Some of you may have wondered; what is Project Management. What Project Management is not; it is not magic nor is it an instant fix for all ills. Project Management is nothing more than a common sense, organized way of planning and executing a complex task. Typical tasks might include supporting a trade show, developing a new product, or, perhaps, holding a dinner party. A key feature of good Project Management is that the hard work of planning is done at the beginning of the process. By defining in the beginning all of the actions necessary to achieve the desired results it is possible to identify most (but never all) of the things that can go wrong and provide an early opportunity to take steps to mitigate any negative impact.
The following are the elements of any project plan. The extent to which each is formalized and detailed will depend upon the complexity of the project and the experience and talents of the team assigned to the project.
1. Definition of Requirements. In short, a definition of requirements establishes how one can tell when a project is successfully completed. We are most familiar with the requirements for a new product development embodied in the Marketing Requirements Document. Perhaps it might be a description of a VOD launch, detailing what is to be launched and when. You may undertake a useful mental exercise by preparing a requirements document for your dinner party.
2. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). (Please excuse this terminology holdover from my Department of Defense contracting days.) This is a detailed listing of the tasks that must be done in order to achieve the required results. It also helps to identify which other tasks must occur before any given task can be undertaken. For your dinner party do not forget to “develop guest list”, “obtain invitations”, “address and mail invitations”, etc.
3. Task Descriptions and Bases of Estimates (BOEs). Here we describe each of the tasks identified in the WBS and make some estimate of the time and resources required to accomplish it. As attention is focused on each task it is the time to test whether the required prior tasks have been properly identified. Thus, as you reach for the eggs to bake the cake for your dinner party, you had better have looked at the recipe prior to preparing your shopping list prior to shopping. Otherwise you may not have the eggs you need.
BOEs are merely the methods applied to estimating the time and resources required for a task. Most estimates are based upon experience - you have done something like it before and know about how long it will take. When you are baking your cake or other dishes, many cookbooks these days provide an estimate of the time it will take to prepare a dish. If all else fails, make an “engineering estimate”. This involves the mental exercise of walking through the task and applying wet thumb estimates for each step. If you are really serious about this process you should record your estimates and revisit them when the project is completed. Thus you will have a historical database to which you may refer when next you undertake a similar project.
4. Schedule Development. With the set of Task Descriptions and BOEs, it is possible to assemble a schedule, making certain that all required prior tasks precede their successor tasks. For a new product development project everything typically flows from an assumed start and completes months later than is required to support the business model. There will follow a series of negotiations and brainstorming sessions to find ways to bring the fledgling project plan more into line with the dictates of the business model. For your dinner party you will probably want to develop a setback schedule, starting with the date of the party and working backwards to the beginning. If you find that you needed to start last week to get to the end date, you have the same opportunity to revisit the requirements, review the tasks and, if all else fails, delay your party.
5. Resource Acquisition. For the new product development effort this is the point of assembling the cross-functional team who will be charged with the task of developing the new product. For your dinner party you may need to engage a caterer and/or kitchen staff and/or waiting staff. You will need to establish a budget for groceries, wine, invitations, postage, flowers, etc. (Please note that steps 3, 4, and 5 are really interrelated and generally involve an iterative process, rather than the linear one described here.)
6. Execution. No matter how good the planning is, nothing ever goes exactly the way it is planned (thus one should not overdo the initial planning, but neither should one skimp there). Good Project Management uses the Project Plan, which is the collection of the steps above, as a template against which progress is measured. When things go differently from the plan, adjustments should be made in real time.
7. Review. When the requirements have been met, declare the project successfully complete, celebrate your success, review your plan, record lessons learned, and go on to something new.
