Project Management For Dummies. Stanley E. Portny
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in favor of more flexible project performance domains and project management principles. However, it is helpful to understand where the life cycle phases and knowledge areas of the past are complemented or replaced by the performance domains and principles of today.
For small projects, this entire life cycle can take just a few days. For larger projects, it can take many years! In fact, to allow for greater focus on key aspects and to make it easier to monitor and control the work, project managers often subdivide larger projects into separate phases, each of which is treated as a mini-project and passes through these four life cycle phases. No matter how simple or complex the project is, however, these four phases (start; plan; do; stop) are the same.
Some common, unplanned scenarios might include:
You may have to work on two (or more) project phases at the same time to meet tight deadlines. Working on the next phase before you complete the current one increases the risk that you may have to redo tasks, which may cause you to miss deadlines and spend more resources than you originally planned. If you choose this strategy, document and be sure people understand the potential risks and costs associated with it (see Chapter 10 for how to assess and manage risks).
Sometimes you learn by doing. Despite doing your best to assess feasibility and develop detailed plans, you may realize you can’t achieve what you thought you could. When this situation happens, you need to return to the earlier project phases and rethink them in light of the new information you’ve acquired.
Sometimes things change unexpectedly. Your initial feasibility and benefits assessments are sound, and your plan is detailed and realistic. However, certain key project team members leave the organization without warning during the project. Or a new technology emerges, and it’s more appropriate to use than the one in your original plans. Because ignoring these occurrences may seriously jeopardize your project’s success, you need to return to the earlier project phases and rethink them in light of these new realities.
Adopting a Principled Approach to Project Management
If you recall, we opened this chapter with mention of the PMBOK’s evolution since its inception. For most of the past 35 years, from PMBOK 1 through PMBOK 6, there have been a number of structural updates, like distinguishing between The Standard for Project Management and A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge rather than simply the body of knowledge for project management.
There have also been substantive updates, such as the introduction of project management processes to demonstrate the linkages between the various knowledge areas or the inclusion of Agile methodology as it became mainstream.
We think you’ll find that the recent changes — to add project management principles and project performance domains and forego formal life cycle phases and knowledge areas — are the most transformational of all the changes to date. Whether we refer to these topics and skills as knowledge areas or performance domains, processes or principles, the underlying motivation for this shift is to refocus project managers on the holistic outcomes their stakeholders expect rather than the specific deliverables, artifacts, and other tangibles that are, more accurately, components of the overall outcomes.
The 12 project management principles defined by PMI in PMBOK 7 that will help you deliver your project’s intended outcomes include: Stewardship, Team, Stakeholders, Value, Systems Thinking, Leadership, Tailoring, Quality, Complexity, Risk, Adaptability and Resiliency, and Change. We delve into each of these in the following sections.
Starting with stewardship and leadership
We’ve reorganized the 12 principles into logical groupings to illustrate how they can come together to help you run your project to achieve optimal results. The first of these groupings includes stewardship and leadership, two principles directed at none other than yourself, the project manager.
Additional characteristics of a good steward include integrity, trustworthiness, and compliance. Compliance typically refers to external factors, such as with environmental regulations, societal norms, or the policies, procedures, and standards of relevant industry professional groups (like PMI for project management). Stewardship requires an appreciation of the trust that you earn and work diligently to maintain, throughout your project and in general. Implicit in this trust is your duty to be transparent with your stakeholders through timely, honest, and accurate communication.
The most effective leaders share a number of common characteristics and behaviors, including:
Finding ways to motivate and empower others to want to perform at a high level
Allowing team members to operate without worrying that someone is always looking over their shoulder (Chapter 12 offers tips for how to deal with micromanagers)
Motivating others to perform tasks that have been assigned to them (see Chapter 16 for how to motivate and keep your team engaged)
Helping to line up the tools that each resource needs to effectively accomplish their tasks
Establishing a team dynamic that fosters collaboration and respect without fear of failure or shame
The challenge is not only to embody these characteristics and behaviors, but to do so consistently, day-to-day, throughout the life of the project.
Continuing with team and stakeholders
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more pertinent and inspirational affirmation of the significance of the team than former long-time University of Michigan football head coach Bo Schembechler’s legendary 1983 “The team, the team, the team” pep talk that he gave before taking the field against longtime rival Ohio State. Taken out of the context of a team preparing for a football game against a bitter rival, or perhaps a battalion of soldiers preparing to take on an enemy, Schembechler’s speech might seem a bit extreme for more tame and routine activities like managing a project.
We are not suggesting you deliver an impassioned pep talk to your project team at your next kickoff meeting (although, if it’s appropriate for your audience, it could be fun to try)! Schembechler says, “We’re gonna play together as a team. We’re gonna believe in each