Project Management: Key Factors and Best Practices

Project Time Scheduling and Budget Management

The ideal project schedule aligns perfectly with the budget—neither exceeding nor falling short. A project that goes over budget is not necessarily more successful than one that adheres to its financial limits. Accurate forecasts for project timelines and costs are crucial for a company's overall performance.

Projects are often planned with some buffer for costs and time. However, a smaller buffer can lead to less waste in adjusting resources and costs. For instance, if a company manages around ten projects weekly, each requiring 500 hours of work, precise time estimates are essential. Overestimating can leave the team idle, while underestimating may necessitate hiring additional help, both of which can negatively impact finances.

If the financial forecast is below budget, it is seemingly positive. Likewise, a forecast over budget is negative. Both scenarios can hinder a company's competitiveness. When the sales team prices a project, they consider various factors, including project budgets and time consumption. Accurate budgeting enables more competitive pricing, leading to more projects and natural company growth.

Assessing Project Management Outcomes

The final aspect of a project manager's KPIs involves evaluating the project's end result, which is closely tied to the manager's reputation. This assessment can be categorized into three areas:

The assessment can be divided into

• The internal assessment
• The external assessment (Customer)
• Legal requirements

Ideally, all three assessments should be positive results.

A project evolves like a living organism. As the project team collaborates with the customer, they gain deeper insights into the project's needs, which may lead to changes in goals and tasks. Some initial priorities may diminish in importance, while new requirements may emerge. Additionally, shifts in legal matters or market trends can affect the project scope.

Thus, a project that meets initial requirements may not necessarily be viewed positively. It's crucial to align customer expectations with what the company can deliver. For example, if a customer expects an Audi but receives a Suzuki, a gap between expectations and reality can lead to dissatisfaction.

To secure positive feedback from all stakeholders, it's vital to identify any discrepancies between customer expectations and project deliverables. Establishing a communication plan to address these differences and regularly updating it throughout the project can enhance the likelihood of a favorable assessment, even if the project encounters challenges.

Achieving Better Results as a Project Manager

To get good results with a project the project manager must prepare a project plan, where the schedule and finances are followed and a positive assessment from all parties must be achieved. At the same time, the project manager knows that the project will probably change along the way, which affects the 3 factors.

Project management tools can help the project manager achieve the results if the tools are flexible and adaptable and fits all the project team's needs. The project tools must be adapted to the company's project work methods and help the project manager and the team throughout the project.

The Role of Project Management Tools

The purpose of project management tools is to help the manager and the team throughout the entire project process. The project management tools must ensure that the project follows the policies in the company and provide an overview of the project at any given time.

Ideally, the project management tool provides a description of the company's decision-making structure and policies for developing projects. It shows who generally approves projects, who is a member of each of the project's steering groups and who is in the project teams.

The tool provides custom design user permissions and help users in getting insight into the project. It enables the project manager to act proactively to ensure the progress of the project. In the Proglar project management tool, project phases can be custom designed by the company itself. An example on how the project phases for a project could be in Proglar, is described below.

Project lifecycle – an example

A project has a life cycle which can be divided into phases. Many companies have their own definitions of phases. The phases could be described as:

• Initiation
• Planning
• Execution / monitoring
• Delivery and Closure

Initiation phase

In the Initiation phase, the value of the project is assessed. Business goals, project prerequisites, assumptions, constraints and exclusions are written in a project scope. The business case for the project is prepared.

In this phase the customer accepts prerequisites and definitions for deliverables, as well as setting up any requirements in relation to deadlines for deliverables.

If it is assessed by the company and the customer that the project is viable, the project is moved to the next project phase: Planning.

Planning phase

In the planning phase, the project scope is processed and a detailed plan for the project prepared. The project manager prepares a communication plan for stakeholders and the team is selected.

When the project moves from scope to a detailed plan, there is a risk that assumptions, assumptions, constraints and exclusions are not transferred to the individual tasks in the plan. The link from scope to task definition is sometimes overlooked.

By using a project management tool like Proglar, you can incorporate all details from the scope into a project model which can be transferred to all the tasks. The Proglar project model is made up of a number of sub-models. The sub-models constitutes the complete project. The model approach provides an overview of constraints and minimizes the error rate in the project.

The models can be automatically transferred to a project plan containing the tasks required by the project. When changes occur in the project, the project model changes and it will be clear how it affects the individual tasks. It will be clear which tasks need to be reworked and revisited, which in turn minimizes troubleshooting.

In order to pick the right people for the project team, the project manager must assess which skills the team must possess. In the project management tool Proglar, it is possible to insert skills for each sub-model. The project manager thereby quickly and easily gets an overview of the skills that the team must have. This gives the manager a better opportunity to pick the right team.

Skills Matrix

Execution / Monitoring phase

In some cases, this phase is divided into two phases: execution phase and monitoring phase. In practice, execution and monitoring are parallel phases. For this reason, it is one phase here.

In this phase, the team performs all the project tasks and the project manager monitors the project's progress.

A task can be described by: what needs to be done, who needs to do it, how long it takes and how it is verified. The task has a status progression such as: Planned, Open, In Progress, Test and Completed.

In the project management tool Project management tool Proglar, the status process can be defined by the company itself, so that the process corresponds to the company's processes. Different type of tasks like development and quality can have different status progression matching the task.

Delivery and Closure phase

When all tasks have been completed and approved, the project is ready for final delivery and the customer approves delivery. The project can then be completed.

Project Management Methods

There are many different project management methods. Each method has its processes and working methods. You cannot say that one project management method is better than the other, they each have their advantages and functions.

Some examples of project management methods :

Waterfall

Waterfall is designed for software development and is a traditional management of projects. The method consists of a series of phases, where each phase is completed before the next phase is started. The phases are Specification, Design, Implementation, Verification and Maintenance.

Critical Path (CPM)

With the Critical Path method, you focus on what the longest series of dependent tasks is. It is these tasks that determine how long the project will last.

CPM helps define milestones and deadlines. The purpose of the method is first and foremost to give as accurate a schedule as possible.

Critical Chain (CMM)

The Critial Chain method focuses on the project's supply chain and is similar to CPM, where you only focus on resources. Resources can be both team, equipment and purchased components.

Agile Project Management Method

Agile project management method uses an iterative process, where the purpose is to adapt the project to a rapidly changing market. The method is applicable to projects where the specification is not fully prepared from the start.

With this method, you complete a project in several smaller iterative processes.

In agile projects, you work with smaller parts of projects. It is preferred that the parts being in progress are independent of other parts which are in progress at the same time.

Scrum

Scrum is a variation of the agile project management method. Work is done in smaller self-governing groups that work in sprints. Sprints are short development processes where the project team completes smaller parts of the project.

Scrum teams are self-governing and have a team leader in the form of a scrum master who ensures that the project team pushes the project forward. A scrum master role is not a project manager, but will typically refer to him/her.

Prince2

The Prince2 method is process-based, where the most important are 7 themes: business case, organization, quality, risk, changes, planning and progress of the project.

The business case follows the project all the way through the project's phases and is continuously updated.

The organizational structure consists of well-defined roles that ensure the project's participants have the right authority and responsibility to complete the project.

The method helps the company to ensure that the project yields the benefits that the company wants.

Extreme Programming (XPM)

Extreme Programming is an agile method that has been developed for software projects where the project team is required to be very flexible. Within XPM, you use e.g. user stories to ensure progress in the project.

The method can also be suitable for projects where you want to improve the customer experience.

User stories are prepared by the stakeholders and are simple descriptions in the form of as a ____ I would like to be able to __________ such that ______________ or similar simple form.

User stories collect all the requirements and demands that the stakeholders have and convert them into epics (many user stories in the same category), which can form specifications for a sprint in which the sub-project (epic) is completed.

Other Project Management Methods

There are other project management tools that are not covered here. For example, Six Sigma which is intended for quality, LEAN which targets production or PRiSM, which i.a. deals with social and environmental aspects.

Change Request Management

Documenting Change Requests is an important but often overlooked aspect of project management.

Change Requests are changes or additions that occur during a project. They are the reason why the project scope changes and thus the schedule and cost expectations change.

A change request can be defined as: who wants it, why, when and what is achieved by the change. When the project manager documents changes, the manager can communicate changes to the right stakeholders. In case of disputes between stakeholders, the manager can present a history of changes that have occurred during the project. The history is facts and helps the manager to stay focused on the project rather than resolving conflicts.

Change Request documentation together with a communication plan is a significant factor in achieving a good end result for the project.

What is the right project management method?

There is no one-size-fits-all project management method. Both traditional and Agile approaches have their pros and cons. Traditional methods may lead to delays if one phase takes too long, while Agile methods can require revisiting tasks due to unexpected changes.

Most projects today lean towards Agile methodologies, as time-to-market is a critical competitive factor. For instance, designing and building a house has become an agile process. The customer is involved in the design phase and can determine the layout in terms of the position of the walls, the design of the doors, etc. Walls, doors and windows can be produced at the same time as the foundation is carried out. The processes are independent of each other.

Although the house project is agile in nature, parts of the project can be carried out according to traditional principles. The walls cannot be put up before the foundations have been cast, the roof must be established after the walls have been put up. It can be an advantage for a house project to be a hybrid of different project methods – depending on which part of the project and which phase is being processed.

It is up to you to select a project management method that ensures that the project is completed as quickly as possible, to the desired quality and otherwise meets the requirements that have been set. Therefore, it can be advantageous to adapt the project management method to the company's processes, as this usually leads to the best results.

With Proglar, you can adapt your project management method to your company's processes. And it is even possible to adapt the individual tasks to your processes. A developer uses a different status flow than a purchaser does, as their processes are not the same. By adapting tasks to processes, it helps the project manager to create a more precise overview of the project's status.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in project management

Using Artificial intelligence in your projects can help you improve your performance. Applying Artificial intelligence and other technological innovations to project management could improve the success ratio of projects.

Some benefits:

• Monitoring of project progress
• Compliance monitoring for processes and policies
• Automated preparation and distribution of project reports
• Automation of processes

Project templates

A company often has projects of same nature. An example is a company that produces conveyor belts. The company's projects consist of modules or models that are built together and processes in the form of testing, CE or UL approval, etc. and are the same or similarly from project to project.

It is useful to use a project template, where the template contains the processes and modules that are reused from project to project. The template ensures that the project team gets through the necessary and routine processes and does not redevelop models that are already available in the company.

It is also an advantage if the company has control over the models that are reused from project to project. If there are changes to the models, you will be able to search in previous projects and find the projects where models are included. It helps both in relation to any customer complaints and in case of additional sales.

With Proglar, you can create customized templates and models that can be reused in several projects. At the same time, user permissions ensure that only users with the right responsibility can make changes on the models.

What is recommended in project management

Regardless of the chosen method, certain best practices can help project managers achieve acceptable results:

• Project scope / requirements specification
  Check that the project follows the project requirements specification at all times. Update the scope when necessary
• Project costs
  Check costs continuously and report back to the organization. This ensures that the organization is familiar with developments and knows the reasons for changes. Stakeholders have the opportunity to respond when they are informed.
• Stakeholders
  Know the project's stakeholders and ensure that they have the necessary information at all times. Each stakeholder is different and wants information in different ways. They will not be over- or under-informed. Get to know the stakeholders and prepare a communication plan.
• Project team
  If you have the opportunity, choose the team that best suits the tasks of the project. Continuously follow up on the team.
• Project management method
  If the organization has a procedure for project management, this must be followed. Otherwise, as project manager, you can choose the project management method that best suits the project and you.
• Automation and tools
  Choose a project management tool that supports the project's team in performing the routine tasks - monitoring, task management, bug reporting, change requests, etc. For standard projects, it can be advantageous to develop a project template that is adapted to the specific project type.