Pragmatic Project Management: Five Scalable Steps to Success

By David Pratt PMP

Scale Your Project Management Efforts to Maximize Success!
One size does not fit all in project management. Selecting an approach that is appropriate for the size and complexity of a project is essential to achieving success. Over-managing a small project can bog it down in bureaucracy, while a laid-back approach can lead to disaster on a complex project.
Pragmatic Project Management: Five Scalable Steps to Success will help you select the methodologies and tools that will enable you to expend minimum effort to achieve maximum gain on your project. This clearly written guide lays the groundwork with a chapter on project sizing and management scaling and follows with chapters on each of the five essential elements of pragmatic project management:
• The project charter
• The project team
• The project plan
• Project issue management
• Project status tracking and reporting
Practical tips and a checklist are included at the end of each chapter. Use the checklists as you plan and execute your project to keep it on track and to scale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781567263121

David Pratt PMP

David Pratt, PMP, has more than 20 years of experience managing projects of all types and sizes, in a wide variety of industries as well as in non-profit and service organizations. A retired military officer and hospital administrator, he currently owns DHP Project Services, LLC. Dave is the author of The IT Project Management Answer Book and Pragmatic Project Management: Five Scalable Steps to Success. He currently teaches project management at South Puget Sound Community College in Lacey, Washington, where he led the curriculum design effort for the Project Management Certificate program.

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Pragmatic Project Management

Five Scalable Steps to Success

Pragmatic Project Management

Five Scalable Steps to Success

David Pratt, PMP

8230 Leesburg Pike, Suite 800

Vienna, VA 22182

[phone]

Fax: [phone]

www.managementconcepts.com

Copyright © 2010 by Management Concepts, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief quotations in review articles.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pratt, David, 1954-

Pragmatic project management : five scalable steps to success / David Pratt. p.cm.

ISBN: 978-1-56726-274-2

1. Project management. I. Title.

HD69.P75P66 2010

658.4’04—dc22

2009048305

10987654321

David Pratt, PMP, has more than 20 years' experience managing projects of all types and sizes in both the public and private sectors. He is currently the principal of DHP Project Services, an IT project management consulting firm.

Mr. Pratt has taught undergraduate- and graduate-level business courses in the United States and in China. He currently teaches courses in project management at the South Puget Sound Community College in Lacey, Washington, where he helped design the project management certificate program.

A retired military officer and hospital administrator, Mr. Pratt holds masters degrees in management (Webster University) and hospital administration (Baylor University) and a bachelors degree in psychology (Washington State University). He has authored more than 60 articles and is a columnist for a weekly regional newspaper.

Mr. Pratt is a frequent conference speaker on topics including change management, leadership, innovation, and motivation. He is a member of numerous service and professional groups, including Lions Clubs International, the Project Management Institute, and the Military Officer Association of America.

To Jacqueline, who has tolerated my need to create through project management and writing for so many years. Also, to my past employer Kent Meisner, who once said that he would never hire a project manager who hadn't participated on a failed project at least once. Those people, Kent suggested, have learned why managing projects carefully is so important.

Preface   xiii

Acknowledgments   xvii

Introduction   1

Writing the Project Charter   2

Building the Project Team   4

Planning the Project   4

Managing Project Issues   5

Tracking and Reporting Project Status   5

Bringing It All Together   6

Chapter 1 – Sizing the Project and Adjusting Project Management to Scale   7

Sizing the Project   7

Scaling the Work   10

Chapter 2 – Pragmatic PM Element #1: The Project Charter   11

The Need for Speed versus the Need for Information   11

The Project Charter   14

Vision   15

Business Problem or Opportunity   16

Objectives   17

Deliverables   18

High-Level Schedule   18

Constraints   19

Assumptions   19

Risks   19

Team Roles and Responsibilities   20

Budget   21

Scope Statement   22

Sponsor Approval   23

Scaling the Project Charter Effort   24

The Napkin Approach   24

The Expanded Project Chapter   26

Project Charter Checklist   28

Expanded Project Charter Checklist   29

Chapter 3 – Pragmatic PM Element #2: The Project Team   31

Selecting a Project Team   35

The Formal Team   36

The Informal Team   42

Project, Functional, Matrix, and Hybrid Teams   43

Project Organization Project Teams   43

Functional Organization Project Teams   44

Matrix Organization Project Teams   45

Hybrid Organization Project Teams   46

Stakeholders   48

Critical Team Management Factors   49

Leadership   49

Team Building   49

Scaling Project Team Management   50

Scaling the Project Team   52

Identify Required Skill Sets   55

Define the Work   55

Convert Work into Time Packages   55

Schedule Appropriate Resources   55

Use Data from Analogous Projects   56

Project Team Planning Checklist   56

Chapter 4 – Pragmatic PM Element #3: The Project Plan   57

The Vision Statement   58

Project Objectives   59

Requirements   61

Specified Requirements   62

Implied Requirements   63

Project Tasks   64

Task Estimating   64

Task Duration   65

Task Interrelationships   66

Resource Availability   66

Task Costs   68

Milestones   68

Scaling the Project Plan   68

The Napkin Approach   69

The Detailed Project Plan   69

Project Planning Checklist   75

Chapter 5: Pragmatic PM Element #4: Project Issue Management   77

The Issue Tracking Log   81

The Issue Management Form   83

Prioritizing Issues   84

Scope-Change Requests   89

Risk Management   92

Escalating Issues   95

Delegating Issues   98

Managing Stakeholder and User Expectations   98

Scaling the Work   99

Issue Management Checklist   102

Chapter 6: Pragmatic PM Element #5: Project Status Tracking and Reporting   105

Reporting Project Status   107

Tracking and Controlling the Project   110

Objective and Subjective Assessments   111

Cost and Schedule Metrics   112

Scope and Quality Metrics   113

Case Study: Proving a Project's Status   114

Scaling Project Tracking and Reporting Efforts   116

Case Study: Scaling Status Reporting Practices   118

Project Status Tracking and Reporting Checklist   121

Final Thoughts   123

Appendix I: Additional Case Studies   125

Case 1: The IT Project Gone Awry   125

Case 1 Solution   126

Case 2: The New House   127

Case 2 Solution   128

Case 3: The Out-of-Touch Project Sponsor   128

Case 3 Solution   129

Appendix II: The 40 Key Rules of Pragmatic Project Management   131

Recommended Reading   135

Index   137

Imagine starting a new job and feeling eager to prove your capabilities. One day your boss approaches you with a smile and says, I've got a project for you. Your heart races. You have never managed a project before and have had only a little project management training. If you succeed, you will establish yourself in the company as a capable project manager; but if you fail.…

Whether you are an experienced project manager or a first-timer with little or no training, this scenario is probably all too familiar. On one hand, a new project offers a chance to excel and deliver value to the organization. On the other hand, project management is hard and fraught with risk.

Project management is a complex discipline, replete with challenges and potential rewards. Unfortunately, too many projects struggle and fail right out of the door. The Standish Group, a major source of project management research and best-practice information, predicts that only 35 percent of all projects will succeed; another 46 percent will finish challenged (i.e., late, over budget, or with reduced functionality); and 19 percent will fail outright¹. The Standish Group identifies numerous factors that contribute to project success, including:

Swift, decisive decision-making

Clear business objectives

Clear project vision

Project management expertise

Skilled project team resources

A methodology tailored to the specific needs of the project

The right tools, used correctly².

The Standish Group International, CHAOS Summary 2009: The 10 Laws of CHAOS (Boston: The Standish Group International, Inc., 2009, pp.1–3.

While the Standish Group study focuses on IT projects, it is not difficult to see how its conclusions can be applied to projects across all industries.

For new and experienced project managers alike, it is hard to know how to approach a project. Is it best to pick a specific methodology and systematically march through it from beginning to end, regardless of the project's size or complexity? Or should project managers do something less rigorous and hope for the best? Is there enough time or funds to develop extensive plans, or can the effort be tailored to meet specific project needs?

If you have been in the project management profession for a while, you are probably aware of the plethora of methodologies and tools available to help manage projects. Perhaps you have used some of these tools or applied a few of the methodologies. Based on your past project management successes and failures, which of those tools and methodologies really mattered?

Pragmatic project management (PM) answers these questions. The pragmatic PM approach was developed in response to a survey of senior public- and private-sector project managers who were asked to identify the most common project management tools and approaches they relied upon to deliver successful projects. Their responses were consistent in every case:

Write the project charter. Describe project objectives clearly and in sufficient detail.

Build the project team. Define critical roles, responsibilities, and communication methods.

Plan the project. Identify the project work and plan its order of completion in sufficient detail to understand how the project will move from initiation to successful delivery.

Manage project issues. Address matters straying from the project plan as they arise.

Track and report project progress. Keep the project on target by identifying its progress against the project plan and accounting for any differences. Report project status to the project sponsor, project team, and other stakeholders.

These responses form the basis behind pragmatic PM—a simple, practical, and scalable model that works. Pragmatic PM consists of five essential elements: the project charter, the project team, the project plan, project issue management, and project status tracking and reporting. Each element can be scaled to meet a project's particular size and complexity. When a project schedule is tight, project managers often find themselves with too little time to adequately plan and organize their projects. The key is to determine the minimum amount of project management effort needed to deliver the maximum benefit for the project. Small projects require only a little effort, and the burden of that effort does not have to be overwhelming. For medium-sized and large projects, management efforts can be expanded or scaled to meet project needs. Once the project manager clearly identifies a project's needs, he or she can align those needs with a simple, straightforward process. This is what pragmatic PM is all about.

This book begins with a chapter on sizing and scaling and follows with chapters on each of the five essential elements of pragmatic project management. At the end of each of the chapters is a checklist for that element. Use the checklists as you plan and execute projects to maximize the pragmatic PM approach.

Each chapter also contains various rules of pragmatic PM, which are combined in a comprehensive list at the end of the book. These rules will remind you of important things to consider when managing projects.

Project management is one of the most challenging and rewarding jobs in the business world. At its most basic level, project management is about creating something new, whether it is a new building, computer system, or volunteer management program. But the practice is not simple or easy; it requires a systematic approach and discipline. I hope the pragmatic PM approach I offer in this book will help guide you toward consistent project management success.

David Pratt

Yelm, Washington

This book would not have been possible without the suggestions, advice, and support provided by a number