Part 1 : What is a "project" and what do I do on one?

For the last few years you've been working at your company on day to day operations and improving things where you can along the way. Now you've just been told that you'll be starting working on the super important "Project XYZ" on Monday. There is a Project Manager, a Project WBS, a schedule, budgets, registers etc. You start to wonder how is this "Project" different from your normal day to day getting things done?

On a project you can expect to be responsible for;

Time
  • Task Estimation.
  • Identifying holidays and other non work times.
 Scope
  • Requirements investigation.
  • Scope Verification.
Quality
  • Checking received goods.
  • Measuring the grade of the product or services produced.
  • Reporting on completeness of your own tasks.
  • Assessing the completeness of others tasks.
 Cost
  • Filling out timesheets.
  • Creating requisitions.
  • Approving requisitions.
Communications
  • Input to or creation of regular communiqués for stakeholders.
  • Consistent communications with stakeholders.
 People
  • Working ethically with other team members.
  • 360 degree reviews of team members (including the PM)
Procurement
  • Materials identification.
  • Creating of requisitions.
  • Vendor assessments.
  • Evaluating quotes.
  • Checking received goods against purchase orders.
 Risk
  • Initial risk identification.
  • Creation of specific risks mitigation.
  • Continuous risk assessment and analysis.
  • Implementation of risk mitigation.
Integration
  • Task management.
  • Issue identification.
  • Involvement in status meetings.
  • Participate in Post Implementation Review (PIR)
Typical expectations of project team members in addition to task management.


If "Task Management" is about getting your project tasks done, what are all these other activities and why are they there? Why are projects different from your typical day to day operations?

In a lot of ways projects aren’t that different at all. At the end of the day, a project is a still about undertaking work for the benefit of your organisation. However due to the unique nature of projects, more effort is required to ensure that the project is successful and is beneficial enough to justify the work. The difference in needs between successful projects and repetitive operational work are significant enough to require a slightly different mindset and often a different methodology.

The accepted definition of a project is "... a temporary endeavour to create a unique product, service or result." [1] Projects are different to operational work in that they have a limited time frame. Projects have a start and finish date. Projects are also different in that they create a unique item or service for the organisation. Building a new gold mine is a project, mining the ore isn’t. Creating a new piece of software to monitor expensive tyres for 200 tonne vehicles is a project, regularly checking the conditions and updating the warranty details isn’t.

At the very core, projects are about completing tasks to create something unique within a certain time frame. If projects are just about completing tasks, why the emphasis that projects are different? Two reasons; Risk Management and Good Governance. Not only must the project be completed by a certain time frame, it should be completed within the approved budget. The project should create something new for your organisation, but it should be something worthwhile. Also the “something new” your project creates should be the product requested when the money and man hours were approved, and should work as well as needed. Costs, scope, quality and risk management are all a part of Risk and Governance, and generally the PM will employ a framework or methodology to address these issues.


Projects can be broken down into two main areas: Risk Management and Governance, and Task Management.

The majority of project team member’s time will be spent doing tasks. The majority of the PM’s time will be spent managing risk and ensuring good governance. PMs who ignore the details of the tasks do so at their peril as do team members who ignore the risk and governance aspects of the project. In short, the concrete tasks as well as the risk and good governance components are equally important to everyone and the success of the project.

In practise there are “Just Do It” teams who just focus on tasks, there are also Project Managers who solely focus on the Risk and Governance side and never walk the floor or site. These types of projects are less likely to finish and if they do finish there will be a lot of unanswerable questions at the end such as; “how much did it cost?”, “is it what we wanted?”, “is it really finished?” In successful project teams everyone contributes to managing tasks, risk management and good governance.

Project Managers and their sponsors are responsible for the correct governance of a project; however estimates and risk registers will never be accurate if they are created by a PM who is locked away in an office somewhere away from the team. Good governance and risk management relies on the project team’s active input at the start and through out the project. Conversely, completing tasks will take up of the project team’s time. The team are the experts who’ll undertake the various work packages and report on the quality once completed. The PM’s role here is to communicate change that may have occurred elsewhere in the project to ensure the correct tasks are being undertaken. Also the PM monitors the team’s performance and funds burnt to ensure there will be enough time and money left to finish the project.

Successful project teams need to be actively involved in the individual tasks as well as the overall risk management and good governance of the project.



Next i'll add some more detail on Task Management and Risk and Governance.


References
[1] PMBOK Guide 3rd Ed, Page 5, PMI