Project Management Essentials You Always Wanted To Know

As per Project Management Institute (PMI®), project is defined as “A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result”.

Every project has learning that can be applied to other projects in future.

Pareto Chart helps in analyzingissues by plotting issues against their frequency of occurrence

A fishbone diagram is drawn with the issue on the right and probable causes on the left usually using a brainstorming session

Lessons Learned should be created throughout the project and finalized and distributed to all stakeholders at a set frequency.

Once the project has been completely planned, the project plan is approved by the key stakeholders. This is when a Kickoff meeting is held. This meeting is not for reviewing the plan. The plan has already been approved. This meeting is to open communication channels between all stakeholders. Some of the discussions that happen during such a meeting are key project resource introductions, walkthrough of performance reports that would be sent and review of upcoming risks. Immediately after this meeting the project execution work is started.

Projects have to do make-or-buy decisions in order to come up with a list of things that need to be procured. These decisions are based on several parameters. Most common parameters in favour of making are the following:

a) Project has expertise/capability in making it

b) Project has idle resources/free capacity

c) There is proprietary information involved in doing the work

d) It is cheaper to make

e) It is faster to make

f) It is not available in the market to buy

The common reasons for buying would be as follows:

a) Project does not have the capability to make it

b) Project does not have the capacity to make it

c) It is cheaper to buy

d) It is faster to buy (available off the shelf)

Most common response to risks is mitigation. Mitigation means reduction in probability of the risk or impact of risk or both at once.

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Finally, if the project manager is unable to compress the schedule enough using the above two techniques then the project could be delivered in phases