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PMTimes_Nov8_2022

Best of PMTimes: Top Project Risk Management Strategies And Practices

Published on September 24, 2019

 

Every project is attached with a risk of failure.

Hence, it should be your top responsibility to identify and plan ahead in order to avoid these points of failure. A risk can be a threat with a negative impact on the project principles or it can either be an opportunity which leads to a positive effect. But, there are various strategies to deal with both the positive and negative risks when we talk about project management. Project Management includes new IT systems, new products, and new markets or changes in the business environment to take regulatory or competitive actions.

Project risk management is revolving around identifying the threat level of existing business processes. The ultimate challenge for the project manages is to get the expert teams in functional areas who consist of proper knowledge of business processes and systems aligned for achieving new goals. Along with this, it is mandatory to get the required transparency into the activities which are agreed upon for project execution and how to prioritize the issues that surface every phase of the project.

In this article, we will be looking at some key strategies and practices that can be incorporated to reduce the risks and achieve the desired project goal.

 

Differentiate Between Risk Events And Project Risk

It is essential for every project manager to differentiate between both these terms as it helps to analyze the project risk before planning out strategies. A risk event is defined as a set of circumstances that has a negative impact on the project meeting or one of the project goals whereas Project risk is the exposure of the stakeholders towards the consequences of alterations in the output.

Risk Events are a sort of singular incident that can wreck the whole project. You can think about a secret weapon that is dropping out or a mistake in a 3D printer which can postpone making a model. In opposition to this, project risk is progressively formless and considered as an aggregate of all the individual risk events and vulnerabilities. It might be possible that risk event does not result in project failure but the project risk can certainly end up creating disaster. It is difficult to manage the project risk as there are circumstances that happen outside your control which you have not planned for.

 

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Develop Separate Plans For Explicit And Implicit Risk Management

When you deal with the risk events and the entire project risks, it requires the project managers to develop different plans at various levels. One is an Explicit risk management plan which deals with an individual risk event and revolves around identifying, analyzing and responding or controlling the individual risks. Another one is Implicit risk management risk that deals with overall project risk and revolves around analyzing the project structure, content, context, and scope.

Explicit risk management plans by enabling you to make a rundown of the considerable number of segments in the undertaking and the odds of bombing them. This needs to get a more profound knowledge into the past records, industry benchmarks and standard practices of distinguishing an inappropriate thing. On the other hand, the implicit risk management plans are created in the pre-project phase itself where you have to analyze everything besides the individual risks that can lead to the project failure.

 

Different Ways To Identify Risks

As the agency grows so does its experience of risks. After a specific number of tasks, you don’t find that the dangers rehash themselves. It can spare you a huge amount of time on the off chance that you build up a procedure to inventory these dangers when you run comparable undertakings later on. Here, are some variant ways to figure out the risks. It is not mandatory to use all the given tactics but you can use it according to your needs.

Checklist analysis: This approach involves creating a checklist of your present processes and resources. By doing so, you can ensure whether the targets are getting hit or require any further push for the same.

Expert Analysis: In this approach, you need to ask an experienced project member, stakeholders and domain experts regarding the potential risks. Also, you can interview them about the risks which they have encountered in the past projects and get an idea based on their opinions.

Risk Repository: The risk repository ought to turn into the main stop for the risk distinguishing proof procedure. It is a list of all the essential risks that are encountered in finished projects along with their solutions. The ultimate idea is that there can be an overlap in the objectives of the project and also in the risks.

Status report extrapolation: Here, you need to consider all the available reports be its status report, progress report or quality report to determine the extrapolate risk from them.

Wrap Up

Despite the fact that risk management has developed into a perceived control, it has still not arrived at its pinnacle and can get additionally created. We have tried to mention the main areas where you can focus more to ensure control over the project failures and risks. Till then – keep learning!

10 Project Management Tools the World’s Top Companies Actually Use

Netflix uses ProofHub, Uber uses Asana, Sony uses Podio.

 

Almost every successful business uses one or the other project management tool to handle their tasks, track their time, and manage their work in general.

Even numerous studies indicate that using project management tools increase performance and productivity. If you’ve also just started up a business and looking for a variety of tools that could soar your productivity, you’ve come to the right place.

We’ve compiled a list of the best project management tools that are being used by some big names in the world and you should too.

Let’s check them out:

1. ProofHub

ProofHub is one of the best project management tools in the business. It is simple and intuitive with features that help businesses to collaborate and deliver projects faster and better.

Business with remote teams can collaborate effortlessly with seamless file-sharing and effective document management. It supports many languages other than English, namely French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Danish, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Russian, and German.

Pros of ProofHub:
● Define different access levels for team members based on their responsibilities
● Gantt charts provide a visual timeline for tasks
● Online reports offer clear insights into projects, tasks, and resources

Businesses using ProofHub: Taco Bell, Netflix, Disney, NASA, Trip Advisor, Fractal Fox, and others.

2. Trello

Trello is a leading project management software that implements the concept of boards and cards. The cards contain tasks either to categorize things or track the project progress.

Trello is useful to enable collaboration in company by organizing and tracking tasks, files, and information at one place. Plus, you can anytime integrate third-party applications into your workflow to increase its effectiveness.

Pros of Trello:
● Intuitive simple boards, cards, and lists
● Simplifies collaboration
● Get a glance at who is doing what and what still needs to get done

Businesses using Trello: Adobe, Kickstarter, Google, and more.

3. Asana

Asana is a web and mobile application designed to help businesses organize, track, and manage work. The work management tool helps you prioritize, stay focused, and make more time for work that matters the most.

With Asana, you can also monitor the status of all your projects in real time, so you can keep strategic initiatives on track.

Pros of Asana:
● Set priorities and deadlines to plan work effectively
● Follow projects and tasks through every stage
● Create visual project plans to determine progress

Businesses using Asana: Deloitte, The New York Times, Uber, Airbnb, and more.

4. Basecamp

Regardless of how big or small your startup is, Basecamp is exactly what you need to get things done. It combines all the tools you need in a single and straightforward platform that makes work feel like less work.

Whether it’s about communicating effectively or keeping everyone in the loop, Basecamp can do it all for you.

Pros of Basecamp:
● Easily add tasks and other necessary details
● View tasks from every project together on one screen
● Available on the web and platforms like iOS, Android, and Mac

Businesses using Basecamp: PNMR, Novasyte, Animals Medical Center of MidAmerica

 

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5. nTask

nTask is a smart task management software designed to support collaboration, time tracking and monitoring, and project risk management. It’s built around the business needs that lets you do more much than usual.

It is supported by Google Calendar, Outlook, and many other third-party applications. Moreover, it also offers mobile applications for Android and iOS devices.

Pros of nTask:
● Simple and easy-to-use taskboard
● Multiple board views, task comments, meeting management
● Share files and notes easily

6. JIRA

JIRA is a great tool for running business projects that remains extremely popular with software development companies. It could help you prioritize and discuss your team’s work in full context with complete visibility.

What’s interesting with this project management software is that it lets you use an out-of-the-box workflow, or create one to match the way your team works.

Pros of JIRA:
● Interactive and customizable scrum boards
● Reports with real-time and actionable insights
● Automate processes with its robust set of APIs

Businesses using JIRA: Spotify, CISCO, eBay, Square, and more.

7. Wrike

Wrike is a cloud-based collaboration and project management software that scales across teams in any business. Companies can use it to simplify planning, gain visibility, streamline workflow, and also to enable collaboration.

It shows real-time reports and status for all of your team’s projects. Wrike helps distributed teams to discuss projects and tasks details with the full context of the work. You can also tag images and videos to provide specific feedback.

Pros of Wrike:
● Interactive dashboards
● Centralize communication with stakeholders
● Custom workflows, fields and project folder structures let you work the way you want

Businesses using Wrike: Google, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mars, L’oreal, and others.

8. Droptask

Droptask is a visual and intuitive task management software that helps you manage projects, tasks, and to-dos individually or as part of a team. It comes with a neat interface and real-time collaboration features.

The business plan gives you an unlimited access to flexible workspaces, innovative collaboration and integrates seamlessly with your favorite tools. Droptask has made collaboration easier, better, and faster.

Pros of Droptask:
● Kanban-style workflow boards
● Project templates and permission control
● Integration with Evernote, Google Calendar, Outlook, Gmail, iMindMap

Businesses using Droptask: Harvard University, Coca Cola, BBC, Ralph Lauren, and others.

9. Podio

Podio is a customizable work management solution leaders trust and employees love working on. It helps you create a consolidated process to get your teams working in sync.

Podio enables you to keep content, conversations, and processes structured at one place so that you can focus to get more work done. It is a perfect place to bring your clients and external parties to one place and eliminate lengthy email threads and time-consuming file sharing.

Pros of Podio:
● Granular admin capabilities
● Rigorous security standards
● Automated workflows and data visualization

Businesses using Podio: Volvo, Deloitte, Sony, NFL, and more.

10. Monday.com

Formerly known as Dapulse, Monday.com is a simple project management tool that helps you plan, organize, track in a visual platform. It’s quite flexible in approach and usability as it lets you customize your workflow to match different needs of your business.

Pros of Monday.com
● Plan everything visually
● Track progress with multiple views
● Simple and intuitive

Businesses using Monday.com: Discovery, Carlsberg, Philips, Fiverr, and more.

Conclusion

Now that you know about the modern tools world’s leading businesses are using, it’s high time even you should invest in one such project management tool to manage work effectively and get an edge over others in the market.

PMTimes_July04_2022

How To Write A Data-Driven Resume

As business professionals, we know the increasing importance of data-driven decision making in our projects and operations.

 

This article will explain why we need to bring that same approach to resume writing, and how to level up your Project Manager/Business Analyst resume writing skills.

The Importance Of Data

In the business world today, it is hard to come by important decisions that are made in the absence of data to support them. Managers are, understandably, loath to not have evidence stacked up to support a claim or decision that exposes their organization to opportunity, but also risk.

This same perspective can be applied to hiring decisions as well. Are not employees a huge opportunity, albeit potential risk, for any business? A star employee can transform an organization for the better, resulting in a strong bottom line and happier customers. In a competitive job market, candidates need to sell their attributes and accomplishments to hiring managers, who increasingly need to base their hiring decisions on strong evidence, not unlike other operational or project decisions. Show me the data!

What Does This Mean For Your Resume?

For one, your resume needs to be quantitative. Most resumes list work experience and education in a neat table, sorted by date and organization. This is a good start. However, when you drill down into the details (the bullet points) underlying each previous job, the descriptions often leave something to be desired. For example;

  • “Compiled project analysis for company executives”
  • “Managed an organization-wide ERP solution implementation”
  • “Trained support teams on use of new software tool”

What these examples demonstrate is a lack of volume, scale, or size. How is a hiring manager to know if you managed the roll out of an ERP system for a staff of 10, or 2000? What does improved service delivery really mean? That each agent more consistently said thank you at the end of each call? Or were turnaround times reduced by 30%? Look for your ‘wins’ and highlight them with data.

What this can look like:

  • “Comprehensively analyzed and compiled dozens of address, routing, and fuel data points on a weekly cadence, to draft executive reports that could be quickly understood and acted upon”
  • “Managed a 1 year ERP implementation affecting 900 staff, resulting in time savings of 5 FTEs”
  • “Facilitated dozens of training sessions of 5‐25 participants each, achieving an average instructor rating of 4.5/5 from feedback forms”

There are 2 important take-aways from the above examples:

  1. Fully use the real estate provided to you on the page. Your resume should only be 1-2 pages, so use up that white space as efficiently as possible.
  2. The examples use specifics that are quantified.

Examples of other metrics you can use:

  • $’s spent, saved or earned
  • Time taken or time saved
  • Cadence or turnaround time of process or task
  • # of people impacted, trained or involved
  • # of computers/machines updated or provisioned
  • Volume or quantity of materials

 

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Is The Data Impressive Enough?

What if the numbers aren’t impressive, you may ask? When providing feedback on resumes, mentees often state they don’t think their accomplishments sound big or important enough if too much detail is given, as if keeping it vague somehow augments their work. If you don’t think an accomplishment is worth quantifying, remember that hiring managers can also revert to the lowest common denominator, if quantities aren’t provided. You may have concurrently managed 10 accounts worth an average of $10,000. In the absence of concrete numbers, a hiring manager may theoretically guess that maybe it was 4 accounts worth $5000 each.

Sometimes, exploring different ways of telling your data story can make your work history sound more effective too. Maybe you successfully negotiated a $100 savings on a monthly vendor contract. That’s great, but maybe you can re-word it as, “Negotiated a 10% savings on a recurring monthly expense, saving $1000s per year”. Explore absolute versus percent versus ratio metrics for each claim, as sometimes one will sound better than the other.

Internal- And External-Facing Data Points

You may notice 2 distinct metrics types, that we can call internal, vs. external. Often, when we are stuck in the weeds of our projects, we only think of our internal metrics. These could include things like # of stakeholders managed, dollars spent, or groups involved. What are often more impactful, in terms of convincing employers of the significance of your work, are metrics that speak to what your project ultimately accomplished; the downstream outcomes. Sometimes, these data points may not be known for months or years. These could include things like # of new clients, # of people trained, or incremental dollars earned or saved, directly due to actions you took while deep in the weeds of your project. Have a think about your last few projects. What were their downstream outcomes?

Quantify Your Interests

People differ on the utility of a personal interests or extracurricular section of your resume. I’m personally a fan, because hiring managers are hiring people, not robots, and want to know who the person is that they are hiring. Also, hiring managers, like all humans, are subject to nervousness around meeting new people in a formal interview setting. The personal interests section provide great small chat talking points to fill otherwise awkward pauses that can occur before and after the formal questioning part of an interview.

Just like with the other sections of your resume, be specific, and quantified, with your personal life! Instead of;

  • “Organizer of musical festivals”, or
  • “Love travelling and photography”

you could say

  • “Have organized 3 musical festivals with 1000s of participants each”, or
  • “Have traveled in 23 countries, and photographed the Taj Mahal to the fish & corals of the Great Barrier Reef”

Final Thoughts

Lastly, quantifying your resume is an exercise to perform not only once you are looking for your next contract or job, but on an ongoing basis, so that you can leverage the metrics you have formulated for yourself in conversations and informal networking chats.

Good luck on your next application!

PMTimes_June27_2022

Best of PMTimes: 5 Secrets To 5% Increased Profit On Your Next Project

All resources matter on the project.

 

Without all resources working cohesively and effectively together, it can become nearly impossible to effectively and successfully deliver on the project. But beyond that – looking to the revenue level and the profitability on the project… everything affects it, but close management and oversight of it comes down to the project manager. No one entity on the project has the insight, access to info, and overall project knowledge from that standpoint to effectively manage how healthy the project financials are.

Also, not only can the project manager help keep the project stay on track financially, they can also help increase project revenue and profitability through effective financial management, scope management, and customer and team management. Many things do affect all of this – well beyond my list below, I know – but for me it starts with regularly performing these five tasks… my secrets to keeping project revenues high and project profits hopefully higher than expected. Let’s discuss…

Discuss Financials Weekly With The Project Team.

One of the best ways to get the team aligned on managing their own time charging well and accurately on the project is to just let them know it’s very important to you and to the bottom line of the project. Many don’t realize that and they’re just trying to account – usually at the end of the week – for all their time. They know they put in 65 hours on various projects and they are tired and throwing hours down on a time sheet that means very little to them other than a task that is due Friday afternoon or Monday morning. It’s not daily tracking as it should be – in reality it’s Friday afternoon guess work when they would rather be doing anything else.

So, discuss the project financials at each weekly team meeting. Make sure they know how much time charging is expected of them for that week and the following week from your resource forecast and ensure that the two match up. I realize this one action may not add to the profitability of the project very much – but it can keep it from being the rollercoaster ride it often is and can definitely keep the project from unexpectedly going 50% over budget leaving the project manager wondering what went so horribly wrong.

Limit PM Travel.

Believe it or not, not all project customers see PM’s as a vital expense on the project. I had one project client in Texas who just didn’t see the need or value from Day One. Even my lead tech – who was mostly working onsite with the client – said “how can you not like Brad, you don’t even know him?” I got to the bottom of this PM disdain on their part and they were mostly concerned about budget and questioned the need for my $150 per hour project hit. So I immediately looked for ways to manage from afar. I eliminated my travel and reduced meetings to conference and video calls and they loved it. Best of all it added to the profitability of the project without affecting my management of the project or our performance level on the project.

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Limit Team Travel.

Beyond the PM travel, look for ways to limit team travel as well. If the plan calls for onsite quarterly meetings with the customer re-think that. Does the customer care if you do it with a video call, thus saving thousands and adding to the profitability of the project? I realize that some travel can’t be avoided and the customer will need it to maintain a level of confidence and overall happiness in most cases. But it can be kept in check – I’ve worked too many projects where it seemed we were traveling way too often and making the rest of our “productive time” and effort on the project suffer when we could be effectively delivering on the next phase instead of wasting important dollars on what has already been accomplished by traveling just to review it.

 

Manage The Project Scope.

Scope management may be the best overall way to help ensure project profitability. Too many projects go by with extra work added without the necessary change orders in place to cover the work, add the necessary revenue for that work and keep the profitability of the project in place. Those change orders can add nicely to the project profits – I once added $100k in revenue with a high profit margin by selling the need for an onsite business analyst to the project client. The customer loved it, project revenue skyrocketed and profitability took a nice jump as well. Look for ways to do things like this when managing scope.

Tighten Resource Management And Forecasting.

Making your team aware, watching scope, limiting travel, etc. are all great ideas. But the real profitability boost comes from you – the project manager – effectively, efficiently and relentlessly forecasting resources accurately throughout the project engagement. Don’t just come up with a resource forecast and let it sit. Revisit it weekly. Maybe you no longer need an expensive business analyst during weeks 32 and 33 on the the project. Discuss removing the resource from the project for those 80 hours – thus possibly saving the project as much as $12,000 during that downtime for the resource. If you are working on a time and materials basis with the client it may not help revenue and profitability much. But if you are charging more on a fixed price or deliverable basis, your profits could increase dramatically

Summary/Call For Input

You’re the project manager. No one else can keep costs on track and profitability high like you can. Never just phone it in when managing anything that affects the project $$ bottom line. Even one hour a week spent analyzing project financials and re-forecasting the project financials and resource usage can reap huge dividends in the long run in terms of profitability on the project.

Readers – what are your thoughts? Do you agree with this list? What are your secrets and tricks for keeping project revenue and profitability in check and adding to it throughout the project? What frustrates you the most with revenue planning and profitability on the projects you manage?

PMTimes_June21_2022

Understanding Enterprise Environmental Factors

Critical elements in strategic project management

 

As project managers, we can’t control everything.  In every project there are factors beyond our control that can have both large and small effects on the outcome of a project. Market demands, consumer tastes, corporate culture, even the weather, are all factors that can make a difference between project success and project failure.  While these are things we can’t change, we still need to be aware of the elements within our operating environment and what they mean to the projects we manage.

Enterprise Environmental Factors

Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEF’s) are conditions, not under the immediate control of the project team, that influence, constrain, or direct the project, program, or portfolio (Project Management Institute, 2021).  These are things that are beyond the control of the project team, and often the organization in which the project is taking place, that can have effects on the outcome of the project.  Projects take place in settings that can have effects, both positive and negative, on them.  Those factors can exist both inside of the company initiating the project as well as outside of it.  An organization and project team need to identify and consider those factors in order to increase the chances of project success (Arif-Ud-Din, 2020).

Strategic management is the systematic analysis of the factors associated with the external and internal environments of an organization to provide the basis for maintaining optimum management practices  (Thompson, 2010).  It means understanding what is going on both inside and outside of an organization in order to make better plans and decisions about what to do.  Simply put, strategy is deciding what to do to achieve your goals given what’s going on in the environment around you.  Strategic project management means the same thing; making decisions about actions to take in order to achieve your project goals and objectives in consideration of the environment in which the project is taking place.

Just as in general business activities, the operating environment of a project includes both the internal and external environments.  The internal environment includes everything within the organization; organizational structure, procedures, company culture, and so on.  The external environment is the environment outside of the organization and includes everything from customer tastes to legal restrictions, even the physical environment.

In summary, EEF’s are environmental factors, both internal and external, outside of the control of a project team that can have both positive and negative impacts on project results.  The chances of successfully completing a project are increased by strategically considering EEF’s in managing a project.

 

Addressing EEF’s in Projects

Because every project has at least some EEF’s affecting the outcome, every project manager needs to deal with and address those factors in each project that they manage.  All of the major project management methodologies and approaches have their own prescribed steps for addressing environmental factors, but when looked at as a whole, most of them recommend taking the same three steps: 1) Identifying the factors, 2) assessing them, and 3) planning for them.  Based on experience and best practices, this is also the recommended approach to take in addressing the issue of EFF’s in managing projects.  The overall goal is to strive for having a clear understanding of the project environment in order to be better able to pursue, and achieve, the objectives of the project.

 

Step 1: Identifying Enterprise Environmental Factors

From formal and structured assessments to informal examinations, several different methods exist for identifying EEF’s for every project.  The depth and complexity of each method may vary, but the overall goal is still the same, which is to develop as complete of a listing as possible of potential factors in the project environment beyond the control of the project team which may have effects on the outcome of the project.

Here are a few examples of ways to identify EEF’s in projects

PMI List of EEF’s

The Project Management Institute takes a formal approach to identifying enterprise environmental factors.  The table below examines both internal and external factors to be examined as inputs into various project development and execution stages.

PMTimes_June13_2022

SWOT Analysis

Performing a SWOT analysis is a good way to identify EEF’s in a project.  While it is not a categorical list, as provided by the PMI list mentioned above, it does force a project team to examine elements of both the internal and external project environments.  In doing so, a list of EEF’s emerges and can be identified.

PMTimes_June20_2022

One advantage of using this tool to identify EEF’s is that SWOT analysis is very well known and understood by most people, which makes it much easier to conduct.

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PESTLE Analysis

A more rigorous, but still approachable and usable analysis, is PESTLE.  PESTLE is an acronym standing for six macroenvironmental factors to examine that can be used in performing an industry analysis.

P Political
E Economic
S Social
T Technological
L Legal
E Environmental

 

Just like SWOT, the dimensions of the PESTLE analysis are not a categorical list of environmental factors in itself, but performing the analysis also helps to identify the various EEF’s that will affect a project.

Other Methods

Several other structured methods for market and environmental analysis exist; too many to develop a definitive list.  For market analysis, Five Forces analysis can be useful.  If culture is playing a factor in an international project, cultural dimensions such as those from the Hofstedde Institute or the GLOBE project might be useful.

More important than the tool or framework used to evaluate the project or market environment is the ability to identify the factors and how they might affect the projects chances for success.

 

Step 2: Assess the Identified Factors

With the list of factors in hand, the next step in the process is to asses each one.  The depth of the assessment will strongly depend on the needs of the individual project, but the following list can help to provide a basis for assessment that can be built on as necessary.

Each factor should be identified as internal or external to the organization conducting the project.  This asks the question, are the factors affecting success coming from inside or outside.  Does the identified factor increase or decrease the chance of project success?  This means identifying it as positive or negative. A factor can also be rated as neutral if it is simply an item for consideration in managing the project without any inherent positive or negative direct effect.  Is the factor stable or changing?  Assessing the stability of the factor means to examine if it will remain constant or if it is likely to change during the course of the life of that particular project.  Finally, any additional comments on the impact that factor might have on the project should be noted.

PMTimes_June20_2022

Step 3: Plan for the Factors and their Effects on the Project

Finally, based on the assessment of the identified factors, project managers are in a better position to plan for managing the project in consideration of those factors.  Negative factors can be mitigated as best as possible.  Positive factors can be potentially taken advantage of to increase the changes of project success.  Factors likely to change throughout the lifetime of the project can be scheduled for reassessment as needed.  Other impacts can also be considered as appropriate for each factor.

 

Developing a full understanding of a project environment and considering the potential impacts on project processes and outcomes is an important part of strategic project management.  Projects are unique, and so are the environments in which they operate.  Those environments are also likely to change as time goes on.  The ability to consider the project environment is a tool that every project manager should develop and be able to use.