Creating a Project Management System: A Guide to Intelligent Use of Resources

By Woodrow Sears

Much can be done in the conduct of routine work to get the most from project management. This book explains what and how. The "system" is a way of thinking and working that leads to excellence. A common-sense strategy for operational improvement, it requires a little bit of headwork and a lot of discipline, but little actual cost. If you measure $, this book is a winner! Buy it, try it, win big!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Woodrow Sears
• Release date: Feb 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458150592

Woodrow Sears

Semi-retired consultant, active college instructor, author (6 books for HRD Press in 2007-8), regular contributor to the Cincom "ExpertAccess" business e-zine. I hold one of the early doctorates in Human Resource Development, lectured extensively on project management on an international circuit, worked with clients to install systems, and was heavily involved in civil rights, supervisory, and management training. Came to Lithuania in 1998 as a volunteer, and never left. I live in Vilnius in a former monastery, heat with wood (by choice), and love cooking for friends. Living in Europe is special everyday!

Book preview

Creating A Project Management System

A Guide to Intelligent Use of Resources

by

Dr. Woody Sears

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY

Woodrow H. Sears, Ed.D.

Editorial/Design Support by

PleasantValleyPress.net

Creating a Project Management System:

A Guide to Intelligent Use of Resources

Copyright © 2011 Woodrow Sears

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal use and may not be re-sold or given away. If you want to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and didn't purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

What Problems Do You Want to Solve?

The Politics of Change

Discovering the Way Your Work Flows

Rationalizing the Work Flow

Developing Work Packages

Standards, SOPs, and the Work Flow Workbook

Creating the Project Communications System

Developing a Comprehensive Training Program

Fine-Tuning Your PMS

Author's Note

Everyone uses a variation of project management, turning all kinds of routine operations into projects, from installing new systems to planning office parties. In truth, there's more to project management than most practitioners know. The requirements for effective project management are rooted in the measurements of routine operations that are rarely recorded. So, this book is about organizing routine work to get the most return on resource expenditures—and to support effective project management. Of course, creating a project management system requires some rethinking of business-as-usual and asking employees at all levels to approach their routine tasks a bit differently. Following the suggestions presented here can make your operations more visible, predictable, cost-effective, and greatly reduce cost overruns and missed schedules. It requires some rethinking of roles and responsibilities, but that will permit more productivity without additional resource costs. I hope you will be challenged to put these ideas to work and enhance the effectiveness of your organization.

INTRODUCTION

Disappointed with project management? Having some concerns about quality in execution and deliverables? Thinking about streamlining, fast-tracking, down-sizing?

Begin with these questions: What prevents us from moving work through the organization smoothly, profitably? How often are we late with deliverables, over budget, or doing re-work? Are our customers satisfied with our performance?

If your work truly is routine—same thing, same order, every time—project management has limited value. A simple Expect/Inspect system, rudimentary performance standards, and nominal on-site supervision can plug performance gaps.

Project management is best with non-routine work. That doesn't mean never done before, only that there's no assembly line and jobs vary slightly or significantly from other, similar projects. Projects can be as grand as building a cathedral, as exciting as launching a new product, or as frustrating as installing a new accounting system.

All are ‘projects’ because specific, qualitative objectives are to be met within specific durations and within specific resource limitations. Economies may result from matrix management by which collections of tasks are shepherded to completion by project managers who contract with functional managers for resources (engineers, laborers, trucks, laboratories, etc.) according to project priorities.

Step-by-step, project management is rather simple. What complicates it is the demand for scheduling competence (usually absent) and ego/turf competition among managers (usually present).

This book explains how to build a project management system (PMS) to get cost-effective performance and quality deliverables. Data-based leverage for changes in staffing and for smoothing-out operations is a by-product. That's the real path to productivity and profit—and the most compelling reason for investing in an organization-specific PMS.

Chapter One:

WHAT PROBLEMS DO YOU WANT TO SOLVE?

Project management is misused often, overlaid like a conceptual band-aid on a mosaic of obsolete procedures and policies. Sometimes, the effort to solve production problems is further compromised by ‘old boy’ cronyism and other means by which people try to protect existing patterns of prerogative and non-performance. Nothing can overcome those impediments to organizational effectiveness except tough-minded management responding to hard data about failed performance, falling quality, and missed market opportunities.

One of the foundation concepts on which project management is based is precise identification of responsibility and undeniable accountability for meeting quality, schedule, and cost criteria. That amount of visibility is not always desired by employees, nor is every group of managers willing to deal with that kind of non-negotiable culpability or ownership. That amount of visibility regarding performance issues is threatening in many quarters.

Project Management is a Simple Idea

There are too many people conducting project management courses for it to be overly complex. In fact, if you examine the brochures of several course offerings, it becomes obvious that they all have one or several common antecedents. (Two in particular come to mind: Russell D. Archibald's 1977 classic, Managing High-Technology Programs and Projects; and Linn C. Stuckenbruck's illustrated manual, The Implementation of Project Management: The Professional's Handbook.)

The other thing that becomes obvious is that project management seems to be confused with networking, identifying the critical path, and negotiating schedules with functional managers. As it's typically taught, project management can be brought to bear on any problem, anywhere, anytime. That's why this chapter is titled, What problems do you want to solve?

A Quick Review of the Basics

At its simplest, project management is a matter of making things happen to support a rational, logical flow of activities. The simplest illustration of this kind of thinking is

PLAN

DO

EVALUATE

In this sequence, headwork precedes activity and is followed by a process check that asks, Did we do what we planned, the way we planned it, and what would/should we do differently next time? This is a way to learn from experience, successes as well as mistakes. But…