Chapter 12, 13

Chapter 12
Measuring Progress
When a project manager set a measuring schedule for performance that will help him/her to follow up the progress of work packages. Each package has start and finish dates. The smaller the packages, the more progress points can be referring to, and therefore the more accurate the schedule progress will be. A project manager should always be suspicious of work package status that is reported in detailed increments. The size of work packages plays big role in calculating cost and schedule variance accurately. The larger the project, the more difficult it is to understand all the parts and to stay on top of cost and schedule variance. In large project, project manger, should breakdown the project into small packages, therefore its management and control will be easy. Following each package closely, that will make the project manger job easy and the work can be smoothly mange and cost can be under control.
Project manager should use the 0-50-100 rule for recording schedule completion of tasks.
Work breakdown structure is critical: making earned value work, each task on the work breakdown structure should meet these criteria:
Defined start and finish dates: by defining the start and finish dates, project manger should pay close attention to the budget and the time of the package process.
The task must produce a tangible outcome: each task in the project should have a start and finish time and what to produce. Tangible outcome encourages project manager and the team management and whoever works in this project.
Costs must be assigned to the task: each task should have a defined budget and time to finish. Most projects meet some difficulty on keep up with the budget. When comparing a plan budget and a real cost of any task, you will find out that most of task affected by a hidden cost.

Chapter 13
Enterprise Project Management
Any project has a unique situation during its process, but there are five project success factors generally participate in project success. One of these factors is agreement among the project team, customer, and management on the goals of the project. When all parties of the project are agree on the project and its future product, then that will help the project manager to control homogeneous teams. A clear plan also is one of the factors that affect the project success. Good communication between all parties of project has a positive effect on a project success. A controlled scope also has a positive effect on any project success. A management support is one of any project success.
There are eight common capabilities of enterprise project management technology. Technology helps in project management process from the beginning of the project. Technology help in work breakdown structure and resource leveled project schedule. Technology helps in team communication and collaboration. Using technology project manager can organize project documentation, tracking issues and risks, reporting individual progress, internet and network technology help all teams to communicate and share documents and information. Technology enables project manager to see accurate summary status for any project process. Technology also help project manger to know the updating cost analysis, such as recording time labor spent on a project.
Project team needs a broad skill set on technology to perform all technology management while they are working in a project. Users of EPM will be project manager, team members and functional managers or resource manger. Project’s sponsor should acquire EPM technology knowledge to help him/her in performing and communicating with the others parties. Each project is different in nature and its product. Project management has solution, but not to all projects. Project manager should treat each project in a way that is appropriate to its projects.

Chapter 10-11-14

Chapter 10
High Performance Project Team
Stages of team development:
Forming a team is a beginning of a real work in project management. A team begins as a collection of individuals. The initial reactions reflect the uncertainty everyone feels at outset, team member mostly pride and honored being selected as a team member for a new project. At the beginning each member excited about the work will be done and his/her responsibility and how working with these new member will be when starting the new assignment, at this stage the member still does not feel related yet until the work start. Project manager should use his/her leadership strategies to ease the tension by providing structure and clear direction. Project manager at this stage should provide the project goals and purpose of the group. Members should know their responsibility and their roles in this project and establish team expectations. The initial steps of any project are not easy and needs a lot of work form all team members, project manager and sponsor. Members of a team should be engaged in decision making to address their concerns. Norming is stage where the team members feel they are part of the project and they have their goals and roles are clear. Team’s members start to trust each other and focus on team goals, because their own need for role clarity has been met.
Project manager should help in building a positive environment from the first time the team as group gets together. Ground rules are explicitly stated expectation about team behavior and values. Making team’s expectations explicit accomplishes three things: Team members understand what is expected of them as a member of an interdependent group. Second the team has an opportunity to form and own its culture. Third team’s need for structure should be met.

Chapter 11
Communication
Good communication considered as a key for successful projects. Members of team work together to accomplish a unique goal, they need to coordinate their activities, agree on responsibilities, and reevaluate their progress. A good project communication structures make it easier for member to communicate and interact. Project manager should follow a solid foundation in project management by communicating successfully with all participants on the project. Project manager should follow a systematic approach to staying in control of the project such as:
The kickoff checklist is a guide for putting all the pieces in place he put the project in motion.
Use the task assignment to make sure each team member clearly understands his or her responsibility.
The meeting agenda is structured to help project manager to prepare for meeting and take useful meeting minutes.
A status report for management should be brief and focused to help the audience read it quickly and identify any necessary action
Evaluate project and project management style with the control checklist on a regular basis
Keeping track of problems that need to be resolved

The change log and change request provide structure to keep track of the many proposed and accepted changes on the project
When the project is finished, the project closure report summarizes the outcome of the project and compares the original goal with what actually happened
Closeout reporting is mostly neglected activity in project management. The end of a project may coincide with delivery of a final product or may simply be the end of a product development phase. Some closeout activities include:
Notifying all participants of the new status of a project and whom to contact in future.
Giving product improvement ideas that were not used on the project to the team supporting the product
Detailing any open tasks or unresolved issues by means of an updated project plan.
Chapter 14
Solving Common Project Problems:
Disaster Recovery: when a company hires a new project manager after a problem or a disaster was occurred in the project as a new project manager should first start with statement of work. Clarify the project goals, then prioritize the remaining scope and clarify why project missing the deadline and why it runs over budget. By using the work breakdown structure and critical path analysis, project manager will figure out the best possible schedule scenario. New manager should form a realistic schedule and get the management agreement on it. For work package estimates, new project manager should use actual performance so far to create realistic estimates. New project manager will deal with exhausted, frustrated team members after the problem of achieving and completing the project on time. Project manager should hold frequent status meetings focusing on completing near-tasks keep the project manager on top of progress and allow solving problems early.
The impossible dream:
When the project manager received a deadline and a budget that are impossible, he or she should first check the project’ statement of work and be extremely clear about the project’s purpose, scope, and deliverables. Project manager should make sure that the scope and deliverables are really necessary to accomplish the purpose. Project manager should develop more than one plan for what can be done. Project manager should perform risk assessment at both the high level and the detail level to find the danger points. Project manager should frequently monitor and watch for new risk not to happen. In order for project manager to meet a schedule that impossible he/she should change the stakeholders’ expectations.

Chapter 5,6,7

Chapter 5
Risk Management
Risk management deals with unexpected, and project managers should be ready for that. Project managers should identify potential problems, such as natural disaster or any other disaster depending on the nature of the project. Insurance companies practice risk management better than any other companies, because any disaster will cost them fortune. A successful project should have a solid goal, budget and time, each one of these elements can affect the project negatively if the project managers do not consider the risk he or she might faced.
What a risk management process?
First step is identifying risks, by finding all type of risk factors that might happened during the project process. Second project managers should develop a response; by getting reading to develop strategies for lessen the risk impact. Establish reserves, by put aside part of the budget for that reason. Continuous risk management, this happened by implementation of strategies and monitoring the project. Project manager should communicate with stakeholders about any type of risk that found such as known risks, because know risk is avoided and some budget was reserved for that reason.
Being able to define the risk is important to understand the nature of the risk and if it’s avoidable and some budget was already reserved for it. Project managers should get ready for the risk by scheduling some activities such as: monitor known risk with a risk log, check for new risks at regular status meetings, repeat the major risk identification activities at preplanned milestones within the project, when new risks are identified prepare response plans and check for management reserve exists.

Chapter 6
Work Breakdown Structure
Work breakdown structure identifies all the tasks in a project and sometimes called a task list. Work breakdown structure provides a project manager with necessary details about most of project management activities. Building a work breakdown structure will help the project manager to: provide a detailed illustration of project scope, monitor progress, create accurate cost and schedule estimates and build project teams. WBS breaks all the project work into separate tasks or activities. There are two kinds of tasks on WBS one summary tasks and other is work packages. Building a new hospital is a summary task, but digging and building each one called a work package.
Building a work breakdown structure will make the entire project easy to execute, because every one knows his/her role. There are three steps to build WBS; first one is begin at the top, because WBS breaks down a project into descending levels of details. All tasks required listing the major deliverables or high level tasks from the scope statement on the first tier. Second step is name all the tasks required to produce deliverables which break down each task into lower level. A large multidisciplinary project should be break down into tasks and create teams to successfully manage a project. Step three is how to organize the work breakdown structure. When project manager identified the wok packages it is possible to list them in different ways. Different ways of organizing a work packages might emphasize and prioritize what is more important task to done first.
Criteria for a successful work breakdown structure:

The work breakdown structure must be broken down starting at the top
Work packages must add up to the summary task
Each summary task and work package must be named as an activity that produces a product.
The secret of successful project management is break the project into small, meaningful, manageable units of work.

Chapter 7
Realistic Scheduling
To plan a project a project manager should follow up all the steps that generate information required to understand how a project will be execute, prepare the groundwork for planning and so can be considered preplanning activities, create the project definition by developing the statement of work, which identifies the purpose of the project or the part of a project and scope of the project and also defines the responsibility among the working teams. Develop a risk management strategy to avoid risk and disaster that can damage the entire project or the stages already finished. Build a work breakdown structure which identifies all the task and work packages. Identify task relationships by placing a work packages in the proper sequence. Estimate work package, by their cost, labor and time to be performed. Calculate initial schedule after figuring the duration of each work package and the sequence tasks. Assign and level resources
Identifying task relationships hat helps the project manager to understand and figure out the sequences of work packages, because that depends on relationships between the tasks. If work packages are over hundred still need to keep the sequence of task.
Milestones are useful markers for all projects. The start and finish milestones are useful anchors for the network. Milestones can be used to mark input from one party to another. A millstone can represent significant events that are not already represented by a work package or summary task. Milestones are useful to show major progress points.

Guidelines for using YackPack to enhance learning skills
Project Charter
Project Manager: Yousif Omer
Sponsor: Middle East School II
Date: May/29/07

This charter serves to announce the initiation of the [Guidelines for using YackPack to enhance learning skills] project. We are undertaking this project [YackPack program can make a positive effect on listening and speaking skills for Arabic language learners at DLI”
Arabic Language students at DLI who use YackPack program to improve their listening and speaking skills work as a learning community to achieve their goal and enhance their skills, therefore; a remarkable improvement in students’ grade will be noticed by their instructors in tests and quizzes while using YackPack. Students will be more confident and fluent in their listening and speaking. YackPack as one of the best educational conferencing programs allows students and instructors more interaction by extending the instructional day time and engaging students and their instructors in voice conversation and that will have a positive effect in improving their skills. When students talk directly to their language instructor or their peers, discussing some listening and speaking topics that will help the students to practice more Arabic language and work closely with their instructor for integrating skills, more than any other students who are not using the program].


[Project manager name] has been selected to lead this project.

Please provide your complete cooperation to the project and to [project manager name].

Thank you.

[This charter formally authorizes the project manager and is sent out from the sponsor or project selection board.]



Guidelines for using YackPack to enhance learning skills Statement of Work
Project Manager: [Yousif Omer]
Sponsor: [Ms. Naween Alwahab]

Revision History
Revision date
Revised by
Approved by
Description of change
May 18, 2007
Dr. Eric Tao
Mr. Bill S.
Deliverable Method




Purpose: This program helps instructors and students at DLI to successfully use YackPack to enhance listening and speaking skills

Scope
Major project activities
1. Practicing listening
2. Practicing speaking
3.Tests & Quizzes
Out of scope activities that are critical to the success of the project
Enhancing writing skill activities
Deliverables

Cost Estimates
Cost Type
Amount
Labor hours
None
External costs
None
Labor (consultants, contract labor)
None
Equipment, hardware or software
$1200.00
List other costs such as travel & training
None
Schedule Overview
Estimated Project Completion Date: June/15/07
Major Milestones
Completing the program July /15/07
Validating the program July/18/07
External Milestones Affecting the Project
Supervisor approval July/16/07
DLI approval July/20/07
Impact of Late Delivery
Objectives
This program mainly help the students at DLI enhance their listening and speaking

Stakeholder Analysis
Name & Role
Major Responsibility or Contribution
DLI Instructor &Students
Customer
Instructors will validate the program and the students will try the program and write their feedback
DLI
Sponsor
Will review the program and information technology officer will check the program usability
Yousif OmerManagement
Manage the program and supervise participants (instructors)
Team B3 instructors
Team
Receive training and write their feedback
Chain of Command
Project Team:
Middle East School II Dean: Mr. Bahjat Malek
Department B Chairperson: Ms. Naween Alwahab
IT Officer: Mr. Bill S. Alwahab
Program Manager: Yousif Omer
Project Sponsor
Project Manager
Team Leader
Team Leader
Customer Approval Chain:
Middle East School II Instructors and Students
Customer Project Sponsor
Customer Project Manager
Team Leader
Team Leader
Assumptions
Assumption: The program will be very useful and will be distributed to others schools
Impact if assumption is incorrect: The program will be used only for MEII students





Guidelines for using YackPack to enhance learning skills
Stakeholder Analysis
Project Manager
Yousif Omer


Stakeholder Role Profile
These questions will encourage the project team to consider a wide variety of stakeholders. Use these questions to identify as many stakeholders as possible. After generating the list, you may decide some of the stakeholders are represented by other stakeholders or will have so little involvement in the project that you don’t need to consider them and you may remove them from your list.

This list is a starting point
Add questions to this list that fit your project environment. If you miss an important stakeholder on one project, add a question to this list that will cause the next project team to identify that stakeholder.

For each of the questions below answer the question: “Who…?”

Question
All stakeholders that apply. Use people’s names whenever possible.
1.
Approves funding for this project?
Dean MEII Mr. Bahgat Malek
2.
Approves functional requirements?
Dr. Eric Tao
3.
Approves technical requirements?
Dr. Eric Tao
4.
Approves design decisions?
Dr. Eric Tao
5.
Approves changes to requirements?
Dr. Eric Tao
6.
Approves changes affecting schedule?
Yousif Omer
7.
Approves changes affecting cost?
Mr. Bahgat Malek
8.
Will use the product or service produced by the project?
DLI instructors & Students
9.
Set the organizational goals that drive the necessity of this project?
Project manager: Yousif Omer
10.
Will assign people to the project team and determine the hours per day they work on the project?
Project manager: Yousif Omer
11.
Approves contracts for suppliers?
Mr. Bahgat Malek
12.
Is the manager or executive sponsoring this project (will use their authority on behalf of the project team to overcome organizational obstacles)?
Mr. Bahgat Malek
13.
Will manage the project (provide leadership to assure tasks are assigned and completed on time, cost and schedule are monitored, issues are identified and resolved)?
Mr. Bahgat Malek
14.
Represents organization policies governing this project?
Department Chair: Ms. Naween Alwahab
15.
Represents regulations or laws affecting this project?
Department Chair
16.
Will have their work disrupted by this project?
Project manager: Yousif Omer
17.
Will have to change their systems or processes because of this project?
Project manager: Yousif Omer
18.
Will benefit from this project? (If this is a large group, who will represent this group?)
Mr. Bahgat Malek
19.
Will perform the work on this project? (This includes all vendors and subcontractors as well as employees)
Project manager: Yousif Omer
20.
Will participate in phase gate decisions to approve moving the project to the next phase?
Dr. Eric Tao



Stakeholder Alignment Questions
These questions will ask for a minimum amount of understanding about each stakeholder. Use these for each stakeholder that has a high interest in the project or can have a high impact on the project. The better you understand each stakeholder, the better prepared you’ll be to win cooperation.

Not for publication
These questions are meant to stimulate thinking about stakeholders. Your assumptions and insights into the motivations of each stakeholder or stakeholder group are a private assessment and should not be published.

For each significant stakeholder, answer the following questions:

Name:
Title: Project manager: Yousif Omer
1.
What is their contribution to the project?
Manage and maintain the project
2.
To whom do they report?
Mr. Bahgat Malek
3.
What authority do they have over the project?
Manage and supervise the project
4.
What is their goal for the project (what is their stake in the project) and how does it relate to their organization’s goal or other personal goals? (What makes this a ‘win’ for them?)
To enhance students learning process, using technology effectively for the benefit of the DLI
5.
Do they present a specific threat or opportunity?
Put this achievement in annual input on October 2007 to gain more points
6.
What perception do you want them to have about the project?
Accept the project first then use it and benefit of the unique opportunity


Plan Communication
Use the Communication Plan and Responsibility Matrix templates to document roles and responsibilities and how you’ll keep your stakeholders engaged and informed.

Chapter 3 & 4

Chapter 3: Stakeholders
I have learned in this chapter that everyone involved in a project have an interest in the project’s success, that also mean everyone involved have a duty or a job a signed to each and everyone. Also each individual interested in the success of the project is considered part of stakeholders. A project first before starting work in any project should identify who are the stakeholders. Stakeholders involved in managing, planning and making decisions. Under the guidance of a project manager, stakeholders establish agreements on the goals, strategies, schedules, and budget. Successful projects have to meet all stakeholder expectations, but they have their contribution to the project.
Identifying stakeholder roles is a key for the project success, some of these roles are:
Stakeholder role: Project Manager
Project manager has the primary role in any project. The project manager must keep all the participants working together as one team and all parties know their job and he follow up the project step by step.
Stakeholder role: Project Team
Project team members do the project work. Project team member contribute time, skill, and effort to the project. Project team members are not only company employee’s members who assigned to work together with others project parties, but also include contractors, vendors, and even customers. Project team members should be assigned from the beginning of the project at the time of planning. Project team members should agree to their role and responsibilities first before starting their work.
Stakeholder Roles: Management
Functional management or line management is working with company management to achieve any project success. Functional managers are responsible for an organizational unit, such as engineering or internal audit rather than a specific project. Functional managers are responsible of employee and other resources in the firm. Also they involved in setting company policies which impact the project. Project manager should work closely with functional managers for the success of the project.
Stakeholder Roles: Sponsor
The sponsor is the person with formal authority who is ultimately responsible for the project. A sponsor may be a senior executive or a junior manager. The sponsor position is independent of any project. Sponsor position enables his/her to act as a connection between project manager and normal decision making process. Sponsor according to his/her position might, support project manager by issuing a project charter, assist in developing a responsibility matrix, review and approve the statement of work, review and approve the project plan, advise the project manager, monitor and maintain the priority of the project relative to other projects and assist the project manager in overcoming organizational obstacles

Chapter 4 Making the Rules
This chapter is full of new and useful information. The five rules for the success of any project are: agreement on goal, a plan, good communication, scope control, and management support. Form these five rules only agreement on the goals of the project among all parties involved, control over the scope of the project and management support should be written carefully, because any mistake might not be tolerated, for example the scope of the project should be clearly defined, because each project is a unique one and any overruns will affect the budgets and the schedules of the project. Project charter has two meanings one as a formal recognition of authority and the other refer to it as statement of work.
Project charter contains the name and purpose of the project, the project manger’s name, and a statement of support from the issuer. Everyone who involved with the project should receive a copy of project charter. Project managers should rely on expert authority and legitimate authority on their temporary positions. Expert authority received their acceptance and their creditability from stakeholders by their performance and their knowledge of their expert.
Setting up a responsibility matrix: a responsibility matrix lays out the major activities in the project; it shows the right communication and contacts.
The steps of setting up responsibility matrix are:
List the major activities of the project
List the stakeholder groups
Code the responsibility matrix
Incorporate the responsibility matrix into the project rules
Communication Plan:
Project manager should create a good communication plan for successful project. Stakeholders are the people who involved in the project also they make project happen, then they should be connected by a good chain of communication. Project manager by establishing a good communication plan he/she make getting the right information for the right people happen. Avoiding common pitfalls here are some questions should be asked:
Who needs information?
Sponsor: sponsor’s name should be included in statement of work.
Functional management: functional manager position may represent by more than one manager, for clarification each functional manager’s name or title must appear on the communication plan.
Customers: customers make decisions about the product, product cost and product requirement
Project team: project team members are vendors, subcontractors and staff in other departments.
Project manager: he/she is the source of information

Reference:
The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management
By: ERIC VERZUH

Unique Ideas

Chapter 1:
History of Project Management:
Project management is considered a new critical career skill of modern time. It is a new career skill today, but it was defined in the 1950s, on the major cold war defense programs. Project management as a discipline grew up within the aerospace and defense industries, but in the 1990s project management broke out of its traditional boundaries. It was not easy to find project management classes offered during 1990s, but it was a required course in Master of Business Administration.

Understanding Project Management:
Learning the basics of project management is important not only for executive or managers, but for every one who participate in a project. Managers and executives who select and sponsor projects may spend only an hour or two a week directly involved in a project, but their ability to speak the language of project management will dramatically affect the team’s perception of management support. Managers who know and use the tools of project management make more effective decisions and enable their people to perform more efficiently.

Success Factors:
1- Agreement among the project team, customer, and management on the goals of the project
2- A plan that shows an overall path and clear responsibilities and will be used to measure progress during the project. Since every project is unique, the only way to understand and execute it efficiently is with a plan.
3- Constant, effective communication among everyone involved in the project.
4- A controlled scope. The successful project manager will ensure that everyone involved understands exactly what can be accomplished within a given time frame and budget.
5- Management support.

Chapter 2:
Essential Characteristics of a Project:
All projects have two essential characteristics. The first project characteristic is every project has a beginning and an end.
The second characteristic is every project produces a unique project. The outcome of a project can be tangible, such as a building or a software product, or intangible, such as new hiring guidelines.

Ongoing Operations vs. Projects
Ongoing operations have the opposite characteristics of projects in that they have no end and they produce similar, often identical products. A project produces a unique product. A project has a beginning and an end.

The Challenge of Managing Projects:
Some challenges that face project managers are:
Personnel: Every project has different personnel needs. The number of people needed and their different skill sets is different for each project.
Estimating: In order to evaluate potential projects, organizations need accurate estimates of costs and schedules.
Authority: Authority within a firm usually represents the ongoing operations of the firm, when projects cross organizational boundaries it is no longer clear who has authority for many decisions.
Controls: Normal accounting practices match operational budgets to operational costs on a quarterly or annual basis. Projects’ accounting should be under control.

References:
The Fast forward MBA in Project Management
By: Eric Verzuh

Why Project Mangement?

My name is Yousif Omer. I work as Arabic language instructor at Defense Language Institute at Monterey, Ca
Why did I choose the project management class?Teaching Arabic language at DLI is an ongoing operation since 1940s, therefore this ongoing operation can not be classified as a one project, since each project has a beginning and an end, but achieving the goal of help students mastering this difficult language, this huge operation can be divided into small projects and each project has its own agenda and goal, but the ultimate goal is mastering the Arabic language. Dividing this big job into small projects makes each group or department responsible of part of this job. At DLI the job divide into schools, departments, and teams. As a team member I am part of one of these small projects and my duty to achieve with my team and department part of ultimate goal. I need to lean more about project management, such as helpful tips to show me ways of making changes. I like to use project management knowledge at my work and my own projects in future.