Using and Utilizing the Project Mlestone Plan to manage the project

The Project Milestone Plan is a very useful document, and that's a very generic understatement. Having said that, there is a difference between USAGE and UTILITY of a project plan. Amongst others, the most important ways to use a Project Plan lie in 2 aspects of Project Management:

1) Project Planing: Talk about Project Milestone Plan, and many multiple versions of a document jump to mind. There are various pieces of information that a Plan can contain, but its use in the early stages of the project happens well, when atleast the following information is captured on it:

                    a) Project Milestones and Activities laid out in as much detail as possible.

                    b) Clear Ownership of the activities

                    c) Atleast the start and End Dates for each activity. 

                    d) Comments section to lay out dependencies or status

2) Project Tracking: Well crafted and designed dashboards have been the Status Reporting norm in IT companies ever since one can remember. Such dashboards serve the dual purpose of project status reporting, and Risk mitigation. However, such a dashboard based system suffers from the need to be 'linked' to the approved project milestone plan. Essentially, this means that the milestone level dates of the plan are copied to this dashboard, and status is tracked against these copied items. An easier and more accurate way to track the status of the project hands-on, is to 'utilize' the milestone plan itself, and publish it to stakeholders weekly. Since the plan contains activities, dates and owners, it becomes very efficient to report status by way of comparing Actual v/s Planned Dates. Where the project lies today can be directly mentioned at the activity level. The comments section can report potential issues, risks in case of delay.And lastly, since owners are well identified, such reporting lays out the exact resource level dependencies or delays.

The Risks identified here can be tracked in a separate Risk Risk Register and the mitigation can be done on that document.

For most IT Projects, there is good enough reason to 'Utilize' a Project Milestone Plan to track the project accurately and easily. Good PMs realize the value of such plan based reporting to stakeholders.

Linkedin is so much more than just 'Linking'

Far too honestly, I hadn’t looked at Linkedin for reasons much beyond staying ‘connected’ or for the occasional job search. With the advent of social networking in the last half decade, here was a platform that had a PROFESSIONAL look and feel to it. A site that was meant for professionals to LINK to each other, explore their networks, for recruiters to find another medium to post jobs and the likes. As amazing and impressive as it was, I had some difficulty initially to fathom it.

Social networking is a skill and not many truly realize that. Every social network has a feature and purpose about it that make it different from the others. The whole general point of social networks though is that it enables someone to make sense of your person on the web. It helps people understand your hobbies, your activities, your associations, networks of friends, your choices, activities and so on. Advertisers are likely to pull up trends on your personal data on FB to post ‘customised’ or ‘sponsored’ ads. Your photos, checkins, status trends give much meaningful insights into what is likely to ’catch your attention’.

If FB is personal yet social, Twitter is primarily a way to get a real time idea of what you think about world events. Much real time news today is available on Twitter accurately and quickly than anywhere else. Google is hot as ever for search, mail and the ‘personal’ collaborative tools. The other sites enable you to manage people, google helps you manage yourself.

Somewhere in all of this lies the equally amazing linkedin. Equally because every other is; amazing i’ll tell you why. Linkedin has this amazing side feature “Interests”. One subpart of that is “Groups”. Without drawing parallels, I view Groups as a social network in itself. The Groups feature enables one to join a group of professionals of the same mix. For instance, as an IT PM, my most obvious choice for a group is a Project Manager’s group. A search for such a group lists out all such groups that exist in the Linkedin universe. Typically, this list is sorted in the descending order of group size, or in a way that places the most popular groups at the top.

Within a group is where the fun is. You are likely to meet a lot of people from all across the globe and who share similar interests. I am part of atleast 2 such PM groups. There are members that cut across lines of most parameters. The members are from all age groups, countries regions, even sectors!! Some members are veterans and some are recent graduates. The simply humongous variety of people that the groups features affords is itself awe inspiring.

And the best part of groups is the discussions. This feature allows members to post topics of discussions and others can contribute this by posting their opinions.  People from various sectors contribute their opinions to such topics of common interest, agree, sometimes quarrel even. As surprised as I was too understand just how much Risk Management meant in IT, I was more amazed to learn that Risk Management is an important aspect even in the consulting business!! The Project Charter that I know in IT is an integral component in any other industry too!! That the problems I encounter as PM in IT are shared by PMs in other, completely disparate industries too!

Linkedin has totally caught my attention now! Each discussion is a mini blog, an online learning in itself. This gives me the opportunity to express my views freely, interact with legends from industries, and at the end, learn real time. That’s one for being ‘Linked’

From Testing to Managing, that's been one BIG Project!

Without exaggeration, my SCJP certification and allocation to a QA project happened almost simultaneously. While the former was planned and lovely, the latter was unexpected, and not pleasant at first. For someone from a generation that aspired to be programmers, Java biggies, coders, innovators, miracle workers and the likes, being allocated to a QA – a ‘Testing’ project- was akin to water poured over a well crafted document. All destroyed.

As it turned out, the SCJP exam was literally my last brush with any kind of coding or development work. Once you get assigned to a project, that’s all that you work on, and that’s where things progress. To begin with, testing seemed very difficult. The whole concept of thinking of scenarios, situations around how to ‘break’ an application (there were no ‘social’ or ‘web’ applications then, that lend themselves to testing) seemed new and difficult at the beginning.

From then to now, I have spawned multiple roles- QA, Onsite Coordinator, Project Lead, and finally, Project Manager. From then to now, I truly believe that being allocated to that project was an amazing thing that happened. Starting out as a Tester, I believe, has laid the foundation for me becoming a very effective PM, and here’s why: 

1)      Test Planning: A tester has to create a test plan and draft test cases. This alone induces discipline in going about thing- break the application down to testable modules, prepare test data, define logical sequences, coverage and scope etc

2)      Test Scenarios: Possibly the most value adding activity for a tester. This makes a tester think and think more. He has to look at the application from all ends, inside out and forces him to imagine situations that even the developer may not have thought of. Essentially, this step means a tester has to GAIN KNOWLEDGE of the application as much as possible.

3)      Regression Testing: While not entirely different from module testing, regression testing reminds a Tester that things that worked well in the past still need attention. New things may tinker a bit with what’s working, and you have to be careful.

4)      Reporting: Test reports often run into multiple excel sheets. Each sheet has a carefully crafted detail about the following: Test Cases executed, re-executed, defects logged, defects re-tested, pending items and so on.

In essence, testing induces a feeling of discomfort in a tester, keeping him on toes at all times. The discomfort of missing a defect that raises its head in production, of raising a duplicate, of missing a scenario, reporting incorrectly etc. This is the most essential attribute of a good PM too- being uncomfortable so he cares about the project all the time.

Effective PM? Just Manage the basics

Project Management, they say, is as simple as it is difficult. Project Managers don’t really code hands on, don’t really test hands on, and yet, any Project manager will tell you, that this is really a tremendously difficult job.

It wouldn’t be incorrect to say that a PM is the face of the project; he is the soul of the project, and a PM can easily make or break a project. He needs to have the answers, the right answers, and timely answers, about all questions of the project.

IT projects and IT project management, have mostly unchanged expectations from the IT PM. In the last decade, the advent of social networks, mobile ecosystems and the cloud, have rendered the word “Technologies” rather incomplete. Today, there is no one technology, no one TECHNICAL PM. More than ever, I believe the role of the basic fundamental Project Manager has become more pronounced.

So then, what are the most important characteristics that one needs to have, to be a good PM? I’ll vote for the following 5:

1)      Ability to Tie things together: So many items of information, such numbers of activities to be done, multiple stakeholders; there is far too many things in a project to possibly complete. A PM should be able to formulate an action plan FROM THIS POINT on- a basic listing of activities, owners, dates and dependencies. Nothing helps more.

2)      Document it, lest you forget: Most mistakes happen not because you didn’t know about them, but because you didn’t document them the last time they happened. And this time, they are gonna be worse.

3)      Don’t say that’s not my job: A leader does, and a manager makes sure it gets done. Therefore, everything is your job- you may not be responsible to do it yourself, but you are accountable to get it done. Things like DB creation, migration, deployment, interfaces, architecture, are all that are pivotal to the project, and these are also the things that a PM is pivotal TO.

4)      Communicate and track correctly: There really is just one way to do this most effectively- track and communicate the planned versus actuals. Tie point 1 and this together, and you have a zero deviation project. Remember, re-scheduling is not the same as delaying. Communicate early and you have the flexibility of re-scheduling. Miss the communication, and you have delayed. Simple as that.

5)      Entrepreneurial aggression: There is something about entrepreneurs that makes them aggressive, “I’ll do it come what may” types. A PM needs to be like that. There is gonna be a thousand things a PM is going to have to do IMMEDIATELY- DB requests, execution scripts, deployment even at times. There may be a million things- approvals, reviews, signoffs, status reports from subordinates and so on, that are not going to be easy to come by unless the PM pushes hard. All these call for the kind of raw aggression entrepreneurs typically exhibit.