Project Management Blogs

  What risk management boils down to is a way to ask, “what can possibly go wrong and how is it fixable?” Risk management tries to spot these problems early as opposed to having them catch people off guard during a project, once potential problems are identified it is then time to figure out which ones actually matter and to crate contingency plans for them. Whilst it doesn’t remove fear and uncertainty altogether it offers a level of comfort and gives less chance that a project can sent into a tailspin from one unexpected event. The first steps in addressing risk management is to identify the potential risks, have your team seek out trouble or pain points before they show up unexpectedly. Teams need to be thorough and search through multiple areas in their project to find possible risks, areas such as project scope, budget and schedule. This provides a team with list of possible areas that may become problems down the line, fixing these issues is a later step. Jotting down the...

 Blog 5 Before a project can kick on, plans for the project need to be put in place to see how all the work and tasks will come and fit in together. This step is where your preliminary network schedule comes into play, used as a guide or roadmap for, it breaks down the tasks showing what needs to be completed immediately, what tasks can take place side by side and where some possible delays may occur. The diagram comes from the information drawn up in the project’s infancy, a lot of the information comes from the work breakdown structure the tasks are used in the diagrams and are given key details like the estimated duration, the key needs. The estimates are typically coming from staff that are closely linked to the project, whether that is current team members, hired experts or even tips and lessons learned from previous projects. The next step comes in placing how it all links together, there are tasks that must be completed before the remaining can begin, some can run in tan...

 Blog 4 In project management getting estimates right is on of the most important steps. In planning a project before any work is begins, project managers must figure out some key issues before beginning such as, how long tasks will take, what the costs will be and what resources are needed. These key issues build the spine of the schedule, the budget and also deliverables Accurate estimating starts with a clear understanding the work. Project managers shouldn't be making any assumptions alone. It is important to have the people who are going to be actually doing the work involved as they are likely to have first hand knowledge of the work-load and will be able to provide realistic estimates on time, materials and effort needed. These inputs from multiple team members helps to avoid overly optimistic estimates for projects. Basing estimates on typical working conditions and realistic productivity is another key step. Whist it may be tempting to only plan for ideal circumstances, ...