AFTERNOON TEA TIP FOR TIME MANAGEMENT SUCCESS***** This is an article by “The Time Man” Peter Turla about Time Management for Project Management. “I used to be a rocket designer for NASA. What follows is a summary of the most import concepts and time management tips that I learned about project management. Understanding and using these concepts and time management tips will save you time and keep you out of a lot of trouble as the project progresses and unexpected things start to come up. One of the biggest time-management challenges to completing a project successfully is to manage the “triple constraints” of the project. A constraint is any major area of limitation on the project. Typically, the big three limitations—the triple constraints—in project management have to do with the time, cost, and scope or quality of the project. To successfully manage the project, first start with clearly defined, measurable objectives. Then figure out which constraint is the most important one, the one that will drive the project. For example, if the project is driven by a tight deadline that can’t be moved, time is the constraint on which you should focus. If you have a lot of time to complete the project, but don’t have a big budget, managing resources to keep costs under control is the constraint on which to focus. If you have lots of time and money and it’s critical that the project have a lot of high-quality features, then it might be OK to spend extra time and money on the project if it’ll help you to include all the features that will make the project a success. Often you’ll be in situations where your manager or the project sponsor wants three out of three of the constraints met. For example, they might want everything completed within a very tight timeline, at a very low cost, with every whiz-bang feature they can think of. If you can’t meet all the demands you, you’ll need to push back a bit and negotiate with your manager or the project sponsor. For example, you might need to educate them that if they really need to meet a deadline, some other constraint has to loosen up. To speed up the process so the deadline can be met, they might need to sacrifice certain features that are time-consuming to design or build, or they might need to give you additional resources even though that might drive the cost of the project up. If meeting the deadline looks impossible, you might tell the project sponsor, “We can meet the deadline if we add additional resources, and those will cost “X” amount of dollars. With no additional resources, we’ll be 5 days late. Which is more important, keeping the project within budget or meeting the deadline? If they’re both equally important, what aspects of the project can we scale back?” In other words, something has to give. If you want it fast and good, it won’t be cheap. It you want it fast and cheap, it won’t be good. If you want it cheap and good, it won’t be fast. Pick two out of three. Once you figure out which constraint has some flexibility (that’s where you’re negotiating and persuasion skill come into play), use that “wiggle room” to meet the demands of the other parts of the project that have more rigid constraints. Let me give you an example of how this might work. Let’s say you’re going to invite a group of friends over to your house and you’d like to cook an elaborate dinner after which you’ll all go to a show together. You want everyone to arrive before 7 p.m. so you can serve everything promptly at 7 p.m. Having that determined time will help you to figure out when to start cooking the various items so they’ll all be ready to serve at the same time. You also want people to start eating at the same time so they’ll have time for a leisurely meal and then can leave as a group to go to the show. You’ve told them that you’re going to cook a special, elaborate dinner so please be on time, promptly at 7 p.m. If something unexpected comes up and causes a delay in your cooking schedule, reexamine the variables in the project that are important for a successful outcome (a nice dinner with friends). In this case, the three major variables are 1) the time you serve dinner; 2) the quality of what you cook; 3) how elaborate the meal is. Each of these is a project constraint that limits the flexibility of what you can do. Determine which of your constraints have the least flexibility or “wiggle” room: 1) dinner served promptly at 7 p.m.; 2) dinner is elaborate; 3) the food is gourmet. If serving dinner at 7 p.m. is critical: a) shorten the preparation time by adding resources to the job, like using more burners on the stove to cook more items simultaneously or ask someone to come early to help you; b) be less of a perfectionist and microwave some of the meal or use bottled salad dressing instead of making your own; c) have a less elaborate meal. Sometimes your role as a project manager means you’ll need to persuade or educate others, and negotiate. At the very beginning of the project it’s important to clearly define the scope and the driving constraints of the project and get agreement on them from everyone involved; then as things come up, you’ll have that initial agreement as leverage to use to educate and negotiate. Plan ahead and get as much early “buy in” on the project as you can. In managing a project, the unexpected almost always happens, and we risk getting caught in the trap of thinking there’s nothing we can do. The key is to expect the unexpected and adapt to the changing conditions in order to meet the overall project objectives. You’ll learn from experience to create “wiggle room” by being flexible and creative when it comes to: 1) the cost of a project; 2) the scope; 3) the timing. There’s more than one road that will get you to Rome.”
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 06:30:00 +0000
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