LT TNl coe CTW DRI Naa Define Project } Scope Schedule and Budget Identify Tasks (WES) Fine-tune [ine tune Schedule ‘Assign Resources ) Develop the } Mission Statement Define Processes (Risk, Change, Communication, Quality) FIGURE 2-1 Several planning stens may ‘occur a the same time Far ‘ram, you can work on Ientiina project objectives and projet scope simutane- ‘ously. And you might jump back and forth between steps as Yu learn more about diferent aspects of he projet ifthe problem, objectives, orscope ‘change significant, you may have change the strategy and mission as well Not every project plan reauires detailed write-ups for every component describ this chapter. For ‘example, 8 small project may need only a sentence or two about how you're going to communicate with your ‘wo other team members. Use your judgment to decide how much detail to include. 26 MICROSOFT PROJECT 2013: THE MISSING MANUAL www.it-ebooks.infoThe Benefits of Project Plans A project plan is the road map you use to guide a project toward completion. But it helps you in many other ways, too, from the very beginning to the very end of the project. Here are some of the other benefits such a plan provides: + Getting buy-in. When your project passes your organization's selection pro- cess, you've got a commitment from the customer or project sponsor. But you need buy-in from all the other stakeholders and team members, too. Parts of the project plan—like the mission statement, objectives, and deliverables—help people understand why the project deserves their commitment and what's in it for them. Having stakeholders and team members help you develop the plan is invaluable. People tend to back away from efforts they didn’t help define, and rightly so. In addition, without input from the trenches, your estimates of time and cost could be way off, and the expectations of results impossibly high. Asking for feedback during planning makes people more willing to pull together when they're working on the project + Focusing on the goal. A project plan tells team members what they're supposed to do and where they're headed. In addition to communicating assignments, the plan gives people the background they need to make the right decisions as they work. This focus is good for the project, the team members, and the project manager—you can spend less time on day-to-day supervision, and more time proactively managing the project. + Tracking progress. You can't tell how close you are to your destination if you don't know where you are or even where you're going. A project plan tells you where you're supposed to be at every point ina project so you can compare your actual progress (explained in Chapter 13) to what you estimated. If the road gets bumpy, these comparisons can help you figure out how to get back on track, + Improving performance. The project plan is the baseline to which you com- pare your actual performance (you'll learn how in Chapter 14). It helps you see where you went wrong and what went right. If you communicate how things went to everyone involved in the project, they can do better the next time. Then, archive the final performance information so other project managers can benefit from it as well MESES or rie tan tempat, douniaa 02 Project Pant tam ts Boks Missing CD page at wiv missingmanuals.com/cds, PROJECT CPN ony Rie ane CHAPTER 2: PLANNING A PROJECT www.it-ebooks.info 27DEFINING THE Lite soak Get Enough Planning Time A well-known cartoon shows a manager telling programmers to start coding while he finds out what the customers want ‘You can see disaster coming: The ill-fated programmers are ‘about to do hundreds of haurs of work thatthe customer will, reject as useless. With everyone on the go these days, the temptation to do something is hard to resist, especially when customers or ‘executives are watching impatiently over your shoulder. Buti Vou cave in to the pressure to skip planning, the failed project ‘ends up on yourrésume, not their. Topersuade customers and other stakeholders to give youtime to plan, you have to speak their language. You can compare ‘project planning to the planning activities that executives perform~preparing a strategic business plan, setting up a product launch, or planning the company’s IPO ‘After you wrangle planning time into the schedule, don't forget to document project performance and lessons learned ‘when the projectis complete (page 508) Publicize the reports showing how planning contributed to success, and you'll have ‘aneasier time getting the planning time youneedin te future. lS Defining the Project As Youi Berra once said, “You've got to be very careful if you don’t know where you're going, because you might not get there.” Projects usually get the go-ahead for good reasons, but the motivation for a project may be barely sketched out when the project begins. Before you can work out the details of how you'll perform the project, you need to identify what the project is supposed to achieve Dr. Joseph M. Juran’s definition of a project is a problem scheduled for solution, so identifying the problem you want to solve is usually the first step. A project's mission statement presents the problem in a way that makes people care. Because most problems have more than one possible solution, the project strategy outlines the solution you've picked. From there, you identify all the project's goals, the results it'll deliver, and the assumptions you've made in preparing the plan. The following sections give you an overview of each of those steps. What's the Problem? When you start to identify the problem that needs solving, your colleagues turn into hypochondriacs, overwhelmed with symptoms and making wild guesses at the underlying problem, Just like antibiotics don’t help when you have a virus, the right solution to the wrong problem is still wrong, As project manager, your job is to tease out the real problem from the project’s sponsor, customer, and other stakeholders, Most people offer solutions instead of describing the actual problem. For example, suppose your director says the organization needs a TV ad campaign. You could start planning a series of TV commercials, but does that project have a point? To get. to the problem, start asking “Why?” For example, why TV ads? If the director says 28 MICROSOFT PROJECT 2013: THE MISSING MANUAL www.it-ebooks.infothat donations are drying up, a commercial might help, but it also might not be the best solution. Asking “Why?” a few more times may uncover that the economy has affected charitable giving and competition for donations is at an alltime high—and no amount of TV advertising will correct those problems, In a project plan, a problem statement describes the problem to solve or the op= portunity to take advantage of—not the symptoms or a solution. You might be able to flesh out the problem statement by asking, “What will happen if we con't do this project?” Here’s an example of the right way and the wrong way to state the problem: + Right way: Donations have dropped 25 percent in the last year, and a donor survey identifies the poor economy and increased requests from charities as the top two reasons, If we don’t increase the money raised, we will have to cut some of our programs. + Wrong way: We need a TV commercial to advertise our organization. A problem statement shouldn't include solutions, but sometimes you have to bend the rules, Maybe your organization bet big money on a database, so your project had better use it. For situations like these, include those constraints in the problem statement, and add them to the assumptions section (page 34) for good measure, ‘That way, when you choose a project strategy, you can be sure to take those con- straints into account. BEEN iter stoenadrsoten se tern problems an want aferentresuts Yourjob as roe man ager is to guide the stakeholders to agreement (however tenuous) on what the project wil achieve. When you. work on the problem statement, you're bound to hear a combination of solutions, objectives, and expectations. Write everything down, You may not need this info at the moment, but you wll soon enough forthe sections on objectives strategies, and success criteria Defining the Project’s Goal and Objectives People often don't know what they want, have trouble putting what they want into words, or simply want everything they see (after all, everyone was once a 3-year- old at an ice cream shop). To make matters worse, different people want different things. Identifying project objectives and getting everyone to agree on them is hard work, as the box on page 31 explains. Regrettably, if you try to shortcut this step, your stakeholders will be quick to tell you if they get something they don’t want. The project goal is a high-level description of what the project is supposed to achieve. For example, the goal of the cycling fundraiser is to raise $1,000,000 while minimizing the percentage of management and administrative expenses so more money can go to the charity's programs. Even if its goal fits in a few short sentences, a project can have all kinds of objec- tives. The main objective might be to increase money raised, but the organization might have other objectives, such as streamlining work to save money in other ways Dy oa PROJECT CHAPTER 2: PLANNING A PROJECT www.it-ebooks.info 29Da ‘or implementing new systems so improvements can be shared with other regions. AERTS Project objectives fall into one (or more) of the following categories: + Business. These objectives relate to business strategies and tactics. Whether your executives fixate on increasing sales or extending product life, business objectives are usually the initial impetus for a project + Financial. These are usually distinct from business objectives but closely related, Financial objectives can apply to the entire business or just the project. For ex- ample, a project’s business objective may be achieving a 10 percent profit margin on sales, while its financial objective might be delivering an 8 percent return on investment. The fundraiser’s financial objective is to raise $1,000,000. Another objective that is part financial and part performance (performance objectives are discussed in a sec) is limiting expenses to no more than 25 percent, so that 75 percent of the money raised goes to funding programs, + Regulatory. Many projects have to conform to regulations, and they all have to obey the law. For example, a project to automate electronic distribution of investment info has to follow SEC guidelines. + Performance, Schedule and budget quickly come to mind when you think of performance objectives—finishing before a crucial deadline or keeping costs low to eam a performance bonus, for example, Meeting requirements and matching specifications are other types of performance objectives, + Technical. These objectives may be the type and amount of technology that a solution uses. For example, an emergency broadcast system requires equipment with highly dependable and redundant systems. Ora project may have internal technical requirements like using software that the company already owns. + Quality. When you talk about decreasing the number of errors or increasing customer survey ratings, you're identifying quality objectives—how good results must be. These objectives also give the project quality plan (page 37) targets to shoot for. You also have to prioritize objectives, because a project is a balance between scope, time, cost, and quality. You're almost guaranteed to find that you can’t achieve all the objectives with the time and budget you're given. An overabundance of objec- tives dooms projects to failure. By prioritizing objectives, you can figure out the best ones to eliminate—or at least scale back. For example, the financial objectives are top priority for the fundraising project, so you can't eliminate them. The project stakeholders can help you choose the ones to eliminate. For instance, the director might tell you to wait until next year to work on making the fundraiser applicable to other regions. 30 MICROSOFT PROJECT 2013: THE MISSING MANUAL www.it-ebooks.info