Ways to Improve Project Performance
There are some ways to improve project management & performance if enterprises in general and project teams in particular implement them:
BYPASS AN OBSTACLE
Many projects come to a standstill because an obstacle appears in the path toward achieving their goals.The results can become devastating.People may focus on issues unrelated to the project, or insignificant issues related to the project become significant, as people look for meaning in their work.Instead, team leaders and members must distinguish between what is and is not important. This determination is best achieved by focusing on the ultimate objective.Progress can continue if coupled with some resilience, perseverance, creativity, and leadership.
FOCUS ON THE GOAL
Keeping focus on the goal offers several advantages. First, it enables people to be proactive rather than reactive. People can choose what to respond to, rather than jumping at each situation like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Second, it helps in distinguishing between what is and is not significant.
FOLLOW A STANDARDIZED PROCESS
Contrary to popular belief, a standardized process actually encourages creativity and furthers empowerment, rather than impeding both. It encourages creativity by allowing people to work with a given set of tools and techniques; for example, to complete a task. Through standardization, people can anticipate and understand job requirements. Less conversion and relearning are required to complete tasks. People can operate autonomously, knowing the standards to follow during decision- making.
LEARN FROM THE PAST
Learning from the past involves learning both from oneself and from others. Of the two learning levels, learning from oneself is more difficult because it requires introspection. While learning from others can also be difficult, it is less so because there may be documentation or people may be available to provide an oral history or insights.
MAINTAIN ONGOING PROJECT COMMUNICATION
More projects have probably failed due to poor communications than from any other factor.To realize the benefits of maintaining good communications the Project manager should concentrate on generating information rather than data. This requires focusing on the needs of the audience, in terms of format and level of content.Also ensure that data and subsequent information are current and relevant.
RECORD THE WORK BEING DONE
If companies made an effort to record the knowledge and expertise of what went well on a project, they would gain several benefits for future projects. Such a history improves performance among team members, because people can focus on issues not dealt with previously, which may not be “showstoppers.” It also forces people to think about their actions, and determine where and when to spend their effort and time. In addition, a recorded history tells people what has worked in the past, enabling them to predict with reasonable accuracy the impact of their actions on the current project.
If these ideas are implemented on a project,performance will definitely improve.
Principles for Project Management Success
There are few principles which a project manager must follow to achieve success in project management.
Project managers must focus on three dimensions of project success.
Simply put, project success means completing all project deliverables on time, within budget, and to a level of quality that is acceptable to sponsors and stakeholders. The project manager must keep the team’s attention focused on achieving these broad goals.
Planning is everything — and ongoing.
The single most important activity that project managers engage in is project planning — detailed, systematic, team-involved plans are the only foundation for project success.
Project managers must feel, and transmit to their team members, a sense of urgency.
Because projects are finite endeavors with limited time, money, and other resources available, they must be kept moving toward completion.
All project deliverables and all project activities must be visualized and communicated in vivid detail.
In short, the project manager and project team must early on create a tangible picture of the finished deliverables in the minds of everyone involved so that all effort is focused in the same direction.
Project managers must fight for time to do things right.
Projects must have available enough time to “do it right the first time.” And project managers must fight for this time by demonstrating to sponsors and top managers why it’s necessary and how time spent will result in quality deliverables and in avoiding project delay.
Projects typically must be sold, and resold.
There are times when the project manager must function as salesperson to maintain the commitment of stakeholders and sponsors.
Top management must actively set priorities.
Top Management must actively participate and establish criteria for project selection and funding, monitors resource workloads, and determines which projects are of high enough priority to be approved.In this way top management provides the leadership necessary for successful completion of a project.
Project Management Skills
A Project Manager is the key center position for running a successful software project. To run this show successfully, a project manager has to be a possessor of following project management skills as listed below:
1. He should work as a focused manager looking at positive aspects of his team members, without letting any unwanted behavior of his team members affecting the project. He should have a good relationship with his and other team members even if he doesn’t like in person few of them.
2. He should be always be in a comfort zone and make others feel in a comfort zone. For this he may have to show a tremendous confidence in himself and others.
3. Project Manager has to inculcate the leadership skills in all his team members so as to make them independent in handling adverse situations and coming out of it successfully. Also in this way he will have to burn less energies in tackling each situation.
4. Project Manager has to have strong technical skills so that his team members do not lose confidence in him or do not fool him in technical aspects of the project.
5. Project Manager, along with having good presentation skills, should have equally strong communication skills too. During project lifecycle, 50% of his time is the acid test of his communication abilities.
6. Project Manager should be a strong estimator, a proactive in this regard. He should be able to estimate the progress of each individual, the skills of each member, the abilities, the show stoppers during the project, the customer delays or any other activity where an estimation is required.
7. And last but not the least,he should have a good understanding of his words he is going to speak to his customer, the instructions he is going to give to his team members, the decisions he is going to take. He should be well aware of impact and effect of each of the activity he does during a project lifecycle.
Projects Myths
We know that most modern projects don’t achieve their goals. We explain that today’s projects are much more complicated than even the most daunting civil engineering projects of the past.But while architecture and engineering have progressed, the methods we employ to manage projects might be mired in ancient myths.
Here are some of the myths related to our Projects.
Myth No. 1: Project workers are slaves.
You would never say that project workers are slaves. But consider how you manage them. Do you populate your projects by assigning roles and responsibilities according to the needs of the project, without considering what’s in the assignment for each individual? If so, your methods mirror those of the ancient slave drivers.
Myth No. 2: The plan predicts the future.
Prediction renders you less able to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. It encourages you to “stay the course” rather than take new readings and set another heading. Whenever you plan to predict, you encourage rigidity in the face of uncertain futures, and your rigidity contributes to the wicked results you experience on your projects.
Rather than predicting the future, use your plan to propose it—cataloguing intentions and beliefs.
Myth No. 3: The methods work.
Do you follow a set of cookbook processes while your projects pursue objectives no one has ever achieved before? How could this strategy work?
Myth leads whenever you follow well-worn paths. The past can at best be a point of departure for the future. Your projects can be informed by experience, but can never be properly defined by them.
Myth No. 4: The manager motivates.
Do you promise payoffs and threaten termination? Promises and threats can transform even the most liberated individuals into slaves, creating compliance when your projects need performance.
No one is apathetic except in pursuit of someone else’s goals. Promises and threats can create obligations, but never the juicy personal experience that accompanies every exceptional contribution. Most give more than required when that juiciness is present.
Attempts to motivate merely get in the way. Each assignment, no matter how difficult, can become the medium for individuals to discover their own personally juicy project within their assignment.
So in Project Management it becomes very important to get rid of these myths
Project Management Tools
Management of any project can be done with various resources, techniques as well as tools. There are various project management tools, which can be used on the project to get the desired result but only efficient and effective tools are need to be applied to avoid risk and get the results as per the standards set.
There are various tools used by the various organizations depending on the requirement and software industries have made things easier with a click of button. But what is important is to get the tools properly assembled and that too in time which will not only eliminate risk but will also help in meeting deadlines.
Today it has become imperative to use project management tools as they ease the flow of project, makes proper utilization of the resources. Tools helps in knowing which projects are at risk and falling behind the schedule and which are the projects getting over budgeted. Some of the tools are used internally while some are used externally and the tools, which are, used externally helps in withstanding competition.
If an employee can know how to use the tools properly and ones they know how effective tool can be than it will not help only in individual growth but will also help for the growth of the projects as well as company.
Problems arise with Poor Communication
Many years ago, a good project manager might have gotten away with being a poor communicator.But in today’s world, however, projects need to be undertaken in partnership with the business, and this partnership absolutely requires solid communication. In fact, many of the problems that surface on a project are actually the results of poor communication. Poor communication can lead to the following trouble areas.
- Differences in expectations. Project managers need to strive to ensure that everyone associated with the project has a common set of expectations in terms of what is to be delivered, when and at what cost. People make decisions based on the best information they have at the time, and if the project manager does not keep everyone under a common set of expectations, things can start to get out-of-sync fast.
- People are surprised. If people are not kept informed as to what is going on, they will be surprised when changes occur. Proactive communication means that you raise the potential of missing your deadline as soon as it becomes a risk. Then you continue to keep people up-to-date on the status. If you have to declare that you cannot meet your date, people are prepared. People get angry and frustrated when they find out bad news at the last minute, when there is no time left to have an impact on the situation.
- No one knows what the state of the project is . On some projects, people are not really sure what the status is. The communication on these projects is short and terse and does not give the reader a real sense as to what is going on. Again, people cannot make the best decisions if they do not have good information. If they are not sure about what is going on, they have to spend extra time following up for further information.
- People are impacted by the project at the last-minute . This is a prime cause of problems. In this situation, the project manager does not communicate proactively with other people about things that will impact them. When the communication does occur, it is at the last minute and everything is rush-rush. For example, this happens when the project manager knows for three months that a specialist is needed, but only asks for the person the week before. In this case, the other party is surprised by the last minute request and does not have time to adequately prepare.
- Team members dont know what is expected of them. Poor communication also occurs within a project team. Some project managers do a poor job of talking with their own team to explain what they are expected to do. Sometimes the project manager is not clear on when assignments are due. Sometimes the project manager has a vision of what a deliverable looks like but does not communicate that to the person assigned until the first attempt comes back wrong. Sometimes the project manager does not communicate clearly and team members spend time on work that is not necessary. Again, all of this causes extra work and extra frustration on the part of the project manager and team members alike.
Many projects have problems. Poor project communication can cause many problems and aggravate others. On the other hand, proactive communication can help overcome many other mistakes. Don’t consider communication to be a necessary evil. Instead, use it to your advantage to help your project go smoothly with less frustration, less uncertainty and no surprises.
Common Software Project Management Mistakes
Most of the projects are dogged by cost-overruns or aren’t completed on schedule due to poor planning, poor communication or poor resource allocation.
Here are some of the common project management mistakes relating to Project Management:
Formalize Requirements Gathering – Too often, requirements are scribbled on a napkin -or- communicated via phone calls. The best approach to requirements gathering is to hold Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions. JAD sessions are a set of intense meetings held off-site where executives, developers, and end-users define the exact requirements needed by a software solution. By holding JAD sessions, your team can more quickly define requirements, get executive buy-in, eliminate irrelevant requirements and reduce political jockeying between team members.
Lack of Design – Before projects can be estimated, they must be designed. Many teams by pass this step, estimating the efforts without detailed knowledge of what is needed to deliver each requirement.
Poor Estimating – Another common mistake is to poorly estimate projects. This is done by inexperienced project managers that do not account for all tasks that need to be done or by project managers that succumb to management pressures to get the project timeline to fit a predetermined estimate.
Lack of Change Control – Change control is the process of managing changes as to ensure that decisions are not made hastily and that the decision to add an additional feature is in the best interest of the project. If change control is missing from a project, new features will be introduced at random, jeopardizing the delivery date and quality of the software being developed.
Lack of Risk Management – The key to managing risks is to build contingency plans for risk and to build enough time into your project schedule to mitigate risks that you do not know about.
Poor Project Communication – Studies have shown that software teams that consistently deliver on-time and on-budget communicate in an effective manner. These teams stay in contact constantly, but wisely use each other’s time during the communication process and are careful not to waste other people’s time.
If these blunders in managing a project is taken care of then there is no doubt that the project will be a success.
