Category: PROJECT MANAGEMENT

The Best Project Management Tips

 

The Best Project Management Tips

 

 

Getting Started – Initiation

 

  1. Develop a solid business case for your projects. Where appropriate, ensure you obtain senior managers’ agreement before you start the project. Research points out that too many projects are started without a firm reason or rationale.  Developing a business case will identify whether it is worth working on.

 

  1. Ensure your project fits with the key organisational or departmental agenda or your personal strategy. If not, why do it?  Stick to priority projects.

 

  1. Carry out risk analysis at a high level at the initiation stage. Avoid going into great detail here – more an overview focussing on the key risks.

 

  1. Identify at this early stage key stakeholders. Consider how much you need to consult or involve them at the business case stage. Seek advice if necessary from senior managers

 

  1. Where appropriate, involve finance people in putting the business case together. They can be great allies in helping crunch the numbers which should give credibility to your business case.

 

Defining Your Project

 

  1. Produce a written project definition statement (sometimes called PID) and use it to inform stakeholders – see point 13. This document is ‘your contract’ to carry out the project and should be circulated to key stakeholders.

 

  1. Use the project definition statement to prevent creep. Use it to prevent you going beyond the scope of the project through its use in the review process.

 

  1. Identify in detail what will and will not be included in the project scope. Avoid wasting time by working on those areas which should not be included – identify these in the PID.

 

  1. Identify who fulfils which roles in your project. Document them on the PID. Include a paragraph to show what each person does.

 

  1. Identify who has responsibility for what in the project e.g. project communications is the responsibility of AD. This helps reduce doubt early in the life of the project.

 

  1. Think ‘Team Selection’ – give some thought to who should be in your team. Analyse whether they have the skills required to enable them to carry out their role?  If not, ensure they receive the right training. Check they are available for the period of the project. NOTE: this includes any contactors you may need to use

 

  1. Form a group of Project Managers. The Project Manager role can sometimes be very lonely! Give support to each other by forming a group of Project Managers.

 

  1. Identify who the stakeholders are for your project – those affected and ‘impacted’ by the project. This should be an in- depth analysis which needs updating regularly.

 

  1. Recognise early in the life of the project what is driving the project. Is it a drive to improve quality, reduce costs or hit a particular deadline?  You can only have 1.  Discuss with the sponsor what is driving the project and ensure you stick to this throughout the project. Keep “the driver” in mind especially when you monitor and review.

 

  1. Hold a kick off meeting (Start up Workshop) with key stakeholders, sponsor, project manager project team. Use the meeting to help develop the PID (see Tip 6).  Identify risks and generally plan the project.  If appropriate hold new meetings at the start of a new stage.

 

  1. Ensure you review the project during the Defining Your Project Stage – involve your sponsor or senior manager in this process. Remember to check progress against the business case.

 

Delivery Planning

 

  1. Create a work breakdown structure (WBS) for the project. A WBS is a key element you will need to develop your plan.  It lists out all of the activities you will need to undertake to deliver the project.  Post it notes can be a great help in developing your WBS.

 

  1. Group tasks under different headings once you have a list. This will enable you to identify the chunks of work that need to be delivered, as well as put together the Gantt chart and milestone chart.

 

  1. Identify dependencies (or predecessors) of all activities. This will let you put together the Gantt and milestone charts. Ensure you write them down otherwise you are trying to carry potentially hundreds of options in your head.

 

  1. Estimate how long each activity will take. Be aware that research points out we are notoriously bad at estimating. You estimate a task will take 3 days.  Identify how confident you are that you can deliver in 3 days by using %

e.g. I’m only 40% certain I can deliver in 3 days. You should aim for 80%. If   you do not believe you can achieve 80% then re-calculate

 

  1. Identify the critical path for the project. The critical path identifies those activities which have to be completed by the due date in order to complete the project on time.

 

  1. Communicate, communicate, communicate! Delivering a project effectively means you need to spend time communicating with a wide range of individuals.  Build a communication plan and review it regularly and include it in your Gantt chart.

 

  1. Are you involved in a major change project? If you are, think through the implications of this on key stakeholders and how you may need to influence and communicate with them.

 

  1. Conduct Risk Assessment – carry out a full risk analysis and document it in a risk register. Regularly review each risk to ensure you are managing them, rather than them managing you. Appoint a person to manage each risk.

 

  1. Develop a Gantt chart and use it to monitor progress against the plan and to involve key stakeholders in the communications process.

 

  1. Draw up a milestone plan. These are stages in the project. You can use the milestone dates to check the project is where it should be. Review whether activities have been delivered against the milestone dates and take a look forward at what needs to be achieved to deliver the next milestone.

 

Project Delivery – Monitoring and Reviewing Your Project (Project Governance)

 

  1. Have a clear project management monitoring and reviewing process – agreed by senior managers – the project sponsor and the project Board, if you have one.

 

  1. Ensure your organisation’s corporate governance structure and your project management monitoring and control structure are compatible. If you do not know whether this is the case then seek senior management involvement.

 

  1. Be aware early in the project what will be monitored, how they will be monitored and the frequency.

 

  1. Keep accurate records of your project not only for audit purposes but to ensure you have documents which enable you to monitor changes.

 

  1. Use a Planned v. Actual form. It is easy to create – it allows you to monitor how you are progressing with specific tasks – time and money. Link these forms into milestone reviews.

 

  1. Identify with your sponsor the type of control that is needed – loose or tight or a variation of these, e.g. tight at the start, loose in the middle, tight at the end. Ensure the system you develop reflects the type of control intended.

 

  1. Agree a system for project changes – have an agreed system for monitoring and approving changes. Use change control forms and obtain formal sign off (agreement) by the sponsor, before action a change.  Look for the impact of the change on the project scope as well as the “key driver” – quality, and cost and time.

 

  1. Appoint someone to be responsible for project quality especially in larger projects. Review quality formally with the client at agreed milestone dates.

 

  1. Make certain you have agreed who can sanction changes in the absence of your sponsor. If you haven’t agreed this, what will you do in their absence?

 

  1. Set a time limit for project meetings to review progress. Have an agenda with times against each item and summarise after each item at the end of the meeting.

 

  1. Produce action points against each item on the agenda and circulate within 24 hours of the meeting. Use these action points to help in the creation of your next agenda.

 

  1. Review the items on the critical path checking they are on schedule. Review risks, review yours stakeholders and your communication plans and whether you are still on track to deliver on time, to budget and to the required quality standard.

 

  1. Set a tolerance figure and monitor e.g. a tolerance figure of ±5% means as long as you are within the 5% limit you do not have to formally report. If  exceed the 5% limit (cost or time) then you need to report this to the agreed person – probably your sponsor

 

  1. Report progress against an end of a stage – are you on schedule? Time, cost or quality?  Ensure that if something is off schedule the person responsible for delivering it suggests ways to bring it back on time, within budget or to hit the right quality standard.

 

  1. Develop an issues log to record items that may be causing concern. Review at your project meetings.

 

  1. See whether you are still delivering the original project benefits when reviewing your project. If not, consider re-scoping or if appropriate abandoning the project.  Do not be afraid of abandoning a project. Better to abandon now rather than waste valuable time, money, and resources working on something no longer required.  If you close a project early – hold a project review meeting to identify learning.

 

  1. Produce one-page reports highlighting key issues. Agree the areas to include with the Sponsor before writing a report.

 

  1. Use a series of templates to support the monitoring process, e.g. milestone reporting, change control, log, planned v. actual.

 

  1. Apply traffic lights to illustrate how you are progressing – red, amber and green. Use these in conjunction with milestone reports.

 

  1. Engender honest reporting against specific deliverables, milestones, or a critical path activity. If you do not have honest reporting imagine the consequences.

 

Closedown and Review

 

  1. Agree well in advance a date to hold a post project review meeting. Put this onto the Gantt chart.

 

  1. Invite key stakeholders, sponsor, and project team to the post project review. If the date is in their diary well in advance it should make it easier for them to attend

 

  1. Focus your meeting on learning – identifying what you can use on the next project. Share the learning with others in the organisation.

 

  1. Check whether you have delivered the original project objectives and benefits and not gone out of scope.

 

  1. Make sure that you have delivered against budget, quality requirements and the end deadline.

 

  1. Understand how well you managed risks and your key stakeholders. Use questionnaires to obtain feedback.

 

  1. Prepare a list of unfinished items. Identify who will complete these after the project and circulate to any stakeholders.

 

  1. Hand over the project formally to another group (it is now their day job) – if appropriate. You may need to build this into the project plan and involve them early in the plan and at different stages throughout the project.

 

  1. Write an end of project report and circulate. Identify in the report key learning points.

 

  1. Close the project formally. Inform others you have done this and who is now responsible for dealing with day to day issues.

 

  1. Celebrate success with your team! Recognise achievement, there is nothing more motivating.

 

General Tips

 

  1. But what is a project? Why worry whether something is a project?  Why not use some of the project management processes, e.g. stakeholder analysis or use of traffic lights to manage your work?  They key principle is to deliver the piece of work using the appropriate tools. We use the term project based working to describe this approach.

 

  1. Get trained! Research points out that only 61% of people have received any project management training.

 

  1. Ensure you have the buy-in of senior managers for your project. You will need to work hard to influence upwards and get their support.

 

  1. What about the day job? Projects get in the way and the day job gets in the way of projects! Many people have found that by applying project based working to day to day activities and by being more rigorous on project work, more is achieved.

 

  1. Identify early on in the life of the project the priority of your projects. Inevitably there will be a clash with another project or another task.  Use your project management skills to deliver and your senior management contacts to check out the real priority of the project.

 

  1. Discover how project management software can help. But, you will need to develop the business case, produce a project definition alongside planning what will go into the software.  Many project managers use simple Excel spreadsheets or charts in word to help deliver their project.

 

 

The Best Project Management Tools in 2020

The Best Project Management Tools in 2020

 

Managing a project involves managing people, deadlines, clients, budgets & deliverables at the same time. Not only does it add pressure on your organization’s resources but it also increases the risk of error.

What if a software could automate mundane tasks, improve team engagement, free up resources, send you timely reports and notifications? This will allow you to focus on more important aspects such as business strategy & customer/client satisfaction.

This is where project management tools can make a difference by revolutionizing the way you work and increasing performance and brand equity.

Project Management Software is an ocean with several options available. Which tool do you choose?

We saved you the trouble of searching! Here are the 10 best project management tools online.

1. Monday.com

  • Centralized collaboration
  • Customizable workflows
  • Easy-to-use templates
  • Data visualization

2. ClickUp

 

  • Customizable & intuitive features
  • 3 views (Board, Box & List)
  • Simple hierarchy
  • Smart Search” & “Smart Estimates” features that aid productivity

 

3.Bitrix24

 

  • Employee workload management
  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
  • Social intranet and Gantt charts
  • Telephone integration

4. Jira

  • User Stories & Issues creation
  • Sprints planning
  • Centralize communications
  • Real-time team reporting

5. Zoho Projects

 

  • Employee workload management
  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
  • Social intranet and Gantt charts
  • Telephone integration

6. Clarizen

  • Reconfigurable & customizable to any scale
  • Team collaboration
  • Automated processes, workflows & alerts
  • Budget tracking & expense management

7. Paymo

 

  • Scheduling & monitoring
  • Team performance dashboards
  • Integrated project accounting
  • Task billing

8.Wrike

  • Task automation
  • Team collaboration
  • Custom workflows
  • Project templates

9. Freedcamp

  • Scheduling & monitoring
  • Team performance dashboards
  • Integrated project accounting
  • Task billing

10. Basecamp

  • User-friendly, social media like interface
  • Message boards
  • Project performance dashboard
  • Email, Desktop notifications

 

Remember

“How do I choose the right project management tool??”

One size does not fit all. Just because certain software is highly rated doesn’t necessarily mean it will meet your requirements. Make sure you clearly define your goals & then select the appropriate software that has features that will help you get there.

 

The importance of Resource Allocation and Resource Leveling In Project Management

The importance of Resource Allocation and Resource Leveling In Project Management

 

What Is Resource Allocation?

 

Resource allocation is to assign the needed resources for all construction activities in the required amount and timing.

Work performed on construction requires the utilization of labor, equipment, and materials resources. Shortages in the availability or quantity of any essential resources can affect the performance and project finish date. Therefore, the resource requirements for each activity should be evaluated before a time schedule is put into action. By allocating the labor, equipment, and materials required to perform each individual task on the time schedule, one is able to pre-plan the anticipated resource needs for each workday of the project before the time schedule is put into action.

This total resource requirement is then compared with the quantity on-hand.  If the supply on-hand exceeds the requirement, then the time schedule can be worked as planned. If it is found that the demand exceeds supply, then steps need to be taken to ensure that the proper amount of resource will be on hand on the date needed. It should be noted that the Resource Allocation process only determines whether or not there is a problem when comparing resource demand and supply. It won’t state the course of action needed to correct the problem.

What is Resource Leveling?

Resource leveling is a project management technique in which the project start date and end date are adjusted based on resource constraints with the goal of balancing the demand for resources with the available supply.

When performing construction project planning activities, the project manager will attempt to schedule certain activities simultaneously. When more resources such as people or machines are needed than are available, or perhaps a specific person is needed in both activities, the activities will have to be re-scheduled in a concurrent way or even sequentially to manage the constraint.

Project resource leveling is the process of resolving these conflicts. It can be used to make a balance for the workload of primary resources over the course of the projects, usually at the expense of one of the traditional triple constraints (time, cost, scope). When using specially designed project time schedule software like Primavera P6, leveling typically means resolving conflicts of over allocations in the construction project plan by allowing the software (Primavera P6) to calculate delays and update activities automatically.

Project management software (Primavera P6 or Ms Project) leveling requires delaying activities until resources are available. In a more complex organization, resources could be allocated across multiple, concurrent construction projects thus requiring the process of resource leveling to be performed at the firm level. Resource leveling techniques are closely related critical path method calculations. For that reason, total float, activity sequences, and the network diagram logic affect the required resource quantities per time.

Resource leveling Techniques

The critical path is a common type of technique used by project managers when it comes to resource leveling. The critical path represents for both the longest and shortest time duration paths in the network diagram to finish the project. However, apart from the widely used; critical path method concept, project managers use fast-tracking and crashing if things get out of hand.

Fast tracking:

Fast tracking shortens the schedule by overlapping activities that are normally done in parallel. One way of doing this is changing the network logic by using leads and lags. For example, you can change a finish-to-start relationship to a finish-to-start with a lead.

This causes the successor activity to start before the predecessor is complete. You can also change it to a start-to-start or finish-to-finish with a lag. This performs critical path activities. This buys time. The prominent feature of this technique is that although the work is finished for the moment, the possibility of rework is higher.

Crashing:

Crashing looks for cost/schedule trade-offs. In other words, you look for
ways to shorten the schedule by applying more resources or by spending more. The intent is to get the most schedule compression for the least
amount of money. Some common ways of accomplishing this include

Bringing in more resources: Sometimes, more people working, or using
additional equipment, can speed up progress.

Be careful. Sometimes adding resources actually extends the duration because coordination, communication, and conflict actually take more time than they save!

Working overtime: Many times, you can work longer hours or work weekends. However, this is useful only for a couple of weeks. After that, people burn out and are less productive, so this is but a short-term fix.
You also have to take into consideration any union or labor regulations.

Paying to expedite deliverables: This can include overnight shipping and paying bonuses to contractors for early delivery.
You could crash some activities for the childcare center example. For example, you can bring in an extra carpenter, electrician, plumber, HVAC person, or painter and reduce the duration. You can also ask those resources to work more hours (depending on any labor union restrictions).

Bringing in more resources might even reduce the time without increasing cost because the extra resources will shorten the duration. Overtime is usually billed at time and a half, so that option may cost more.

 

To download more project management resources please visit www.managementproject.net

Scope Creep and its Impact on project Delivery

Scope Creep and its Impact on project Delivery

 

Project Management and Project Delivery seemingly harmless words; but can run businesses to the ground when gone wrong. It is not as simple as moving from one point to the other or setting a goal and distributing the activities among a set of people and arriving at it happily.

If you are one of those Project Managers who thinks things are this simple – you are lucky! Projects are complex endeavors with 100s of moving parts. Pick any project from your experiences so far and analyze. You will find elements like resources, time, budget, milestones, defined deliverables, company direction, change of stakeholders, change of stakeholder requirements, market conditions, competition, acts of nature etc. that need to be assessed and planned for.

You miss to account for one of them & if it skews in an unwanted direction your entire project runs the risk of crumbling like a house of cards. Agreed that we cannot humanely control all of these elements but definitely a few of them and mainly the critical ones – Scope, Timelines & Budget!

And the most interesting thing about these 3 elements lies in the fact that they are controlled, changed and tossed around by the same set of people – most of the times.

  • Existing or New Stakeholders
  • Change in stakeholder requirements
  • Business demands
  • Company direction etc.

Let us see how any unplanned changes to these elements impact our deliverables and their quality. The root of all troubles for any project lies in Scope changes or Scope Creep as commonly referred in a purely project management terminology.

Understanding Scope and Scope Creep

 

Defining and understanding Scope of a project is the most important activity in the project management life cycle. Simply, because Scope or the statement of work [SOW] is the very basis and the bible that guides your project from start to finish The “single source of truth” that pervades and resolves all conflicts! At the onset of a project, being a Project Manager you must spend a fair amount of time to understand:

  • The requirements
  • Ask more and more questions till you are sure you understand your client and stakeholders expectations.
  • What are the business drivers of the project
  • What is the fundamental need of the project
  • Why the project is being funded and prioritized as it is

Once you have all the above answers, you must proceed with documenting them, circulating them among the stakeholders, decision makers to ensure they understand, agree and sign-off.

A point worth noting here is the documentation is to ensure everyone involved with the project knows very clearly as

  • What WILL be delivered
  • What WILL NOT be delivered

In addition, to this allow for a few days for your clients and executives to review and request any modifications. But at the same time do assign an “offer expires by date” to add the much needed attention & focus to this binding document.

The expiry date triggers a very helpful chain reaction where all stakeholders become keen to ensure ‘their objectives’ are part of the project scope. Thereby, there is increased participation, debate and Q&A to further refine the end objective and project goals.

 

Do note that the increased participation also means greater stakeholder alignment which is one of the critical success factors for successful project delivery.

Having performed the above due-diligence, ensures that everyone understands the deliverables, the time, efforts and cost required to meet the overarching project goal. So far so good! You have done everything a good project manager MUST do. Now, let’s get to the devil that lies in actual practice and implementation – say hello to Scope Creep!

Scope Creep, simply put is adding new features, altering existing requirements or changing the pre-agreed project goals. They can come in at any time and disrupt your entire project strategy because they require additional resource, time and cost which were not accounted for at the beginning.

Typical scope creep comes in as minor requests or major overhaul due to a change of business strategy, market demands etc.

It is often noted that a seemingly harmless tweak is requested and this one tweak leads to another and another and before we realize we have already shifted away from what was originally intended! And suddenly, there are delays, milestones are being missed, planned costs rise, quality is impacted and customer dissatisfaction starts pouring in.

Hence, it is important to understand that no project is free of Scope Creep! They are bound to find their way in to your project. But it is also important to understand WHY?

Why do I have Scope Creep?

 

As stated earlier, if enough effort and focus is not devoted to base lining your scope, you have setup yourself for a definitive failure. However despite of the due diligence there are other factors that contribute to a lack of proper Scope e.g.

  • Lack of enough clarity or information on requirements
  • Unavailability of the right stakeholders
  • Conflicting ideas and opinions
  • Lack of proper and time bound feedback mechanism
  • Promising the moon
  • Bid to outdo the competition
  • PM with poor leadership

Understanding the impact of Scope Creep on Time and Budget

We now have a fair understanding of what is scope creep & what contributes to it. So let us rightly move to explore its impact on our project, project team and reputation of our organization.

Consider a very relevant yet hypothetical example of a new iPhone to be launched. At the onset of the year it is decided that the next iPhone would pose a larger screen with a new exterior look. We all know it’s the WWDC in September each year without fail where the products are launched.

Hence all project execution and planning is done with that date in mind. Now the project kicks-off everything goes fine and suddenly there is a buzz around removing the standard headphone jack or adding a dual sim slot!

What do you think is the impact of these 2 feature changes?

These “features” as we refer to bring with them a whole range of research, additional planning and overhauls the execution. Almost everything stops until the exterior frame is finalized.

Do not forget the manufacturer involved in making these phones. So the new plan goes like this – research and builds ability for the iPhone to host and run the 2nd sim, remove the headphone jack and replace – replace with what???

You get the drill! Think of this – the WWDC CANNOT be shifted; what all is at stake – Money, lots of it! Reputation – one that is hard to earn so easily and must be protected at all costs. So again – Money! Bound to meet the WWDC deadline so add resources, more and more resources.

Now, do note that we all are not Apple Inc. and consider what havoc a Scope Creep can cause to our bottom-line, company’s reputation and most importantly the confidence and moral of the project team. Demotivated soldiers have never won a war!

This is as seen on the surface. Just drill down a bit and imagine how a real workplace with such an activity in progress would look!

  • Continuous fire fighting
  • Conflicting interests & priorities
  • Overloaded and overworked resources
  • Rising expenses & investments
  • Dissatisfied Stakeholders
  • Demotivated & battered employees

 

How to protect your project from Scope Creep

With the insights shared so far it is pretty evident of what must be done to ‘prevent’ scope creep. But what about when you are already into it ?

Let us take a quick look at some best practices or guidelines followed by project teams across the globe to contain scope creeps and yet maintain a high client satisfaction and project success rate.

Invoke the Scope Baseline or SOW

The project Scope is a Project Manager’s best friend! The most diligent of PMs live by their Scope Baseline and refer to it for the slightest of activities that may indicate a deviation from what was agreed.

The healthy practice of consulting the baseline proves an effective strategy in holding off pushy clients. In other words, it also reminds them of what they signed up for and puts the extra onus on them to be judicious with their requests

Communication and Feedback

Too much communication has never proved harmful! Make sure your clients, decision makers and each individual who has a significant stake in the project and can alter its course are fed a steady stream of progress information.

Define a clear communication criteria in terms of frequency of updates, means of updates (reports, meetings) and timing of these updates.

This keeps your clients updated with actual status and helps ease any anxiety plus helps build their confidence and trust. Also, when they know they have the right platform & tools to voice their feedback or concerns they would be more vocal and mindful of the timing too to not derail steady progress.

Thus any conflicting or contentious issues can be proactively identified and addressed to prevent Scope Creep.

We all know an outright rejection or denial of a client’s request isn’t advisable. And most of the times you may not be even aware of what does a scope change request entails.

It might be a fairly simple ask and not impact the scope. The best thing to do upon receiving an unexpected request is to respond with – “Let me assess and estimate the time and cost implications of the requested change”.

You will easily ward off any client personnel who is neither serious nor committed to the project with these words – assess and estimate! On the other hand if they are serious, they would definitely like to take a look at your assessment and make an informed decision. And if they decide to move forward, you have an opportunity to generate additional revenue and invoke your change management process. Thus, we all are happy!

Built a Strong Change Control Culture

The significance of a robust Change Control process cannot be emphasized enough. You should NEVER have a contract without a Change Process clause! When the change is requested, there is a series of approvals that are triggered.

This leads to enhanced attention on the requested changes and the required focus to decide if it is needed at all. Well, it will curb scope creep is one aspect but the important thing is it leads to a good review of the original plan and assessment of

  • What will the impact
  • Are we ready to accept the impact – delays, costs etc.
  • Is there enough cost and time bandwidth
  • Lastly will it enhance or significantly support the fundamental goal of the project

 

Change Control culture allows you to maintain the required transparency & puts you in control!

Additionally it demonstrates your forward thinking and professionalism thereby a positive impact on your company’s reputation. Win-Win! Isn’t it?

Penalties – The Silver Bullet

Penalties are an aggressive approach deployed by the client and service providers alike to ensure both hold their end of the bargain.

With penalties baked into a contract ensures both parties are always diligent and never lose sight of the goal. Penalties trigger a competition, fierce at times where both strive to achieve the same goal.

And it goes without saying, all unwanted and impulsive requests are out of the door right away.

Why so? Because the primary reason for undertaking a project is to make money not lose it! Having said that, Penalties are a bitter pill best not enforced upon because they indicate lack of trust, obstruct innovation, impact the team’s morale & rather sets us up for unwanted conflicts And hence, they are not considered to be professional in nature.

To that effect, let us deploy the right tools as illustrated above and at our disposal to ensure that things never come this far in our projects!

 

How Agile Project Management Prevents Resource Conflicts

How Agile Project Management Prevents Resource Conflicts

 

Introduction

Agile Project Management helps when your team has got evolving needs and wants to rapidly deliver the project.
The traditional way, mostly known as the Waterfall methodology fails to keep up with the requirements change.
On one hand, Agile Methodology is about iterative planning whereas on the other hand Waterfall is about sequential planning.

In software development companies there are constant requirements changes. So a method that is based on continuous planning and feedback through the process will deliver the business value right from the start.

Agile Project Management benefits:

 

  • Regular Testing produces high-quality products
    The testing’s integrated through the production cycle. Regular testing makes sure whether the product is working through the development, and helps resolve issues if any.
  • Meeting Customer’s needs
    User interaction is encouraged. The product owner is present every step of the way of progress of development. And his feedback and involvement is essential to deliver the right product.
  •  Chances of risks are reduced
    From the beginning of the project, in the very first sprint, you have a working product. It completely eliminates the chances of complete project failure.
  •  Seamless collaboration
    Everyone is on the same page regarding the project, the scrum master, the product owner, and the development team. Daily scrum meetings identify the work done, the work to be done and the issues.
  • Prevents resource conflicts
    With ever-changing goals, your team can miss deadlines, and it could lead to project failure. But agile project management can prevent chaos in your workflow process and remove the resource conflict.
    When a project manager needs a scarce resource, and there is insufficient capacity to allow all demands on that resource to be met it is called a resource conflict.
    When it happens, you ought to ask yourself a few questions to gain much-needed clarity about the problem.
  •  Is the resource spread out too thin?
  •  Or is he having trouble prioritizing projects?
  •  Do other resources have his skill??
  •  Are they available?
  •  Can you distribute the tasks?
  •  If you can’t solve it, can a higher level of project manager do it?
  •  What is the time you need to solve the conflict?

17% of the projects fail due to poor resource management according to PMI

A proper resource planning can be done with the help of robust project management software.
It helps with planning, analysis, and forecast. And it can also increase your project success rate exponentially.
“Even though only 22% of the organizations use PM software, 77% of high-performing projects use project management software.- Wellington’s survey”
If you want success, you need to use agile project management to prevent resource conflict.


Here Agile Project Management solves the conflicts

 

Optimal use of resources


Efficient resource management involves planning, allocation, and efficient resource utilization.
It makes sure you are making proper use of resources available to you. It also guarantees that your team is not underperforming or your staff isn’t overburdened.
Happy resources perform to their fullest.

Resource utilization can be effective only when resource allocation is on point.
A project manager picks the resource for a particular task based on his skills and availability.
He checks whether the resource is free enough to take on the task.
Project management software provides you with features like – Resource Availability and Resource Utilization to ease your resource management process.
It helps you analyze whether your resources are over-utilized or under-utilized.
You can check the productivity of a resource by comparing his estimated hours with actual
hours spent.
And you can also check whether a resource is available for a particular task with the
resource availability feature. A resource availability chart maps out the time a resource can
invest.
It shows you whether he is available for the task, overloaded or on leave. If a resource is
booked for 8 hours of tasks for that day, then when you assign a task he is on task overload.

If a resource is spread out too thin, you can assign tasks to someone else or you can
distribute the task among team members.
This way you can complete the task on time, without overtaxing the resources. The benefits
don’t end here.

 

Here are more advantages of using resource availability.
Heightened collaboration and team understanding.
Awareness of task dependencies
Enhanced clarity on project progress
Team members are on top of their schedule
Easy and timely delivery of projects

 

Transparent Communication


Project management becomes a piece of cake when all the information and all the team
members are on a single platform.
A common chart listing the availability of all team members gives everyone clarity for future
project progress.

It prevents resource conflicts because resource allocation becomes easy.
The PM needs to choose a specific member for a task with relevant skill, who is available in
the said time.
When all these lengthy processes become automated through software, this saves a lot of
time and there is a better alignment on business objectives.

Conflicts prevention saves time

Team and time are the two critical resources. You do not want to waste any.
Agile project management can solve resource conflicts and save time.
The daily catch-up ritual is something to be followed ardently by the team.
You know where your project stands, where it has to go, and you decide which route to take
to reach their fastest.
Here is a simple example describing how agile project management prevents resource conflicts.
Our team had to publish five milestone content within a week. But we are a team of 3, Rachel was booked for the week, and so was Tina. It was only Rory who was available for the task.
But our content head knew that 5 for 1 is an unbalanced ratio. The unavailability of other team members took a toll on productivity.
So he took the matter in his hands and tried solving the resource conflict. He reallocated the tasks to Tina and Rachel. Tina had 1 milestone content, Rachel had 2 milestone content and Rory had 3 milestone content to deal with.
He reassigned the task priorities and saved the pending tasks for next week.
Even though the resources weren’t completely available, he knew how to re-prioritize and deliver the immediate results important for the project.

Agile project management gives you increased control over the project and helps you to adapt according to the change.

  • What a Project manager learns from it?
  • You learn how to be more accommodating
  • You become adaptable
  • Become a master at re-prioritizing
  • How to hit relevant and immediate goals
  • How to manage resources
  • Prevent project delays


Resource conflicts can be prevented by resource management components like availability and allocation. And agile project management is all about continuous planning and adapting. It is flexible enough to handle the conflicts, and not fall back on the progress.

What is agile project management?

What is agile project management?

 

Agile project management is an incremental and iterative approach to delivering requirements throughout the project life cycle. At the core, agile projects should exhibit central values and behaviors of trust, flexibility, empowerment, and collaboration.

Agile project management principles There are several methodologies that can be used to manage an agile project; two of the best known to be Lean and Scrum. An agile project’s defining characteristic is that it produces and delivers work in short bursts (or sprints) of anything up to a few weeks.

These are repeated to refine the working deliverable until it meets the owner’s requirements. Where the known project management will establish requirements in detail and detailed plan at the start then attempt to follow the plan, agile starts work with a rough idea of what is required and by delivering something in a short period of time, clarifies the requirements as the project progresses.

These frequent iterative procedures are a key feature of an agile project and cooperative relationships are developed between stakeholders and the team members that deliver the job because of this manner of working. The scope has to be adaptable where no detailed requirements exist initially, but agile still have processes to ensure that, at each stage, the work to be done is defined and in-line with client needs.

 

The project manager’s role is different on agile construction projects (and is often known as the Scrum Master or Project Facilitator); it is the team member who deals with problems and handles interruptions to allow the other team members to concentrate on producing the work.

Agile projects need reviews, processes and documentation just as traditional projects do to meet requirements, manage schedules and costs and, deliver benefits and avoid scope creep; agile simply does not place as much emphasis on very detailed documentation and does not expect to fully understand the requirements before work can begin. Instead, it emphasizes the importance of delivering a working product as something tangible for the client that can then be refined until it fulfills the owner’s needs. The key measure of progress of the project is this series of working deliverables.

 

Why is agile project management is important?

 

Agile project management has its disadvantages such as less easy identification of project risks and poor management of resources, and many project teams don’t understand how to use agile project management effectively. However, with the fast pace of business change in the 21st century, many projects need to be sure they will deliver something that meets client needs at the end of the project and not expends wasted effort refining requirements that will be out of date by the time the end-product is delivered.

Agile project management has its disadvantages such as less easy identification of project risks and poor management of resources, and many project teams don’t understand how to use agile project management effectively. However, with the fast pace of business change in the 21st century, many projects need to be sure they will deliver something that meets client needs at the end of the project and not expends wasted effort refining requirements that will be out of date by the time the end-product is delivered.

 

Even in business environments that don’t change rapidly, it can be difficult to fully articulate requirements without seeing a tangible product first so there is still the risk of delivering something that does not quite meet the owner’s needs. That is why agile is becoming increasingly necessary for many different projects’ types.

 

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