How To Track Time On Your Project

Working out hours spent on tasks is easy when you know how.

Set up online timesheets

Online timesheets have a big advantage over paper-based timesheets or a standalone time management system. When you have everything online it is easy for your team members to get access to their records wherever they are working and at any time of the day. It's also easy to link the time management data to other areas of your project like your schedule, as we will see next...

Link timesheets to your schedule

Use your timesheet data to populate your project schedule. You can set it up so that the data feeds in to the relevant line about each task and marks it as a little bit more complete. It saves your project team (and you) a job as you don't have to update your schedule manually quite as often.

Collect time tracking data

OK, so you've created timesheets for each person on the team and you have linked them to your project schedule so that everyone can see the data and what it is used for. Now you have to get your team to fill in their timesheets so you can get the data in the first place!

Some individuals can be reluctant to complete timesheets as it can feel as if their work is being judged, and it can turn into a competition about who can work the most hours. The best way to avoid these challenges is to be honest about what the data is being used for: improving your project tracking. Let them see how it is being used and why it is helpful for you. Try to create a culture in the team where there is no competition and that people complete their timesheets accurately without feeling under pressure to justify themselves.

Make it real-time

Another concern with collecting data about how people are spending their time is that it needs to be as it happens'. There's not much point collecting historical data about what people did two months ago as that won't help you monitor and control the project today. You need your timesheet information to be in real-time, so encourage your project team to enter their data regularly. Online access makes this easy as they can fit it in whenever and don't have to be in the office. They should do this at least once a week, but more often is better. After all, think back to what you were doing last week. Can you remember everything you spent time on? Probably not, so get that information out of your head and on to your timesheet as soon as you can.

Make it easy!

Your project team will fill in their timesheets and tell you how long things are taking if you make it easy for them to do so. Make sure that they have a link to the online timesheet tool from their desktop, or that it is saved in their favorites. Limit the amount of tasks on the timesheet so that they don't feel it takes too long to complete. And check that they all have user names and passwords so there are no excuses!

Tracking time isn't difficult, although many project managers find it hard to get to grips with gathering this data. Use your tools and your team to help you and you'll find that monitoring progress on your project is really straightforward.

Manage your team's time the online tools of www.timexpro.com. The professional results will help you track time accurately every time.

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Where Do Project Managers Provide the Most Value?

Not everyone believes in project managers.  Some people say project managers are simply bureaucrats that push paper and don't provide value to the project. Other's think they know about useless processes but not about the real work of the project.

There are many fine and capable project managers. However, that doesn’t mean that everyone is competent, or that even the capable ones are perfect. Poor project management can still negatively impact the success of the project.

I think poor project managers are in the minority. Project management is a tough job, but it does not take too long to see what makes project managers valuable. Here is my perspective.

• There are many reasons why projects are less than totally successful. Many projects are successful based solely on the skills and talents of the project team, but it seems these are in the minority. It seems intuitive that major work initiatives will be more successful if they are planned ahead of time and managed proactively. (Versus projects that are planned poorly and managed reactively.) The person that plans and manages that project is the project manager. So, it seems like the project manager is valuable at a basic level.
• Some people believe that a good project manager can be successful on any type of project, regardless of whether they have any subject-matter expertise. Other people believe you cannot manage a project without prior subject-matter experience. My belief is that a skilled project manager with no subject matter experience is better than a subject matter expert without project management experience. The project manager provides a value to the project based simply on applying their project management skills.   
• The project management processes used on a project must be scaled based on the size and complexity of the work itself. Small projects need less rigor and structure. Large projects need more. A good project manager knows how to apply the right processes based on the size of the project. This provides value.

All projects build things. This is the purpose of the project. If you have the best project manager in place, but you are not delivering products the customer needs, you are not going to be successful. Project managers are important because they ensure project deliverables are completed successfully. This is where the real value lies.

So, here is my bottom line. Project managers that know what they are doing, implement proactive project management practices and apply processes scalably can contribute significantly to the success of the project. Do all project managers meet this criteria? No, of course not. Those that do are the real rock stars of project management. If you are a project manager strive to this level of knowledge and performance, and then you too can rock on!

Source:Tenstep

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Four Techniques to Manage Risk on Your Project

All projects have risks and the risks have the potential for negatively impacting the project. (I am not referring to opportunity (positive) risk.) You use risk management to determine the risks that are important enough to manage. The following four techniques will help. 

Try to Include Budget and Schedule for Unknown Risks

A project manager can request additional budget and schedule to account for known risks at the beginning of a project. Of course, the risk contingency does not include the full impact of risk. Instead you multiply impact by the percentage likelihood for all high risks. Then add the numbers to come up with a risk contingency budget and schedule.

However, risk identification is not something that only happens at the beginning of a project. The project manager assesses risks throughout the project.  Therefore, it makes sense to include time and budget for unknown risks as a part of your estimating process. If you do an effective job of periodically reassessing risks, you may find new risks to manage that were not included in the original risk contingency budget. You can include some additional contingency budget and schedule for these as well.

If your organization does not allow a risk contingency budget, you would naturally account for risk uncertainly in your base budget estimates.  

Include Team Members in Risk Identification

If team members are familiar with the circumstances of the project, they can take an active role in identifying and evaluating project risks. Joint participation from the team can help identify project risks, lay out effective actions to manage the risk and provide consensus and buy-in for execution.

Weigh the Cost of the Risk Management Plan Against the Level of Risk

The activities associated with managing risks have a cost. The project manager should make sure that the effort and cost associated with managing the risks do not exceed the impact to the project if the risk occurs. For high risks, this is normally not the case. However, for medium risks make sure that the costs of managing the risk is not more than the risk impact to the project.

Understand the Risk Tolerance Level in Your Organization

During the risk identification process, you may encounter many risks that have some likelihood and impact to the project. Which ones do you think are important enough to manage? The answer says something about your risk tolerance.

Risk tolerance is usually cultural in an organization. Some organizations are bigger risk takers and will accept a higher level of risk on projects. They will also tend to have a higher threshold before they chose to manage a risk. On the other hand, some organizations are more risk-averse. They will tend to accept less risky projects and they will also tend to have a lower threshold to manage risks.  

Source:Method123

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Add Green Thinking to Your Procurement Process

Procurement

Procurement refers to the aspects of project management related to obtaining goods and services from outside companies.

Green Procurement

There are a number of areas within procurement that can be enhanced to consider sustainability and help you establish a green procurement approach.

• Plan Procurements. Green procurement starts with the Procurement Management Plan. The Plan will incorporate green thinking. It is important to understand and note any organizational Environmental or Sustainability policies and standards you are adopting on your project. As you gather and rank the needs against which you will evaluate vendors, you can now include sustainability criteria that the vendors need to meet. You can also establish the weighting factors for these needs and ultimately rate the vendors on their ability to meet your environmental and sustainability requirements.
• Obtain Seller Responses. In your RFP, you may include information on your organization’s environmental focus (such as describing your GreenPM processes) and have the vendor comment on how they will align to these, or make a general inquiry regarding the vendor’s use of green processes. Each vendor should be able to explain and demonstrate how they help accomplish your environmental goals, possibly describing how they have completed similar goals previously.
• Select Sellers. Map the vendor capabilities against your requirements and weighting factors, including the environment requirements that you have established. Using GreenPM, it is possible that your vendor selection may result in a different vendor. For example, if your environment requirements are weighted highly, it is possible that there is a vendor with a significant focus in this area who ends up being your top ranked vendor.
• Administer Procurements. You should validate that the vendor is performing as agreed throughout the project. This includes confirming that the vendor is following green project management processes (GreenPM) and meeting any defined environment criteria for deliverable completion. Procurement audits can be one approach to validating the compliance to your expected standards and processes.

Procurement is not simple and organizations seek to continually streamline and improve their procurement approaches. Green procurement may add another dimension to improving procurement processes.

Source:Tenstep

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Seven Key Components of a Cost Management Plan

The Cost Management Plan describes the process that will be used to manage the project budget including tracking current expenditures, upcoming expenses, identifying potential budget overruns and evaluating overall project spending against the budget. The components of the Cost Management Plan can include:

• Roles and responsibilities. You can describe different roles and their ability to access the project budget. For example:
  • Who is the budget owner. This is probably the project manager. (The project sponsor owns the money from a business perspective, but the project manager owns it from a budget perspective.)
  • Who can approve expenses? This is important to identify up-front. It is possible that only the project manager can approve project expenses, but in some instances this can be delegated to someone closer to the expense. For instance, if you have contractors working within project teams, it is possible that the team leader will be authorized to approve the timesheets for these contractors.
  • Who can read? The budget numbers may or may not be sensitive information. You should decide who else can have access to the actual expenditures and budget information.
• Frequency. You should describe the timing of budget analysis. On many projects this may be monthly since that is the frequency most General Ledger reports are available. On some projects, the expenses may need to be tracked weekly, even if it is a manual process.
• Feedback. This describes how the budget feedback will be delivered. This is probably going to be automated reports from your financial system or a manual tracking process, or both.
• Budget change review and approval. This is where you define the process required to evaluate and approve proposed budget changes. It defines the authority for accepting and approving changes to the budget. This process does not include approving individual expenses during the project. It applies to changes in the overall project budget. It is possible that the project manager may have some discretion to exceed the budget by a certain percentage, but after that threshold some formal body may need to approve the change.
• Tools. Describe about any budgeting tool that will be used on this project, who will have access to the tool and what various people can do with the tool (read the budget, update numbers, etc.)
• Reports. Comment here on the types and names of reports you are using to manage the budget, who will receive them, the frequency, etc.
• Budget integration. Normally each project keeps an independent budget, but in some instances your master budget is the result of a roll-up of other underlying budgets. It is also possible that your budget could be integrated and rolled up to a higher-level program or portfolio budget.

The Cost Management Plan is not needed for all projects. However, if you have a large project and large budget, you might want to plan ahead for how the budget will be allocated and managed. Think through and complete a Cost Management Plan if it provides value to your project. 

Source:Method123

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Top 10 Timesheet Tips

Some project managers find it hard to get their teams to complete timesheets. It doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, completing your timesheet can be a quick job if you do it regularly and use an online system like TimExPro that makes it easy for you. Here are our top 10 timesheet tips in case you are struggling to get accurate time data from your team.

1. Include Vacations

Make sure there is somewhere on the project timesheet for team members to book their vacation time to. If they are on the beach or taking photos of a new city they won’t be working on your project, so make it easy for them to record this absence as holiday. Encourage them to complete their holiday timesheet time in advance as this will also help you understand when they are available for project tasks.

2. Include National Holidays

You wouldn’t schedule any project work to happen

on a national holiday (unless that was required by the project schedule) so make sure that team members have the opportunity to book hours to ‘national holidays’ as a task so that they aren’t booking time to your project when they were at home or away for the weekend.

If you can, pre-populate the timesheet templates with this already completed for the relevant days, as this will save your project team members a job.

3. Include Non-Productive Time

Project team members might book 8 hours a day to your project, but in reality they don’t spend 8 hours a day working on it. They take calls about other projects, they drink coffee, they talk to a colleague they haven’t seen for a while. Make sure that they can book the appropriate amount of time to other projects or to ‘non-productive time’ and let them know that you expect a certain proportion of time to be accounted for in this way.

4. Do Them Regularly

Do you remember what you were doing two weeks ago? Probably not – projects are so fast-moving and things change all the time, so it’s hard to recall what happened earlier this week, let alone earlier this month. Doing your timesheets regularly is the only way to gather accurate information when it is fresh in your mind.

You should complete your timesheets at least once a week, and make sure your team members do this too. Chase anyone who doesn’t complete them on time, but don’t leave it until last thing on a Friday afternoon when everyone is keen to get home for the weekend. The risk then is that they’ll rush the exercise and book time to any activity instead of the correct ones.

5. Set A Good Example

If you don’t complete your timesheets accurately and on

 time, how do you expect your team members to? And if they hear you complaining about how hard it is to fill them in or what a waste of time it is, they will take their cues from you. You set the tone and the culture for the project team, so it is important to lead by example.

Put a regular task in your diary so that you don’t forget. Be positive about your use of timesheets and your compliance with the policy, and make everyone else on the team feel that it is a normal, productive part of being on a project.

6. Explain How The Data Is Used

People often worry about why you want to know exactly what they are doing every day. In difficult economic climates, or companies that are going through redundancy programs, employees might be worried that the data will be used against them somehow.

Tell your team what you are using the data for – validating project estimates, checking schedule progress and ensuring that the project is progressing according to plan. They shouldn’t be worried about the data being used for anything else. If you think it will help and you can genuinely do this, tell them that it won’t be shared with anyone outside of the team.

7. Make It Easy To Add New Tasks

Projects, by their nature, involve change. There might be a change to scope or an issue that requires new, unplanned work. Make sure that project team members can easily add this new work to their timesheets. This ensures the integrity of the data and gives them the chance to complete it accurately instead of booking it to another, inaccurate task.

Of course, you don’t want your project timesheets to include hundreds of tasks, but if a new task is worthy of being a timesheet item, make the process to add it or request it as easy as possible.

8. Include Sickness Absence

Unfortunately, team members get sick, so

 make sure that there is a line they can use to record any time out of the office due to sickness absence. There should also be lines for other absences, such as paternity leave or jury service.

9. Do Them Online

If you make your timesheets available online, no one will have an excuse for not completing them! Online timesheets are accessible from everywhere, even from home if you have forgotten to complete them before leaving the office.

10. Use Reporting

Reports can show you who has not yet completed their timesheets this week. You can then chase them up, instead of sending an email to everyone on the team when some of them will have already done their submissions.

You can also use timesheet report data to validate your estimates and review your project plan information. Check that you are on schedule by making sure that the hours spent on a task broadly add up to what you had forecasted. If they don’t, you’ll need to make changes to your schedule accordingly. Many online project timesheet applications have a built-in suite of reports that you can use or tailor to your needs.

Doing timesheets doesn’t have to be an administrative overhead. If you set a good example and take the worry out of completing the data, team members will soon have confidence in the process and make time each week to enter accurate data. In turn, that will give you the information you need to manage the project effectively and successfully.

Use the professional timesheet features of TimExPro to manage the time spent on your project. Your team members can access their timesheets from anywhere and you’ll always have a real-time view of project progress.

Check out our easy and simple solutions for timesheets :

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Easy way of track your time and expenses...

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Effective Status Meetings

Status meetings are a good way to maintain effective communication on a project. There are some simple rules and etiquettes that will make them more production and valuable to the attendees.

1. All individual meetings should have an agenda that describes the major aspects of the meeting and the timeframes. Regularly scheduled, ongoing status meetings do not need a published agenda every week if they stick to the same agenda format. Instead they use a "standing agenda" which is understood to be the same for each meeting.
2. Someone should document the key points of the meeting. This will be the facilitator or originator unless other arrangements have been made. This person is sometimes called a “scribe”. The scribe should recap all outstanding action items, including who is responsible, what is expected, and when the action item is due.
3. There should be a meeting facilitator. This is usually the project manager unless other arrangements have been made.
4. Make sure the participants know ahead of time of anything they need to bring to the meeting or any advance preparation that needs to take place.
5. Only invite the people that need to be there. Others may dilute the effectiveness of the meeting.
6. The meeting should start on time, with some allowance for those that may be coming from another meeting.
7. The person who requested the meeting should explain the purpose and the expected outcome.
8. The facilitator needs to follow the agenda and watch the time to make sure everything gets covered.
9. Take any lengthy discussions offline or to a separate meeting that focuses on these items with the people that are most interested.
10. The scribe or facilitator should recap the notes and any decisions that were made and send them to attendees and other appropriate stakeholders.

Is There Too Much Problem Solving?

There can be a temptation to engage in problem solving when you have all the key people together at one time. However, the concern about problem solving is that usually only a few people are engaged in any one problem, while everyone else is unengaged and wasting time. While you have everyone together, use the time to discuss general status, issues, scope and risk. Only use problem solving if the problems are of interest to most of the team members. 

Long meetings are usually the result of too much problem solving. If you find that problem solving is extending the meeting, try to reduce the time allocated to the meeting. For instance, if you meet for two hours per week and find you are engaging in problem solving try reducing the time of the meetings to 90 or 60 minutes. Keep the status meetings short with a tight agenda to be most effective.

Source:Tenstep

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How to Deal with Uncertainty on Long Projects

Many long projects start off with a lot of uncertainty. You may not be 100% sure of the resource requirements, the final deliverables, the cost, schedule, etc. There may be many risks. The good news is that project managers deal with the uncertainty associated with large projects all the time, and it is very likely that you can be successful. Here are a couple tips to consider, depending on what you think will work best in your situation.

1. Break the work into smaller pieces
   The first thing to do with a long project is to break it down into smaller pieces if possible. Although you may be unclear about the work to be done in the next year, you should at least know what you will need to do over the next few months. Instead of defining a two year project, for example, start by defining a project that will cover only the first phase. After that project, you can redefine and estimate the next major phase as a separate project. You will also be able to more easily plan and manage each of the shorter projects.
2. Plan at a higher level as the planning horizon gets further out
   Many organizations will not allow you to break a large project into a set of smaller ones. Many companies only want to pay for one project, and track one project. 
   The next idea is to estimate and plan the work for the entire timeframe, but plan at a higher-level the further out in the future you get. You should have a firm and detailed workplan for the next three months, but then the planning will be at a higher and higher level. You have a framework for completing the project, but only the short-term activities are planned out in detail. This is probably the approach most project managers take on long projects.
3. Use multiple estimating techniques
   The classic estimating technique is to build a work breakdown structure, estimate the work associates with the lowest level activities and then add everything back up for the final overall estimate. This approach does not work well when you are not sure exactly what the work is a long way into the future. Fortunately, there are other estimating techniques that will help you cross-check your estimated effort, cost and duration.
   • Rely on outside experts to review your Charter and schedule to see if they think your estimates are reasonable.
   • See whether there have been similar projects in your company where you can review the prior schedule and estimates to see how they line up with your project.
   • Create a parametric estimate based on some type of reasonable model.
   It is best if you can use multiple estimating techniques to increase the accuracy of your final estimates.
4. Apply rigorous risk management 
   
   
   We have already discussed some ways to deal with the uncertainty of schedule and effort estimating risks. There will be many other risks as well. All of the risks need to be identified, and then a specific plan can be put into place to respond to the risks. Every month, you update the risk plan to ensure known risks are being managed and new risks are identified.

Summary

You are right to be concerned about the unknowns associated with long projects. However, there are a number of techniques that can be used to make you feel more comfortable. These means you have applied your best thinking to plan the project out as best you can, and then rely on good communication processes, risk management and schedule management to discover the detailed nature of the project as you progress.

Source:Tenstep

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Handle Scope Change Requests with Appropriate Discipline

When a project begins, you must gain agreement with your sponsor on project scope. The scope is defined at a high-level in the Project Charter or Project Scope Statement. At a low-level, the scope is detailed through the approval of the business requirements. Once these two documents are approved, you have enough information to understand scope through the remainder of the project.

However, like death and taxes, change is inevitable. There are two reasons. First, it is almost impossible to define ahead of time exactly what the final solution should look like, and so the requirements may change as the solution starts to evolve. Second, overall business conditions change over time. Some of this business change will force changes to the project scope in ways that are not known ahead of time.

So, what do you say when the inevitable changes start to come in? If you say yes without understanding the consequences to the project, you increase your chance of failure. If you say no, you may introduce conflict with the client and run the risk of delivering a solution that does not meet the client’s needs.

The key to scope change management is to not say "yes" or "no". The better response is to follow a scope change management process. This process should include:

• Understanding the business value of making the change
• Estimating the impact on the project budget and schedule
• Taking the information to the project sponsor (or their designate) for an approval decision.

Scope change management is really the process of letting the sponsor make the decisions - once they understand all the facts and implications.

You should establish scope change procedures based on the size of the project. For small projects (maybe less than 250 effort hours) you don’t need to worry about scope change as much. The project will likely start and end before the business can change much, and most of the requirements are probably fairly well known. The project manager can quickly evaluate a small change request and work with the sponsor to determine if it should be accommodated.

For larger projects, scope change is a big deal, and must be managed accordingly. The entire team, including the sponsor, must be sensitized to understand when a scope change request is made. The scope change request process may have a number of steps and require a template or two. If the sponsor approves the change, the budget and timeline are changed accordingly. If the change is not approved, it is noted as such and the project continues on its way. You might be surprised how often the sponsor does not approve the scope change, once they understand the impact to the project.

Summary

Many project managers do a poor job of managing scope because they don’t want to offend the client. However, that should not be a part of the scenario at all. Instead, the project manager’s job is to make sure the scope change management process runs effectively, and that the project sponsor has the information they need to make the best decision possible on whether the scope change should be accepted.

Source:Tenstep

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5 Tips for Managing Project Costs

Here are 5 tips for project cost management.

#1: Negotiate

Most projects involve suppliers or other third parties, and you might be surprised at how much negotiating power you have, especially if you are buying goods or services in bulk. If you are the first company to use a product from a supplier you could get a good discount by agreeing to provide references or a case study.

Look at the pricing structures as well. You may be able to negotiate a different payment structure such as phased payments instead of paying for everything upfront. This can help your company's cash flow. You may be able to get a discount if you can pay cash on delivery too.

#2: Use expense management software

You can't manage project costs unless you've got a great system for keeping on top of what is being spent when. These expense tracking tools help you keep track of where the money is going. The software can also manage recurring expenses so you'll never need to remember to enter regular payments.

In some companies managers will also expect you to track the cost of resources, so make sure that your expense management system can handle automatic calculations of resource time based on the hours worked and their hourly or daily rate.

#3: Review your contracts

Are you paying for value-added services that you don't need, such as insurance or project management that you are actually doing yourself? Many vendor contracts include an admin overhead that you could do without. Think about renegotiating your contracts or purchasing services on a ‘pay as you go' model instead of a full-service contract basis.

#4: Get the right resources

A huge amount of your project budget can be spent on people, so it will literally pay to get the right resources. For example, don't ask a highly paid, skilled resource to do general admin work when you can get a temporary resource at a much lower rate to do that. And use specialist resources when you need to—they will often complete work much faster than a generalist and so work out cheaper, even if their day rate is a bit higher in the short term.

Don't be afraid to use temporary resources. You can integrate them into the project team and then manage their departure when they leave. This might sound like a lot of work but it's more efficient for everyone.

#5: Extend the project

When faced with mounting costs, you might find that your project client or sponsor is prepared to extend the deadline for the project, even if they previously said that the milestones had to be fixed! It may be cheaper to deliver your project over a longer period of time as you can spread out costs or do more work in-house. Talk to your sponsor to see if there is any flexibility in the timescales.

Remember, if you complete your project on or below budget but you don't deliver something that meets the objectives of the stakeholders, then the project hasn't been a complete success. Ideally, clients will get what they want for a reasonable price. It's a difficult balance, but there's no point cutting costs if the end result isn't useful and doesn't meet the customer's needs. There's nearly always some cost cutting that you can do, but don't let it be at the expense of project success!

Source:Projectmanager.com

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Build Project Management Skills through a Training Plan

Successful project management requires two main elements. First your organization must have aligned processes to help projects to be successful. This includes project management, portfolio management, financial processes, HR processes, etc. Second, project managers need the skills to proactively manage projects.

If your organization has good processes and the staff is well skilled, you will find you have a powerful combination for success.

Training (skill building) must be considered holistically. It doesn't make sense to just start teaching classes. Project management is a very broad field. There are dozens of classes that can be offered, in many different formats and delivery modes. A Training Plan will help set the overall context for training. A Training Plan includes the following.

• The scope of training. An early and fundamental decision to make is the scope of your training effort. The project managers will be the primary focus. However, there are other stakeholders as well. You need to decide what, if anything, you will target to project managers, team members, functional managers, clients and external partners. 
• Training needs. You should assess the skill levels of the organization within the overall scope that was determined earlier. Project managers will need practitioner-level training. Team members and customers might just need an overview. Managers might need executive level training. 
• Specific classes. Now that you have determined the scope of training and the training needs, the Training Plan describes the specific classes to offer and the the order of the classes.
• Development. Determine how classes will be developed, or perhaps whether you will rely on pre-built vendor classes.
• Delivery. Discuss how the content will be delivered. This could be using internal staff or training vendors.
• Mode. There are many ways that training can be delivered. This could include instructor lead, e-classes, webinars, books, magazines, etc.
• Coaching. Coaching is less structured, and usually involves describing or demonstrating how project management techniques can assist. Coaching is usually targeted. For instance, you can coach a project manager on how to complete a Project Charter, or how to respond to certain situations the project manager is facing on the project.
• Costs. Estimate the costs for the training plan you have developed. Training can be relatively expensive, or it does not need to cost anything at all. There are all sorts of options at all types of price points.  
• Success criteria. Describe how you will ensure the training is successful.
• Metrics. Describe how you will measure the effectiveness of training and what success looks like from a numbers perspective.

The Training Plan is where the overall training model is defined. You then need to execute the plan to ensure the staff actually receives the agreed learning.

Source:Tenstep

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Seven Habits of Highly Destructive Project Managers

You have all heard about the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Here is a similar list of seven habits - only these are for highly destructive project managers. In other words, you don't want to do these things. 

1. Motivate by intimidation. Since project team members rarely report functionally to the project manager, some project managers try to "motivate" team members by instilling fear. This could be by shouting, threatening to remove them, humiliating them at team meetings, etc. This may seem to have short-term gains at times, but is never a good management technique.
2. Not knowing your team. The personal lives of team members impacts their work behavior as well. An effective project manager knows enough about his team members that he is able to understand what motivates them. This does not mean you have to pry into every personal details. The point is to have some interest in the team members as human beings to build a more effective work environment.  
3. Not being open to ideas. Some project managers believe that there is just one way to do things right, and that one way is their way. Not being open to team suggestions and ideas stifles their creativity. Such a closed attitude prevents new and better methods from being implemented.
4. Negative expectations. Many project managers are convinced that employees are untrustworthy, sneaky and lazy. This causes them to constantly monitor team members and treat them like children. In a situation where expectations leads to reality, this type of project management behavior can lead the team members to actually become poor performers.
5. Not communicating performance expectations. Many team members are shocked to learn about project manager perceptions and expectations late or at the end of the project. Ineffective project managers withhold a lot of important information from team members - including their performance expectations. They then provide negative input to the functional managers for performance feedback, which is terribly de-motivating to the team members affected. 
6. Viewing themselves as the only decision makers. Ineffective project managers tend to believe that they alone make all the decisions. They fail to realize that project managers are as prone to making errors as anyone else, and only managers that admit their errors stand a chance of thrive and grow. Ineffective project managers fail to see the opportunities for a collaborative relationship between project management and team members.
7. Creating a negative work environment. Project managers help shape the organization through the kind of culture they propagate. This helps determine whether team members enjoy work or dread it. An organization of poor project management leads to poor project execution, which leads to all kinds of negative characteristics for the entire work environment.    

As a project manager, look at the list above. If you are doing the opposite of these traits you are probably doing well. On the other hand if you have one or more of these habits you should think seriously about changes.

Source:Method123.com

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Review Eight Aspects in a Feasibility Study

Most people are aware of a Business Case. The Business Case allows you to define a project at a high-level, yet with sufficient enough detail to know whether the organization wants to provide funding. However, sometimes the sponsor is not certain of the costs and benefits, or even if the project is feasible. This is a good time for a Feasibility Study.

A Feasibility Study is used to explore whether a project makes sense or not. The Feasibility Study looks at more than cost and benefit. It looks at whether the project is feasible in a number of areas. 

There are a number of areas of feasibility that should be analyzed.

1. Technical. Is the project technically feasible? If it is you should state any technical risks associates with the project.
2. Financial. Is the project financially feasible? This would be especially important if the cost of the project was material to your company. It is possible that a project could have a cost that is significant enough to put the entire company at risk. You may have the ability to budget for the project now, but you might also analyze what the impact would be of a significant cost overrun.
3. Operational. Can you operate the project solution? It is possible that the project itself is feasible, but you may have significant risk in being able to operate the solution after the project is over.
4. Geographic. Is the project feasible given the physical location of the project team or the customer?
5. Time. Is the project feasible given the amount of time it will require from the participants? This is a big worry on larger projects. You may have the budget to execute the project but you may realize you cannot free up the project team for enough time to execute the project.
6. Resource. Do you have the staff, equipment, supplies and other resources necessary to complete the project?
7. Legal. Are there any legal problems that will make this project unfeasible?
8. Political. Are there any internal (or external) political problems that will make this project unfeasible?

Recommendation. You may explore a number of alternatives for structuring the project before ultimately drawing your final conclusion and recommendation. The recommendation may be that the project is not feasible. The sponsor and management stakeholders may choose to accept the recommendation or move another direction.

If the project appears feasible, the sponsor would proceed to develop the Business Case based on the final recommendation. The Business Case should address the costs, benefits, risks, assumptions, and other information to finally determine if the project makes business sense.

Source:Method123

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Define These Twelve Sections in a Full Project Charter

The Project Charter holds the information that you uncovered in the project definition process. The Project Charter is written by the project manager and approved by the project sponsor to show that there is an agreement on the work to be completed. The information in the Project Charter typically includes:

1. Project Overview. State the purpose of the project. Discuss the business benefit of the project and share the overall business goals that this project is helping to achieve.
2. Project Objectives. List the objectives that the project will achieve. The project objective should support your organization business goals and strategies. The deliverables produced should support the project objectives.
3. Project Scope. There are two parts to the scope section - deliverables and boundary statements. For each deliverable, provide a high-level description. It is very important to be clear about what things the project could produce, but will not. This will make it much easier to manage scope change throughout the project.
   
   
   In addition to deliverables, you should also state any project boundaries. It is a good practice to state scope boundary conditions in terms of both in-scope and out-of-scope statements.
4. Estimated Effort Hours (resources). Estimate the effort required, and provide information on how the estimate was prepared.
5. Estimated Duration.  Once the effort hours are known, you can estimate how long the project will take to complete (duration) based on an assumption of how many resources will be applied. 
6. Estimated Cost. Estimate the cost for labor based on the effort hours, and add any non-labor expenses such as equipment, supplies, training, travel, etc.
7. Major Assumptions. Assumptions are statements that you believe to be true but you are not 100% certain. Assumptions can be identified through your own experience, brainstorming sessions with the stakeholders; and by looking at items that were identified as low risk in the risk management process.
8. Major Risks. There may be future external conditions or events that will cause problems to the project if they occur. These are listed as risks if the combination of probability and impact are not acceptable.
9. Constraints. Constraints are events or limitations that are outside the control of the project team and need to be managed around. They are not necessarily problems. They are not risks since they are 100% likely to occur. They are facts.
10. Project Dependencies. List any other projects that are in progress or pending that have a dependency with your project. These dependencies are deliverable-based. Don't consider a project to be dependent simply because you might share a resource with it.
11. Project Approach. You should describe major project phases and milestones, and the general sequence of the work. Also take some time to explain any interesting or out-of-the-ordinary techniques that will be utilized on the project.
12. Project Organization. The organization chart has boxes that reflect involvement from various stakeholders. List the project manager, sponsor, project team, steering committee, etc.

The Project Charter describes the nature of the project and what you will build. The project schedule tells you how you will produce the deliverables.

Source:Tenstep

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How to make more time in your day

#1: Use templates

Templates are documents or files that you can use time and time again. Don't create a new Project Charter for every project, for example. Use a template and simply fill in the relevant bits for this project. You'll save time because you won't have to set up titles, headers or footers or any other style elements.

You can also use templates for creating schedules, task lists, reports and anything else that you use on your project. Don't just limit yourself to documents!

#2: Use time sheets

The key to getting more done is understanding what you currently do with your time. Time sheets will show you what you have actually been working on, so you can assess how your time is being spent. You might, for example, find that you spend too long in meetings each week, or working on a particular element of project management like budgeting. Using timesheet software will help you keep track of where your time is going.

Once you have completed time sheets for a couple of weeks you will be able to see where you are wasting time in the day. You can also decide if there is anything you could delegate to another team member as a learning opportunity.

#3: Take breaks

It might seem counter-intuitive, but it really will help you get more done if you schedule some breaks into your day. Breaks help refresh your brain and your body, which means you come back to your desk feeling more motivated and capable of completing your tasks. Go for a walk, talk to a colleague or simply get a cup of coffee. Anything that gives your eyes a rest from the screen and your mind a change of scene will do.

#4: Use dashboards

Dashboards are visual representations of project progress and they are a great way to see the big picture status of your project. You won't have to review every element of the project to get a status update as you'll be able to see it all at a glance.

Dashboards are also great to share with your stakeholders. They will save you time producing bespoke reports month after month as instead, your project sponsor and anyone else who is interested can simply log on and see the status for themselves in real-time.

#5: Store your files online

Project managers and their teams spend a great deal of time looking for important project files. You can save time if you set up an online filing system that will structure your files for you and keep them secure. Then you'll always know where the latest copy of a document is kept, and you won't waste time hunting for it when you need it. This will also help your project team save time!

Of course, you don't need to spend your extra hours on project work! Why not use some of it to study for a professional qualification, or to catch up with a good book, or to just get home earlier and spend more time with your family?

Source: Projectmanager.com

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