Unit 5.2 How to set up projects.

When we want to set up project we also should consider a few things. Here are also a lot of things to consider but when we do it, it can be helpful for our project and finally for us. Everybody would like to save time and money so let’s take a look how can we do it.

Image source: https://hackernoon.com/how-to-build-a-project-management-organization-in-90-days-783b907f4a12

On the wrike.com we can find useful information about that  set up some of project in a proper way.

Step 1: Identify & Meet with Stakeholders. A stakeholder is anyone who is affected by the results of your project plan.

Step 2: Set & Prioritize Goals.

Step 3: Define Deliverables.

Step 4: Create the Project Schedule.

Step 5: Identify Issues and Complete a Risk Assessment.

Step 6: Present the Project Plan to Stakeholders.

2.1 Consideration when reviewing project proposals.

Christina M. Sax from the evolllution.com writes about when we will be decided to set up particular project we should consider it carefully. Here we have a few important points to consider. We should think about: purpose, impact, costs, execution, assessment, risk.

1. Purpose:

The foundational consideration for any innovation proposal goes to its core purpose. What are the goals of the project and why would we want to adopt it? What problem are we trying to solve, what change are we trying to effect, what advancement are we trying to achieve through the project? What are the strategic, operational, and/or moral imperatives for engaging in the project, and for doing so now rather than waiting?

As always, the decision maker will ask how the proposal serves the institution’s mission, vision, values and strategic plan.

2. Impact:

Both informing and following naturally from purpose is the impact of the proposed project. Senior decision makers will want to know the direct/tangible and indirect/intangible benefits of the project across numerous key areas.

The impact on student access, success, retention, timely degree completion and gainful employment are always of concern as they go to the core mission of the institution. What also are the impacts on institutional effectiveness, efficiency, cost savings, revenue generation, accreditation, reputation and brand? How will the outcomes affect individuals and relationships—faculty, staff, and administrators of the internal community, as well as alumni, and the broader external community and partnerships? Beyond the intended goals, what are the possible unintended negative consequences on the proposal’s target and other elements of the institution?

3. Costs:

Contrary to popular belief, cost is not the primary driver for decision makers. Cost considerations are significant, but the context of purpose and impact can mitigate cost barriers. Direct and tangible costs are relatively straightforward to predict and estimate.

Harder to do, and often ignored, are the direct and intangible dollar and time costs of human power in time and effort, as well as technology and facilities usage. Harder still to estimate are the costs of positive and negative impacts on perceptions, morale, reputation, awareness and brand.

Senior decision makers will also want to know if the goals of the project can be accomplished in another way with less or shared resources, or in less time with less effort or human power. For example, can the project be added to, or an extension of, another project, operation, or set of responsibilities? The parallel consequences of funding the proposal can be addressed by answering strategic questions such as: What else can’t we do if this proposal is funded? From what other activities will dollars, people, time and effort be diverted to support this proposal?

4. Execution:

Decision makers are acutely aware that the best reasoned and planned innovation project can fall short due to an ineffective execution, and indeed have been burned by such occurrences in the past. To ensure success and protect the best use of institutional resources, decision makers will want to know who will be involved and impacted by the project, in its planning, execution, assessment, sustainability and outcomes. A detailed timeline for the planning, launch, and assessment and evaluation phases is important, and should also indicate when we might first begin to see the impact of the project.

An often-overlooked point is whether the project’s activities are sustainable under the proposed and likely future conditions and levels of funding. Also of interest will be whether the implementation of the project provides the opportunity to explore creative, instructive, relevant, adaptable, interoperable, or new models for other situations and problems.

5. Assessment:

The assessment, evaluation and accountability plan is a critical consideration as it will allow us to know whether the project has achieved its goals, been successful in additional ways, and been a worthy investment of institutional resources. On the front end, decision makers want to know what data and research indicate that the project is needed, has validity, is feasible, has a reasonable chance of success, and which other institutions or groups have previously attempted the project and their experience in doing so.

Thinking with the end in mind, the proposal should describe the eventual measures and indicators of success and accountable units for each, taking into consideration quantitative and qualitative aspects, direct and indirect indicators, leading and lagging indicators, external benchmarks and internal targets, and return on investment and return on value estimates. The assessment plan would do well to address the maximization of institutional resources by answering strategic questions such as: Are there interim milestones of success, and can they stand alone and be sustained in the absence of completion of the full project? How and when will we know if the project is unsuccessful? Are their opportunities for mid-course corrections and adjustments? How should we proceed if the project is not successful?

6. Risks:

Decision makers are also interested in the risks associated with the innovation project, well beyond the simple risk of resources wasted on an unsuccessful initiative. Risks come in many forms, including those that are foreseeable and preventable, unpredictable and uncontrollable, internal and external. Such risks have the potential to impact strategic, operational, financial, compliance, reputational, systemic and localized activities, organizational effectiveness, morale, and governance aspects of the institution.

Taking these into consideration, an overall level of risk assessment can be estimated and should be stated in the proposal—insignificant, low, moderate, high, or extreme. Thinking ahead, decision makers will want to know how the institution will handle specific potential problems and scenarios. Parallel considerations include the potential risks and costs for students, other members of the university community, and the institution if the project isn’t approved and pursued.

2.2 How to set up clear goals for projects.

If we want to set up clear goals for projects we should remember about following points. They are described in a good way by Alexandra Lamachenka on the blog.capterra.com.

1.  Have precise goals.

Meet Murphy’s Law, which claims that when something might go wrong, it will.

In the case of project planning and goal setting, consider this statement: “If there are several ways to understand the task, then someone will understand it improperly.”

While setting goals, you should make them as accurate and specific as possible to avoid misinterpretation. Writing goals on paper or (even better) in an easily-accessible electronic format is also good practice. Fortunately, there are many types of project management software available to help achieve this end.

Examples of Goals:

Incorrect Goal: Make a cross-browser layout of the http://www.site.com

Correct Goal: http://www.site.com must be equally displayed in browsers IE6 +, Opera 6+, and Firefox 2+

Incorrect Goal: Make a valid layout of the http://www.site.com

Correct Goal: http://www.site.com must completely pass check validators w3c.org (http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools)

2. Agree on goal meanings instead of details.

You do not need to go into every minute detail of every goal. You just have to agree on each goal’s meaning. It is important that the team and the product owner understand each backlog element in an equal way.

Measurable Goals

3. Measure your achievements.

Measurable goals bring several benefits.

First, if there is a numerical measure of achievement, you know exactly at what stage of work you are and how much is left to do.

Second, you know exactly how much you have done. Sometimes, it is useful reflect on achievements to boost morale.

Finally, at the end of the workday, you and your teammates will be able to calculate by what percentage you achieved your target.

Examples of Goals:

Incorrect Goal: Increase traffic on the site.

Correct Goal: The traffic on the site must be 2,000 visitors per day.

Incorrect Goal: Make every visitor to buy more.

Correct Goal: Increase the sum of an average check by 10%.

The presence of metrics are important, and not only for formulation of backlog elements; they also allow the project manager to assess the size of the goal element. Although latest trends abandon numerical estimates in goal setting, it is impossible to make the process of project planning sufficiently accurate without them.

4. Form implementation intentions instead of goal intentions.

When setting project planning goals, project managers usually create succinct goals. Yet sometimes they fail because of changing requirements and situational cues.

Compare Goals:

Goal Intention: The feature must be released by May 20.

Implementation Intention: If the feature is still under development on May 5, an extra developer should be invited to the project.

With the focus on implementation intentions strategy, you can specify how a person should behave by predefining if-then situations. In this case, risk management is already taken care of, and there is a clear path to respond to negative events.

Attainable Goals

5. Set goals in accordance to your team members’ strengths.

Each person has a unique set of knowledge and skills, so it is necessary to select the appropriate goals for individual people. Referencing the skills and knowledge of the person, goals can be categorized:

• Unreachable: The goals are unrealistic.
• Elusive: The goals are unclear.

First of all, you should assign difficult or complicated goals to experienced and ambitious employees. The harder the goal, the greater the sense of achievement.

Good goals look like this:

• Achievable: These goals correspond to the knowledge and skill level of the performer. For example, to draw the layout design of the approved site outline and brief in one day. Such tasks are necessary for respite between more difficult tasks and to develop self-confidence.
• Easily accessible: These goals do not correspond to the competence of the employee. Reaching them does not give any sense of satisfaction for an employee. For example, to draw the button for a form in the specified style in a day. It is desirable to entrust such goals only to new employees to integrate them into the team.

The general conclusion is that it is necessary to alternate accessible and elusive goals. Using agile methodologies, when a team evaluates backlog items, such alternation is obtained in a natural way.

6. Set Learning Goals Instead of Performance Goals.

Most project managers measure goal achievements by learning metrics, but not performance metrics. The difference is that performance goals focus on the final result. In contrast, learning goals focus on the process itself and answer the question, “How can I reach this goal?”

Why is it important to focus on learning goals?

Surprisingly, learning goals are more likely to be achieved. Usually, when people face performance goals (these goals answer the questions like, “Can I outperform others?”), they focus on the end result and have a strong apprehension of failure. Doing so decreases their motivation and stops them from completing goals collaboratively.

With learning goals, people are able to devote their cognitive resources to a second task with minimal impact on performance.

Relevant Goals

7. Keep goals inspiring for the team.

The relevance of goals should be considered from two sides: goal relevance for the performer and for the company. Goal relevance (significance) for the team member is closely connected with his or her own set of personal motivations. For example, a research project can and should be given to an employee who enjoys learning new things, and wouldn’t be great for a programmer who would rather just code.

8. Keep goals relevant for the whole team.

Granted, when the team realizes that a goal is important, they’ll put in more effort when compared to “unimportant” goals.

And what can the team do if the goal is prioritized? Focus on efficiency. “Efficiency,” in this case, can be measured by a deadline, the final product, and the cost of work.

Time-Based Goals

9. Set concrete goal deadlines from urgency to availability.

When discussing dates for goals, you should remember one more empirical law called “Parkinson’s Law,” which states, “Any work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” If a task doesn’t have a deadline, immediate tasks displace it, and the chance that somebody ever gets around to it decreases. Thus, when setting any goal, always set a deadline.

The urgency of your goals is closely linked to goal-completion attainability. Let me show you why.

Examples of Goals:

Incorrect Goal: Make on the website the section “Contact Us” for a demonstration to the client by tomorrow.

Correct Goal: Make on the website the section “Contact Us” for demonstration to the client by noon 6/10/2016.

These deadline concepts integrate into Scrum. Iterations always have a fixed size and everyone knows precisely when will be a demonstration of sprint results.

10. Keep operational goals small while continuing to set high goals.

One of the SMART project planning tips is that operational goals and high-level goals should be clearly separated. Keep the low-level goals on which you are working small and achievable. This allows you to track the progress of the whole project and instantly make decisions based on the performance metrics.

But when setting ambitious goals, you assume that your colleagues have an ability to meet them, do not have any conflicting goals that can influence the result, and, finally, are moving in the same direction.

2.3 Project resource requirements.

Every project need a resources so we should keep it in our mind all the time – these information we can find on wikipedia.org and these information are important.

In project management, resources are required to carry out the project tasks. They can be people, equipment, facilities, funding, or anything else capable of definition (usually other than labour) required for the completion of a project activity. The lack of a resource will therefore be a constraint on the completion of the project activity. Resources may be storable or non storable. Storable resources remain available unless depleted by usage, and may be replenished by project tasks which produce them. Non-storable resources must be renewed for each time period, even if not used in previous time periods.

Resource scheduling, availability and optimisation are considered key to successful project management.

Allocation of limited resources is based on the priority given to each of the project activities. Their priority is calculated using the Critical path method and heuristic analysis. For a case with a constraint on the number of resources, the objective is to create the most efficient schedule possible – minimising project duration and maximising the use of the resources available.

2.4 How roles and responsibilities are allocated within project teams.

On the sielearning we can find information about that a really good team leader knows needs, requirements, team’s capabilities and also team’s weakness. It is very important thing to allocate responsibilities and roles between team members.

Team Leaders need to allocate roles to team members in such a way that the roles are coordinated to achieve the team’s goals and that team members take responsibility for their individual roles. Allocating appropriate roles and coordinating these roles can lead to increased morale and motivation.

There are a number of factors that Team Leaders need to consider when allocating roles to ensure that the team is effectively meeting its goals. Team Leaders need to ensure that team members:

• Understand their roles
• Understand the roles of their team mates
• Understand how the roles interrelate in the achievement of the team’s goals
• Have authority to coordinate activities with team mates

2.5 Project communication needs

2020projectmanagement claims that communication is important everywhere also in the project management. Good project communication can help with achieving particular goals within our project.

Project leadership calls for clear communication about goals, responsibility, performance, expectations and feedback.

Successful project management communication is about being there for everyone, being in touch with the real challenges of the project, understanding the real issues within the team who must deliver the project as well as understanding the issues of the sponsors who the team delivers the project for. Being present, visible and engaged with everyone is important – during the good times and the challenging times.

Communication is not only about speaking to and hearing from people, it’s about understanding the complete message.

2.6 Possible risks to successful completion of projects.

Very important thing is to be aware of possible risks which we can meet on our way within project. Is always good to know possible risks and about that we can read on the project-management.com.

The most common project risks are:

• Cost risk, typically escalation of project costs due to poor cost estimating accuracy and scope creep.
• Schedule risk, the risk that activities will take longer than expected. Slippages in schedule typically increase costs and, also, delay the receipt of project benefits, with a possible loss of competitive advantage.
• Performance risk, the risk that the project will fail to produce results consistent with project specifications.

There are many other types of risks of concern to projects. These risks can result in cost, schedule, or performance problems and create other types of adverse consequences for the organization. For example:

• Governance risk relates to board and management performance with regard to ethics, community stewardship, and company reputation.
• Strategic risks result from errors in strategy, such as choosing a technology that can’t be made to work.
• Operational risk includes risks from poor implementation and process problems such as procurement, production, and distribution.
• Market risks include competition, foreign exchange, commodity markets, and interest rate risk, as well as liquidity and credit risks.
• Legal risks arise from legal and regulatory obligations, including contract risks and litigation brought against the organization.
• Risks associated with external hazards, including storms, floods, and earthquakes; vandalism, sabotage, and terrorism; labor strikes; and civil unrest.

2.7 How to mitigate for possible risks.

Everytime we should try to mitigate our risk. In my opinion is a permanent process which we have to do within our project. According to the strategyex we have following points which are linked with mitigation for possible risks.

1. Clarify The Requirements
What is it that you want to achieve with this project? Knowing that, and having true, deep clarity about that, is a huge mitigating factor for risk. It eliminates all the ‘we didn’t know what we were doing,’ and ‘you never said’ type risks that relate to scope.

Make full use of feasibility studies, workshops and user groups to test out the ideas before making a full commitment. Agile techniques can ensure end users and clients are engaged at every step of the way, feeding into the outcomes and making sure that what is delivered is really what is wanted.

How To Do It: Hold workshops. Interview stakeholders. Produce a comprehensive scope document and project brief, even if it takes much longer than you wanted to spend on this exercise. It will pay off in a big way if you get it right.

2. Get The Right Team
People introduce all kinds of risk to a project, largely due to their availability and skills. People with inadequate skills make your project take longer because they are slower. People who aren’t available when you need them also impact your project timescales.

If possible, ringfence the resources that you need into the team. This mitigates a lot of the people-related risks. The highest priority projects should attract and retain the best resources in the company (and interpret ‘best’ to mean whatever is most appropriate for your project: person with the most Java skills or whatever).

How To Do It: Use resource allocation techniques to identify the resources you require for the project and then to secure them. Make sure that you know when your resources are available for project work and book their time accordingly. Plan around them if you have to because it’s better to know now that they aren’t around than to have to push your project delivery back by 2 weeks because you weren’t aware.

3. Spread The Risk
Don’t try and dump all the risk on one person or group. Yes, risk transference is a recognised and useful risk management strategy, but it has to be used with caution. Mitigating your own risk by dumping it on someone else isn’t always the best approach.

For example, you can transfer risk to another party but that might incur a great deal of cost (through increased supplier prices or insurance) which in many cases isn’t the most appropriate use of company funds.

How To Do It: Quantify the risk. If you can’t quantify it, how can you put a financial measure on it to enable transference? Think about cost of transfer and likelihood of occurrence. Look for ways to manage risks jointly with contractors or other stakeholders to spread out the actions and also the impact should the risk occur.

4. Communicate and Listen
There is another way that people add risk to a project: through their actions when they are overlooked as stakeholders. I was speaking the other day to a management consultant in Canada who told me about a bridge that was built and then torn down due to lack of communication between local and national government bodies.

Communicate widely, consult widely and listen to the responses you get. These can help you identify residual risks and strategies to engage more effectively with the stakeholders concerned.

How To Do It: Plan your communications and take third parties into account too. Consumer, environmental or other external groups can have a huge impact on your project (positive and negative) so involve them early and consistently.

5. Assess Feasibility
Make use of feasibility studies and prototypes to test out ideas and solutions before you move to a full build. This is a simple way of de-risking a project because you can use this early stage as a test bed for checking your concepts, methodology and solution.

How To Do It: Break your project down into phases and include time at the beginning for a feasibility or investigation stage. This is a short period of time where you can fully scope out the initial underpinning or enabling work and test out your solution in a limited way prior to a full rollout. The learning can be incredibly helpful for shaping the rest of the project, and it can prove (or disprove) the business case without having to commit the full investment.

6. Test Everything
Experienced project managers will tell you that when project timescales are under pressure, testing is often the task that gets cut.

Don’t let that happen. Testing is an important part of making sure that your project risk is lower and manageable. Testing helps flush out problems that might bring the project to a standstill later. Test everything: training materials, implementation plans, and obviously software and the deliverables. Test frequently and allow longer than you expect.

How To Do It: It’s probably not a popular view but I would estimate the time needed for testing and then double it. That’s the time I would put in my plan for the task. In my experience testing is vastly underestimated, often because people forget that testing is cyclical and requires time to fix the bugs before you can test it again. Estimate carefully and have dedicated schedule contingency for testing.

7. Have A Plan B
You’ve planned out everything and your risk mitigation strategies are all in place. And still you hit a problem that you hadn’t foreseen. Don’t worry. It happens.

The best way to plan for the unplannable is to have alternatives in your back pocket. This could be:

• Contingency funds
• Float in the plan
• Additional resources on standby
• Options to break the project into segments and/or reduce scope

A Plan B isn’t something that you particularly set out to want to use, but it’s there as a cushion should any of your risks materialise in ways that you didn’t expect or new risks come along that took everyone by surprise.

How To Do It: Agree tolerances and contingency with your sponsor before the project starts. Talk about what additional funding you can secure to deal with unforeseen issues and how you will access this when the time comes. Having these discussions can save time if you need the funding and also act in themselves as a mitigation strategy through raising awareness of things like scope creep.

Conclusion

In summary we should do everything to achieve our goals. Probably it will be quite difficult process but after that it should be beneficial for us. We should think about: purpose, impact, costs, execution, assessment, risk. Good project manager should understand different roles of teammates and should coordinate everything in a good way. Communication it is also really important thing when we want to coordinate our project. Good communication means good results. Another important thing is mitigation of possible risks. All the time we should be aware of possible risks and do everything to prevent it. If we want to manage our projects we can use a lot of tools which can be really helpful for us. It depends on us which and how many tools will we use. Before we start something is a good to test it and check that everything is working. The last important thing is to have a plan B if something will be wrong. When we have plan B we will not be surprised and we can start another method to achieve our goals.

References:

https://www.wrike.com/blog/foolproof-project-plan/ – accessed on 11.01.19

https://evolllution.com/revenue-streams/market_opportunities/six-key-considerations-for-innovative-proposals/ – accessed on 11.01.19

https://blog.capterra.com/10-smart-goal-setting-best-practices-for-project-planning/ – accessed on 11.01.19

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_(project_management) – accessed on 11.01.19

https://sielearning.tafensw.edu.au/toolboxes/toolbox316/ip/ip_c02.html – accessed on 11.01.19

http://2020projectmanagement.com/resources/communication-management/communication-the-key-to-successful-project-management – accessed on 11.01.19

https://project-management.com/types-of-risk-in-project-management/ – accessed on 11.01.19

https://www.strategyex.co.uk/blog/pmoperspectives/7-ways-to-mitigate-risk-on-projects/ – accessed on 11.01.19