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.