Planning and Controlling Projects: How to Save Yourself from Chaos

Executing any business initiative requires project management, and planning and controlling the project are the two most important tasks that an organization needs to undertake. Any project, no matter how big or small it is, requires planning and control if it is to be successful.

Understanding the project management process helps an organization plan and control its projects. Planning is the process of focusing on outputs and outcomes instead of the activities that are executed during the project’s life cycle. Controlling means monitoring and measuring progress against the planned targets for the completion of milestones.

Why Is Project Management Important?

Projects canbe short lived affairs, over in a matter of weeks or months,but they can also sometimes take years to complete.Whatever their length, managing aproject requires special skills if they are to be executed in the most efficient manner.

In contrast to normal day-to-day operations, projects have a specific scope, resources, and time frame.There are many reasons such projects are needed. For example, in order to win a new customer, an organization may need to upgrade its IT infrastructure. This will be a project that is executed for a set time and cost and will result in a new IT infrastructure once the project is completed.

Defining the Scope of a Project

The scope of a project is the work that needs to be undertaken to achieve the objective of the project. It is vital to know the scope of a project before you start executing it.

If you have a clear scope, it will help you in managing the resources and the budget for the project. Understanding the scope of the project will also help you to clearly communicate the objective and benefits of the project to your stakeholders.

To define the scope of a project, you have to follow a few steps. First, look at the business case for the project. Here, you will have to examine the advantages and disadvantages of the project. Next, identify the stakeholders for the project.A stakeholder is anyone who is affected by the project and who can affect the outcome of the project. Once the stakeholders are identified, you need to clearly communicate with them to establish their expectations from the project. Over the whole lifetime of the project, your stakeholders will need to be kept fully informed if you are to retain their trust.

Establishing a Timeline

A project timeline is important as it details all the activities that will need to be executed during the lifetime of the project. It will help you manage the project’s resources and budget and give you an idea of when you need to complete each activity. When planning a timeline for a project, you need to consider the resources available for the project. For example, the timelines for the activities that use the scarce resources must be shorter than the timelines for the activities that use the abundant resources.

Managing Change

Managing change is an important aspect of project management. This is because ideally, projects have a set scope and budget and are executed for a set time period. In practice, the scope, budget, or timelineare likely to change.

When projects are executed, it is common to see changes in the scope. This change in scope isn’t always a bad thing, but it is important to manage the changes and keep all the stakeholders involved.

When you are managing change, you have to consider the following factors:

• The impact on the timeline and the budget of the project: some changes in the project scope may be significant enough to affect both the timeline and the budget of the project.
• The impact on the quality of the product: if your project scope is to build a software application, the changes in the scope mustn’t affect the quality of the software.

Communicating and Reporting

When executing a project, it is important to report on its progress to all involved. This will help you in managing the expectations of your stakeholders and will also help you in taking the necessary corrective actions.

Wrapping Up

Project management, and in particular planning and controlling projects, is a critical function that needs to be fully understood by any organization faced with the challenge of change.

This in turn means that any business needs to ensure that its project managers are suitably trained. And one of the best ways that this can be achieved is by practising project management withlife-like scenarios. Prendoare industry leaders in the area of business simulations and have assisted numerous organisations across the globe. See https://www.prendo.com/leadership-challenges/leading-complex-projects/ for more information.