Project control first-class practices can without problems be carried out to small tasks to allow you to plot and manipulate your challenge successful
As an energetic project manager and project management trainer, I often get asked whether or not the project management best practices that are applicable to massive comes is applied to tinyer projects. this is often a very necessary question and one that all project managers should face to once managing small projects.
That specializes in project delivery
one in every of the arguments against mistreatment project management methodologies is that they're very process-centric leading to Brobdingnagian quantities of project documentation which are merely not sensible or fascinating on small projects. this is often a powerful argument and any technique that focuses on producing documentation at the expense of delivering the important business advantages of the project are going to be a hindrance instead of a benefit. when all, the name of the sport in project management is delivering business objectives, not producing reams of documents.
there's an in progress and active discussion among the software system development community regarding the simplest thanks to manufacture
software for projects. a lot of recently, some software professionals have argued for more agile ways of manufacturing software rather than the more ancient heavyweight methods which centered on producing Brobdingnagian quantities of documentation.
Agile ways specialise in the delivery of software system instead of documentation. With this in mind, i believe project managers everyplace will learn one thing from the agile methods used in software development. In short, this leads US to focus on project delivery rather than project documentation, though the crucial selection project managers everywhere
have to be compelled to create is what quantity documentation is admittedly necessary?
Apply the simplest practices
i'm a firm believer in precisely manufacturing the maximum amount as is needed by the project. Nothing a lot of and zilch less. an easy rule of thumb is: if it' helpful in serving to US to deliver the business objectives of the project then produce it, if it'sn't useful in helping us to deliver the business objectives of the project then don't waste time to supply it. With this in mind, i feel that all told projects, at a minimum it is best to use project management best practices.
Let’s take into account the simplest practices successively and see whether or not or not the overhead lost in applying best practices is definitely worth the advantages which can be gained.
Shaping objectives and scope
Even on the littlest project, there'll be objectives that has to be achieved. As a project manager, it's in your interest to outline what these objectives are since you're possible to be assessed on whether or not the project meets those objectives. it's your responsibility to make sure the project meets those objectives and you are in command of this. In short, the book stops with you.
currently suppose you don't define and write down what the objectives are, you are forever going to be at the mercy of any boss who decides he' got it certain you. The outlined and documented set of objectives is your policy against your manager later coming back on and oral communication you didn't meet the objectives.
However, there's one more reason why you continue to have to be compelled to outline and document the objectives even on atiny low project. you wish to satisfy the wants of the stakeholders since that's what you're paid to try and do as a project manager. If the objectives aren't defined, then you won't be able to meet those needs through your project.
equally with shaping the scope. The scope forms the boundary of your project. If you don't outline what it is, the likelihood is that that it'll grow and grow because the project progresses and though you may have started managing a awfully small project, rapidly your project might become significantly larger than after you set out.
you continue to have to be compelled to document who are the stakeholders on atiny low project as well. By defining who these are, you'll make sure that you cowl all of their desires when you outline the objectives and deliverables.
Shaping deliverables
someone goes to own to hold out the particular work to supply no matter is delivered from your project. albeit the deliverables may be tiny and don't take abundant time to produce, they must still be written down. By documenting these items and so having them reviewed by others permits errors to be found. Your aim should be to document a close enough set of descriptions of the product to be delivered.
These descriptions can then be used by the those who will manufacture the deliverables. albeit these descriptions take no quite a page of text, it's necessary to jot down them in an exceedingly clear and unambiguous way. If you don't write down a description, it implies that the person creating the deliverable can interpret what's needed in sudden ways in which which can solely lead to work being done later to correct the mistakes. So, forever outline and document the deliverables.
Project coming up with
If you were to steer up Mount Everest, you'd ne'er have intercourse while not a substantial amount of coming up with. albeit you walk up the Hill at the rear of your house, there's in all probability some planning concerned - what time does one go? What must you take with you? it's a similar on even the littlest project wherever you'll still have to be compelled to compute that activities are needed to supply a deliverable, estimate however long the activities will take, work out what number employees and resources are required, and assign activities and responsibilities to staff.
All of those things need to be written down and communicated effectively to the project team members. I've seen immeasurable people become unstuck as a result of they assume they have to use some quite project management coming up with software system adore Microsoft Project. this is often an spare overhead. I've noticed that individuals tend to waste an excessive amount of time creating their Microsoft Project Gantt charts look pretty so they lose sight of the explanation why they're mistreatment the tool.
Instead, for little projects, I notice that making a chart in Microsoft surpass is that the best. it's straightforward and quite adequate for small projects. simply create every column a serial date, write your tasks within the 1st column, and fill in the cells to represent the time the activity takes.
additionally to the bar chart, you'll have to be compelled to document the milestones of the project. Milestones are the dates by that you wish to deliver bound things or even the date on which a significant activity ends. The responsibilities of every project member should even be documented in the project plan.
Communication
Even in the smallest project team comprised of simply a project manager and one other person, the project manager will still have to be compelled to assign tasks and responsibilities to the opposite person. It can't be assumed that they'll recognize what they must do while not it being effectively communicated by the project manager. If the project manager doesn't assign them specific activities, then the probabilities are they will act and work on things that don't seem to be required by the project. So, either the project will find yourself delivering the incorrect things, or the project will get delayed since time will need to be spent in a while doing the activities that should are done earlier.
you'll communicate the set ups via email, provides a output of the decide to your project team member(s), or higher still, decision a gathering and run through the plan with the project team members. Remember, if the plan changes, you'll conjointly have to be compelled to communicate the changes to your team as we have a tendency toll.
Trailing and reportage progress
If we still take into account our two-person project team - the project manager and one alternative person - the project manager will need to recognize the progress of the activities that the other person is functioning on. this may be wiped out a spread of ways: a brief daily email particularization the work completed, the work still left to do, and an inventory of any issues/problems. In most cases, this will be sufficient.
Alternatively, a short 15-minute face-to-face catch-up can accomplish a similar thing. Or a mixture of the 2 things may be best. In any event, the project manager still must be totally alert to the progress that's being created so progress can be half-tracked effectively.
Amendment management
Even on our two-person project, amendments are possible to occur. Requests for change sometimes come back from stakeholders and it's your responsibility as a project manager to assess the impact of acceptive these into the project. to try and do this, you wish an honest estimate of the impact the change will have in terms of the additional effort and price involved. this can usually impact the schedule as well, thus by having a transparent understanding of however the schedule and budget are going to be affected you'll create the choice on whether or not or not you'll settle for the change in your project.
On atiny low project, there shouldn't be a need for any fancy amendment panel to make a decision if the change is settle fored. a fast discussion with the key stakeholder(s) should be decent for you to return to a decision provided you have got figured out the impact on price and schedule.
One factor you ought to ne'er do is solely accept the change. albeit you think that the change is small, you should never accept any change(s) while not totally understanding what its impact are going to be on cost and schedule. That is a direction for what 10dency to|we tend to} decision 'cope creep' wherever the project grows bigger and greater as a lot of and more changes are extra to the project. Before you recognize it, your small project has become a far larger one and you'll inevitably fail to deliver your project to your original budget and schedule.
Risk management
there'll be risks even on atiny low project. confirm you have got thought through all the potential risks at the start of the project, monitor the highest ten risks hebdomadally (or the top 5 if the number of risks is small), and keep looking for brand new risks. Failing to manage risk properly is one in every of the most causes of the project to failure.
The overhead in managing risks is incredibly low. On a recent project, I Drew up an inventory of what I thought of to be all the risks of the project. It came to about ten risks in all. Of these, 5 were serious risks. I figured out an idea to avoid or minimize every risk. In all, it took ME a bit over one or two of hours to do this. Then, hebdomadally on the project, i'd pay say 0.5 an hour reviewing all the risks and thinking of any new ones. At the tip of the project, while some risks truly had materialized, as a result of I'd known an idea at the beginning of the project to attenuate the impact of those risks, the impact of these risks on the project concluded up being minimal.
So, with very little direct and in progress effort, you get a giant payback if you manage the risks throughout the project.
summary
So, in summary, applying the simplest practices to even atiny low project is dodged making an excessive amount of work or overhead. the simplest practices are the items that incalculable project managers have done on thousands of comes and are
deemed to be the 'best practice' as a result of they have an inclination to assist you to attain the best results.
Don't assume that because you're managing a small project you'll ditch these best practices because if you do, you'll regret it later once your project gets in an exceedingly mess.
