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Free PM Workshop – An Update

28 August 2009 By AussiePM Leave a Comment
Sunrise over Bass Straight

Sunrise over Bass Straight this week.

The response to my request for expressions of interest was fantastic. Thanks to all of you that did so.

As an update, I am planning to conduct the Workshop on the morning of Friday the 18th September 2009 at a suitable venue in Hobart. Hopefully this date gives you enough time to organise your schedule and to encourage others from your office to attend.

I will organise the venue and let you all know as soon as the details are confirmed. For those of you unable to this workshop, I received responses from Zambia and the North West, I’ll post the slidepack with a voiceover on this blog after the event.

Onwards and upwards!

Filed Under: Cost, Project Management 101, Time, training Tagged With: , , ,

Free Introduction to Project Management Workshop (free as in free beer!)

14 August 2009 By AussiePM Leave a Comment

Recently our eldest daughter provided us with a tremendous example of leadership, generosity of spirit and self sacrifice that we are very proud of. Instead of receiving birthday presents for her recent 9th birthday party, she asked her guests to donate money towards the Haemophilia Foundation Australia, as her cousin has Haemophilia and it was her way to try and help someone else.

Now a nine year old selflessly saying no to birthday presents is pretty special in my book, and yes she is a pretty special girl, as are both our daughters.

However, this got me thinking. I take leading by example seriously in our house, so I thought about what I could do to help as well. So I thought that I have some time on my hands during the week, why don’t I give something back to society and help raise a few dollars towards the Foundation as well.

So here’s my idea, how about I run a FREE half day workshop on the fundamentals of project management for anyone who wants to come along, with a particular emphasis on attendees from non-profit organisations, government policy and IT areas and private sector change management and IT companies. Ideally targeting new-comers to project management or people who have found themselves in charge of running a project without any training or experience in doing so.

So firstly I’m giving something back to the project management fraternity through providing information to help build project management capacity and secondly, if I charge a gold coin donation for attendance that money can be donated to the Haemophilia Association. Lastly, I’m leading by example for my children. That’s what I’d call a win/win/win situation.

So, what do you think? Would you be interested in coming along to a half day workshop to learn a bit about the fundamental aspects of project management, such as managing time, cost, quality, human resources, quality, risk, and procurement in exchange for a gold coin donation to the Foundation?

If you would be please click here and leave your details. When we’ve collected 20 expressions of interest, I’ll go ahead an organise the event and let you know the details. The event will be held in Hobart, so if you are elsewhere, I can’t see why we can’t record it in a podcast and post afterwards.

If you’d like to help in some way, or would like to make any additional comments or suggestions, either leave a comment to the post, or use the additional comment field in the expression of interest form.

EXPRESS YOUR INTEREST TO ATTEND HERE

Filed Under: Cost, Leadership, Procurement, Project Management 101, Reading, Teams, Time, training Tagged With: , , ,

Control, the key to good times.

28 January 2009 By AussiePM 1 Comment
Not your typical project control office.

Not your typical project control office, the Operations Control Centre of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

Today I’d like to talk about project control inside a fixed priced project. I’m writing this on a flight from Hobart to Melbourne, sitting right up the back with my knees around my ears – you know the drill. Thats why they say that economy seats are the quietest on the plan, as your knees against your ears block out any sounds. Anyway, I digress. Project control is about identifying and monitoring specific metrics about your project and using those to put in place management interventions to ensure that your project is delivered within your constraints of time, cost and quality.

Sometimes the hard part is identifying the metrics that are useful in their insight, present for the whole project lifecycle, and not overly burdensome to collect. I also try and find a primary metric that the whole team can focus on, one that means the most to the majority of stakeholders. I’m a proponent of keeping it simple and efficient.

When I talk about a metric being useful in its insight, I’m talking about tracking a quantifiable measure that is meaningful in what it tells you. For example, tracking the number of meetings required to finalise user documentation or requirements specification, whilst useful as an aside, isn’t the best primary metric. Tracking a metric like this can help identify documentation churn, the amount of effort being used in this area, it isn’t useful as a whole of project metric.

The metric needs to be present  for the entire project lifecycle to allow for tracking from start to finish. It’s not useful to identify a metric only to have the goal post moved part way through the project which essentially renders the metric meaningless.

Likewise the metric shouldn’t be overly burdensome to collect. Keep in mind the effort required to track the metric versus its usefullness as a project control tool. Most useful metrics are ones that require little or no physical intervention to collect and store.

I guess these are some of the reasons why we track costs and revenue. We’ll always do that of course on well run projects, but keep in mind other candidate metrics. On infrastructure projects, for example on an operating system rollout, measuring the quantity of machines upgraded over time is very useful and on software projects I always keep the quality criteria, defect raise and fix data, on my dashboard.

There are many other ways to measure projects, please don’t hesitate to make comment (the registration system is working again).

Filed Under: Cost, Project Management 101, Time Tagged With:

Five Considerations When Estimating Project Budget

23 September 2008 By AussiePM 1 Comment

Don't forget to factor in the total cost of a project when estimating its budget.

Every now and again we have interesting discussions in my office and more often than not I end up attempting to convey my ideas or position on my trusty whiteboard. Here’s a picture from my whiteboard today.

Here I’m explaining that the total cost of a project isn’t just the cost of the widget.

1. Project Management

One of the simplest ways to increase the likelihood of a successful project is to build in the cost of the delivery mechanism, dedicated project management staff. Whether you have in-house project management staff or you buy them off the street, there is no better way to guarantee project delivery than to allocate the appropriate level of project management resources. After all, projects don’t deliver themselves, so depending on the amount of effort required, you will most likely need dedicated, knowledgeable and skilled project management resources.

2. Contract Variations

On larger projects, you may find yourself delivering a project in partnership with a private sector partner. Contract variations are where changes to the baseline contract have occurred. Variations can occur for any number of reasons. For software projects it’s generally due to scope increase because of changed customer requirements or effort that was not estimated at the project setup stage, it can also occur to decrease scope – where a piece of work is found to be no longer required. However a variation surfaces, they more often than not cost money, so allocate a portion of your total budget to paying for the variations.

3. Change Management

All projects deliver change but not all projects need dedicated resources to particularly manage the change, as distinct from managing the project. You may need dedicated resources to communicate the project ambitions to a wider stakeholder audience or to handle inbound enquiries. You may also need to consider preparing and releasing formal publications containing project information, or writing articles for publishing on websites or in the industry magazines. Running an endless array of workshops to help any change resistant stakeholders through the pain also takes time and resources, so consider allocating a portion of the budget to dedicated change management resources.

4. Training

So your going to deliver a new software application or surgical centre. Do your customers need training on how to run it efficiently? You may even consider training when training isn’t, in your view, even required. yes I know, a total waste of time and money, but don’t tell me everything you deliver in a project is intended the way it seems on the surface. Sometimes you may need to offer training and no one takes up the offer. If you’re going to offer training, make sure your budget supports it and remember to design the training with the trainee in mind and in consultation with the business owner.

5. Widget

I use the term “widget” a lot nowadays as I often talk to people about project management who are from very different sectors. Your widget could be a changed business process, a day care centre, a bridge, a new road or a software application, all projects deliver either one or more widgets. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that the cost of the widget is the total cost of the project. If you take one thing away from this post, that’s it. You need to consider all the items which are needed to ensure that the widget is delivered within the constraints, and the preceding four items include a lot of them.

What about costing risk?

What about the cost of risk I hear you say. Well costing risk is its own post one day, but you should consider building the costs of  your risks in to each of the above subject areas. Anyway, more on that at a later date.

Filed Under: Cost, Project Management 101 Tagged With: , ,