Project Management’s first phase – The Concept Phase
Project Management Concept Phase the Project Manager and his team must decide whether the project should be taken on or not. To arrive at this decision depends on a number of important factors:
Factors to consider during the Project Management Concept Phase
Is the project in the best interests of the Company? Is this what the Company does, or will the Company be diversifying too much? What does the Company anticipate the break even point of the project to be? What is the Company prepared to spend on the project? What sort of return on investment does the Company hope to achieve? Are there any cash flow problems that need to be taken into consideration? And so on.
Appoint a Project Management Committee
To answer the above questions a Project Manager needs to have broad idea what the project is all about and how it will fit in with the Company’s Mission and Vision statements. A SWOT analysis of the Company will assist in making a decision as to whether the project should go ahead or not. The Project Manager should document his findings and call a meeting with all stake holders to analyze these preliminary findings to decide if the project will go ahead or not. We don’t just blunder forth with a project before doing at least a preliminary analysis of the Company and the Project it wishes to undertake.
If the decision is to go ahead
If all the stake holders are in agreement that the project should go ahead then a Project Management Committee will need to be identified. A Project Management Committee should be setup to administer the Project. Depending on the scale of the Project, the Project Management Committee should consist of at least some of the stakeholders. The Company’s Senior Management should not shirk their responsibility towards the project.
A meeting should be held with all the members of this Committee to determine how often the committee should meet during the Project “Scope and Design” Phase and what penalties if any should be imposed on members who miss these meetings.
Other important ground rules for the “Scope and Design” Phase should be established at this meeting. The Project Manager should chair the meeting and take the lead in making recommendations as to the communication protocols and documentation to be used during the subsequent phases of the Project. These decisions should then be minuted. The minutes should be distributed to all Project Management Committee members as soon as possible.
4 Phases of Project Management
A project can be divided into 4 basic phases:
1.Concept Phase
2.Scope and design phase
3.Implementation Phase
4.Commissioning and Handover phase
Project Management Principles Rather Than Rules
Each of these phases are crucial to the success of a project – but to what extent the Project Manager implements each of these phases depends a lot on the project. A Project manager should keep in mind the principles of the Project Management Methodology rather than the “rules” of the Methodology.
Corporate Governance and Project management
As far as corporate governance goes, a company should outline the principles and guidelines that should be applied to each project undertaken by the companies Project Management Team.
In this way, each project will be handled correctly in accordance with a predefined Project Management Methodology, but at the same time allowing the small projects to be handled speedily without the bureaucracy of the larger projects.
Small Projects and Large Projects – apply Project Management Principles
The larger the project the more controls the Project Manager will need to implement. To what extent these controls are to be implemented should be left up to the discretion of the Project Manager.
For this reason it is important that a Project Manager be guided by principles rather than rules.
To give an example:
A project of rolling out 60 or 70 new computers for the sales staff will probably not require the same amount of testing, change control and bureaucracy as would a project to implement a company wide software roll out of a totally new product developed for the unique needs of the company.
Project management is about choosing your projects carefully, assuming that you don’t have a boss who dictates which projects you will take. The reason is that your failure as a project manager could mean the end of your project management career. Of coarse, employing the correct project management “tools and rules” will mean less chance of failure.
I was involved in a project once that was totally do-able from a project point of view, but the project manager broke just about every rule in the book. Our team (responsible for a small part of the project) would arrive at the weekly meeting armed with our own minute taker. The project manager didn’t see the need to take minutes of the meeting so we ended up taking our own minutes. Needless to say, he is no longer a project manager.
Having said that, sometimes you are given a project that is impossible to complete successfully. It might be a “pick up the pieces” type project, where they have sent the original project manager packing, and now you get the job of miracle man!
Sometimes you need to say NO, for you our sake. When the project has failed it will be your neck on the line, as everyone will have forgotten the fact that you were trying to fix the stuff up.
On the other hand, if you can pull it off, it might look good on your resume – but is the risk worth it?
To fail or to fail!
If you are in the unfortunate position of having a boss who is calling the shots, and he’s given you an impossible project, be very careful about telling him the project will fail. When it does fail, you will get the blame anyway, and on top of it, you will have acquired the reputation as someone who deliberately sabotaged the project to prove a point.
Just do the project – just make sure you do it to the best of your ability. When the reason for failure has been analyzed, at least you won’t be the cause of it.
Project Managers should be able to think for themselves
In my opinion a good project manager needs to be able to think “outside the box”. A Project manager should not be bound by rules and regulations, but rather by the principles of Project Management.
Think Outside the Box
All too often a Project Manager will fail as a leader because he, or she, is bound by the rules and regulations of Project Management. “We must do it this way because this is how we manage a project!” they will say.
But is there not a better way to handle this particular project, and yet still be within the framework of the Project Management Methodology principles? A good Project Manager should be the type of Manager that asks such questions.
Comments (0) 
