VILLAGEMALL SMALL BUS HOME PROJECT MGT

Define the Work

Build the Work Plan

Manage the Work Plan

Small Projects

1. Review the workplan on a weekly basis.

2. Identify activities that have been completed during the previous week and update the workplan to show they are finished.

3. Determine whether there are any other activities that should be completed, but are not. If an activity is behind schedule, work with the individuals who are assigned to see what is going on. There could be problems that need to be resolved or it may be that the length of time needed to complete the activity was underestimated. Determine how much additional effort and duration will be needed to complete the work and update the workplan accordingly.

4. Evaluate the remaining work to see if the project will be completed within the original effort, cost and duration. Even though some activities may be completed later than planned, other work may be completing early.

5. Adjust the workplan so that it reflects how the remaining work will be completed. The first priority should be to complete the project within the original estimates for effort, duration and cost. If you are behind schedule or trending overbudget there are many techniques you can utilize to get back on track.

6. If the original budget or deadline estimates cannot be met, new estimates need to be prepared and communicated to management and to the client. This is important information to share because there may be areas where they can provide input. For instance, the client may agree to reduce the remaining requirements to allow the project to complete within the original estimates.

Medium and Large Projects

Review the process associated with small projects. Although a small project may have twenty activities and a large project many have five thousand, they both end up using a similar process. However, there is more rigor that is put in place for larger and larger projects. In the case of larger projects, there may be a person(s) responsible for actually updating the project workplan with actual results, and then running reports that are presented to the project manager for evaluation and analysis.

1. Review the workplan on a regular basis. For a medium project, this is probably still a weekly process. For larger projects the frequency might be every two weeks. Do not go any less frequently than every two weeks. (A frequency of monthly is too long. There is too much work taking place, and if there are problems, too much time may pass before they are surfaced.)

2. Capture and update actual hours. If the project is capturing actual effort hours and costs, update the workplan with this information. Identify activities that have been completed during the previous time period and update the workplan to show they are finished. The effort hours and status can come from team members through the Status Reports and status meetings. In some cases, a scheduling tool might be set up so that team members can update the workplan directly with their effort hours and completion status.

3. Review your schedule situation. Determine whether there are any other activities that should be completed, but are not. This information can be gathered by running the appropriate report from the project management tool. If there are activities that are late, work with the individual(s) who are assigned to see what is going on. There could be problems that need to be resolved, or it may be that the length of time needed to complete the activity was underestimated. Determine how much additional effort and duration will be needed to complete the work and update the workplan accordingly.

4. Reschedule the project. After the work plan has been updated to show the current reality, let the tool reschedule the work to see if the project will be completed within the original effort, cost and duration. Even though some activities may be completed later than planned, other work may be completing early. 

5. Run additional work plan management reports. Run additional reports from the project management tool to help determine how the project is progressing. For instance, look at resource allocation. The project may be completing on schedule because some of the team member are being scheduled for 80 hours per week. If you saved a baseline version of the work plan, you can run reports to compare the current work plan against the baseline to see the variances. 

6. Review your budget situation. Review how your project is performing against your budget. Because of how financial reporting is done, you may need to manage the budget on a monthly basis, even if you update the work plan on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. If you are keeping all of your expenditures in your project management tool, this may be as simple as running a report to compare actual expenditures against budgeted expenditures. More than likely, however, you are keeping up with your budget on a separate spreadsheet, since many organizations have separate financial reporting systems. If you are fortunate, your financial systems and project tracking applications will be integrated so that all of the financial information is in one place.

Use whatever tools are available to capture all of the expenditures paid to date, including all expenses related to labour, equipment and material. Then compare the numbers against your budget. You may or may not have an apples-to-apples comparison. There are a number of items to factor in to this comparison. The following items point out times when a project may look like it is in budget problems, when it may really not be.

• Some expenses may be budgeted for, but in another time period. If you paid for a major purchase this period that was originally scheduled for next period, then it shouldn't surprise you to see that you are technically 'over budget'. This type of expense will even out over time.

• You may not be over budget if you are also ahead of schedule. If your project is on schedule, but over budget, there may be a problem. However, if your project is ahead of schedule, it may be fine that you are also ahead of your budget. For instance, you may have paid contractor overtime to get ahead of schedule, or utilized more employee labour hours to get ahead of schedule. In this case, creating your estimate-to-complete should show that the project would complete within its allocated budget. 

The following items show over budget situations where the project really is in jeopardy. If you are trending over budget because of these situations, corrective actions are required.  

• The project may be on schedule but over budget because some of the activities are taking more effort than estimated. This could be because of working unscheduled overtime or applying more resources than estimated. In this case, if the trend continues, the project budget may be in jeopardy. This should be raised as a budget risk unless there are mitigating factors that will allow the over budget trend to reverse.

• It's very possible that mandatory activities or project expenses were missed when the original estimates were put together. If the work or expense is required, but missed in the estimating process, you may not be able to invoke scope change management. In this case, a budget risk should be raised unless there are mitigating factors that will allow you to recoup the additional expense through a cost savings somewhere else.

• Check to see whether you are working on activities that are outside the approved Project Definition or business requirements. If so, the work should stop until scope change management can be invoked. Even if the over budget can be recouped somewhere else by cost savings, scope change requests should not be allowed to impact the project unless they were approved, along with the corresponding approval of revised budget and delivery timeframe, if necessary.

7. Look for other signs that the project may be in trouble.
   These could include

• Activities starting to trend over budget or behind schedule early on in the project. There is a tendency to think you can make it up, but usually these are a warning that you will get further in further in trouble.

• A small variance starts to get bigger, especially early in the project.

• You discover that activities you think have already been completed are still being worked on.

• You need to rely on unscheduled overtime to hit the deadlines, especially early in the project.

• Team morale starts to decline.

• Deliverable quality or service quality starts to deteriorate.

• Quality control steps, testing activities and project management time starts to be cut back from the original schedule.

If these situations start to occur, raise visibility through risk management. Put together a Risk Management Plan to proactively ensure that the project stays on track. If you cannot successfully manage through the problems, raise an issue.

8. Evaluate the critical path of the project. The critical path is the sequence of activities that must be completed on time for the entire project to be completed on schedule. If the end date has slipped, it will be because at least one activity on the critical path did not complete on time. It is important to understand the critical path sequence to know what activities need to be accelerated for the project to complete earlier. Placing additional resources on non-critical activities will not result in the project completing earlier. It is also very possible for the critical path to change on the project. Again, you may be trying to accelerate activities that were on the critical path, but if the critical path changed, this will not have the intended result.

9. Adjust the work plan. Update the work plan so that it reflects how the remaining work will be completed. The first priority should be to complete the project within the original estimates for effort, duration and cost.

10. Communicate any schedule and budget risk. As soon as you feel you at risk of missing your budget or deadline, you should communicate this to the sponsor and stakeholders. You do not have to state that you will miss your estimates for sure. However, start to communicate the risk so that you can implement actions to try to get the project back on track. If you are sure that the current commitments cannot be met, new estimates need to be prepared and communicated to your management and to the clients. This is important information to share because there may be areas where they can provide input. For instance, the client may agree to reduce the remaining requirements to allow the project to complete within the original estimates. It is also possible that the increase in schedule or budget will not be approved, in which case you will need to work with the sponsor on ways to complete the work within the current budget and deadline.  

11. Add more details to future work. On a monthly basis, adjust future work to reflect any additional information you know now. For instance, when the work plan was created, many of the activities further into the future may have been vague and placed into the work plan at a high level. On a monthly basis, this work needs to be defined in greater detail. For sure, work that covers the next three month window should be scheduled out in activities of not more than 80 hours (less than 40 hours if possible).  If work is entering this three month window at a higher level, then break it down into a lower level of detail. Note that this step refers to originally identified work that requires more detailed information. This is not the place to add new work.