Pitfalls of Project Managers Changing Jobs In Short Duration

It is very interesting to note that there is a group of project managers who do not stay in an organization for long. They set a rule not to stay longer than 2 years or so. Or maybe the rule gets imposed on them automatically due to their own pitfalls to enable them to keep surviving in the ecosystem. Let us look at what makes it happen in case of such project managers. The main factors could be their attitude or lifestyle.

These guys are not fundamentally strong in their project management skills. They appear to be confident and strong get goers in their talks but not in their walk. They talk high about their past achievements which probably they have never achieved in reality. They are good in ensuring management about their capability in handling any kind of tight situations and tough projects but in actual they have their plans of exit at right moment well in advance.

They will not be able to run projects well and that will apparently start appearing after a short while. They would spend their intelligence not in learning business, processes and procedures; but on how smartly to shift cap to one or the other instead of owning it. Logically at the point of insertion in the beginning itself should raise eyebrows of the management for such candidates who have appeared for candidature with a track record of spending not significant time in their previous organizations.

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How Much Tech Savvy A Project Manager Should Be?

Keep pace with the Technology: The way technologies are changing at a very fast pace, it will be foolish to stay with your legacy technology running for years whereas the world is adopting newer technologies for the similar kind of projects. There is no doubt that when the existing technology was selected, it would have been a state of the art and latest of the technologies kind of solution. But remember that over a period of time, technologies get faded away in wake of newer, robust and advanced technology entrants.

Remember that development for all business apps start with a prerequisite set of requirements basis which timelines and plans are built and team sizing, resources etc. are set. Once this business requirement is converted to an app, it is released on Test Server, Staging Server and Live Server respectively for QC, UAT and go-live in the same pattern. Gradually when this app is handed over to end users on go-live environment, the app usage starts triggering along with the desired business results chickening out.

But story does not end here. New requirements that either go to changes in existing functionalities or new functionality built keep pouring in there by reshaping the size and environment of your existing app. That is where your awareness towards newer technologies to manage and control any kind of crunch in the existing one, is very critical.

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/quality-assurance/how-much-tech-savvy-a-project-manager-should-be/

3 Fundamental Pillars To Drive Your Project To Success

Methodology & Approach: Every project does not fall in a generic project methodology. It is important to understand the type of project before making it enlisted under a particular project methodology. For this, based on the projects undertaken and new upcoming ones, relevant project methodologies to be identified and defined. Right project methodology helps project manager and other teams to ensure following right processes and documentations for each project phase in that methodology. A new project marked in wrong methodology could lead to extreme level of confusion and thus leading to failures.

Issue Management: Issues are integral part of any project arising during any of the phases of a project. Taking issues in a lighter way could lead to losing the right direction of a project and hence getting it derailed from its progress track. A single issue management charter with process driven approach with right & understandable definition of issue, its categorization, its severity and its closure with identification of ‘who’ is responsible for closure of issue, is very important. Any issue, howsoever small, could lead to a big disaster. A regular review is a must.

Communications: Be it project management, team management or issues management; nothing will move in right direction, if inappropriate or incomplete or missing communications happen during a project. Project manager must ensure to graduate each of the team members and team leads on how to handle communications and its importance. Right kind of information, to right people, at right time with right kind of actions required must be a set protocol of communications. For example, if a piece of information is just for the sake of information, or an action is required, along with its criticality, should be the right approach to manage.

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/quality-assurance/3-fundamental-pillars-to-drive-your-project-to-success/

Why Date Constrained Projects Go Uncontrolled?

It happens at times when you have a mission critical project with tight timelines from customer that increases its stake manifold, for which you place best of your teams comprising of high skills and experience, and on top of it you provide state of the art tools to tackle all kind of situations; and still the timelines are not met and things go out of control. It is always important to go for a deep analysis for such kind of failures to such an extent that the shortfalls are identified with their core reasons; and are sidelined once for all, for all forthcoming similar kind of projects.

It is well said that disciplined approach and hard work pay well in comparison to merely hard work. Well defined processes and procedures play a major role in this. If these are in place, it makes your tasks easier in managing and guiding your teams. Since there is no differentiation among teams and the standard procedures apply to everyone, irrespective of who and what, the same procedures need to be followed.

Growing these skills is as important for immature teams, as is for matured teams to keep nurturing and excelling in these.

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/quality-assurance/why-date-constrained-projects-go-uncontrolled/

3 Critical Weapons For Winning A Battle Called Project Management

If you really want to be a successful project manager you need to acquire following three powerful weapons so as to be a winner all the time whether the conditions are favorable or you are travelling in rough seas. The teams that are formed usually have all mixes of human beings having different styles of working and delivering results in different fashions. Overall momentum is something which need to be maintained all the time to race along the ticking clock. The three important and potent weapons that can help you are as below:

Skills: You need to have high quality project management skills to win your battle. If you are leading a team of unbeatable and brave soldiers but lacking the same in you, would not lead you to a winning situation.

Tools: Whether it is project management tools, bug tracking tools or incident recording tools – you need to assess your needs and acquire these tools accordingly. Overstuffing yourself beyond required commodities will lead to a burden on your head. But vice versa also holds equally good meaning if you are underestimating your needs and go for the battle along with your team with shortage of armory, your defeat is sealed right in the beginning.

Experience: Guys with rich experience under their belt and laurels shining on their shirts are always moral boosters in the teams. Hence it is important to have such guys, at least one in each team to keep overall tempo at high pitch all the time.

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All Projects Face Budget Constraints

Budget for any project is allocated right at its initiation phase. Budgeting includes lot of factors but the main factor remains customer defined timelines. Keeping this target defined by customer in mind, a backward calculation is done and accordingly time allocation to each phase is done, team sizing is defined and resource planning is done. After all it is customer that matters the most.

Well, it does not mean that there is a scope of comparison even if this backward calculation is being done. Two prime factors that play a major role in this whole game is quality and finances. Budgeting beyond optimum level and compromising with quality of the product will mar the beauty of product and impact on business badly. When timelines are shorter there is another way of pulling your socks and not letting you beaten down. It requires higher level of skilled task force, error free tools and rich experience to win over in such kind of wars.

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/quality-assurance/all-projects-face-budget-constraints/

Meaning of CTTR In Project Management

Project Management mainly comprises of converting customer requirements and business needs to an application so as to enable customer in running its business in a much smoother and error free environment. It needs to be imbibed of business processes, workflow (if required by customer) and minimization of manual interventions to a maximum extent. Any business process that speaks about business enhancement, improvisation and optimization by transforming it from manual to automation enabled through coding needs to be thrown into a dustbin.

Timelines of a project are mostly defined as per customer guidelines. At times it is important for a customer to get a solution within a stipulated time frame if the app is related to a pre-scheduled launch in a big way and the app is going to play a major role in that particular launch. Usually a project where customer has no say in desired results’ release timelines especially when it is a customer sponsored project, it is definitely a major glitch. Either the requirements are not serious or customer has no intentions to pay for the product later.

CTTR is Customer Time To Release which means the timelines defined by the customer regarding release of product. All project timelines, budgeting and allocations are a total derivative of CTTR.

Source: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/quality-assurance/meaning-of-cttr-in-project-management/