Estimating Effort
Effort hours must be estimated first, before duration and cost estimates can be prepared. Use the following process to estimate effort hours.
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Team Resistance to Managing the Workplan
It’s one thing to build a project definition and the workplan. It’s another thing to effectively manage the project. If the project manager could just could create the plan and the work assignments and have everyone complete their activities on-time, your life would be much easier. However, the process of managing the team and the workplan is more complex than that. …
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Allocating Resources in a Matrix Organization
In large organizations, or on large projects, you may have the luxury of full-time resources for your entire team. However, in many (or most) situations, the project manager must utilize shared and part-time resources to complete the work. Some resources may be working on multiple projects, while other resources may be working in support (or operations) roles as well. The process of gaining and retaining resources in this environment can be difficult and is related to the way your organization is structured. …
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Five steps to good management
By Professor Adrian Furnham
Stability
Senior positions always involve stress. People have to make hard decisions, take risks, face criticism and endure set-backs. They need to be hardy and resilient to respond to the pace and challenges of modern business life. …
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Manage Metrics – Large Projects – Beginning of the Project
Large Projects – Beginning of the Project
Large projects should definitely be capturing metrics that will provide information on the quality of the deliverables and the processes used to create the deliverables. The following process can be used to come up with the appropriate metrics on the project. This process will result in the creation of a Project Scorecard. …
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Responsibility Matrix
In a large project, there may be many people that have some role in the creation and approval of project deliverables. Sometimes this is pretty straightforward, such as one person writing a document and one person approving it. In other cases, there may be many people who have a hand in the creation and others that need to have varying levels of approval.
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Create a Short-Term Schedule to Guide the Definition and Planning Processes
The process of creating the Project Charter, schedule and budget may take a long time and may be very complicated. Therefore, the work should not be left unorganized, for the same reasons that you are building the schedule for the project to begin with. …
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Resolve Issues as Soon As Possible
The definition of an issue is that it is a problem that will be detrimental to the success of the project and cannot be totally resolved by the project team. That definition leads you to understand that issues must be addressed quickly. …
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How to Manage Risk in Large Projects
The risk management process for large projects is the same as for medium projects with two additional items. First is to utilize quantitative risk analysis techniques (in addition to qualitative techniques). Second is to create a contingency plan to document the consequences to the project if the Risk Management Plan fails and the risk actually occurs. …
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The Service Request Process for Project Managers
In a small project, there is usually not a lot of effort associated with formally defining the work. However, some definition work still needs to be done. The result of this short definition is a one-to-two page document called a Service Request. …
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Make Sure Team Members Know What Their Assignments Are
One of the basic responsibilities of the project manager is to assign work to team members. However, some project managers are not always clear on the work to be done and the person that is responsible. This causes uncertainty in the team and can result in some activities running late. …
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The Basic Concepts of Earned Value
In any project, the value to be gained is based on completing the work. From a customer perspective, the business value is achieved when the project is completed. If a project gets canceled 90% through completion, the business value might be zero.
However, earned value looks at this differently. With earned value, you are earning the value of the project on an incremental scale as the project is executing. When 50% of the work is completed, you could say that 50% of the value of the project has been realized as well. …