Source: dzone.com
8 Essential Steps to Effectively Manage ProjectsCategory: Data
We are investing our experience in project management to provide 8 essential steps that can generate the maximum chance of project success. We will not be discussing any specific project management framework but will discuss the critical structure that will help you lead your project from day 1.A project is said to be successful when it meets the needs of a stakeholder.
The objective of this step is to identify the main aim of doing the project, and the deliverable for this step should be a statement describing the vision and the critical outputs of the projects.By the end of Step 1, you will be able to identify the direction of the project.
Identifying the milestones will help you in building a structure, which will, in turn, help in making a project plan.The process of identifying the milestones can start by marking the most significant and apparent milestones initially.
Start with the basic questions like “When does the project start”, “When does the project finish?”, “What do we need to create, and by when?”Try to identify milestones that are crucial to keeping the project on track. Milestones are necessary, and you should make sure that the team understands these milestones and identifies the consequences of not meeting the milestones.Once you have identified the milestones, it is crucial to identify the risks associate with the milestones and find solutions to these risks.Also, make sure you put a time stamp on each of the milestones. Time is always a crucial element in the success of a project, and putting a timestamp on the milestone will help you identify if you are on schedule during the execution.In this step, you add details to the milestone. You will have to identify the activities associated with each milestone. The nature of the activities depends on factors like the size of the project and the project management framework. If you are following the waterfall model, the activities will mostly be sequential. However, if you are using agile, you will have to designate a timeline for various stages.The Work Breakdown Structure is going to be the base outcome of this step. This is also the time to determine the cost baseline, delegate tasks, and assign resources. Now that you have a clearer picture of the activities, tasks, and work packages, it will be easier for you to allocate resources. It is also essential to mark resource constraints and make it known to the project team.Activities like stakeholder approvals, marketing endeavors, and 3rd party action items need to be identified in this step. Remember that you need just enough information to devise a plan and need not worry about adding every activity in this stage. The plan that you have created now will evolve over the time where you might have to add tasks or address new risks.Step 4 is very closely related to step 3. This is where you will take a closer look at the activities and try to determine the dependencies. Dependencies are the relation of the preceding task to the succeeding task. Again, you should not aim at identifying all the dependencies. It is good to start with the significant dependencies and planning for them.Once you have identified the critical dependencies, you should look at removing dependencies or at minimizing them. You might have to add more activities to mitigate the dependency. This is more of an optimization process, and you might have to rethink the order of work.Risk is an event that may or may not happen but can have a significant effect on the outcome. Risk identification is not just a one-time activity but an approach that needs to be integrated into all your endeavors. Not only should you include the project health check action at the start of the project, but in all the planning meetings.Brainstorming is the first step where you ask the project team, ”What could go wrong?”
The objective of this step is to identify the main aim of doing the project, and the deliverable for this step should be a statement describing the vision and the critical outputs of the projects.By the end of Step 1, you will be able to identify the direction of the project.
Identifying the milestones will help you in building a structure, which will, in turn, help in making a project plan.The process of identifying the milestones can start by marking the most significant and apparent milestones initially.
Start with the basic questions like “When does the project start”, “When does the project finish?”, “What do we need to create, and by when?”Try to identify milestones that are crucial to keeping the project on track. Milestones are necessary, and you should make sure that the team understands these milestones and identifies the consequences of not meeting the milestones.Once you have identified the milestones, it is crucial to identify the risks associate with the milestones and find solutions to these risks.Also, make sure you put a time stamp on each of the milestones. Time is always a crucial element in the success of a project, and putting a timestamp on the milestone will help you identify if you are on schedule during the execution.In this step, you add details to the milestone. You will have to identify the activities associated with each milestone. The nature of the activities depends on factors like the size of the project and the project management framework. If you are following the waterfall model, the activities will mostly be sequential. However, if you are using agile, you will have to designate a timeline for various stages.The Work Breakdown Structure is going to be the base outcome of this step. This is also the time to determine the cost baseline, delegate tasks, and assign resources. Now that you have a clearer picture of the activities, tasks, and work packages, it will be easier for you to allocate resources. It is also essential to mark resource constraints and make it known to the project team.Activities like stakeholder approvals, marketing endeavors, and 3rd party action items need to be identified in this step. Remember that you need just enough information to devise a plan and need not worry about adding every activity in this stage. The plan that you have created now will evolve over the time where you might have to add tasks or address new risks.Step 4 is very closely related to step 3. This is where you will take a closer look at the activities and try to determine the dependencies. Dependencies are the relation of the preceding task to the succeeding task. Again, you should not aim at identifying all the dependencies. It is good to start with the significant dependencies and planning for them.Once you have identified the critical dependencies, you should look at removing dependencies or at minimizing them. You might have to add more activities to mitigate the dependency. This is more of an optimization process, and you might have to rethink the order of work.Risk is an event that may or may not happen but can have a significant effect on the outcome. Risk identification is not just a one-time activity but an approach that needs to be integrated into all your endeavors. Not only should you include the project health check action at the start of the project, but in all the planning meetings.Brainstorming is the first step where you ask the project team, ”What could go wrong?”
Related Articles
Community Partners
DevOps Careers