By Annie Ka Wenu
The podcast currently has 20 episodes available.
The understanding of the project's life cycle and the process is often confusing. When you want to conduct a project, it is paramount to know the difference between the project life cycle and process. A life cycle is a series of changes that something goes through during its life or duration. A process is a series of actions or activities performed to accomplish something.
Therefore, the project goes through a series of changes during its duration. The project life cycle starts with: Preparation, Planning, Delivery, and Closure
However, the project process goes through five phases of activities: Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and control, and Project closure
Let us go through one by one!
We are all born to perform and successful performance is valued in many parts of our culture such as our work, education, and sport.
According to the oxford dictionary, performance is the action of executing a task or performing a function. It is the action of doing and how you do it and evaluate how the task was accomplished or not accomplished in comparison with the target set beforehand.
This performance needs to be monitored and control to ensure that the target, goals, and objectives were achieved. It is why project performance is evaluated to ensure that the outcome is developed according to the stated plan.
Project monitoring and control involve monitoring the whole project life cycle and measuring the performances. This phase looks at the project's current state and correct areas that are falling off track and get them back on track.
Its purpose is to check the overall state of the project to ensure that the project is on target compare to the plan or baseline; and the project outcome is developed according to the customer’s specified quality for acceptance at the end of the project. If the specified quality is not achieved, the customer may reject the project outcome.
How to monitor and control the project?
While the deliverable is developed, you need to:
- Assess first the project progress and performance to find out if the project is performing well or not.
- Compare the project’s actual status with the planned performance or baseline and draw the variances.
Analyse the variances to find out why they happened. If the error or change is happening more often, go deep to uncover the root cause.
- Submit the change request for approval to correct the variances depending on which area the change needs to be done. It can be that the change is related to the scope so you need to control the scope or the change is related to the costs, schedule, risk, procurement, monitor the communication, and stakeholders’ engagement.
- Perform the change requests.
- Present the deliverable to the customer for acceptance.
- Close the project.
Why do projects exist? And why do you need to conduct your project using project management principles? The need for change is ever-increasing in the business environment and in people’s private and professional lives. Change happens because of the competitive business world and also the human need of wanting more out of life.
People are involved in projects to solve problems or to take advantage of an opportunity in order to realise benefits at the end of the project. These benefits can be products, services, processes, or any other results. There are so many reasons why projects are needed. Whatever your reasons you need to ensure that your project's benefits are realised.
Many projects continue to fail despite the criteria of a good project manager and many people are unhappy with their jobs, businesses, or life statuses. In order to ensure that your project is a success, you need to state first what are your project success criteria?
The project success criteria are the standards that will determine how your project will be judged as successful at completion. Before, a project was considered to be successful if it is completed on time, within the stated budget, and according to the specified quality.
Just imagine if your project is to build a website, the website is delivered on the stated date, within your budget, and according to the specified features, colours, and quality standards. After one year of that project completion, no one is visiting your site. Tell me, is your project successful?
Time, cost, and quality were considered to be the success criteria before but in order for your project to be successful you need also to realise the personal, business, and end-user benefits, these are the reasons why you started the project in the first place.
What are the benefits? When to list those benefits and how to proceed?
The business benefits may be things such as retaining 90% of your existing customers or attract 100 new customers per year. Produce 1000 products a month. The benefits aligned to your vision, goals, and values if you are doing your own project, or they can be aligned to your business vision, goals, or strategy.
The benefits are listed in the initiation phase normally in your business case if you have one. How to ensure that the benefits are realised at the end of the project? You will need to
- List the benefits you want to get and how to measure them
- Looking at your vision, goals, and strategy, ask yourself if your benefits are inline
- Who will be responsible for realising the benefits
- When the benefits will be realised? Is it short, medium, or long term realisation?
- Track the benefits realisation.
In summary, many people are not happy with their current jobs, businesses, or dream goal project and project continue to fail. Among those reasons is the lack of alignment and benefits realisation. In order to judge if your project has been successful you will not only judge on whether you complete your project on time, within the budget, and according to the required quality.
You will also need to realise your personal, business, or end-users benefits. The benefits are listed earlier in the initiation phase and decide on who will be in charge of their realisation and when they will be realised.
For more information visit us at www.lqic.co.uk
It is paramount to know clearly what you want to achieve in your project so that you produce your project’s outcome that meets the needs and expectations of your customers, end-users, or any other stakeholder who have an interest in your project or its outcome.
Who is responsible for gathering these requirements?
It is the customer who is in charge of gathering the requirements and the business analyst will refine them and he or she will be between the customer and the project team doing the work. The business analyst will collect the requirements from the customer and other stakeholders. He or she works closely with the project manager.
A business analyst is a person who conducts research and analysis to help the business improve its processes and systems. His or her role is to gather, analyse, and document requirements. The knowledge of soft skills is crucial because the customer will not only bring a list of requirements but also problems or symptoms of problems that need to be solved. ...Listen
HOW TO IDENTIFY AND MANAGE WHAT MAY GO WRONG IN YOUR BUSINESS OR PROJECT?
We live in a world characterised by uncertainty. Many events may occur preventing you to achieve your business goal. Your business may indeed suffer physical and financial losses.
It is why you need to manage risks to ensure that you prepare yourself on how to prevent them from happening and how to manage them efficiently. Most of the projects are conducted in the business environment and risks are unavoidable. They are essential elements of a business. They can be negative or positive and you need to manage them strategically.
Why do you need to manage risks? You need to manage risks to protect your business from loss to property due to fire, liability for damages due to changes in laws or frauds and loss to earnings such as the death or illness of the owner or injury to a person. There are risks you can control and others you cannot control. For example, you cannot predict risks due to inflation and natural catastrophe.
All projects involve risks. There are many types of risks that can affect the project. The main ones are the schedule, budget and performance risks. For example, the project schedule can be overrun or the budget can be overspent. Therefore, you need to set up your threshold of how much risk is acceptable in your project.
Who will manage risks? Business managers should be aware, responsible and accountable for risks. They can play the role of risk managers. What are the causes of business risks? The causes of business risks can be damages caused by storm, fire or flooding, employees strike, power failure etc. Another example is the price fluctuation that may disrupt the selling price, the cost and income forecast. You also have risks from other company’s competition, risk caused by the government change in policy, regulations, interest rate etc. And also damages to business property and risk arising from mismanagement of the business affair.
HOW TO MANAGE RISKS
We live in a world characterised by uncertainty. Many events may occur preventing you to achieve your business goal. Your business may indeed suffer physical and financial losses. It is why you need to manage risks to ensure that you prepare yourself on how to prevent them from happening and how to manage them efficiently. Most of the projects are conducted in the business environment and risks are unavoidable. They are essential elements of a business. They can be negative or positive and you need to manage them strategically.
Why do you need to manage risks? You need to manage risks to protect your business from loss to property due to fire, liability for damages due to changes in laws or frauds and loss to earnings such as the death or illness of the owner or injury to a person. There are risks you can control and others you cannot control. For example, you cannot predict risks due to inflation and natural catastrophe.
This episode is the continuation of SOFT SKILLS MATTER. As mentioned in my other episode, soft and hard skills are equally important. Soft skills are necessary to lead and manage people effectively and hard skills are technical and domain knowledge skills necessary to perform your tasks.. I will continue today with team management, change management, negotiation and influencing and decision making.
Looking at Team management, A team is two or more people working together to achieve a common goal. There are different types of team namely functional, cross-functional, semi autonomous and virtual team. All these types of team were covered in one of my podcast. There is another type of team I didn’t mention is the project team
A Project management team comprises of.
For a team to perform well, you need a mixture of personalities.
- You need members who are thinking-oriented. They are thinkers, monitors/evaluators, specialists.
- People-oriented members are coordinators, team workers, resource investigators,
- Action oriented members are shaper, implementers, completers.
The next soft skill is the ability to manage change. Change management process start with:
1. Recognizing the need for change and start the change process. If you are stubborn and you don’t start the change process your business can be out of business.
Listen
YOUR SOFT SKILLS MATTER IN ANY ENVIRONMENT
You will always be surrounded by people wherever you find yourself, whether in your personal, business or social life. Where there are people, there will always be issues and conflicts. It is your ability to lead yourself first and lead others that matters the most. This is why you need to possess soft skills in order to lead people effectively.
Soft skills are also called life skills, emotional quotient, generic skills and they are also known as personal quality. When considering soft skills in management, these skills are leadership skills, thinking skills, decision-making skills, and problem solving skills.
These skills are very important to assist entrepreneurs and project managers in increasing their confidence in their leadership roles. However, many businesses focus more on hard skill or technical and domain knowledge skills to increase their performance rather than investing in developing their employees who are their most valuable asset. Technical skills are things such as: accountancy, information technology, operating machines, academic education. Hard skill is your ability to perform a job. Both hard and soft are equally important.
The world is going through an economic downturn, I don’t know what kind of challenges you are facing right now. Teamwork is very important and it works whether in your career, business or social life. Please use the link below and tell us what your pain is. You don’t need to figure out alone. Let us find a solution together so that you start and deliver your project successfully. https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/MNLYQRP
SUBSCRIBE TO ANNIE'S CHANNEL
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-FKpkaEjN3dGYg3qHcbV9Q?view_as=public
MY DETAILS
Annie Ka Wenu [email protected] +447879145706 www.lqic.co.uk
OTHER RELATED RESOURCES
1. Project management: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeuzRHpl3SQ&list=PLkz0qqQL8FgABUcjxJ-6opyhyOHBliGBv
2. Are you amongst people doing jobs you don't like?: . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqrjWuOV4vs
3. Our Book trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWAlxqp9vUw&t=6s
YOU CAN FIND MY BOOK SERIES HERE:
https://www.amazon.com/Annie-Ka-Wenu/e/B081Z334YM
HOW TO IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE?
As mentioned in my previous podcast, most of the projects are conducted in the business environment. Your personal characteristics play a big role in order to manage your business and project effectively using your leadership skills.
Knowing who you are, what you like, and what you want to achieve is paramount in order to create a self-image that is your personal brand and a reputation to set you apart. When you create your personal brand you need to identify your target audience who wants to hear your message and buy your product and pay for the service you provide.
Personal branding is about looking at who you are in a deep way and express yourself in a way that brings more value to what you are doing and to your target audience. Your business exists to sell products and providing services to your customers. Therefore, you need to communicate to your target audience in a way that will attract them to your brand and deliver your project outcomes that are fit for the purpose, and realise the business and end-users benefits.
The world is going through an economic downturn, I don’t know what kind of challenges you are facing right now. Teamwork is very important and it works whether in your career, business or social life. Please use the link below and tell us what your pain is. You don’t need to figure out alone. Let us find a solution together so that you start and deliver your project successfully. https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/MNLYQRP
SUBSCRIBE TO ANNIE'S CHANNEL
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-FKpkaEjN3dGYg3qHcbV9Q?view_as=public
MY DETAILS
Annie Ka Wenu [email protected] +447879145706 www.lqic.co.uk
OTHER RELATED RESOURCES
1. Project management: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeuzRHpl3SQ&list=PLkz0qqQL8FgABUcjxJ-6opyhyOHBliGBv
2. Are you amongst people doing jobs you don't like?: . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqrjWuOV4vs
3. Our Book trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWAlxqp9vUw&t=6s
YOU CAN FIND MY BOOK SERIES HERE:
https://www.amazon.com/Annie-Ka-Wenu/e/B081Z334YM
The podcast currently has 20 episodes available.