Project Planning

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Project Planning

• Ian Harris
• Entrepreneurial Champion

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• What do you want to know..?

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Contents

• Qualitys of a Project Manager
• What is a Project?
• Project Organisation
• Controlling a Project
• Summary

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Personal and Team Qualities

• Project Management can be done by anyone,
  however, some people are better suited to it
• To be a good project manager (project team) you
  need to
• Motivate
• Delegate
• Communicate
• Lead
• Good teams Motivate each other, Delegate within
  and between, Communicate always and have
  different leaders when they are necessary

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Motivation

• Irrespective of your project planning there will
  be times when it goes off the rails
• To motivate effectively it is necessary to align
  the personal objectives with the project
  objectives
• If people think they are developing in more than
  one way they will be much more motivated
• However, different people are motivated by very
  different things one size does not fit all

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What motivates YOU?

• Spend two minutes on your own trying to
  understand what motivates you!
• You are responsible and each of you own the
  Student Skills Competition you must be
  constantly motivated

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So what are the motivating factors?

• Quality of work (and sometimes quantity!)
• Sense of teamwork and belonging
• Feeling of involvement
• Sense of achievement
• Recognition of success and effort
• Opportunity for development and progression
• Fulfilment of skills and abilities
• Increased responsibility
• Maslows etc.

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Group Exercise What motivates?

• In your teams identify what would motivate your
  team take five minutes

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What are my dominant needs
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Delegating

• Delegation is about presenting suitable work to
  suitable people to achieve a suitable outcome!
• Delegation is a subtle art too much and people
  will resent you, too little and people will
  resent you!
• Delegation works within a team, even if one
  member has been tasked with an outcome, its not
  unlikely that further delegation will be required
  to achieve that outcome
• Tasks need to be explicit with little ambiguity
• MAKE SURE THE PERSON UNDERTAKING THE TASK KNOWS
  EXACTLY WHAT IS REQUIRED!

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Communicating

• This is essential to minimise re-work and for
  people to understand precisely where the project
  is heading
• Good communication, even when people are in
  disagreement is essential to good project
  outcomes
• Communication requires negotiation, persuasion,
  advising and listening and this is a two-way
  process!
• REMEMBER TWO EARS/ONE MOUTH spend twice as long
  listening as talking!

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How will you communicate as a team?
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What methods will you use to communicate?

• How could you do this?
• Weekly team meetings
• Ad Hoc team meetings
• Regular Email Correspondence
• Production of Project Plan and distribution
• Once a week in the pub!

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Leadership

• The leader of a team need not be one person
• Different people should lead at different times
  of the project
• Leadership principally means inspiring others to
  follow
• There are many different types of leaders

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Different Leaders

• You may select different leaders for
• Creating the content
• The presentation
• The stand
• The marketing
• Answering Questions

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Complimentary Team Skills

• Complimentary Skills
• Ideally a team will consist of three types of
  skills
• Technical Skills (TS)
• Problem Solving (PSS) and Decision Making Skills
• Interpersonal Skills (IS)
• For a Student Skills Competition presentation
• What skills should be identified (TS), in what
  way should they be articulated (PSS), and who
  will deliver the presentation (IS)
• Complimentary skills are not needed at the onset
  of the project as long as there is scope to
  develop them throughout the lifecycle of the
  project
• Also, team members DO NOT have to be compatible,
  as long as the team has TS, PSS and IS

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Planning

• Dont forget the Seven Ps
• Poor Prior Preparation Precedes Piss Poor
  Performance

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Ensure a systematic approach

• This is key to effective management of a project.
  It is necessary to put in place the
  communications, tasks, outcomes and exception
  steps that the project will need to be successful
• These steps need not be heavyweight and should
  not take a great deal of time within the project,
  but they should be outlined
• Remember when you used to create revision plans!

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Your turn10 mins

• Organising a Presentation
• As a team, work out what you need to do in order
  to provide a successful presentation on student
  skills to a team of industrialists.
• What are the tasks that need to be completed, and
  what order should they be completed in.
• Place the tasks into priority order and map out
  the critical path, consider why you have placed
  things in the critical path?
• As a group do you all agree with the critical
  path?
• Some constraints
• The Presentation will take place on 14th March
  2007
• You come up with some more

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Mind Shower/Brain Storm

• Some rules
• Allow yourself 10 minutes
• Objective What do we need to do to provide a
  successful presentation
• Select one member to write everything down
• Write everything down, do not judge anything
  during the brainstorm, just record everything
  EXACTLY as it was said
• Be patient, there will be enough time at the end
  if you cant get a word in at the beginning!

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Categorising

• Options available/ideas
• Activities involved in each of these
• Sequence the activities
• Identify the resources
• Technical, Problem Solving, Organisational
• Make a plan
• Review the Plan
• Create Action Plans and Schedules
• Do this in your own time

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Now put them into a priority order
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Now break each activity down
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Now find personnel
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Now monitor
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Some potential issues?

• Venue
• Availability, Size, Location, Cost, Booking,
  Directions, Check Booking Signs
• Presentation Materials
• Flip Board, Data Projector, Computer, Pens,
• Audience
• Type, Age Range, Experience, Purpose
• Marketing
• Email (Central), Email (Departments), Posters
  (Library), Posters (Departmental), Email
  (Partners),

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Whatever you choose you will need

• Objectives
• Scope (limitations of the project)
• Strategy

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Why do you need

• Objectives?
• To provide direction
• To focus on results (outcomes)
• To enable the creation of plans
• To prioritise work
• To communicate the purpose
• To recognise success

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• Objectives
• Provide a 20 minute multi-media presentation to a
  group of industrialists on the topic of skills
  and how they can be used in the workplace by 2nd
  March 2007.

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SMART

• Objectives should be SMART
• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Time Constrained

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SMART OBJECTIVES

• By February 21st Team X will have completed the
  design, construction and evaluation of the
  Student Skills competition display stand
• On 2nd March 2007, team X (we) will have created
  a final draft of our audio-visual presentation
  and as a team will have agreed the content

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Why do you need

• Scope?
• People Affected
• Really this is the Who, What, Why, Where and When
  component
• Why is the scope important
• Constraints
• Time, People, Money, Quality

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Strategy

• This is what you will do to achieve your
  objectives
• For the purpose of the Student Skills Competition
  this can be fairly lightweight but how will you
  achieve your objectives?

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What about risks?

• Risk mitigation is key to a good project plan
• Things rarely go to-plan
• What are the risks?
• What are their priority?
• What can be done about them?

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What do you think the risks will be?

• Illness
• Lack of interest
• Poor leadership
• Lack of resources
• Poor communication
• Too much STRESS

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Detailed Planning

• Estimating time, quality, cost
• Identifying dependencies
• Assigning responsibilities
• Allocating resources
• Producing a Gantt Chart

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Estimating

• This is critical, but the name itself identifies
  why its difficult its not quantifying its
  estimating!
• If you dont normally do a job how do you
  estimate how much time it will take
• How long might it take you to organise a
  presentation?
• The standard method is to add contingency
• Contingency for you means
• Whatever your estimate double it
• If you think designing a stand is going to take 2
  days, put four into the plan
• If it only takes 2 days youve just found
  yourself an additional 2 days!
• The next time you make the stand you will know it
  should only take 2 days!

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Dependencies

• Dependencies identify what needs to be done and
  when
• You can find dependencies by working back from
  the plan from end to start
• To ask yourself, what needs to be in place for me
  to undertake this task
• E.g. Stand Design cannot be completed until the
  MarComms have been written

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The critical path

• Identify the activities that HAVE to be completed
  before the next activity can be initiated. If
  there is time/quality slippage on the critical
  path then the project will start slipping

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Responsibilities

• The name gives it away you are responsible for
  any task that is given to you you are therefore
  accountable to the group
• Who is available to do what?
• When are they available
• What are they responsible for
• Whom else may be available to help

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A Gantt Chart
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I almost forgot - Monitoring
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