The Importance of Communication in Project Management

“Since I didn’t hear otherwise, I ASSUMED all was going well” – The Importance of Communication in Project Management

Second on Rick Klemm’s list of things most commonly overheard on a failing software project, this remark is characteristic of Project Managers who are not in frequent and efficient communication with their staff.

Communication is key to successful Project Management.

If project staff do not know what their tasks are, or how to accomplish them, then the entire project will grind to a halt. If you do not know what the project staff are (not) doing then you will be unable to monitor project progress. And if you are uncertain of what the customer expects of you, then the project will not even get off the ground.

Maintaining open, regular and accurate channels of communication with all levels of project staff and stakeholders is vital to ensuring the smooth flow of instructions from customer to factory floor and sufficient warning of risks and changes to enable early assessment and preparation.

•    The Information that You Need to Give

As Project Manager, it is your job to keep a number of people well-informed. It is essential that your project staff know what is expected of them: what they have to do, when they have to do it, and what budget and time constraints and quality specification they are working towards.

It is also your job to keep the Project Board informed of project progress. The Project Board usually includes the Executive (person ultimately responsible for the project), and representatives from the User and the Supplier.

It is important that the Project Manager updates the Project Board regularly on the status of the project, so that any changes or risks can be assessed, project progress can be measured against the original Business Case and a project that is not fulfilling its purpose or matching the value of its investment can be called to a halt.

•    The Information that You Need to Receive

In order to keep the relevant people informed, you must have regular and complete access to all information about the project: customer needs, objectives, plan, constraints, changes/risks and progress.

PRINCE2TM, the government-standard Project Management methodology, suggests that a system of ‘management products’ (documents used to make management more efficient) is set up.

For example, a Project Quality Plan relies on information about quality expectations provided by the Customer. The Quality Log is a record of quality checks performed by project staff. Both documents are necessary for effective management of product quality.

The PRINCE2TM method also recommends that Project Managers establish regular dates for Checkpoint Reports (detailing the progress of individual teams and team members) and Highlight Reports (documents prepared by the Project Manager, for the Project Board, describing overall project progress).

With disciplined adherence to a system of regular and focused communication, you will avoid the misunderstandings and delays that so frequently lead to project failure and ensure that all your project staff and stakeholders are secure in their knowledge of what has to be done, and who is doing it.

Ten Tips for Running Successful Projects

Why do so many projects fail? Researchers regularly conduct studies to find out the leading causes of project failure. Some of the studies are in the public domain. You can look up studies by such groups as Gartner, Carnegie Mellon University and the Project Management Institute. The studies reveal a recurring theme. Here are some of the common causes they identify:

• poorly defined organizational objectives
• loose project sponsorship and executive leadership
• project manager untrained
• loose scope containment and project change control
• poorly defined requirements
• lack of consultation with key project stakeholders
• no risk management plan
• unrealistic project estimates

 Do any of these look familiar to you? Do you recognize one or more as handicaps in your organization? I have summarized below the top ten things you can do to improve the chances of success of your projects.

1. Before you start your project, find a committed project sponsor who has sufficient clout in your organization. Your project sponsor will prove invaluable in helping you overcome organizational roadblocks as they arise.

2. Analyze who are your project’s key stakeholders and communicate with them throughout the project. Your stakeholders can make or break your project. Compile a stakeholder communication plan with the help of your project team and sponsor.

3. Get your sponsor and key stakeholders together to thrash out the measures of success of your project. How will you know if your project has succeeded? What are the key indicators of success? Get everyone on the same page from the outset.

4. Decide upfront the methodology you will use on your project. What project phases will the project proceed through? What will be the key go/no go decision points? What are the expected project outputs for each phase?

5. Draw up a project schedule that clearly allocates project tasks to team members. Identify which tasks depend on others for their successful completion. Communicate schedule progress regularly to all team members and to the project’s sponsor.

6. Make sure that project changes don’t get out of hand by reviewing and authorizing all proposed changes. Evaluate each proposed change for the impact on project cost, quality and schedule.

7. Do not let an unforeseen event sink your project. Find out what risks can threaten your project and build a risk mitigation strategy into your project plan. Issues will also arise from time to time, so you will need to keep track of these and communicate their impact to all concerned.

8. Decide at the start which documents your project will generate and when. For medium- and small-sized projects, keep documentation requirements to a manageable level without significantly increasing the risk to the project.

9. Once your project finishes, use the measures of success that you agreed at the start to evaluate project performance. Was it within budget? Was it on schedule? Did it produce what it was meant to produce, and at the required quality? What can you learn from this? Now report your project’s performance to your sponsor and the key stakeholders.

10. Follow up with the key stakeholders and your project team members and find out how they felt about the project. Was the project a success from their perspective? How did the project impact them personally? From this you will discover what went well and what did not go so well. Apply these lessons to your next project.

Successful projects do not just happen. They require structured planning, the right tools, insightful management and good interpersonal skills. Use the ten tips above to help make your next project a winner.

10 Block Formula to Pump Up Selling Power of Your Website

If you want your website to attract MORE traffic, sales and leads, then this might be the most important letter you’ll ever read.

If you want to convert MORE visitors into sales, then I urge you to read this article.

Now you can own my simple 10 block formula and cash-in on some of the greatest traffic building and conversion strategies that can make you some cold hard cash.

Are you ready? Here You Go…

Block 1 – Increase your Credibility using Testimonials.

Publish testimonials for your free stuff. It would increase their value and if they’re viral marketing tools, you’ll have more people giving them away.

Block 2 – Make your website Sticky.

Give your visitors a good time so they will visit your web site again. Use a few jokes, humorous graphics and funny stories.

Block 3 – Get Engaged in Joint Venture Deals.

Make money from web sites that don’t have an affiliate program, by doing a joint venture. Set up the affiliate program through a third party for them.

Block 4 – Help Your Customers to Help Yourself.

Build rapport with your potential customers by teaching them something new. Provide them with free ebooks, articles, tips, courses, etc.

Block 5 – Give them a Bait to Visit your Site.

Allow your visitors to collect things from your web site so they will stop back again and again. It could be a series of software, ebooks or articles.

Block 6 – Keep Your Website Layout the Same.

Keep each page of your web site consistent or similar. Use similar text fonts, colors, graphics and background on every page.

Block 7 – Build a Quality Freebie Directory.

Build a popular directory of freebies. It will draw tons of traffic to your web site and you can request that submitters place your link on their web site.

Block 8 – Help them Build a Quality Site.

Create traffic generators that people can add to their site without doing all the work. It can be an article directory, freebie directory, web tool, etc.

Block 9 – Reduce their Risk in Dealing with You.

Challenge your visitors to buy your product or service. People love a good challenge. Tell them if they can find a flaw you’ll give them a refund.

Block 10 – Build a Secret Relationship with Others.

Form a strategic alliance with other related but non-competing businesses. You’ll be able to beat your competition by selling to a larger audience.

You can easily sell more products and grab more leads using the above system. You can quickly and easily double your website traffic from now on using the above 10 block formula.

There’s never been a better time for you to get started than it is today!

How to Get Clients During Recession

If you are having issues with getting clients for your business these days, you are not alone. Many business owners I know are reporting to me that it is much harder to get clients now that everyone is concerned about increasing prices and a downturn economy.

How is your business doing? Are you having trouble finding clients for your business? If your answer is yes, here are tips to help you making getting more clients for your business easier, even in this economy:

– Define And Refine Your Target Market. People like to do business with those who they consider to be experts in their field. When your customers are aware of your expertise and your knowledge, they are much more willing to do business with you and buy from you.

Therefore, the clearer you are about who your customers are, the easier it is for you to get clients for your business.

– Get Your Target Market To Know You. As we just discussed, when your potential customers know who you are, it is much easier to convince them to become your clients and buy your products.

So how can you get your customers to know you? You can do that by publishing a newsletter, participating in social networking web sites where they participate, teaching teleseminars for your target market, speaking at radio shows that they listen to. You need to reach many people in your target market at once in order to get them to know you.

– Diversify The Marketing Techniques That You Use To Promote Your Business. If before it may have been enough for you to use just one marketing technique and get enough clients for your business, now it may not be enough. You need to diversify your marketing in order to reach your potential customers in different market segments.

There are many different marketing techniques that you can use to bring clients to your web site and your business. The include article marketing, business blogging, teaching teleseminars, online social networking and many more.

– Create Many Streams Of Income. Just offering one one-on-one service to your potential customers is not enough. Many times a potential client will not be able to afford your service, so you are not going to make any money with this potential client if the service is your only offering.

When you have many income streams, great things happen. If a potential client can’t afford your service just offer your e-book or teleseminar or an audio recording for them to buy. They will be able to have access to your expertise at a lower price, and you will be able to earn money.

– Look For Cross-Promotional Opportunities. Cross-promoting yourself with other experts in your niche will enable you to reach more people in your niche without spending a lot of time doing that. The more people you can reach in your niche, the more potential clients will be aware of who you are and what you do.

An economic slowdown makes you think more creatively about marketing your business. In order to have a successful business now, you need to reach more people in your niche and offer them different options to do business with you.

Vitamins for Blog Stats

All newbie bloggers pass through the in-love-with-the-hit-counter phase. At least I did. It took me a few months to realise that the count doesn’t matter, and the important thing is Google Ads cash, and ok, the connections you make online.

Yesterday while checking my stats, i noticed the top ‘Referrer’ was alphainventions.com, followed the link and…from their blog…”If you were to comment on a blog right after the webmaster published (updated) it, you would get a faster response, because most likely the webmaster is still online, and shocked to see that someone has commented so quickly.  This is either very simple, or i’m an advanced human.”

Guess it allows readers and bloggers to chat, comments being so off-line. Anyway, i submitted my blog at alphainventions.com, and my hit-counter started doing that Kwaja Mere Kwaja thing, very fast.

Thank you Cheru Jackson Blog myspace.com

Microsoft Launches Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4

Microsoft announce to launch the new version of Visual Studio 2010 and microsoft.net Framework 4.0 that fall into the “democratizing ALM” theme.

The aim behind this new version is to give the platform of “Life cycle management of democratize application”.

The two biggest and improved features is modeling and testing. Thus it’s make better fro developers for database pros, architects, and testers to work together in Visual Studio Team System 2010.

Visual Studio 2010 Team System will include some pieces of Microsoft’s “Oslo” modeling approach, as first demonstrated at Microsoft’s TechEd conference earlier this year. The Architecture Explorer allows Architects and developers to build, customize, and see an architectural diagram of an application and enforce architectural consistency to build a piece of software. The software supports the Object Management Group is the unified Modeling Language and domain-specific language. Read more updates about this article click here.

Features and tech. specifications of Visual Studio 2010 and Framework

New Added Features in Visual Studio 2010

• Design and share multiple diagram types, including use case, activity and sequence diagrams.
• Discover and identify existing code assets and architecture with the new Architecture Explorer.
• Enhanced version control capabilities including gated check-in, branch visualization and build workflow.
• Identify and run only the tests impacted by a code change easily with the new Test Impact View.
• Improve testing efforts with tooling for better documentation of test scenarios and more thorough collection of test data.

General features

• Enabling emerging trends
• Democratizing Application Lifecycle Management
• Breakthrough Departmental Applications
• Inspiring developer delight
• Riding the next generation platform wave

Read more features click here.

Visual Studio 2010 and Framework Leaked Screenshots :-

Grim outlook for new IT projects

The grim economic outlook has caused CIOs to withhold budgets, ditch new projects and cut back on contractors, according to technology analyst firm Longhaus’ Australian Technology Index for the first quarter of 2009.

(Credit: Longhaus)

The peak for the local IT industry was 2007, driven largely by hardware refreshes that were part of what Longhaus has called “Y2K-related asset refreshes”. With that period largely over, and the deteriorating global economy, work is expected to dry up.

The index is based on a proprietary model used by Longhaus to measure the health of the Australian ICT industry. It measures demand forces, including ICT spending and importing, supply factors (including venture capital), strength of vendors as indicated by market value and employment capacity, and consumer factors such as internet subscription rates. It also uses heuristic views from Australian CIOs.

Uncertainty had caused 26 per cent of the 69 CIOs, who represent organisations with at least 200 employees, to withhold on average 12.5 per cent of their budgets, Longhaus reported.

That uncertainty would also mean IT contractors will be cut back due to new projects being shelved — and exacerbated by moves within the Federal and Queensland Governments to cut back on the use of more contractors, who can be more expensive than permanent staff.

“Longhaus believe that the lack of new investments in infrastructure technologies and a stalling of ICT projects is the likely cause behind the proposed reduction in contractors,” it reported.

However, the outlook for those seeking permanent work was better, with 67 per cent of CIOs saying they expected to boost the size of their permanent workforce.

The index has echoed concerns of Australian IT outsourcing companies regarding new projects as funding and new business opportunities dried up. ASG chief executive, Geoff Lewis, said the company would most likely not bid for new “discretionary spending” projects, preferring to focus on multi-year infrastructure and core business systems management deals.

“This is a very serious recession and will have serious ramifications in the financial arena,” said Lewis. “Organisations will be very scrutinising of capital spending and will be looking for savings in their operational budgets,” he recently told ZDNet.com.au.

The downturn, however, could present a good opportunity for CIOs on the skills front, according to Longhaus.

“This is the time for savvy CIOs to go on a recruitment drive. However, CIOs should be forward-looking in their appraisal of the right permanent skills and opt for applications development and business analysis above core infrastructure headcount,” Longhaus said in the index report.

The hunt for permanent skills in the current climate has become easier, according to Peter Kazacos, chief executive of P K Business Advantage and founder of Telstra’s IT services business Kaz, who said his company had not required recruitment services for months.

“There are a number of recruitment firms that are about to hit the wall. We haven’t used a recruiter in months, simply because we don’t have to,” he said.

But the question that has eluded many analyst firms is exactly how deep and long the downturn is expected to last. Gartner earlier this year put forward widely varied estimates of how the technology sector would weather the storm.

Head of research at Gartner Peter Sondergaard was certain that IT budgets would slow in 2009, but dared not answer how long for. “Your guess is as good as anybody else’s,” he said.

But Longhaus has estimated the downturn affecting the Australian IT industry would, based on past downturns, be stemmed by 2010. “The next wave of hardware renewal in Australia is set to begin in 2010,” it said.

Quality Control vs. Quality Assurance

Quality control and quality assurance are important concepts, yet most project managers have only a vague understanding of the meanings and the differences between these terms. Here’s what they mean.

Managing quality on your project means that you must first understand the specific quality expectations of your customer and then put a proactive plan in place to meet those expectations. The “proactive plan” contains a number of elements — the most important of which are the quality control and quality assurance activities that need to be performed.

Quality control and quality assurance are important concepts, yet most project managers have only a vague understanding of the meanings and the differences between these terms. It’s actually pretty easy.

Quality Control refers to quality related activities associated with the creation of project deliverables. Quality control is used to verify that deliverables are of acceptable quality and that they are complete and correct. Examples of quality control activities include deliverable peer reviews and the testing process.

Quality Assurance refers to the process used to create the deliverables, and can be performed by a manager, client, or even a third-party reviewer. Examples of quality assurance include process checklists and project audits. If your project gets audited, for instance, an auditor might not be able to tell if the content of a specific deliverable is acceptable (quality control). However, the auditor should be able to tell if the deliverable seems acceptable based on the process used to create it (quality assurance). That’s why project auditors can perform a quality assurance review on your project, even if they do not know the specifics of what you are delivering. They don’t know your project, but they know what good processes look like.

Here’s an example to drive home the point. Let’s say a project manager asked the sponsor to approve the Business Requirements Report. If you were the sponsor, how would you validate that the business requirements seemed complete and correct?

One solution would be for you to actually review the document and the business requirements. If you did that, you would be performing a quality control activity, since your actions would be based on validating the deliverable itself.

However, let’s say the document was thirty pages long and that you (as the sponsor) did not have the expertise, the time, or the inclination to do a specific content review. In that case, you wouldn’t ask to review the document itself. Instead, you would ask the project manager to describe the process used to create the document. Let’s say you received the following reply.

Project manager – “I gathered eight of your major users in a facilitated session. After the meeting, I documented the requirements and asked the group for their feedback, modifications, etc. I then took these updated requirements to representatives from the Legal, Finance, Manufacturing and Purchasing groups and they added requirements that were needed to support company standards. We then had a meeting with the four managers in your area that are most impacted by this system. These managers added a few more requirements. I then asked your four managers to sign off on the requirements and you can see their signatures on the last page.”

If you were the sponsor, would you now feel comfortable to sign the requirements? If it were me, I would feel pretty comfortable.

That’s the difference. Quality control activities are focused on the deliverable itself. Quality assurance activities are focused on the process used to create the deliverable. They are both powerful techniques and both must be performed to ensure that the deliverables meet your customers quality requirements.