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Jim Russell, RPM Associates, BA Hons, MAPM "Enabling
managers and businesses to implement successful PROJECTS and high-impact
CHANGE through exceptional training, coaching, consultancy and
facilitation services" Projects and
Change Newsletter |
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Contact Details jim.russell@rpm-associates.co.uk +44 (0)1454 415410 Project Management Training 2006 dates going
fast. Book now to avoid disappointment. 10% discount for remaining
dates in Jan-Mar 2006 if booked by the end of December. My highly successful Project Management Training course is
delivered direct to client organisations. Practical
Delivered by a practising project
manager Uses your own REAL projects CHALLENGING Immediate application ADDED VALUE TIPS BEYOND PROJECT
MANAGEMENT CONSISTENT WITH PRINCE
& PM BODY OF KNOWLEDGE The course
focuses on HOW you manage projects as well as setting out processes
consistent with all recognised standards. It covers both the process and
people sides of project management. This is an intensive two-day programme
that is never forgotten and always receives exceptional feedback. It works
for anyone who is new to projects and project management as well as those
seeking to refresh their knowledge and approach. Course satisfaction ratings exceed 95% and tutor ratings 98%! £250 Referral Remember – if
you introduce me to a new client organisation for training or consultancy
work, on completion of that work I will pay you £250 referral commission! Project Initiation Most project failures result from problems
at the outset of a project. Get it right at the start is the most
important project management principle. I can provide expert and
invaluable consultancy guidance during the initiation stage of a project
to help ensure your project starts on a sound foundation. Team Away Days Has your team
lost its focus, common spirit and togetherness? Need an injection of
drive? Need to address change issues? Facing new challenges? An
‘away-day’ can have a massive impact on teamwork, productivity and
focus for your team. Built around the issues you face and with expert
facilitation, this workshop can transform your team. Strategy Workshops Has the time come
to re-assess the direction of your organisation, or part of it? Are you
realising the full potential of your business? I provide expert
facilitation of challenging strategy workshops that can produce quite
startling and invigorating results. Project Coaching Direct 1:1
coaching support to individual project managers on specific projects
provides massive benefits for the individual, the project and the
organisation. It can save substantial costs and time and ensure your
projects deliver the benefits that you organisation needs. Do you know
someone who needs some help on a project? Help them by forwarding this
newsletter or call me to discuss options. Facilitation Independent and
objective facilitation of project workshops, management events, planning
or strategy forums etc can maximise the benefits from such activities. It
ensures full participation and can help resolve key issue areas. Expert
input to planning such events can also make a massive difference. Project Troubleshooting! Have you a
project that needs fast, expert troubleshooting. I thrive on such
challenges and have extensive experience in finding a way forward when
things seem desperate. Project Consultancy Not sure which
direction to go? Want help to set up your project in the way most likely
to get results? Got problems with an existing project? For a fraction of
your overall project cost, use my extensive management and project
consultancy experience to ensure you get the benefits you need. Jim Russell Jim founded RPM
Associates in 1993. Prior to that he was a senior management consultant at
KPMG Management Consulting, and before that an experienced Project
Manager. He has a unique blend of training, coaching, consultancy and
facilitation skills and experience across a wide range of industries and
disciplines. His proven TAILORED programmes always receive excellent
feedback and have a significant impact on anyone who attends them. This FREE, regular e-newsletter
is relevant to anyone introducing change and implementing projects in
their organisation. It is emailed as a matter of course to delegates of my
Project Management Training courses and individuals who have received
Project Coaching. This helps to re-enforce their learning over an extended
period of time and contributes to their ongoing development. It is also
sent to those who may be involved in decision-making regarding Project
Management Training, Project Coaching and Project Consultancy. Each issue
focuses on a different topic. If you do not want to receive this
newsletter, please reply to this email with ‘OPTOUT NEWS’ in the
subject or text. Better still; forward it to someone in your organisation
for whom the content is more relevant. |
DECEMBER 2005 Ten Top Planning Tips If you are facing a significant
project, please remember that the effectiveness of your planning will
probably determine the level of success you will achieve. By planning I
mean the scheduling of tasks required to undertake the project. Here is a
set of tips that may help you. For the many of you who have attended my
Project Management Course, you have been reminded! If you would like help
with the planning of your project, please give me a call. [NB. See the end of this newsletter for a list of
previous issues and topics. If you would like to receive one or more of
these, please send me an email.] 1) Treat planning as a priority Recognise that planning is
important – ‘to fail to plan is to plan to fail!’ Many of us shy
away from planning. The two main reasons are that we prioritise
‘doing’ over planning with our time and also that we actually find
planning difficult. But planning is essential on projects. Without a plan,
how will you know when you can do it by? How can you know what resources
you need? How can you assess how best to do it? How can you convince
others that you can do it? So the first tip is obvious, treat planning as
a priority. 2) Break your project into
stages For larger projects, map out
the plan in a series of stages. The end of each stage represents a key
milestone, usually a decision point. At this time, the deliverables from
the last stage should be signed off, any key changes should be assessed,
the overall health of the project checked and plans for the next stage
agreed. For many businesses, the stages may follow a common structure. For
example, in IT you may have Initiation, Requirements, Design, Build, Test,
Implement, Handover. For a product development project you may have
Concept, Feasibility, Design, Build, Test, Beta Test, Implementation. If
you don’t have established project frameworks like this, you may well
have to create one. Having such a structure makes it much easier to plan
each stage. 3) Use work blocks for top-down
planning As a first step to detailed
planning, it helps to identify ‘areas’ or ‘work-blocks’. Each work
block relates to a number of deliverables and each deliverable needs one
or more tasks associated with it. Work blocks not only help with top-down
planning but they can be used to allocate responsibility and for
monitoring costs. For example, in a publishing project the following would
be examples of work blocks: Feasibility, Commissioning, Editing, Design,
Production, Web Service, Marketing, Pricing, Sales, etc. To check whether
you’ve identified all the key work blocks, list all the
‘stakeholders’ on your project and make sure you have a ‘home’ for
each of the ‘deliverables’ that they have an interest in. ‘Project
Management’ itself should be a work block, and depending on the degree
of ‘change’ issues that exist on your project, ‘Change Management’
may also be a useful one. 4) Planning strategies At the start of a project you
cannot plan all the future stages out in detail, so for high level
planning you will make some assumptions. However, it is a very useful
practise to put future planning activities into your plan. For example,
lets say you are going to need to do some technology testing later in your
project. This can be achieved in many different ways and needs a lot of
preparation and planning. So well before you need to start the actual
testing, put a task in your plan called ‘Produce Testing Strategy and
Plan’. This ensures that it won’t be forgotten and that you have
plenty of time to put facilities and procedures in place before you need
them. 5) Involve others in the
planning Plans need to be lived. They
need to be owned. Ownership comes from being responsible and being
involved. Make ownership of different parts of your project clear and
involve the ‘owners’ as much as possible in the development of the
plans. Imposing plans rarely works and the chances are that they know more
about what needs to be done in their part of the project than you do. 6) Take care with presentation Make plans easy to understand
and in the most appropriate format for whomever is going to use them. For
example, senior management will probably find it easier to relate to a
simple list of key milestones rather than a complex, multi-page gantt
chart. And remember to label your tasks clearly. It should be easy to
understand what each task means. 7) Make your plans realistic There is no point in having a
detailed, coloured and impressive looking plan if the content is not
accurate or the timeframes are unrealistic. The whole point of a plan is
to identify how long the project and the different tasks will take so that
you can manage it through its life. If it’s not realistic and achievable
there is no point. It is not an academic exercise. Also, make sure you are
realistic about how much time you and others can really commit to a single
project. Most of us are working on more than one project at a time and
have other responsibilities too. It makes a massive difference to a plan
whether someone can devote four days or half a day to a project. 8) Build in contingency Common sense tells us we will
not identify everything and that some activities will not go as we
expected. To this end, it is only sensible to build in some contingency.
This will increase our overall chance of success, particularly as time,
whether rightly or wrongly, is often viewed as the most important measure
of success. So make sure you’ve built in some contingency into your
timeframe. The amount will vary according to your overall assessment of
risk. 9) Use your plans to estimate
resource needs Planning helps us estimate the
level of resource that we need. Many plans are roughly estimated in terms
of elapsed time, eg. ‘I think that will take 4 weeks.’ If you build
actual estimates of effort into your plan, you can identify the level of
resource that you need. Not only will this help in your negotiation for
resources, but it will also enable you to estimate the resource cost for
your project so that you can properly evaluate the overall cost benefit. 10) Use software for the right
reasons Planning software can really
help, but it can also hinder. If you are going to use software, consider
the following. 1) Do I need to build in complex dependency links between
tasks? 2) Have others on the project got access to the software? 3) Is the
plan likely to change much during the project? 4) Have I time to get
training in using the software? 5) Is my project going to take more than,
say, 6 months? 6) Will I be spending a lot of time planning? If you answer
yes to most of these questions, then the chances are that using planning
software will make a big difference. Otherwise, you are likely to resort
to more simple task lists and perhaps spreadsheets. Please remember that
being a project manager does not mean sitting behind a computer drawing
immaculate plans. A plan is but one tool of the project manager’s tool
kit. You also need to make sure the tasks on it are actually done! Where software makes the
biggest difference is that you can build and then retain the links or
dependencies between tasks. If you then need to change a particular task,
for example extend its duration, the other tasks automatically adjust
without you having to change their dates etc. This is also useful when
trying to optimise a plan. Microsoft Project is probably
the most commonly used planning software but there are others. See www.project-management-software.org
for a selection. Web based collaborative tools that have planning,
document storage and communication tools are being increasingly used.
Examples can be found at www.projectplace.co.uk
, www.eproject.com, and www.basecamphq.com
. Such tools are particularly useful where teams span multiple sites and
countries, and external suppliers are involved but cannot have access to
your internal networks. Please make sure that your
project plan is sorted! I would be pleased to discuss
with you any areas of concern that relate to this or other project or
change management topics. I provide expert training, coaching and
consultancy in project and change management. Average tutor satisfaction
ratings rarely dip below 100%! I also provide help in strategy
development, both via facilitation processes and more direct consultancy.
Please call me on 01454 415410 to discuss these or any other issues or
opportunities that your organisation faces. And don’t forget, all my
services come with: §
Proven methods and approach, tailored to your
business §
Money back guarantees to remove the risk §
Free ongoing telephone and email support to
delegates of training and coaching programmes §
Free Projects and Change e-newsletter to all
delegates to re-enforce learning ©
COPYRIGHT RPM ASSOCIATES 2005
PREVIOUS NEWSLETTER TOPICS If
you would like any of these re-sent, please email me with your request and
the letter of the topic shown. If there is a topic you would like covered
in the future, please let me know. A.
Managing Stakeholders B.
IT Projects from Business & IT Perspectives C.
Managing Multiple Projects for an Individual D.
Managing Multiple Projects for an Organisation E.
Taking Responsibility F.
The Human Factor G.
Key Principles H.
So What’s Wrong with Problems I.
Quality Improvement Projects J.
Sponsoring Projects K.
Ten Summer Tips L.
A Positive Attitude to Risk M.
Don’t Just Rely on Process N.
Balancing Management of Change O.
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