Susan de Sousa

Do Project Reports Really Give The Real Picture on Project Progress?

by Susan de Sousa

Big Picture - by aloshbennett via Flickr

Guest post by Susan de Sousa

A project manager often holds a position of great importance within an organisation. Often the projects and programs entrusted to them, together with the large project budget which can be ill afforded will determine the future of an organisation. In return, transparent project reporting through the weekly report is not unreasonably expected, to enable senior project management stakeholders to accurately track progress. But do Organisations always get the real picture?

Now there are correct and incorrect ways to fill in the project management report. Some project managers like to fill in the bare minimum of information, whilst others go for incessant detail and write reams. However it doesn’t matter how much is written, so much as what is written.

Where projects are concerned, Organisations need an update on the following:

• Summary of Progress
• Milestones
• Key Issues
• Risks
• Dependencies
• Budget

Now this might appear to be extremely straightforward, but being a project manager, is in my book at least, an art, not a science. Sometimes being economical with the truth can be an extremely good idea as it allows time for the issues to be resolved without unnecessarily raising the alarm bells with project sponsors.

The problem is that this often gets taken to extreme lengths by certain project manager’s who are simply after an easy life. With these individuals, being economical with the truth becomes a way of life and soon the problems mount up with the project becoming unachievable, but no-one understanding this until it is too late. After all it is far easier for everyone if project reports contain only good news to stop senior management asking awkward questions.

You might think that this is a far fetched scenario, but it occurs far more frequently than you may realise. Take the UK’s $468 million public sector C Norris IT System. A recent report by the National Audit Office reported that bad news about this project failed to go up the reporting ladder and that in the early stages, the project was consistently rated as green despite the lack of progress being made. By the time the project was finally reported as being in Red, three years had passed, an enormous amount of taxpayers money had been wasted and it was too late to rescue.

Of course it doesn’t have to be like this. Consistently hiding bad news from senior management is a sure fire way to bring a promising career in the profession to an ignominious end. Thankfully it doesn’t have to be that way as long as you maintain consistent project communications.

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Is it Possible to Successfully Deliver a Project without Really Good Project Management Resources?

by Susan de Sousa

Guest post by Susan de Sousa

image by Yodel Anecdotal via Flickr

The reality is that good project management resources are hard to come by. If you are fortunate enough to have more than one good resource on your project, then count yourself lucky. However this shouldn’t be a surprise. After all if the entire project team were of the highest calibre they wouldn’t need a Project Manager to control it all; just a glorified admin assistant!

I should mention that as you move up the career ladder this becomes less of a problem, as you start managing the more high profile projects. Organisation’s tend to put their best people on their most important projects. Not only because they have to be delivered on time, but also because they usually involve the most complexity in terms of the solutions which have to be delivered.

Unfortunately when you start out you quickly discover that the smallest projects are usually contrained in terms of number of resources and their skillsets. So what can you do to successfully deliver without the necessary team resources? Well there are 3 points you must follow. These are:

1.0 Take Control and be a Leader

By this I mean you not only have to take control of the delivery, but also be seen to do so. Your resources need to be clear in what goal is being delivered and for when. They also need to know that you are someone who won’t just listen to their problems and then raise them in a risk and issues log, but be someone who will proactively try to get them resolved.

2.0 Foster Team Spirit

The sum of the parts always amount to more than the individual parts. Therefore to bridge the experience problem, get your team to work as one. Foster a “blitz spirit” which equates to “we’re all in this together so let’s help each other”. This includes you as well. Being an extra pair of hands and getting stuck in where required from detailing requirements to executing scripts all helps and you’ll be surprised at the results.

3.0 Locate the Experts
Often it is easy to get bamboozled by your colleagues. Deep down you have an instinctive feeling that you’re being led up the garden path, but because you aren’t technical enough you can’t really challenge what you are being told.

In this instance you need to seek out the “centres of excellence” within your Organisation and the internet. After all just because you don’t have the best resources on your project, it doesn’t mean that no-one does. You’ll quickly find that there is always someone who is an expert in a specific area, or who has delivered something similar to what you are doing who’s brain you can pick.

By following these points you will have a good basic head start in this important area, which when you are starting off in project management is absolutely vital to get right if you want to progress onto the high profile cutting edge projects.

My-Project-Management-Expert.com provides further information on this vital area regarding managing project teams as well as developing successful project teams which you must know if you want to succeed.

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The Top 2 Reasons You Should Develop Contingency Plans Too

by Susan de Sousa August 3, 2009 Risk

Guest post from Susan de Sousa When you first start off in project management, spending time writing a contingency plan can seem like a complete waste of time. After all there are so many other things which appear to have a much higher priority, that planning contingency for risks which might never happen doesn’t seem [...]

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5 Steps to Sighting In Precise Project Scope

by Susan de Sousa June 15, 2009 Scope

When you come to initiating a project, determining the project scope can at the outset seem like an easy thing to do. After all everyone must be clear on what the project is delivering because otherwise there wouldn’t be project, right? Sadly no. Accurately determining the scope of a project is one of the hardest [...]

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