Project Management Way

By Massimo Antoniello

Dear Reader,

This book describes building blocks to design and implement project management process and procedures for a scalable organisation.

Resulting from over twenty years of direct experience by the author in developing PMO offices, the book approaches the subject from a pragmatic approach to cover, yet in structured way, the foundations and tools and process to develop a structured methodologies in the project area.

Project modelling is described as 5 steps: Planning, Design, Develop, Deploy and Acceptance; all steps are described for contents, methodology, tools and success tips.

Sometimes sales representative and customers ( either external or internal ) could be very "creative" in their requests and expectations , it is very important is to get a proper and solid document and process to deliver while surviving.

So, what is a project ? In practice, the distinction between what is "normal work" and "project work" can be quite grey. Many activities that we usually classify as just normal work can be called projects. 
Main characteristics of a project are as follows:
•Defined start and an hopefully finish date.
•Time frame for completion..
•Involvement of several resources
•Limited set of resources
•Set of activities and milestones 

"Project Scoping and Planning", is the first and most important stage for the Project manager. It is in this stage that the project manager has the opportunity to look at and assess the project before it becomes formally "live" - to establish how the project should be organised.

For many projects, gaining support from others in the organisation is a key issue to consider.

Planning is one of the main key task to successful project implementation. In the first place, during the planning stage, a good plan creates a model of the project which enables the Project Manager to analyse how the work needs to be carried out and identify the options for doing so.

In spite of all the planning and thinking done, all projects face unforeseen pitfalls. Experienced Project Managers know this and try to look ahead and predict such pitfalls beforehand and find means to avoid an mitigate effects.

Many times projects go wrong because of poor communications and misunderstandings than any other single factor. A project manager need to try to ensure that all involved in the project know what is going on, what their role is, and what they should be working on.

If your project involves a team, then investing time in keeping the team connected, committed and energised will make the project progress much more smoothly.

All projects need a final stage; to ensure that all know that the project is over and has been successful, and to ensure that everyone’s contributions have been recognised by their line managers and by the Project Sponsor.

There is no "magic formula" to success in project management. In practice it is simply a matter of introducing definition, focus and clarity into the project and then managing people and tasks actively to ensure progress this is the aim of this book.

Thanks for your interest
Best Regards,
Massimo Antoniello

• Language: English
• Publisher: MAC
• Release date: Mar 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9788827586259

Book preview

author

About this Book

Dear Reader,

It is with great pride that I propose you this book, I’ve been working for over thirty  years in developing organisation and projects and I feel the need to document and pass the knowledge I develop in the fields to others.

Yes there are thousands of books and resources for project managements in these days, so why another one ? because the existing material that I’ve also used is oriented to structured organisation.  I wanted to target newcomers in the project and organisation management by providing a real personally developed skills with a pragmatic approach that do not replace the structured PMI or Prince or others exiting methodologies.

The idea to write a series of books grow up in my mind in the last 2 years and I always had to park that idea for various reasons, BUT if you have a passion you should not park ant you should always give a try to your passions. .

This is my first published book and will be followed by a series to cover the scope to create organisations build to last.

I hope you find this reading helpful and useful and I’d really appreciate your feedbacks, review and suggestion to help tailoring the next chapters of this new challenge for me.

Sincerely Yours,

Massimo Antoniello

Project Brief and scope

The early days of a project are always important - they provide a window of time in which you as project manager can question items and negotiate some changes. Later in the project it becomes more difficult to do this. This stage is about that period and about preparing the ground - getting the foundations in place to make managing the project an easier task.

Sometimes sales representative could be very creative in either the customer and project qualification and selection, it is very important is to get a proper handover from sales representative.

To get a clear scope and requirements listed documented and signed-off by all stakeholders is a key step in designing a sustainable project plan and results.

Outcome of this Stage

A project where the ground is prepared in terms of project sponsorship, agreement to a project scope, understanding of both stakeholder requirements and the level of support for the project, and forewarning and preparation of those likely to be working on or contributing to the project. 

A Project scope document gives the project manager the opportunity to look at and assess the project before it becomes formally live. Not so much to query whether the project should go ahead but to establish how it needs to be organised and managed, specifically to assess:

• Project aims and objectives

• Risks and possible difficulties.

• how the project should be organised and tackled.

Such a document may take variable amount of time depending on the size of the project. Usually it is based around discussions with key stakeholders (those with a vested interest in the project) and potential team members and contributors. The findings and conclusions are summarised in a Project Plan.

What is Project Scoping

In any project there is a Project Proposal Stage - sometimes formal, sometimes informal. It is the period of work which results in a decision. In medium or large projects this may result in a Project Brief which summarises - this is what we expect to deliverer.

The next stage, Project Scoping and Planning, is the first and most important stage for the Project manager. It is in this stage that the project manager has the opportunity to look at and assess the project before it becomes formally live - not to query whether the project should go ahead (that is already decided) but to establish how the project should be organised.

It is a period of time, often short (days or weeks), during which the Project Manager assesses the project to establish:

• what the project aims and objectives should be

• what the risks and possible difficulties are,

• and how the project should be organised and tackled.

What does it involve

That clearly depends on the project. For really major projects it may take months but in practice most projects can be scoped in a few days or weeks. It rarely involves collecting significant new information.

The bulk of the work involves discussions with relevant parties to get a feel for the key issues, and then some structured thinking and evaluation.

What is the outcome

The conclusions are summarised in Project Plan - sometimes referred also as project Brief.

This then needs to be used by the project manager to set the project up as follows:

discussed with the Project Sponsor and agreed so that it becomes an agreement/contract between the project manager and the project sponsor.

used as the basis for a bid for money and resources

used to communicate to key stakeholders and those working on the project

used to forewarn key contributors (IT, Contracts, etc) of future demands on their time.

Why Scope your Project?

When asked to tackle a project, one of the worst things any project manager can do is to rush-in immediately to start tackling it. The worst thing the person requesting or sponsoring the project can do is to insist that they do so. Why? The following case story perhaps illustrates this best.

The committee sponsoring the project was fairly clear what they wanted - a new training system for new staff. However, they had only a general idea about the work involved in designing and introducing one - this is to be expected as they were simply not in a position to know that.  Despite that, they felt that it should not be too difficult and that four months was a reasonable timescale.

They appointed Massimo as project manager. When Massimo looked into the project in more detail, the whole project started to look unreal. Without more resources the timescales were