Project Management. All Project Managers have to start somewhere from some beginning. So moving ahead, it’s what you do with that leadership role that makes you a good or great project manager. At some point in time, all of us are new to project management. There are a few different ways we can choose, move into and even fall into the role of project manager. Sometimes we choose our path into project management and sometimes the career choice is forced upon us out of organizational need.


For me, the key tips for PM success that new Project Managers should rely on as they take on this new uncharted territory...


Rely on the tools. Good project management tools are there to lean on, to depend on, to help you manage a project. Admittedly, every once In awhile there are those projects that you could manage on a piece of handwritten paper. But that is rare. If you’re an inexperienced PM, rely on the good tools you are surrounded with. They will help you with the current project and the project timelines and information you put into them and get out of them will get better and more detailed and more fine-tuned with each project and you can take each of those morsels with you to the next project… using the same tool or tools each time.


Shadow a good one. Mentoring. Not everyone has time to do it and not everyone is good at it, but if you’re starting out as a PM and you’re involved with a group of some experienced project managers you are likely to find one who is willing to help you along the way. It isn’t about PMP certification. It is more about experience and success.


Conduct great meetings. Learning how to conduct great project meetings and to get – and keep – people in their seats at your meetings can be a huge key to project success. So how do you make that happen? Make sure you plan for the meeting and send out materials – including a status report – in advance. Only invite the key players but make sure those key players know what they are assigned to and why they are there. If they know they are expected to contribute, they are less likely to just consider it another meeting to skip. Conduct the meetings for the project on a regular basis – usually weekly – and try to never cancel project meetings. Even if there isn’t much to cover in a given week, still conduct the meeting because the minute you start to cancel project meetings is the moment that those attendees start to consider your project meeting optional. Even if all you do on those slow weeks is go around the room and get a brief update from each attendee, it is worth it. It keeps them involved, keeps them coming, and keeps anything from falling through the cracks that could be very important to the project. Finally, take good notes and send out those notes to all attendees to review and revise and send back to you in order to make sure everyone is on the same page at all times.


Status reporting drives the projects. Put together a good, detailed status report and let it drive the project meetings. Take notes and then revise the status report post-meeting and send it out to all participants to verify everyone understands what went on and that everyone is still on the same page.


The budget is the hardest part. You’re managing – for the most part – someone else’s money. Manage the budget closely. Get new actual charges against the project every week from accounting, revise the project budget forecast and analyze what the budget health looks like every week. A 10% budget overrun can be corrected fairly easily. A 50% or 60% overrun can not…and may not ever be corrected. If you’re managing the budget closely every week, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever go past about 10% over and you can quickly plan with your team – and possibly even your project customer – on what corrective action you may need to take. Your customer wants you to succeed. They are there to help. Trust me.


Summary / call for input


At one time or another we are all new to project management. If you are now new to project management, I hope this list helps. If you’re experienced, tell us all what you would change or add to this list.


Some of us wanted to be project managers and do great things and lead great teams while others had greatness thrust upon them – at least initially – unwillingly. What's your story? How did you initially become a project manager? Looking back, do you consider that it was a good career move? Please share your story.

As project managers, it seems that everything we do is measured by time or timeframes. We live and die by them. Our projects fail or succeed by them. Our raises and pay incentives are usually based on them. Our whole careers are one big master project schedule. It almost seems like we should run our lives using a project management software tool. Ok, maybe I’m going a little overboard now – I tried that one time years ago on my home computer with one of the first tools that came out and I thought my wife was going to kill me.


Missing the mark on project deployment


First, let’s consider project success factors. In most people’s books, there are three key success determiners for projects…and ultimately project managers. On budget delivery, on time delivery, and customer satisfaction. And of course that last one is often based heavily on the first two. So, there’s that on time delivery measure. That’s on time delivery of the project as a whole. As we know, there are many, many factors that can play into missing the mark in terms of on time delivery. Several that come to mind are:

• Scope creep
  
• Error filled deliverables
  
• Outstanding software bugs
  
• Loss of key project personnel
  
• Funding issues
  
• Unplanned risks arising as real issues
  
• Problems with a third party vendor
  

The list could go on and on in terms of what could affect the overall delivery date of the end solution. The key for the project manager is to document the issues and any reasons why the project is delayed and keep it as part of the knowledge base of information for the project – sort of what we used to refer to as the project notebook. When a two-year project comes in two months late it’s nice to have that documentation showing that in month ten of the project work stopped due to customer funding. Any information that documents anomalies to successful delivery of the solution is good to have when it comes time to get final project approval and when you sit down with the customer and project team to conduct a lessons learned session. And be sure to have the schedule affects documented in your online project management software for these same purposes.


Delayed deliverable delivery


Delayed deliverable delivery may seem like a catchy phrase, but it’s painful if you’re a project manager. Some of the same things that affect overall project delivery can affect the timely delivery of deliverables throughout the project. I once had official approval and signoff of a functional design document deliverable delayed because my team kept delivering an error-filled version of the document. First the PDF creation software was altering the format of the document which caused the customer to reject it. Next, once we finally got past the formatting issues, the customer noticed many typos. After I picked myself off the floor and realized that my highly paid technical team was not proofing documents before sending them to the client, I incorporated a ‘peer review everything’ practice on the project and we got past that issue. But we lost valuable time trying to move to the development phase and we lost valuable customer confidence trying to deliver an error-free document.


Summary


The bottom line is, the project manager essentially promises the customer that he will be overseeing a successful project for them. One that promises to provide on time deliverables, hold weekly meetings according to a planned schedule, deliver status reports and revised project schedules on a regular basis, and deploy an end solution on the date that was planned in our web-based project management software tool with the customer. Every time you have to apologize and miss one of those dates, you’re taking a hit to your reputation as a project manager, your project is incurring unnecessary expenses, your customer is losing confidence in you, and your company may be suffering as well. Quality control is not just something we need to worry about in our software system, it’s something we need to implement in the overall way we run projects.