BSBPMG510A

Administer and monitor project

Reading

Overview 3

The 5 phases in a project 4

The organise phase 5

Obtaining resources 5

Recruiting personnel 5

Identifying the skills you need on your team 6

Selecting the right candidates for your team 6

Developing your team 7

Assigning all project tasks 8

Communicating with stakeholders 8

The control phase 10

Team leadership 10

Leadership styles 11

Controlling the project 12

Why are project controls necessary? 13

Quality control 14

How do I manage problems? 16

Find the real cause of the problem 16

Keep an eye on the risks to your project 17

Change management 17

What records do I keep and when do I do this? 18

Small projects 19

Larger projects 20

Information to include 20

What goes in the project report? 21

Acknowledgment:

Adapted from the UpFront! Toolbox (601) © Commonwealth Australia 2004.

Overview

All of your planning will be wasted if the plan is not implemented and monitored properly. In this reading we will look at the elements that lead to the successful implementation of a project: recruiting the right team, obtaining resources, monitoring and assessing the project, and managing risk.

For a project to be successful administration and monitoring systems need to be established early in the life of the project. An understanding of these systems must start in defining stage when formulating the scope of the project. These systems should then be detailed in the project plan. It will be up to the project manager then, to make sure that these systems are maintained throughout the project.

Administration is essentially the management of all the activities that allow a system or organisation to function.

There are many major and minor procedures to sort out. The budget needs to be managed and measures for accountability need to be set in place. You need to establish work flow patterns, and there will be day-to-day office work to be done.

Administration also includes the organisation, attendance and taking of minutes at meetings. It includes management of correspondence, ensuring that project files are well structured, appropriately stored, named and maintained, and there is a regular review of processes for improvement.

In a project, there is a tendency to take administration duties for granted, or to resent them, and leave these tasks for someone else to do. However, ignoring them can lead to major problems, particularly when something unexpected happens, or when a dispute arises.

Some of the systems that may be required for the successful management of projects include systems for:

·  planning and monitoring

·  financial management including, budget allocation/funding, income generated and expenditure

·  record keeping of correspondence, surveys, test results, and contracts

·  to record time allocated and spent on each aspect of the project as well as reports of progress, performance against milestones and project outcomes

·  archiving and management of documentation, samples, prototypes etc

The 5 phases in a project

There are five general phases in a project:

1.  initiate phase

2.  plan phase

3.  organise phase

4.  control phase

5.  close phase.

This reading takes a close look at the organise and control phases.

Major activities that occur during each project phase

Initiate / Plan / Organise / Control / Close /
Define the overall project goal / Develop a detailed task list / Obtain necessary resources / Lead and support the team / Complete final deliverables
Identify all stakeholders, their needs and expectations / Estimate all task times and all costs / Recruit necessary personnel / Establish control tools and methods / Write and issue a final report, close the accounts, hand over project files
Identify the project objectives / Arrange the best sequence of all tasks / Organise and lead the project team / Monitor the project plan and make any necessary corrective actions / Release all resources
Identify initial work and resources and basic milestones / Develop a workable schedule and identify critical milestones / Assign all project tasks / Assess and implement change / Obtain stakeholder acceptance and signoff
Identify all constraints, assumptions and risks / Write a detailed project plan and obtain approval from stakeholders / Communicate with stakeholders and all necessary parties / Prepare and distribute status reports / Evaluate the project

The organise phase

In the organise phase you will:

·  obtain resources

·  recruit personnel

·  organise and lead the project team

·  assign all project tasks

·  communicate with stakeholders and all necessary parties.

Obtaining resources

There are seven fundamental resource types that are required to implement almost any project. The actual quantity of each resource should be identified in the detailed work breakdown structure (WBS) and schedules that make up the project plan.

The seven fundamental types of resource are:

  1. people
  2. money
  3. equipment
  4. facilities
  5. materials and supplies
  6. information
  7. technology.

Always start with the people first. Other materials and facilities are useless without the right project team.

Recruiting personnel

As the project manager, you may not be solely responsible for determining who will be part of the project team. Your organisation may have particular recruitment processes and human resources staff that can assist you in finding the right people for the project. During the recruiting process you must:

·  determine the skills required for each activity by developing a skills requirement list

·  determine where the people will come from—existing internal or new external staff or contractors

·  select the right team members, either internally or externally

·  assign activities to each team member

·  establish an appropriate staff hierarchy and chain of responsibility for the project.

Identifying the skills you need on your team

Your WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) will list all activities that are to occur during your project. It is now time to use this to develop a skills requirements list based on what you need to complete each activity. Here is an example:

Activity / Skills required
Estimate building costs / Building project estimator with experience in estimating building costs for a building of this type and size

As you work through the skills requirements list, you list each activity required and then the skills needed to complete that activity. You may need more than one person to provide the skills required. In fact in many cases the skills might need to be provided by teams made up of a number of people with the same skills, for example, a team of architects.

Selecting the right candidates for your team

You can compare a project team with any other team that works together in a department. When you are selecting staff, it is important that you look for people who have as many of the following characteristics as possible:

·  commitment to the project goal and its completion

·  flexibility in changing work activities from one task to another

·  technical competence

·  being task-oriented and able to work with schedules and resource constraints

·  being a team player, and not self-oriented

·  ability to work across formal structures and if necessary reporting to multiple managers

·  being open to suggestions, and showing a willingness to admit error and be corrected

·  knowledge and experience with project management tools.

As a project manager, you will also need to keep a team member record. This lists all project members, their skills, when they joined the project and when they left the project. A simple table document or spreadsheet can be created to record this information. See the example below.

An example of a team member record

Team member name / Skills / Date entered / Date departed /
George Williams / project management skills
construction supervisor / 12/3 / 9/12
Beth Carillios / Building quantity surveyor and estimator / 15/4 / -
Alan Peters / Construction foreman and WorkCover OHS accredited trainer / 20/4 / 17/12

Employing external project staff in either permanent positions or as contractors is all part of the process. Hiring or contracting staff is necessary when appropriate internal staff are not available.

Developing your team

As the project manager you are usually responsible for the management of all aspects of the project, such as cost, resources and deliverables. But just as important is the responsibility to the project staff to build a cohesive and effective team, by providing a positive and supportive working environment. Your people are the most important resource of the project, and without them the project will fail.

You must apply all your principles of communication, leadership and organisation to build the best team. It is your job to:

·  listen

·  support

·  resolve conflict

·  motivate

·  train

·  advise

·  lead

·  recognise and reward achievement

·  communicate.

Assigning all project tasks

Once the key team members are in place and the structure is set up, you can start gathering together the other resources required for the project and then assign the tasks and work activities to the team members.

When we break down the project into the complete list of tasks, we produce the WBS. Tasks should be broken into manageable, unitised chunks of activities that share common skills, resources and can be started and completed within a reasonable timeframe.

It is important that you clearly document all work activities, providing a description of the tasks and resources that make up each activity. Work activity documentation is then standardised across the project. This is helpful because:

·  It informs all parties of the tasks in sufficient detail, what the deliverables are, the expected completion date, and the relationship to other tasks.

·  It is presented in a format that can be used to record progress. This in turn can be used for regular status reporting.

·  It serves as a clear reference for any conflicting issues that may occur.

Scheduling of work activities always depends on resource availability and time constraints imposed by the project itself.

You will usually schedule tasks to maintain a consistent use of available human resources over the life of the project and, where possible, try to avoid times of peak activity.

Communicating with stakeholders

It is important to have an open communication and consultation process with all stakeholders throughout the project to:

·  determine whether targets are realistic

·  make changes to the plan to accommodate the feedback received and reasonable concerns of stakeholders

·  monitor the implementation process to ensure that everything is on target

·  ensure that everyone is aware of progress and how their performance is impacting on others

·  organise training for people who need it in order to deal with new work methods.

Once you have established a team of project staff and assigned project tasks the core activities of the project can begin. It is during this stage that you must maintain control of the project to keep it on track. The next section of this reading provides an overview of the control phase.

The control phase

In the control phase you will:

·  provide team leadership and support

·  establish control tools and methods

·  monitor the project plan and make any necessary corrective actions

·  assess and implement change

·  prepare and distribute status reports.

Team leadership

There are many textbooks on the subject of team leadership and leaders. It is beyond the scope of this topic to teach these skills, but it is important that you recognise the skill areas that you must develop to succeed as a project manager. You can successfully do all of the management parts of the project: planning, reporting, analysing and organising, but if you fail as a leader, then your project is also in danger of failing.

Here are some useful tips.

·  As the team leader you can arrange discussions around the needs of the organisation for innovative ideas.

·  You can introduce team members to techniques such as brainstorming that can help the innovation process.

·  You can support team members when setbacks happen. If the team puts a proposal to senior management and it is rejected, that can demoralise team members. Your role as a team leader is to work with your team to find out why an idea was rejected, and discuss what they will do in the future. Teams need feedback so that they can improve their skills.

Studies have found that successful project managers have several common characteristics that make them successful. Successful project managers:

·  are leaders by example

·  are technically competent

·  are decisive

·  are good communicators

·  are team players

·  support their team members

·  can stand up to upper management when necessary

·  are visionaries.

Leadership styles

There is a wide range of leadership styles that are effective across many situations, but we will consider three basic styles that you can use to manage your projects:

·  People-oriented leaders develop rapport with team members and generate an open, positive environment for the team.

·  Task-oriented leaders focus on getting the tasks decided on, organised and assigned, as well as evaluating performance.

·  Reward-oriented leaders use meaningful rewards that correlate to the level of results and the person's efforts. These rewards can range from money to simple support and acknowledgment for work well done.

A successful project manager has the ability to vary the leadership style to suit to individuals and teams.

Further reading…

Cole, K (2001) Supervision The theory and practice of first-line management. Prentice Hall: Sydney, Ch 2 pp 606-624, and/or

Robbins, S, Bergman, R, Stagg, I & Coulter, M (2003) Management. 3rd Edition. Prentice Hall: Sydney, Ch 16 pp 482-502.

These books talk about different approaches to leadership (leadership theories, or ways of thinking about being a manager):

·  trait approach—these theories say you need certain traits or qualities to be a manager, eg confidence, intelligence, initiative

·  behavioural approach—these theories often put managers into categories according to how the manager behaves, eg authoritarian or democratic

·  situational approach—these theories say that effective managers vary their leadership style to suit the situation (also called the contingency approach)