Managing Projects

Session 3

Project Leadership
For project mangers to be successful and effective they must practice an appropriate style of leadership. Leadership is about setting goals and objectives and generating enthusiasm and motivation amongst the project team, and stakeholders, to work towards those objectives.

 Managing is concerned with logic, structure, analysis and control. Leadership requires a different mindset and the leader has different tasks. These tasks include:
Creating a sense of direction. Communicating the vision. Energising, inspiring and motivating.

Leadership Styles

 Autocratic: (isolated decision) The project manger solves the problem on his own, using information available to him at the time. There is no communication from team members. Autocratic: (informed decision) The project manager obtains information from team members but decides on the solution on his own. Consultative Autocratic (discuss with individuals): The project manager shares the problem with team members individually, gathering their ideas, etc. Then makes the decision on his own. Consultative Autocratic: (discuss with team) The project manager shares the problem with team members, as a group. Then makes the decision on his own.

 Democratic: The project manager shares the problem with the team members. Then together they make the decision as a group majority vote. Laissez- Faire: The project manager gives the problem to the team and lets them make the decision themselves.

As a guide to how to use the above styles the following questions might prove useful:
1. Is one decision likely to be better than another? If not, go for number 1. 2. Does the leader know enough to make the decision on his own? If not avoid number 1. 3. Is the problem clear and structured? If not use number 4 or 5. 4. Must the team members accept the managers decision? If not then number 5 is preferable. 5. Do the team members share the managers goals for the organisation. If not then number 5 is risky. 6. Are the team members likely to conflict with each other? If yes then number 4 is better than 5.

Motivation
The project managers task is to influence the work situation in a way that encourages the person (or persons) to achieve the project goals. The two most important factors that a person can bring to the job are ability and commitment.

 The persons willingness the perform the job is known as the commitment the person brings to the job. It is the project managers job to ensure he brings an appropriate style of leadership, addressing the teams needs in terms of ability and commitment, to the working environment so that the performance he brings out of his work force achieves the project goals.

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

Maslows research (Maslow1954) established an hierarchy of needs. This hierarchy contained five needs that outlines that people work in order to satisfy certain needs.

 Physiological Needs
This is the most basic of needs. It refers to the needs of the body to survive and for self preservation. If you were deprived of these needs (food, air to breathe) you would become totally preoccupied trying to acquire these.

Security and Safety Needs

This concerns needs of job security, protection from accidents and danger.

 Social Needs
The need to be accepted by others and belong to the team. This is especially important in project teams as we share our lives with our fellow workers and we seek approval and acceptance of our fellow workers.

Self-esteem Needs
It involves the need for attention, importance and prestige.

 Self-actualisation Needs
This is the highest of all the needs. It refers to a persons own self-fulfilment and selfrealisation and becomes very important as the previous needs are met.
Strongly ethical. A more efficient perception of reality. Increased acceptance of self and of others. Spontaneity and simplicity. Deeper more profound interpersonal relationships. A natural creativity. Increased detachment and desire for privacy.

Conflict
All mangers will come up against conflict at some stage in their working relationship(s). The important thing is that managers understand what causes conflict and take appropriate steps to control conflict. Main symptoms of conflict:
Lots of rules and regulations. Poor communication. Decisions taken with incomplete information. Low morale caused by inefficiency and frustration.

Project Control

 Control is the system, or process, of comparing actual performance to the plan to determine how the project is progressing. The frequency of the reporting cycle should reflect the needs of the project. Short reporting periods when there is a high level of change and uncertainty in the project, long periods when there is little or no change.

Areas to be monitor carefully..

There will problems meeting quality specifications. Some items will be overlooked in the estimate. Activities will take longer than expected. Key staff will leave the project. Suppliers will be late delivering equipment. Equipment will cost more than estimated. New legislation may prohibit a planned course of action.

Principles of Monitoring and Control

Always have a formal process to control changes in the project. Revise project plans as needed to keep them realistic and accurate, but only those authorised to update the plans. Elevate problems to the lowest level of management that can make the decision and take action. Ensure that progress, cost expenditure and scope performance are calculated and reported using methods consistent with the way the plan was set up.

 Collecting information on project progress is a key task. The data can be collected electronically, manually, by onsite inspections and team meetings. The projectmanagerwill establish a cycle for the collection of data. This cycle could be daily, weekly or monthly. This information should be compared with the project plan to identify the variances. A variance exists when the actual status does not match the planned status.

Scope and Quality Control

Scope management
The processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully. It is primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is or is not included in the project.

 Since most projects seem to be riddled with fuzzy definitions, scope management takes on a greater importance to avoid scope creep, and avoiding adding features and functionality to the product that were not part of the original project contract without an appropriate increase in time and budget.

 To control the scope and quality you must compare actual performance to the scope statement to determine variances. Scope and quality are more difficult to measure than time or cost, and when project team members are up against time and cost deadlines they may forced to cut corners on scope and quality.

 In practice, you need to ask yourself the following questions when controlling scope and quality:
Is the specification, as per the scope statement, being met? Compare performance with the scope statement. Analyse variance to compare against to determine impact against scope and quality. Publish reports that detail where the project is meeting or not meeting specification. Take corrective action to act on scope deviations quickly.

 It is good practice to use a formal change request and a project communication form to help with scope changes.

 Quality management is the processes to ensure the project will satisfy the needs for which it is undertaken by addressing the management of the project and the product of the project. You need to consider both the quality management system to assure you are capable of building the product and the quality control system which tests and inspects the product, to confirm you have achieved the required condition.

 One important document is the Project Quality Plan. This is a detailed document that explains how the company will assure that the product will be made to the clients requirements. Crosby (1987) argues that quality is free. It costs less to get the job done right first time. However, some managers never seem to have time to get it right first time, yet seem to have time to rework the job. The cost of the re-work may be two or three times the cost of the original job.

 Prevention costs are those costs that are associated with actions taken to make sure the product will be made to the required standard: such things
as reviewing and verifying designs, quality training, quality planning, quality improvement programs and in-process control engineering.

 Variances
Not all variances will have a negative impact on the project and not all variances will need corrective action. It will be the job of the project manager to determine whether the variance has:
A significant impact on the project. Whether the impact is a problem. The cause of the variance, including reasons and the people involved. If the variance will cause other variances elsewhere in the project

 Often the project manager will issues a report which shows what the project should be doing, what is actually happening and the variance between the plan and the latest status of the project. As the project manager develops and analyses solutions to the variances, and/or problems, he will decide on a course of action. This action could include the following: taking action to solve the problem, follow up to ensure the action solves the problem, document the significant design(s) that impact on the agreed project plan, take preventive action to be sure similar problems do not happen again.

 Managing: The Start of the Project

Most project managers start the project off by holding a formal kick-off meeting with all the key players (client, customer, project team members) involved in the project. This is usually used as an opportunity to define the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved in the project and to communicate the project plans clearly and concisely. It is the first step in building the project team and building team morale

 According to Field and Keller the activities of the project manager during the projects execution may be considered to fall under the following headings:
Initiating. Planning, organizing and staffing. Monitoring and controlling. Directing. Communicating.

 Harrison (1992) used the term rolling wave to describe how planning changes throughout a medium to large project.
Hierarchical planning normally incorporates the rolling wave concept of planning. In many projects it is not practical or possible, because of the lack of the necessary information, to plan the complete project in any level of detailing its early stages. Often the necessary information to plan the later stages of the project in detail is actually generated in these earlier stages. In such projects, the rolling wave concept overcomes this problem.

 Along with monitoring and controlling, the Project Managers other main job is to communication. Communicating what is happening with the project, communicating to clients, to suppliers and contractors. In fact communicating to all the team members and management the status of the project. The Project Manager also needs to be a good listener and encourage good communications between all the project team members.

 Controlling Project Objectives

Time : This is the process of comparing actual schedule performance to the baseline schedule to determine variances, evaluate possible alternatives and take appropriate action. Cost Control : Controlling cost is much more difficult than monitoring cost. It is almost impossible to prescribe how it should be done.

 Cost monitoring is, of course, an essential prerequisite for cost control without it the project manager is left in the position of one who can only exhort the team to do their best but does not know whether to praise them or blame them for their past performance. Careful monitoring and quick action will help take care of cost issues before the problem gets out of hand.

 Resource Control
Resource control is the process of comparing actual performance to the source plans to highlight variances and determine appropriate action. Obviously a project manager cannot micro-manage everyones work and be aware of what everyone is doing all of the time. The project team should work in an environment, and the project manager should encourage such an environment, where team members control their own work.

 Some methods used to control resources include:

Team members should prepare individual plans for accomplishing their work. Empower team members to accomplish their tasks by giving them appropriate authority and information. Ensue all team members understand the basic project objectives and understand their tasks.

Methods to Control Resource and Project Objectives Inspection

This will include examining, testing and measuring whether activities are progressing to schedule.

Statistical Sampling
It not practical to inspect every activity in the project so sometimes principles of statistician sampling are applied to measure progress.

Control Charts
These are charts that show results along with established control limits. Charts help to check if the project, or an activity, is in control or in need of adjustment.

 Reporting on Project Objectives When preparing reports you should consider the following:
Maintain concise, quality, accurate plans. Choose the best format for a report, such as a Gantt chart, graph or histogram. Use exception reporting by including only major variations from plan. Use software to break information down and report on variances. Make reports easy to read:

 Reporting per cent Complete

Reporting per cent complete is sometimes more useful than just reporting on how many units or hours have been completed.

Sample Reports

 Change control is needed to manage the potential effects on the project. Whatever change you make, however small, there will be a knock on effect to the project. A knock on effect to the budget, schedule or scope. Beware of scope creep! This is the tendency for scope to increase during the course of the project without proportional increases in time or cost.

 Change control is often called configuration management. Introduce a process for submitting, evaluating and approving changes to the project plan. Define guidelines so the team members know exactly what minor changes are acceptable and what changes need to be put through the change control process. Review change requests with the project team. Consider the impact of the changes, identify causes of change and determine if these impact on other areas of the project. Look at other areas and courses of action and determine their effect on the project. Approve or reject changes and communicate changes to all concerned. Document and track changes, reporting their effect in the project.

 Project Evaluations
You will be collecting data and issuing reports to ensure costs, time and resources are being managed effectively. Even though these will give you a good idea of the progress you are making, most project managers also hold project reviews to ensure team members are motivated, and customers and clients are happy. Project reviews also provide feedback to help everyone stay focused on the project objectives. People work better when they receive positive feedback. It helps people stay committed and motivated.

 On-going reviews: on-going reviews should ensure that the project standards, as included in the scope statement, are being met. Periodic Inspections: these are weekly or monthly inspections to ensure that project objectives are being met. Every bit of work cannot be inspected, therefore it should be agreed at the beginning of the project what will be inspected and at what frequency. Milestone Evaluations: milestones are the completion of major phases in the project. Here you are certifying that all the work scheduled to be completed has been completed to the agreed specification. Final Project Audit: this happens at the end of the project to confirm that every thing was completed as agreed by the customer, and/or client. The audit is helpful to gather lessons learned during the project. What was well done? What could be learned to improve future projects?

 Closing the Project

Good project management techniques include procedures for formally closing the project. The reason for project closure is to confirm that all the work has been completed as agreed and the customer accepts the final product. There may also be a deliverable called project handover.

 The documentation also needs to be complete. The documentation includes complete lists of all the project deliverables, showing how they fit together and how they were designed and tested. Furthermore, the documents should show how it was intended that the product should be used and maintained. This applies just as much to software as it does to hardware.

Example project closure list

1 Have all activities in the project plan been completed? 2 Have all work orders been completed? 3 Have all the contracts been closed out? 4 Has the client accepted the final product? 5 Have all the maintenance procedures been put in place? 6 Have all final project reports been prepared? 7 Have all payments been made to vendors and contractors? 8 Have the project accounts been reconciled and closed? 9 Are all parties aware of the pending closeout? 10 Has excess project material been dealt with? 11 Have all project equipment and other resources been returned to stores or reallocated?