Project Management | Creative Management

Posts Tagged ‘project management’

April 26th, 2009 Posted at management, project management

business, Change Management, communication, culture, document control, leadership, management, metrics, project management, Stakeholders, strategy, team

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Keep the Change! discusses the basics on how to achieve permanent result after change implementation. Managing change effectively and efficiently is key to success for any business. Companies must be flexible and agile to face changes. M&A (like the recent Oracle-Sun deal), market volatility, disruptions in traditional ways of doing business (crowd sourcing, web 2.0…) and technological advancement are some reasons why business will fail if there are not enough emphasis being put on Change Management.

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If you want to be successful, start making yourself redundant now

April 17th, 2009 Posted at Organization Behaviour, management

Getting Things Done, leadership, management, process, project management, redundant, Stakeholders, value creation

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A successful consultant and project/department manager makes him/herself redundant by selflessly building the foundation that others will use to solve problems, operate a business and deliver results.

To be a successful, you must find ways to consistently add value to the organization (your employer, your own business or your client) you work for. For that to happen, you need to constantly challenge yourself and be innovative.

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Respect Deadlines

April 9th, 2009 Posted at Operations Management, Organization Behaviour, project management

culture, project management, Stakeholders, team, time management

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The purpose of setting objectives that are tied to dates is to empower, motivate and to measure performance. Date is one of the easiest and achievable metric that we can set for measuring performance.

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Getting started with Change Management

April 7th, 2009 Posted at Operations Management, project management

Change Management, ITIL, Operations Management, project management, service management

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An auditable and “performance metrics-loaded” change management process helps managers maintain control over their operations and projects. The ability to manage change effectively brings about stability and thus freeing up resources for innovations and skills upgrading.

I will discuss various aspects of change management over several articles. Follow me over the next few months as I attempt to break down change management into easier bite size for your understand and application.

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Writing good reports for success

March 31st, 2009 Posted at Organization Behaviour

communication, project management, Report Writing, Stakeholders

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I don’t have time to write reports.

My boss does not read my reports anyway.

I have nothing to report.

Does this sound familiar to you?

Report writing should not be a chore but an activity that you can enjoy (because you achieve the result you want through the report). Here are some guidelines:

Know who are the report recipients. Be it a project or weekly report, you must have an audience to write to. Knowing who are your audience helps you to create a high impact report. You want your reports to be read and achieve certain reactions don’t you?
Establish objective of your report. What is the message that you want your reader to receive? For example, in a project report, you want your readers to be aware of the project’s health (is it on schedule, any new risks identified or issues that requires attention). In a weekly report, you want your boss to be aware of your contributions, achievements as well as problems that requires his/her support.
Develop templates that you can easily insert contents. Report writing should not take more than 30minutes. For that matter, no one says that you should write your weekly report only on the last day. You can spread out your report writing over the entire span of the week.
Identify the areas in which you want the report to help you achieve your goals. A good and consistent report can help you drive the project and getting all the individual activities owner on their feet because the report is being read by all the important stakeholders.
Be creative and sharp. Use pictures, charts, tables, etc, to deliver crispy clear message to your ready. For example, instead of writing how well you have done to maintain high up time for your system and services, it would make more impact if you draw a few charts showing the trends.
Keep it short and simple. Don’t write a 50 pages report. If you do not want to read a long report, what makes you think anyone else would? If someone wants to know more, they will approach you for elaboration.
Be punctual and consistent. If you deliver your report every Tuesday at 4pm, then do so consistently. This will help to reinforce the authority of your report and generate anticipation from your audience.

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Stakeholders are critical to your success

March 28th, 2009 Posted at Operations Management, project management

Operations Management, project management, Stakeholders

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Anyone who consumes your services or products are stakeholders to your project or operation.

Putting in more effort to identify all your stakeholders from the onset has many advantages for a project or an operation.

Number of changes (in scope and schedule) are reduced in project. Scope change happens when newly identified stakeholders request for certain features to be added or tighter schedule to meet their business needs.
Improved communication which leads to higher customer satisfaction. If you do not know who consumes your services, you will end up “neglecting” some group of users. For example, if you plan for a maintenance window, you have to inform all your stakeholders regarding the activities and the associated impacts. Anyone not in the loop may results in unnecessary business disruptions and revenue losses.
Project budget is more realistic with more stakeholders participation in the cost estimation process. Budget padding will be minimized since less assumptions are made on behalf of other “unidentified” stakeholders.
More stakeholders = More risks can be identified. This translates to more predictable and manageable project/operation.
Useful reports can be generated when all stakeholders’ interests are taken into consideration. Performance metrics are predefined together with stakeholders. Never generate a report that no one is interested to read.

Identifying stakeholders in a project is a progressive activity. In an operation, however, the challenge is that there are new consumers of your services which you may not be aware of. The only time you know you have a new stakeholder in operations is when you receive complains. This will be discussed in future articles focusing on operations management.

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