Hi All,
I wish to bring more posts and useful updates with information like PMP related knowledge, presentations, templates, podcasts.
You are always welcome to suggest your ideas for me to work harder to come back to you with more useful and relevant details
I wish everyone and family a happy and wonderful new year 2010
Regards,
Ram
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Start your day with daily planning
For project managers, every day is full of activities, follow ups, meetings, mail replies and formal and informal team member discussions, etc. All these add up to your little personal time spent with your family, friends, personal phone calls, mails, etc.
As a project manager, you will work on weekly schedules and task lists based on your project plan! (if you have not had one such weekly schedules, start preparing one on weekly basis!!!).
From the weekly schedule, managing the daily activities is always a real challenge and sometimes, we miss to reply to mails, urgent meetings, escalations, etc.
In my experience, I have learnt to manage my daily tasks using a simple notepad scrible for every day!. In fact, I have named my notepad as 'Activities' which start from my day one (as long as my notepad reaches the size limit, and the current one that I have is 2 years long history of such activities!).
How do I do that (step-by-step):
1. Mark the date with an underline
2. Start noting down all activities with short description from your project plan and other sources
3. Once the activity is completed, I would mark it as 'OK'
4. Anything that is not carried out on that day, will be copied to the next day (depending on your schedule and list of activities)
To visualize better, I have provided a sample below:
12/28/2009:
------------
-- EDI Project - kick off meeting slides preparation -- OK
-- Ecommerce Project - Review definition phase document and reply to Mark -- OK
-- DC project - Weekly IT Update meeting - 4.00 PM -- OK
-- Vendor call - Dell - 5.00 PM
-- PQR - send weekly update for Friday meeting -- OK
12/29/2009:
------------
-- < note down activities as above with short description and final completion tag at the end.>
I hope this simple notepad daily organizer is much more effective than any other tools, though I believe that many of us (project managers) are used to other better tools. However, the textpad is only of the simplest of all tools and easy to manage!
I believe the above tips and technique will be useful for you!!! Please share your comments.
As a project manager, you will work on weekly schedules and task lists based on your project plan! (if you have not had one such weekly schedules, start preparing one on weekly basis!!!).
From the weekly schedule, managing the daily activities is always a real challenge and sometimes, we miss to reply to mails, urgent meetings, escalations, etc.
In my experience, I have learnt to manage my daily tasks using a simple notepad scrible for every day!. In fact, I have named my notepad as 'Activities' which start from my day one (as long as my notepad reaches the size limit, and the current one that I have is 2 years long history of such activities!).
How do I do that (step-by-step):
1. Mark the date with an underline
2. Start noting down all activities with short description from your project plan and other sources
3. Once the activity is completed, I would mark it as 'OK'
4. Anything that is not carried out on that day, will be copied to the next day (depending on your schedule and list of activities)
To visualize better, I have provided a sample below:
12/28/2009:
------------
-- EDI Project - kick off meeting slides preparation -- OK
-- Ecommerce Project - Review definition phase document and reply to Mark -- OK
-- DC project - Weekly IT Update meeting - 4.00 PM -- OK
-- Vendor call - Dell - 5.00 PM
-- PQR - send weekly update for Friday meeting -- OK
12/29/2009:
------------
-- < note down activities as above with short description and final completion tag at the end.>
I hope this simple notepad daily organizer is much more effective than any other tools, though I believe that many of us (project managers) are used to other better tools. However, the textpad is only of the simplest of all tools and easy to manage!
I believe the above tips and technique will be useful for you!!! Please share your comments.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Lessons Learned sessions - effectiveness
------------------------------------------------------
Most of us as Project Managers never forget to conduct "Lessons Learned"sessions during the project close phase and do a detailed report to be presented to the Project Management Office / Project Office and the management with various stakeholders' inputs and feedback points.
It really sounds great and fulfilling when we say that we have closed the project in a much professional way after the Lessons Learned session apart from other administrative closures of the project.
The "Lessons Learned" session is very much a vital information as part of historic projects' database maintained by the Project Office, as we all know. Its an echo of various participants from the business, the performing departments like IT, HR, Legal, Marketing, etc.
If we think deeply from customer's perspective of the time and effort that
are spent during such sessions and the feedback points that are furnished, there is a clear message that voted "Improvement Points / Suggestions" are need to be implemented immediately (OR) at least evaluated by the management (OR) Project Office for future implementation.
The implementation of such "Improvement points / suggestions" from these Lessons Learned sessions would reflect on the maturity of the organization's process adaptability and influences the 'Continuous Improvement Plans' of the department/s and hence the organization/s.
Is there a serious considerations by departments and organizations to implement such "Improvement points / Suggestions"? (OR) they are kept in the historical database of project information systems!
How to improve the scores:
------------------------------------
We value customer, project members, end-user feedback very highly and collected some high rated / voted "Suggestions" etc. Remember that there is high expectation from customer / project members / end users side of the implementation.
To effectively carry out a planned implementation of such "Suggestions", the departments / organizations need to provide adequate empowerment to centralized departments like Project Office and the management need to encourage such bodies to neutrally monitor those suggestions by using a systematically organized database of such "Suggestions". These"Suggestions / Improvement Area points" need to be tagged with a control-number and a Senior Management person of a relevant department has to be assigned a Responsibility.
At the same time, regular updates has to be provided to the initiator of such "Suggestion / Improvement Area points"as a matter of feedback. Such plan needs also to include expected date of implementation, any evaluation if needed, expected % of improvement, productivity improvement % and such metrics to measure the effectiveness of such "Improvement Areas / Suggestions points" that we gather from most of our projects and programs.
If your organization / department is using a different and effective
approach / strategy in implementing such "Improvement Areas" of Lessons Learned sessions, please do share with me / us, and that would help many of us to learn here.
When you share the knowledge with others, it gets refined more and grows itself profoundly, unlike material assets!
I would write about "Customer Expectations" in my next notes.
------------------------------------------------------
Most of us as Project Managers never forget to conduct "Lessons Learned"sessions during the project close phase and do a detailed report to be presented to the Project Management Office / Project Office and the management with various stakeholders' inputs and feedback points.
It really sounds great and fulfilling when we say that we have closed the project in a much professional way after the Lessons Learned session apart from other administrative closures of the project.
The "Lessons Learned" session is very much a vital information as part of historic projects' database maintained by the Project Office, as we all know. Its an echo of various participants from the business, the performing departments like IT, HR, Legal, Marketing, etc.
If we think deeply from customer's perspective of the time and effort that
are spent during such sessions and the feedback points that are furnished, there is a clear message that voted "Improvement Points / Suggestions" are need to be implemented immediately (OR) at least evaluated by the management (OR) Project Office for future implementation.
The implementation of such "Improvement points / suggestions" from these Lessons Learned sessions would reflect on the maturity of the organization's process adaptability and influences the 'Continuous Improvement Plans' of the department/s and hence the organization/s.
Is there a serious considerations by departments and organizations to implement such "Improvement points / Suggestions"? (OR) they are kept in the historical database of project information systems!
How to improve the scores:
------------------------------------
We value customer, project members, end-user feedback very highly and collected some high rated / voted "Suggestions" etc. Remember that there is high expectation from customer / project members / end users side of the implementation.
To effectively carry out a planned implementation of such "Suggestions", the departments / organizations need to provide adequate empowerment to centralized departments like Project Office and the management need to encourage such bodies to neutrally monitor those suggestions by using a systematically organized database of such "Suggestions". These"Suggestions / Improvement Area points" need to be tagged with a control-number and a Senior Management person of a relevant department has to be assigned a Responsibility.
At the same time, regular updates has to be provided to the initiator of such "Suggestion / Improvement Area points"as a matter of feedback. Such plan needs also to include expected date of implementation, any evaluation if needed, expected % of improvement, productivity improvement % and such metrics to measure the effectiveness of such "Improvement Areas / Suggestions points" that we gather from most of our projects and programs.
If your organization / department is using a different and effective
approach / strategy in implementing such "Improvement Areas" of Lessons Learned sessions, please do share with me / us, and that would help many of us to learn here.
When you share the knowledge with others, it gets refined more and grows itself profoundly, unlike material assets!
I would write about "Customer Expectations" in my next notes.
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