Project Management Closure Phase

Closure is the final phase of the project. It requires the consolidation of work done, work required with all the stakeholders. Referred to as approval and sign-off process.

The Key Responsibilities to be a driven are: -

1.                   Is the objective Achieved?

2.                   How to you Measure it?

3.                   Feedback? and

4.                   Lessons learned?

The First key element for Project Wrap up is:

Ensures that the deliverable's are approved, accepted and handed over to the customer. A formal Checklists can be made and signed off from both team and stakeholders will help to avoid further confusions and will motivate the team in further activities. This checklist will be helpful for acceptance, finalizing and terminating resource or de-establishing the team and accounting the final project report.

The Second task is Elevating project success(Measuring): -Accessing, Verifying and Documenting project results.

Measuring: Information based on Objectives set, duration, resource, actual cost etc. to the end status. This will ensure you about project slippage in terms of duration and cost overruns.

The information collected will be compared against baseline project plan that we did in initial and planning phase. The difference between them will help to find out the correction action and put back the project in inline. This helps to identify whether the project scope is achieved or deviated due to some reasons?

Based on this draft we can decide whether the project will be handed over in stages or a single handover. The outstanding documents, rules, drawings, Manuals, unresolved issues should be documented and handed over as well. The unresolved issue should be communicated to the customer/end-user.

Feedback: - Relative it is set to quality and time and cost. This should not show the negative aspect of the project rather than improvising oneself for both team and stake holders as this is a critical step to manage. Acceptance may always have some concerns but make should your feedback lies within the scope and plan made earlier.

Examples :

-          Did the project stay in budget?

-          Did the objective achieved?

-          Stakeholders kept informed at progress of each stages?

-          Team work well together?

-          Agreed project life cycle fallowed?

-          Risk identified and managed effectively?

Constructive feedback's may help to achieve extra skill set and motive each one in the team including project manager and stakeholders.

And now we need to value the lessons learned and the feedback we have got. Most organization avoid this due to lack of time or fear of being blamed etc.

The value of lessons learned will be helpful in next outcomes and improve the performance overall. And also as a project closure part the project manager should have a celebration as well to reward the effort of stake holders.

Project Management Execution Phase

The execution phase of project to check whether the plans are made to met the desired deliverable's.

The findings of internal and external stake holders who are related to the project or in other words who are answerable or questionable part of project are considered to be stake holders. For example internal stake holders is project team, organization etc. External stake holders are client, contractors, customers etc.

Constant communication with them plays a very important in these stages. Effective communication will make sure the facts that the project is falling inline?When it is a large project in an organization the internal stake holders should be assigned with roles, responsibilities and their accountabilities.

Mostly projects fail happens due to  ineffective communications. So the effective communication will be helpful for both the managing the project and the stake holder even though it is a time consuming thing. But can expect for beneficial results.

Before starting the execution phase it is highly recommended to have a initial meetings with all stake holders to discuss about the expectations and concerns.

This will be things to go in track if u take a further step of associating all into a common link and allow access to view the status of the project.

Key Project Team Roles:

Acquiring required skill set plays a important role as in later stages of role confusion may cause a pause in project development.A team Organization chart can be drafted to have a clear view of skill acquired or roles and responsibilities, their reporting to whom and may assign specific task to them.

The team Charter document can be made to outline and also to define the purpose, goals and outcomes including the rules and policies to be fallowed. The overall motive is to have effective performance of team.

Good communications plans help in further clarify objectives, roles and responsibilities. To have a common repository to access the status, achievements, concerns of projects can be made. Commonly we use emails or weekly status meetings.

We can use the below listed technologies/Sites for having a centralized repository to have updates and access to project related documents.

Drop box,

Icloud,

One drive,

Google drive or

Basecamp

 Here the achievements made can also be update to reach all the stakeholders who all are involved as well. And also the related task can a scheduled together easily by identifying each milestones.

The access and approving authority for any documents can be defined. Publishing a project schedule and updating it regularly is a effective way of communication.

Effective communication is about delivering information, giving clear instructions, listening to responses, and providing constructive feedback.

A stakeholder analysis matrix identifies and then categorizes all project stakeholders according to their level of influence and level of interest in the project. Which manage stakeholder expectations throughout the project.

Overall the leadership role and effective situational leadership management and communication in holding trust and making team members to be a part of all informative steps make a successful Project.

Project Management (Risk Analysis)

Project Management -Risk Analysis:

All Projects are exposed to some sort of risks. The risk should be identified addressed and managed. The severity of the risk should be measured and action be taken accordingly as to avoid its impact on overall project deliverable's.

The project risk will vary depending on planning, time, level of experience for other team members and the technology used. Adequate proportion for risk management is required for a successful project. Can verify with a risk management form to be drafted by identifying the risk.

The risk can be technical risk, financial risk or commercial risk etc. The international set standard risks are as follows:

-          Understand and confirm on the objective.

-          Knowing what needs to achieved.

-          Identifying of all risk that may impact on achieving the objective.

-          Involve stakeholders to identify risk factors.

-          Undertake risk assessment -document and analyze the severity of likelihood and impact.

-          Plan the risk Response.

Basically a risk can be responded in 4 ways

-          Accepted

-          Transfer to 3^rd party such as contractor or client as well.

-          Risk can be reduced.

-          Can be avoided.

The risk monitoring review is an ongoing process. The risk management involves to communicate the outcome to stakeholders for proper decision making.

You can draft a design like below to identify the severity of risk and dealing with it:

(Also can call it as risk register)

Risk Identified	Occurrence	Severity	Dependency	Risk Response

for example we can consider the IT Project which i mention in earlier phase.

Risk Identified	Occurrence	Severity	Dependency	Risk Response
Multiple positions for same Employee so grade cannot be applied	Migrating Employees	High	New grade rule and salary process	Refine rule

Can also set the rate for a scale of 1 to 5 for all occurring risks.and inform the higher severity risk to the stakeholders appropriately as it may impact on outcome of project or delay the project or may increase the cost of project.

The acronym PESTLE is mostly considered for analyzing project risk,

P- Political

E- Economical

S- Social

T- Technology

L-Legal

E-Environmental Causes.

The Action taken after finding a risk will be accepting it or transferring it or avoiding it or reducing it.A risk register template should be drafted from our identification session with proposed response.

As a part of risk analysis and plan B should also be drafted after identifying it if its severity is high. For example the plan can revolve around sudden change of team member/stakeholder,change or loss of data.

Even after identifying and drafting a risk response some risk may occur eventually called as residential risk according to its livelihood of occurrence we can avoid it.

Project Management Phase 2- Scheduling example

	This is a sample of drafting the timeline based on work structure..Each sub task may have a plan like this so that any new change to be accomplished can be given full review of whether t do or not or in others will affect what and where? Column1 Column2 Column3 Column4 Column5 Column6 Column7     Timeline           Deliverables 1st week 2nd week 3th week 4th week 5th week               1 Upgrade 5days         2 Legacy Data Collection   5days       3 Refining legacy data   5days       4 Migrate the data     3days     5 Add the new structure     3days     6 Add new rules to employees     5days     7 Apply grades     5days     8 Test for salary element       7 days   9 Check the reports related         4 days

- The dependent task can be grouped after completion of main task to reduce the days utilized.

-Any change in requirement or adding new scope may force to break down of this plan which may show effect on cost or time span of the project,

Project Management Planning Part 2:

Project Management Planning Part 2:

Re -Scheduling:

-          Depends if the task defined has dependencies in-between them. The sub task which are dependent on a main task to be completed can be combined as one after completion of main task.

-          The Objective is to find the dependencies in order to reduce the time and not to add any new task.

-          Adding new task at this point may collapse the overall objective as the new risk factors may also needs to be considered.

-          Once the schedule has been fixed after considering the dependencies and the timeline is reducing as well. Further change in schedule for faster competition of project may lead to CRASH SCHEDULING

o   Crash Scheduling: - Has its own set of new risk. First thing as a project manager you need to say ‘NO’ as you are answerable part for the successful completion of a project. And each sub task dependent to a main task completion order may put in risk situation for the new requirement coming in.

§  But when You have you have no Alternatives the you can choose work over budget like including more resources to support fast track competition or by reducing the amount of time they spend on each task. But usually this will lead to question the quality.

-          Since Project Manager is Accountable for any decision taken during the project the fast track schedules should be properly decided considering the primary objective plans of starting the project.

Overall the project Management phase of scheduling defines us the three things of scoping, scheduling and costing. The Scoping Defines the requirements and activities. The scheduling is based on the work break down structure and the costing depends on the objectives, resources and timeline.

Let us take one example of IT Project.

-           Is about migrating the existing employees in the company to a new set of rules defined in the organization.The software’s and platform are the same.The rules have to affect the payroll and employee details in grading. According to the scenario a manager cannot in grade defined in legacy system. New set of grads and salary to it has been defined.Bonus are eligible for only employees of experience greater than 5 years as per new rule. The Organization has decided to upgrade the version of the tool with new changes and applying these rules. The time period allocated is 90 days and budget is fixed.On successful completion of this rollout all the other companies in the group will adopt the same hierarchy and rules.

Project Management Phase 1:

-          From the above points we can draft an initiation phase information

o   Project is for organization

o   Outcome is to apply new set of rules and additional grading system.

o   Duration is 90 days and cost is fixed.

o   Objects may depend on software, resources and system.

o   Risk analysis- since this deals with employees (Human Resource) -the existing reports or other modules in the operation of the organization are related and may affect. For Example, the approval management defined earlier in workflows or reports or automated mail can affect.As this is a upgrade as well will the new system provide support for older structure?

Project Management Phase 2:

-          Scoping: -

o   Data analysis of existing system

o   version of previous and new one differences should be taken in account

o   Count of objects existing

o   Areas need to be changed should be Identified-Deliverable’s

o   Change and dependencies should be drafted

o   Count of objects and a rough data analysis to be taken as sample outcome

-          Scheduling: -

o   What are the main task, sub task?

o   Who is going to do?

o   When to complete the sub task and main task?

o   What should be the milestones set for each sub task to reach the main task?

o   What is the time set for each task?

o   Work breakdown structure

§  Employees: Data collection

§  Software version and uprade to be performed

§  Data analysis for all employee’s record

§  New package design to include the new rules and the new grade.

§  Add subsequent payroll element like bonus condition.

§  Check the dependent reports/related data analysis

o   Reschedule if the dependencies are more and can be reducing in time using same set of resources.

-          Costing: - May change if any scope enters after analysis of dependencies.

Gantt chart may be helpful in each state to reference and set the mile stones properly and periodically.

Can have a subsidiary management plans which helps in though out the planning phase of project and also guides through the procurement plan, quality plan management documents.

Can Also have a milestone log to for completion for major deliverables.

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Project Management Phase 2-Planning

PROJECT MANAGEMENT STAGE 2: Planning

Here we can break down this into

1.       scoping,

2.       scheduling and

3.       costing.

1.       Scoping:

-          Ideally we need to find out that we have understood the objective of the project?

-          The deliverable considered are in the scope of project or out of the scope?

-          If the deliverable is in out of scope of the project-will it delay the closure of projects and will effect on cost of the project?

-          We need to omit the things which are out of scope of project and need to firmly built a breakdown structure of scope/task to carry out the actual deliverable's.

-          A serious consideration of planning and number of resources needed to be complete this deliverable should be taken in account as this plan going to guide us thorough out the project.

-          We can call it a WBS(Work Break Down Structure) to define our task.

Like this we need to split our task into more smaller task and should have a calculated result which gives the actual deliverables on time as desired.

1.       Scheduling:

Here we need to consider key elements like

-          Identifying the activities

-          Sequencing the activities

-          Estimating the activity resource required

-          Estimating the activity duration to complete and develop a schedule.

The project manager has to carefully identify the task and the relative resource allocated with the deliverable and its time so that he can make the same output to be the one full deliverable for each task to be completed.

After scheduling the resource, work and cost need to be discussed with the stakeholders as well.

In this stage you can remove task which does not fit into work breakdown structure. You can also verify whether there are dependencies of any of the task which needs to be done together, before etc.. and re design if required.

After rearranging as per the priority of the deliverable to complete the full task draft a schedule plan and constant monitoring of the plan should be done to check the task or in inline as defined.

You can also have a plan list to verify your requirements like below:

3.Costing:

               Costing should be done for the amount which was already approved for the project. The cost to be spent on resource/equipment’s/materials should be taken in consideration.

               If any sort of new scope enters first we need to check whether we can achieve it within the allocated resource/cost estimated. 

            

              If the new added scope cannot be accommodated the we have two choices

1.       Seek Additional Budget

2.       De-scoping (trade -off) reducing our scope of project to add the new one. Mostly this will not be preferred as it will affect the quality of the project.

Project Management - Initiation Phase

Project Management Initiation Stage 1:

This is the most important stage and less time consuming stage. Here you will be considering the objectives of project using acronym SMART Keyword

S          Specific

M        Measurable       

A         Aligned

R         Realistic

T          Time Bounded

This initial stage needs to be having the bird eye of the whole project including the final outcomes. If the project objective is not understood well and we move on the next stage without proper understanding the in the other stages of project we need to come back to this stage again which is a waste of time, resources and money used.

Once the objects are understood well and problem solving is clear we can move to next stage of project management phase PLANNING.

Let Us see about the Acronym SMART. Let us consider it to be a Software implementation project. You can imagine it to be construction or project which is applicable to you.

S -Specific

-          Is it a Project

-          What is its background

-          What should be the outcome

-          How many deliverables are there?

-          When is the start and end?

-          Who all are going to be involved in the project (resources, stakeholders)?

M -Measurable

-          How the project end is going to be determined?

-          What are the things to be considered by the stakeholders and the organization on closure?

-          What will be the cost?

A -Aligned

-          How many are there in the resource part?

-          How to break the timeframe under risk factors?

-          The communication between stakeholders, organization and setting team

-          Does the organization and stakeholders aware of outcomes of the project?

R- Reality

-          For whom we do

-          Where we do

-          What we do

-          How do we do

-          Know your requirements well?

-          Dependent on resource for which part of deliverables?

-          Risk factors+outcomes+communication+stakeholders all in inline?

T- Time bound

-          Start date and End Date

-          Under risk factor will a delay is acceptable?

-          How to solve the risk factor for the expanded time frame?

Here in the initial stage we will be analyzing about the options available to be involved in project. It may be resource, machinery, money or anything related in the further development stages of project.

Over all this phase is the shortest phase and highly effective phase of project where we need to acquire a clear understanding of what is a project, why I am doing it, what I need to and finally what should it result in.

You can also make a chart to make it clear for all the questions above mentioned to draft a initiation phase of your project.

1. What is the Project?

2. What Is the background?

3. Who all are involved?

4. What needs to be achieved?

5. what all are the risk factors?

6. what is the time span?

7. Objective of project is clear between stakeholders and project manager?

8. Plan is made toward achieving the same goal?

Project Management

Project Management

(I am going share my knowledge which i gathered through a online course on Project Management.You can relate it to small or any type of projects like event management,IT or a Business)

The project may be simple or complex based upon that you can break the plans into smaller components to make it have a perfect start and a End.

A Project should come under perspective of a Start and a End.The important Characteristic are when,how,who to be filled in for planning a project.

There are three Four Important Phases for a successful project Management

1. Initiation

2. Planning

3. Execution and 

4. Closure

1.Initiation:

                      What is the Project is about.The start takes place here to understand where u stand and what type of Problem Solving required based on your exposure and skill set available.

The Main What's are

          -What I am Going to Do

          -What plan i am going to Build or Focus on

          -What should be Goal at End?

2.Planning:

                   How starts here.This is the phase we need to find the scope of the project.

The Main How's are

          -How to define the scope.

          -How many resource i need.

          -How much cost?

3.Execution:

                    The most important and critical phase where your part plays a crucial role to expose your                      skill set for management.

                     - The Communication plays a important role in this phase as you need to deal with the                             team as well as the stake holders.

                     -Here the Risk Factors and time phase needs to be analysed frequently with relevant                               communications regularly.

                      -We need to be aware weather we are in right path or we are doing the right thing.

The Main When's Are

              -When going to make the difficult part solvable

              -When Going to integrate the pieces of work to a complete structure

              -when and where to analyse the developments.

4.Closure:

              The Original Start reached its end as planner(Desired).How ans who is going to evolve it?

               The time measure or the measures considered to be achieved as a part of completion has been delivered?

               -In this phase the analysis should be in terms of measure whether quality,cost or timeline.

Will post more details with example for each phases in coming days.Happy Reading....