PMBOK Guide

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS

Posted on by nadaj502

During the last two sessions we covered the topic of Project Management, and the importance of having the right skills and knowledge in order to manage project successfully, meeting its agreed time, cost, scope without compromising on quality. We’ve also briefly discussed the roles and responsibilities of the Project Manager, but would you like know more about the roles and responsibilities of the Project Manager? Well MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!!! If you are a Project Manager, do you start your work every day thinking about ways to move your company forward?? Well again, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!!! Or do you think of how to get better deals for your procurement processes? One more time, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!!! Yes, you read correctly, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.

In most of the projects the Project Manager is minding the business of the cost controller, the Human Resource Manager, the Risk Manager, the Quality Manager, the COO, the CFO and sometimes even the CEO.  Why is that? Because Project Managers always feel that they are in charge of the entire project and its end result, and tend to forget that they are not solely in charge of it, and that other team players are also in charge.

Think of it as channeling your energies toward successfully completing your own assignments – your domain of responsibility.  If everyone in your project focused on his/her own domain of responsibility, the project will do just fine.  In fact if your entire company started to think with this mentality, then not only your project will be more successful, but also your company will be more successful than it is today.

Let us agree on the definition of “Your domain of responsibility”, it includes all responsibilities and commitments that fall within the score of your assignment.  And this applies whether you are a one-person project, or a member of a 10-person project, of a 1000-person project, your project success is directly related to how well you perform within your domain of responsibilities.  It has been my experience that if you focus superbly within your domain of responsibility, your contributions will be the most effective and your career will shine brightly even without the extra credit.

I once worked in a company that did not have well-defined project management best practices that we could adopt as project managers for our projects, nor it had well-defined roles and responsibilities of the project manager, so we – the few project managers – worked together and developed clear “domain of responsibilities” as per the project management best practices and aligned with the PMI’s PMBoK Guide (Project Management Body of Knowledge Guide).  Examples of the items we included in our domain of responsibilities that project manager often pursued weakly include:
– Seeking out a project sponsor and establishing an effective relationship
– Adopting/defining project management best practices for your own project
– Ensuring client participation
– Obtaining commitment from others and then holding them accountable

Some might think that focusing on your domain of responsibility is selfish and that you do not care about your company, I don’t think so, so what are your thought on this? Will you MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS or Not?

on Time with errors

Posted on by Bashayer

We discussed different aspects of project management during our last class, which are highly important and rewarding if applied properly in real life. However, some projects, if not most, can go towards unwanted directions or results.

In the company I work with, we had a project of launching a new system at a specific budget and within a very short time (6 months). Both cost and time were out of negotiation, so we couldn’t increase the allocated budget nor increase or extend the project period. This was a real challenge and a very stressful situation. So what did we do? We worked together, the project
manager and the functional lead, and put all our effort in planning the project from the different perspectives of a project, such as:

  • Project integration management.
  • Project scope management.
  • Project time management.
  • Project cost management.
  • Project quality management.
  • Project human resource management.
  • Project communications management.
  • Project risk management.
  • Project procurement management.

It might sound a bit complicated, but with the help of PMBOK guide, which is a frame work for project management, we were able to plan and execute the project efficiently.

For more information on PMBOK guide, please click the below link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_to_the_Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge

Our project was delivered on time and within budget but of course the output quality of the project was not superb. Because the emphasis from the higher management was on time and cost, we had to deliver a lower quality system that suffered from minor issues which were considered as none show stoppers.

Another issue that has contributed to the output quality was the changing requirements of system users. As the project progressed, the end users of the system had a clearer picture of their requirements and how the system should behave in
different cases. Such requests for changing the requirements or adding additional requirements are handled by monitoring and controlling process. Most of the requested changes were considered as chargeable change request, which means that we have to pay additional cost to the system vendor, and this of course was unfeasible, hence, the change requests were declined and the system did not deliver the modified or additional requirements.

From management point of view, they were happy that the project was delivered on time without exceeding project budget, however, from end users’ view; they considered that the project did not fully satisfy their requirements.

I personally think that we could have achieved a better quality results if the project was scheduled for a longer period (more than 6 months) because for any system, it has to meet end users’ requirements, and because it’s the end users who are going to use the system, not the management.

Do you think we should deliver a project on the specified time and cost even if the project’s output suffers from errors?

How would you act if you are in a situation where the higher management is only concerned about time and cost but not performance?