraft to transport the bomb, and training of the flight crews to fly the modified aircraft.

The plutonium production and uranium enrichment sub-project experienced numerous false starts and restarts after the first failure in Oak Ridges. Along about this time the numerous challenges the project faced, in addition to the numerous failures must have made the project appear almost impossible to Groves. I'm sure that at this point, he didn't know for sure whether it was possible to succeed or not; after all, Groves wasn't a scientist himself. He did know two things: the Germans had not succeeded in producing nuclear weapons and he had the best team and best resources his country was capable of giving him. His pragmatic approach to the changes the project faced kept the work moving forward. He must have had his moments of doubt. We've all been there - we're right in the middle of the most difficult, complex work of the project and nothing is going right. The team is missing deadline after deadline. Failures are eroding morale, no-one believes in the project or the project manager anymore. Poor morale leads to bickering and bickering leads to more missed deadlines and further erosion of morale. The thing that makes Groves remarkable in my mind is not his ability to keep pressing forward in the face of all this adversity, but his ability to keep the team moving forward, and not only moving forward, but working long exhausting hours under the most adverse conditions and under the most extreme pressure.

One of the keys to making a nuclear weapon is the ability to cause the fissile material to implode. This was another area experiencing repeated failures. Groves addressed this problem with corrective action: he brought 2 additional scientists from England on board the project - Geoffrey Taylor and James Tuck. The corrective action was effective; Taylor and Tuck produced the desired affect. Taylor pointed out that the fissile materials had to have a minimum degree of stability to be used (materials produced previously had been much too unstable) and Tucker introduced the concept of wave shaping which was to make the production of the bomb feasible.

Groves restructured the fissile materials production facilities to produce stable fissile materials with the new requirements introduced by Taylor. Oppenheimer and his team were re-focused on the technology of wave shaping and implosion to construct a bomb. Thinking up to this point was that it would be possible to deliver the nuclear weapons using some form of gun. This sounds very strange to us now, but keep in mind that no-one had much experience with nuclear reaction at this time, much less nuclear weapons production. The delivery of a nuclear weapon using a gun must have seemed a reasonable project objective at the outset. Like so many project objectives, changing technology made a project change necessary. It's not that Groves recognized the need for change, or that he implemented a change to the project that I find so admirable, it's the way in which he turned a potential disaster into a success!

General Groves had additional challenges to overcome which were not technology related. The military establishment was deeply suspicious of the team of scientists and mathematicians Groves had assembled and wanted to take a cautious approach to information sharing with the team. The added layer of difficulty in acquiring and sharing the information that was needed for the team to succeed, frustrated the team and eventually the complaint was escalated to General Groves. Groves wasted no time in delivering a solution to the problem. His solution? Ignore the security policies imposed on the project by the army brass. This wasn't a wholesale divestiture of all the security rules, just those that hindered information sharing amongst the team. The result was a disgruntled segment of army brass, an unfettered flow of information among the team, and the eventual success of the project.

By the end of 1944, the project had turned the corner. On October 27th Oppenheimer approved the first test of a nuclear bomb. Approval was later given by Groves who had ultimate approval authority on the project. Also accomplished by the end of 1944:


The uranium enrichment facilities succeed in increasing their production rate. Production was not yet at the level needed to make a bomb, but they had mastered to technology needed to reach that rate.

The wave shaping technology was successful in proving the feasibility of an implosion bomb.

Problems with plutonium production were resolved and large scale production of plutonium began.

Work to date had finally succeeded in delivering the pilots that proved fissile materials could be produced in sufficient quantities to build a bomb, now work would begin on producing the bomb. General Groves imposed an August 1 st deadline for readiness to deliver the first nuclear weapon (the decision to actually deliver the weapon would be made by about the only man that Groves was answerable to at this point: President Harry S. Truman). In the intervening 7 months of 1945 the project needed to:


Increase the rate of production of enriched uranium from 90 grams/day to 204 grams/day, a level necessary to produce a workable bomb.


Pilot the construction of an implosion bomb to prove its feasibility. The gun delivery method was still the backup plan, but by this time all hopes were fixed on the implosion approach.


Complete work on a nuclear reactor and bring the plant on line.


Complete work on a thermal diffusion plant and begin producing enriched uranium in sufficient quantities.


Build a nuclear bomb and explode it, without causing injury or property damage, to prove the feasibility of delivery of the bomb.


Choose the target, plan the flight, choose the bomber and crew and prepare them for the flight.

On July 16, 1945, the first nuclear bomb (named Gadget) was tested in the New Mexican dessert near Los Alamos. The test was a success, and that was just as well for Groves as he had already dispatched Little Boy, the bomber, and the bomber flight crew to an island near enough to Japan to deliver the bomb and return. Do you see a recurring theme here? General Groves has yet again crashed the schedule to meet a tight deadline.

The rest, as they say, is history. Harry Truman gave his approval to drop Little Boy on Hiroshima on August the 6, 1945 and Fat Man on Nagasaki on August 9. The resulting carnage hastened the end of the war in the Pacific; war in Europe had already ended in May of 1945 with Hitler's defeat. The purpose of this article is not to argue the moral issues involved, merely to use General Gate's accomplishments to illustrate the leadership qualities I believe distinguish truly remarkable project managers from the rest of us mortals.

Ignoring for the moment the moral implications of the atomic bomb, something that General Groves did, Groves took on a huge project with a team that reached 175,000 members at its peak, overcame numerous technical challenges, to deliver the planned scope of the project on time. Budget was certainly not a priority for this project, although there was one presumably so I haven't discussed it here. I say that the project delivered to its planned scope because it delivered a nuclear weapon, despite the fact that the original plan called for a nuclear weapon that could be fired by a gun.

The project management skills that General Groves possessed in spades that facilitated his success were the following:



Leadership General Groves set the stage for the pace at which the project would move within a week of his arrival. He also knew how to delegate authority so that project details were the responsibility of a team member who had the demonstrated leadership experience and technical expertise to deliver results (Oppenheimer). He showed his leadership capabilities in countless ways during this project, but those are some of the ways which stand out.



The ability to respond to change Most of us view project change from a passive perspective but Groves was an instigator of change. When he recognized the need for expertise in the creation of large industrial plants he changed the project parameters to outsource that work to Dupont and Kellog. He also recognized the need to change the project requirements to deliver the nuclear weapon by air rather than by gun. Again, his ability to respond to changes in the project environment was demonstrated in countless ways. The ones I've mentioned here are just those that stand out.



His willingness to take risks General Groves could have played it safe and accepted the restrictions placed on the project by the military's security rules. He didn't, he recognized that adherence to all the rules would jeopardize the project and risked his career by flouting some of them. This is just one example of his running rough shod over those who opposed him. These enemies were partially successful in visiting retribution on him. Responsibility for the country's nuclear program was wrested from him and passed to civilian authority. General Groves retired from the military to accept a post as Vice President at the Rand Corporation.



Use of authority General Groves recognized the level or responsibility he assumed when he took the project over from Compton and exercised a degree of authority over the project that was commensurate with it. If he had any doubts about that, he was relieved of them when he was promoted shortly after assuming responsibility for the project. Groves not only understood and used the level of authority he had been given, he actually exceeded it as he demonstrated with his flouting of the security rules.



Setting stretch objectives for the team General Groves was leading a team (actually any number of teams) that were challenged with producing a deliverable that no-one had ever produced before. Not only did they have to produce a nuclear weapon, they had to invent and implement most of the technology required to produce the weapon. As if these weren't challenges enough, they had to do all this in less than 3 years. Had Groves set objectives for the team that they were confident of achieving, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been safe (and up to 100,000 American lives would have been lost invading mainland Japan). Groves ignored the conservative advice and set stretch objectives. Not all the objectives were met, Groves set the project completion date for early 1945 initially, but the failures were used as learning opportunities and new stretch objectives were set.



Implementation of corrective actions Each time that General Groves and his teams experienced failure he kept a cool head and learned from the experience. When the team failed to develop a means of converting fissile material into a bomb, he acquired two new team members from Britain whose expertise succeeded in overcoming that challenge. When the first plant failed to produce materials in sufficient quantities to produce a bomb, he learned from the experience and restructured the plant. All these corrective actions were successful in saving the project.

Very, very few of us will ever have an opportunity to demonstrate our capabilities in the way that Leslie Groves did. What we can do is be very grateful to him for demonstrating the importance of the project management role for the entire world and to emulate some of his strengths. If we're just moderately successful in imitating the Leslie Groves model we'll be better project managers. We should start by hanging a picture of him on our office wall to remind us of his contributions. I think I'll do that now, if only I could find a picture of him where he's smiling.......