How to Improve Your Personal PM Practices?

Project management processes are defined as "the methods taken to complete a project". Put simply, they are the sets of activities that a Project Manager completes to initiate, plan, execute and close projects. Project Managers use processes to manage a project - whether these are personal processes or a common set of processes defined by your organization. You should periodically take a step back to refine your processes so that they become more and more effective over time. 

The process to improve your processes is not so hard. You can boil it down to three steps.

Step 1: Identify Your Current State Processes

It will be hard to improve your processes if you cannot identify them to begin with. The first step to take is to review your current project management processes and answer questions such as:

• Which processes do I have in place to manage my projects?
• Do these processes result in the desired outcomes?
• Who manages these processes?
• Have any issues or weaknesses been identified?
• Are my processes operating efficiently, without hassle?

Ideally, each process should result in the desired project outcome every time, without hassle. If you're not achieving this, then you will want to implement  improvements to improve them. 

Step 2: Identify Future State Improvements

With a clear understanding of the state of your current project processes, the next step is to identify any areas for improvement. Here is one way to do it:

• Look for problems, weaknesses or risks associated with your current processes.
• Compare those processes against the processes defined in the best practice project management methodology
• Identify enhancements/improvements based on the comparison of your weak processes versus a best practice model

By comparing your current processes against a best practice methodology such as MPMM, you can easily identify the areas for improvement. 

Step 3: Implement Process Improvements

Now that you have identified the process improvements, you will want to carefully think about how to implement them. You'll need to:

• Prioritize your improvements based on the intended benefits
• Add the process improvement work to your project schedule
• Communicate the improvements to your project team
• Implement the improvements according to your schedule
• Observe the improvements to see if they've had the desired effect

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Process improvement work takes time, diligence and patience to implement changes that help you to manage projects successfully every time.

Top Project Managers continuously review their processes to make sure that their projects are completed as quickly and efficiently as possible. Regardless of your current level of experience and knowledge, you will gain substantial benefit from performing continuous process improvement. It will certainly help you to achieve project management success.

How to Solve Project Problems?

Having a structured approach to solving problems will help you resolve them more quickly and directly. Guessing the cause of the problem rarely works. You want to not only resolve this particular problem, but you also want to understand the problem well enough so that you can identify the root cause and ensure that this particular problem does not occur again. 

Use the following general process to identify and resolve problems.  

1. Identify the problem or symptom

You should not assume that everyone knows the problem already. Take the time to document the problem in clear terms that everyone can understand. If you cannot clearly document the problem, it will be difficult to solve it. Make sure that you also explain the impact of the problem to the project.

2. Identify the root cause (or causes)

This is the most important step, since you do not want to spend your time resolving a symptom that you think is a root cause. Instead you should be very clear on the root cause and explain how the root cause ultimately results in the problem. If you cannot track the root cause to the perceived problem, you have not taken your investigation far enough. There are a number of issues management techniques that describe how to focus in on the root cause.

That being said, it may be that the root cause is not within your power to resolve and you may be forced to try to solve a symptom. However, you want to still be sure to identify the cause(s) of the problem to make sure you understand if you are solving a cause or a symptom. 

3. Determine alternatives and impacts

The project manager may assign one or more people to determine alternatives. For each alternative, they should also address the impact to the project.

4. Select the best alternative

The project team and appropriate stakeholders can all be involved with determining the best alternative. This may include members of the project team only, or outside stakeholders. 

5. Resolve the problem

A plan is put into place to address the problem and implement the chosen alternative. This could just be one activity or it could be a complex plan of resolution. These activities should be moved into the project schedule to ensure that they are performed

6. Validate the problem is resolved

The situation must be monitored to ensure that the problem is resolved as expected. If the problem appears to be resolved you are done. If the problem or a related symptom still exists, you have more work to do. Return to step 1.

How to build an effective Communication Plan?

There are three types of communication that can be included in a Communication Plan. We find these three categories to be helpful when creating a well rounded Communication Plan. The three types are mandatory, informational and marketing.

Mandatory

This includes any communication that is required by your organization. There is no reason to worry about these or debate their value. If they are required just create them. Examples include:

• Project Status Reports and status meetings
• Meetings with steering committee
• Required reports to shareholders or your Board of Directors
• Government required reports, safety reports, audit reports, etc.

This information is “pushed” (sent directly to) to recipients.

Informational

This is information that you make available to people, but they need to take the initiative to access it. You put this information in a place that people can access and you tell them that it is there. However, it is up to them to seek out and review the information. Examples include:  

• Awareness building sessions that people are invited to attend (these are not meant as training – just to build awareness of the project)
• Project deliverables placed in a common repository, directory, website or library that people can access
• Frequently-asked questions (FAQ)

This is referred to as "pull" communication since it requires the reader to take the initiative to review the information.

Marketing

These communication events are designed to build buy-in and enthusiasm for the project and the solution you are delivering. This communication is especially important if your project is going to change how people do their jobs. These types of projects are culture change initiatives. Examples include:

• Project newsletters with positive marketing spin
• Traveling road shows to various locations to explain the project and benefits
• Testimonials that describe how the project deliverables provided value
• Contests with prizes to build excitement            
• A count down until live date
• Project memorabilia with project name or image portrayed, such as pins, pencils, cups, T-shirts, etc.

This type of communication is “pushed” to the readers.

Summary

The examples above show that project communication can take many shapes and forms. For large projects especially, the project team should be creative in determining how, what, to whom, where and how frequently the communication takes place. If the project is controversial, requires culture change or is political, the positive aspects of marketing communication become more and more critical