Tag: Technical Project Management

5 Team-Building Activities to Enhance Employee Performance

Written by Harry Conley on April 22, 2019. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on 5 Team-Building Activities to Enhance Employee Performance

In searching for effective measures to boost employee and team performance, team-building activities have proven to be divisive.

Some see the inherent value in such exercises, but others see them as expensive folly, resulting in a jolly social outing but little more. Like anything else, value lies in the team-building activity being suitable and well-organized. With that in mind, here are five team-building themes that should really help to advance staff output.

Get out and get active

The value of getting active far exceeds the limits of improved work productivity. No matter what your line of work, getting up and getting out will take your employees out of their familiar everyday surroundings, and also take many out of their regular work comfort zones. Popular activities here include nature walks, orienteering sessions, or a regular sporting event such as softball or bowling. Whatever the activity, make any objective inclusive and team-oriented instead of competitive, which can have detrimental results. If you see that the activity is proving a particular struggle for one or more of your staff, then mix it up or build in elements which enhance the group dynamic.

“The key here is to really identify the challenges your employees face on a daily basis, and select an activity that mirrors those challenges and seeks effective means to overcome them. The more the employees can connect the exercise to their daily task, the more value will be added,” states Bianca Larsen, a team leader at Last Minute Writing and Writinity.

Cultural appreciation

First, a warning. Anything that actively involves breaking down social and cultural barriers contains an element of inherent danger, so think carefully before you proceed. Yet on the other hand, the rewards here are tangible. The idea is to create situations which actively encourage staff to highlight their differences, be that culturally, or even regarding their likes and dislikes. An example here would be a food party where all employees bring a typical dish from their family, or a dress down day where employees are encouraged to wear something traditional from their culture.

“The secret here is to unlock the invisible barriers that exist in all situations where there are groups of people from different backgrounds. Build trust and understanding, actively promote cultural appreciation, and the group dynamic will instantly respond, sending performance into a different stratosphere in most cases,” adds Harry Hughes, a business writer at Draft Beyond and Researchpapersuk.

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Get talking

Communication is a key element to any successful team, be that on the sports field or in the office. A team that has failed to unlock its potential is a team that doesn’t communicate effectively. So, what can be done to rectify this wrong? Get your staff talking, but not as they normally would. Take them out of their normal environment and out of their comfort zones by debating a number of diverse and eclectic subjects. Ideas here could include a debate-team scenario, or even a discussion where individuals must support standpoints they normally wouldn’t. It would perhaps be mindful to avoid the normal conflict areas of religion and politics, but even these subjects are not off limits if you trust your staff to be constructive in voicing their opinions. Just ensure everyone gets their say, and that opinions are always sought, not just delivered.

Have some fun

A vitally important element to team-building activities is having some fun. If the activity proves to be otherwise, you will quickly lose the buy-in from the key stakeholders – in this case your employees. There are countless fun activities that can be initiated for the purpose, from fancy dress parties to ‘escape’ scenarios where the team must work together to escape a locked room, for example. Activities which involve constructing something or creating something tangible are always worthwhile and enjoyable, while cooking something together which can then be shared is always a winner. The reality is that if your staff are not enjoying the experience, they won’t want to be there, and if they don’t want to be there, they won’t engage. Engagement in what they are doing is crucial to any activity: something that should always be applied in the office as well as out.

Get quizzing

This is a firm favorite going back many years. People, on average, just love pointless trivia, so setting up a regular staff quiz night in a relaxed environment can be a sure winner when looking to enhance staff morale and productivity. Just be sure to mix up the questions and the teams, and in general steer clear of talking shop, although a cheeky work-based round can have its merits too. Be careful not to overly stoke the competition, but keep the eye firmly on the aspect of fun, and this can be an enjoyable and rewarding exercise.

About the Author

Content Editor Harry Conley is a man of many talents. As well as his work for LuckyAssignments and GumEssays, he is involved in the development of training and workflow activities to enhance the ability of writers, always seeking to unlock potential along the way. Another string to his bow is his interest in the provision of supplementary materials and instructional support for contributors.

Global Project Portfolio Management

Written by Thomas Silvestri on April 1, 2019. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Global Project Portfolio Management

In 2007, Purcell and Hutchinson proved there was a direct correlation between an individual’s personality and a successfully delivered project.

A report in the Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management found that to be successful, project managers need to demonstrate extrovert and perceiving personality traits (more about that below). While noted project management researcher Lynn Crawford stated in 2001 that once a project manager had achieved an entry level of project management knowledge (yep, entry level), then more knowledge doesn’t make them more competent. Prof Crawford concluded: ‘It’s their personality and leadership style that does.’

Barely a week goes by without reading quotes from luminaries such as Drucker, Godin and Peters about just how vital it is. Today’s modern IT PMO governance are superior delivery experts in project driven delivery, technology powered, business centric, and BI enabled. IT leaders must embrace constant pressures, changes, and innovation. The capital investment portfolio and primary decisions criteria for which programs and projects are funded remains a mystery for most IT departments lack of visibility to the decision-making processes of their corporate boards and CEO’s.

On average, over 50% of projects will fail as businesses are unable to sense and respond to the project risks and challenges for superior implementation causing a massive capital leakage across all industries. The tracking of performance and accountability provides a means for
IT governance process and policy control, with no financial functions capturing the activity-based costing expenditures that account for the millions of dollars wasted on failed projects annually.

The Standish Group – Project Success Factors

The 2018 Chaos Report identified three key success factors for projects as:

Executive Sponsorship
Emotional Maturity
User Involvement

All true and all within project sponsor and project manager control. In the past, organizations have argued that the leadership ability of project sponsors and managers is hard to measure and provide feedback on a continuous basis.

Project Management Institute – The Report

Pulse of the Profession report: “We saw declines in many of the success factors we track. Even more concerning, the percentage of projects meeting their goals—which had been ﬂat for the past four years—took a signiﬁcant dip.” The report, however, then went on to say that to resolve this dip, “organizations need to shift their thinking and embrace project management as a strategic competency for success.”

Overview

IT Governance and project management industry reports provide information on the status of the project itself, however if I wanted to know how a project was really going in financial terms, I had to get out and speak to the stakeholders, budget analysts, and related administrators within the organization.

Early warning signs that a project was failing and the project is in jeopardy of losing capital:

Unhappy project team
Lack of executive sponsorship
Dissatisfied or disengaged stakeholders
Lack of collaboration
Lack of communication
Disorganized meetings

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These are all elements of the emotional maturity of a project sponsor and manager and are usually the things uncovered when teams are asked to provide their ‘gut feel’ as to how things are going. These are also the things talked about in the kitchen or staff room long before a project fails and yet are rarely picked up or resolved.

CEO and CIO –A Global Disconnect

The world’s largest companies say they plan to do everything it takes this year to gain a competitive edge in their markets. In the meantime, their CIOs are still stuck trying to be the best darn technology providers they can be. A major disconnect between CEOs and CIOs? Haven’t we heard this one before? Well, yes. But Gartner Inc. analyst Mark McDonald points to fresh statistics from the Stamford, Conn.-based research firm that suggest the perennial disconnect has more urgency, especially at companies trying to grow faster than the market. The report surveyed 1,400 CIOs at organizations with an average IT budget of $90 million.

PPM Business Performance Outlook

2010-2015 Resulted in 5 years of the worst PPM performance on record
TCO increases dramatically while PPM performance levels dramatically decreasing
CXO Cultural: CEO/COO/Business managers do not value IT as peer to peer
CIO have become “order taker” managers of business
PPM managers are humiliated
30% of global PPM delivery success rate (70% failure rate)
25% of global investment leakage for sunken costs of ca. $125M per $1B invested
50% of CXO’S Don’t Value Project Management

Key Project Management Challenges

Lack of Risk Structures: No risk calculation for enterprise management plan and assessment for the outcome of the project deliverables.
Lack of Proactive Issues and Resolutions: No coordinated effort on the feedback to close loop of all critical issues and resolutions path.
Poor Requirements Building: Business workflow process and business operational models are not documented with WBS details.
Change Implementation Standards: SOP’s playbook for performance, education, training, development, investment for the enterprise
Develop Governance: Establish an optimal process for making decisions and assigning decision rights. Identify and engage stakeholders. Agree on authority and flow for decision making. Implement and set up feedback mechanisms.
Drive Change Management: Set up a system to communicate ideas via multiple channels. Get buy-in from stakeholders at all levels. Assess progress, and drive stakeholder commitment to the change. Be sensitive to the amount of change PPM efforts will entail.
Execute Business Goals: Optimally operate the initiative in accordance with business goals. Update and drive new elements of the initiative in response to changing business requirements.
Continuous Improvement Processes Post Production: Measure how the initiative has affected business outcomes. Seek feedback from stakeholders. Drive improvements through process changes and upgrades.

Modern PPM Approach: New Methodologies

Project Driven, Technology Powered, Business Centricity, BI and Analytics

Insight Driven
Proactive data-driven based on competitive advantages
Collaborative
Creating cultural of social project success and teamwork for better outcomes
People-Centric
Alignment of diverse skills sets, with project delivery requirements
Ultra-Efficiency
Project efficiency of personal execution and solutions
Control
Single source of accountability and track performance profitability for monitoring the control mechanics.

The Future of Project Management

Written by Jack Roberts on March 13, 2019. Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on The Future of Project Management

Project management is an integral function across all industries and organisations.

With the rise of globalisation and digitisation, there is an increasing demand for skilled project management professionals to manage and lead projects on budget and on time. Principles and practice in project management need to evolve in line with an increasingly digital economy. But what does this mean for the future of the industry?

‘Projects are proliferating globally, and it’s projected that, over the next decade, organizations of all sizes and types will need nearly 88 million people working in project management roles.’ PMI 2017

Digitisation

Emerging technologies have revolutionised the project management industry and transformed traditional practices. The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning has provided us with valuable data and insights that can transform projects and consumer experience. The Internet of Things (IoT) is defined as ‘the network of devices such as vehicles, and home appliances that that contain electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and connectivity which allows these things to connect, interact and exchange data’ and by 2030, Gartner has predicted that 30% of our conversations with technology will be through conversations with smart machines.
What effect will this technology have on the project management industry? As all PM’s will know there are usually several different technologies in use at the same time on a project and depending on the size and scale of the project it can be hard to manage. The IoT will allow PM’s to fully integrate their equipment and create a network of connected devices that can connect with each other. In construction for example, by fitting machinery with IoT sensors that can communicate with one another, PM’s will be able to retrieve real-time valuable insights and data that can rapidly increase efficiency and waste.

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Challenges

Successfully executed projects can lead a company to succeed in this competitive marketplace, and the correct use of technologies such as IoT and machine learning can dramatically improve overall project efficiency. However, this doesn’t come without its challenges. As with any emerging technologies, some of them are still in their infancy and technical problems can arrive that can have a knock-on effect on an entire project. Traditional workplaces are transforming, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the individuals with the technical expertise to manage these technologies are transforming at the same rate. The project management industry is currently facing a skills shortage, and project management professionals will need to upskill to stay competitive and ahead of the curve.

Lifelong Learning

A commitment to lifelong learning in the project management industry has a variety of benefits such as upskilling, career progression and broadening networks. A Master of Project Management can offer knowledge and skills that can immediately be applied in the workplace. Covering topics such as procurement and project management, quality control and risk and portfolio and project management, project management professionals can increase their career opportunities and annual salary. In a recent Project Management Institute (PMI) survey it was found that project management professionals in the USA that possessed a master’s degree could increase their salaries by 13%.

The Key to Delivering Success: Project Assurance

Written by Greg Bailey on February 25, 2019. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on The Key to Delivering Success: Project Assurance

Project assurance is a process that allows project stakeholders and project managers (PMs) to assess the risks and strengths of a project.

By outlining key threats, objective success criteria, and adequate project controls with project stakeholders, PMs can create a stronger infrastructure to increase the chance of success.

For projects with high financial value, project assurance is particularly beneficial, since it prevents overspending – but the concept can work for a project of any size. This blog will explore the key benefits of creating a formalized project assurance strategy.

A definition of project success

When undertaking a project, PMs should establish clear goals, so it’s easy to see what to deliver and when. This will establish how they prioritize work and how they report to stakeholders. Keeping all stakeholders united by common goals requires open communication. If a project doesn’t have goals that match their organization’s wider strategic goals, or that don’t fully meet stakeholders’ expectations, it risks failure.

To create objective criteria for a project, transparency is necessary. As well as objectively deciding whether the outcomes of a project are worth the expenditure, project assurance establishes the metrics by which project success will be judged. A project assurance team, consisting of stakeholders and PMs, can establish criteria for project success based on realistic factors like budget and resources. This helps project managers understand the criteria they’re working with, helping them deliver successful projects.

Risk monitoring

During a project, controls must be put in place to mitigate risks. Risk prevention is a priority for PMs and stakeholders alike. This requires careful examination of every potential threat to a project, including budget, supplier, or regulation. If threats are not identified and planned for, a project can be quickly derailed and doomed to failure.

Project assurance identifies all potential risks within a project.

These can be split into three categories: business, project framework, and execution. Project stakeholders are responsible for managing external factors concerning the business, so project framework and execution are the areas that PMs can have greatest influence over. The framework of a project outlines the structure and resources, and execution outlines the tasks and overall scope of work within the project. Delegating responsibility for risk monitoring in this way ensures greater accountability within projects.

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Improved stakeholder expectations

Stakeholders have many concerns outside of an individual project – they’re responsible for wider business concerns and larger decisions. They don’t have time to micromanage every detail of a project’s progress. For this reason, it’s essential that a PM understands exactly what the specific deliverables and expectations of a project are. If these aren’t properly communicated, stakeholders will miss key project milestones and may not be happy with the finished project.

Increasing stakeholders’ visibility of a project helps establish communication about what’s expected and when. It’s easier to track success with solid, data-based metrics in place. To simplify reporting to stakeholders, a powerful tool that helps you collect resource and wider project data should be implemented. Project assurance includes setting regular checkpoints at which the project should be reviewed – these will identify any potential risks to the project, and check it stays on time and on budget.

Avoiding scope creep

Projects fall prey to scope creep when their goals are ill-defined, or their plans aren’t solid enough. Scope creep is when the deliverables of a project are increased midway through a project. A project gets more complex by adding extra work and resources, and it’s unwise to try and deliver more than was agreed in the initial plan.

Using project assurance can help a PM deliver project success, because the scope of the project is established in a much more structured way. Getting upfront approval of the project’s goals and success criteria from stakeholders greatly increases the chances of project success.

Supporting projects with the right technology

A project assurance strategy requires a lot of organization for all those involved. In order to minimize unnecessary work, the most simple and effective tools need to be selected to support a project. For stakeholders and PMs, the easiest way to track a project’s progress is through resource management software – users are able to:

Create a central pool of resources, creating greater visibility of not only one project’s resources, but all of an organization’s resources
Simplify data entry by synchronizing the software directly with data depositories, reducing administrative work whilst improving data quality
Model and forecast data to make better informed project decisions
Run alternate project scenarios to test potential outcomes
Create flexible project plans to safeguard against project failure

To keep a project running smoothly, you need to arm yourself with the best quality tools. With the right resource management software and a good project assurance strategy, you’re destined for project success.

The Internet of Things and the Future of Project Management

Written by Mike Morton on January 30, 2019. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on The Internet of Things and the Future of Project Management

The Internet of Things, or IoT has evolved from its rudimentary purposes into an invaluable mechanism. It has found application in a host of industries.

Construction, engineering, and software development, among others, are areas where IoT is proving to be an indispensable asset. In its infancy, IoT was more of a novelty mechanism. With IoT, your refrigerator could notify your grocer when you run out of milk. Which is all well and great, but there had to be something beyond that. And there was.

Today, devices and systems are an integral part of any project. Everyone, from team members to managers, has come to rely heavily upon a plethora of devices and software in order to perform their job effectively.

Projects managers in all these sectors continue to delight in IoT’s capacity for increasing the connectivity of their systems and in turn, the efficiency of the processes involved. Here’s a widely quoted number: 20.4 billion. According to Gartner, this is the number of connected devices which will be in use by 2020.

Let’s delve further into how the Internet of Things will shape the future of project management.

1. Reduced Workload for the Project Manager
  Starting with the most obvious effect of IoT enabled devices to project managers: it reduces their workload. Especially when it comes to gathering and organizing data.
  Before, the project manager had to manually gather data, status reports and more from each element involved. Say, you’re an IT Project Manager. You would be stuck collecting data and subsequently the reports for each system. It could take days, maybe even weeks, to compile reports for a single department.
  When the systems are connected via IoT, project managers will not be wasting their time collecting crash logs, maintenance reports and the like just in order to assess the situation. They would be getting steady updates from the very devices they are supposed to keep track of.
2. A Real-Time, All-Encompassing View
  When combined with other technologies such as project management software, IoT can enable project managers to coordinate the various phases of the project. IoT gives project managers greater visibility into specific elements of each phase. It also increases foresight. Before, it would be impossible to predict exactly how a project would turn out. But IoT makes processes more agile, and with the increased scope of observation there is an opportunity to detect problem areas and glitches before they turn the whole project into a failure.
  For projects which have anything to do with construction, manufacturing, maintenance, and the like, this is a vital function being performed by IoT sensors.
  The smallest detail is made visible when IoT devices are empowered to access relevant areas. This makes it easier for various stakeholders to collaborate or take decisions in real time.
3. Making Data More Accessible and Actionable
  As previously mentioned, IoT enables faster collection of data. It’s a hallmark of what makes projects truly agile, despite there being a greater number of touchpoints to collect data from. It provides a steady stream of relevant updates from the relevant system to the appropriate team members. The data is made instantly actionable, as the trends are made visible accordingly. This can be true whether you’re integrating your IoT devices with a simple task management software or with big data analytics tools. There is no longer a need to wait for a phase of the project to be completed before the team can gain insights into what needs to be corrected or improved.Data regarding the smallest element can be accessed by team members easily. It can also be cross-referenced against data from previous projects involving the same subject. This makes for more accurate predictions, and allows the team to avoid the pitfalls that were encountered in the previous iteration of the project.
  The speed with which updates are made available ensures that the right decision can be taken faster, avoiding project failure.

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Project Execution Made Seamless
Yes, IoT makes communication between systems lightning quick. It certainly goes a long way towards making project execution faster and more accurate. However, it also has another effect. It improves the speed and quality of the communication between the human elements of the project, namely the team members and the project manager. Due to hyper speed reporting, IoT gives team members the opportunity for better monitoring and control as well. And it’s not just team members, but other stakeholders as well. Management and other stakeholders can just as easily receive relevant updates on any project, removing the need for unnecessary meetings for minor updates or changes. It saves everyone’s time, but keeps all relevant stakeholders in the loop at all times.
It makes collaboration between various stakeholders more effective and less time-consuming.
Thus, project execution is made seamless by virtue of improved communication between all elements of the project, including the human elements.
Evolution of the role of the Project Manager
Owing to the changes in the very ecosystem of projects, there will be a significant shift in the role of the managers handling these projects. There will be a shift in the kind of maintenance plans that managers will have to develop for their projects. Because of IoT sensors are always “on”, the focus shifts to preparing long-term plans for monitoring and management of the project elements. This is what the project manager has to worry about now. There will also be greater need than ever before to be on top of security with IoT devices. These devices hold tons of valuable data, more of which is being generated every other minute. Moreover the connectedness to other systems such as document management software or CMS, makes IoT insecurity a real threat. Therefore, security will also be a bigger priority for project managers who want to avoid DDoS attacks that are caused by IoT insecurity.
Project managers will function as the integrators of IoT with various organizational heads. Again, as things become more connected, the onus for ensuring that such a development yields better results, rather than the investment going to waste. He has to make sure that the connectedness is reflected within the workforce as well.

Conclusion

The Internet of Things is here to stay, there is no doubt about it. The applications of this technology are endless, be it in business, science, manufacturing or construction. It’s the reason why the global IoT market is expected to reach a $1.1 trillion valuation by 2025. Project managers across all relevant segments would do well to re-examine their role as well as the changing dynamics of projects before IoT inevitably becomes commonplace. The points mentioned in this article give a comprehensive view of the changes that they can expect in the future, how it will benefit their teams, and the pitfalls they should avoid so that IoT investment actually pays off.