إدارة مشروع بإحترافية Professional Project Management

Professional project management What does project management mean? How can I be a successful project manager? In the year 1900, some construction companies began applying the idea of managing construction projects in an organized way and achieved remarkable success. over time, many people in other fields found that the organized way for engineers to manage projects helps to achieve goals and accomplish the required way in an systematic way So they started applying the idea of project management in many fields of life, such as a project to develop a medicine for a disease, education in a school, a project to increase crop production, etc. Project management means leading a team to achieve specific goals, and meeting specific success criteria (Time, Cost, and Quality), passing through five stages that represent the life cycle of a project. Which are: Initiating, planning, Executing, Monitoring & controlling, and closing. Let's explain each stage in detail with a simple, practical example of managing a small project let’s assume that your father bought a new apartment that is not ready for housing, and he asked you to finish it during the summer vacation with certain specifications then to move the family to it before the start of the new semester within 3 months, and not to exceed a certain amount of money. The first stage: Initiation At this stage, you (as a project manager) need to know clearly the goal/aim of the project (why are you doing it? ) What is required to accomplish exactly? the whole holistic picture of the project. It is also very important to know the exact project time (start date and end date), the project's budget to be compared with the actual cost, and the quality of the deliverables at the end of the project, whether it is a product or a service. This is done in the Kick off meeting with all involved parties in the project, where PID “Project initiation document” is signed, It is your role to take this document and study the project in detail. And to tell them that, “I will study the project and respond to you within certain period (based on the size of the project. ) In our example (the apartment): your father will meet you, and assign to you the project to finish the apartment, this is the starting signal, the aim is “to move the family to the new apartment” The second stage: Planning This is the most important stage for a successful project, neglecting it or doing it poorly/badly, will cost money and waste a lot of time and effort. In this stage, the following nine steps have to be done: 1- Collecting Data, read a about the project topic (and read about similar successfully completed projects), ask an expert, then set work structure/Skelton. In our example: search on the Internet and read about how to finish apartment, and its costs. ask an engineer of your relative or your neighbor about such project and its costs and requirements 2- Defining the list of tasks to be accomplished and the order of execution (i. e., dependency between tasks) the tasks to be done in our example are: Ceramic flooring works, Plumbing and sanitary works Electricity works, Paints, Gas installation, Telephone line and internet service installation Apartment cleaning, Moving furniture. 3- Build a Team Work. In our example, your team will be, your friend or relative who will help you, a plumber, an electrician, a ceramic worker, a painter, gas company and telecom company, and a company to move the furniture. 4- Estimate the time and cost of each task with your team support. In our example, Ceramic flooring works (7 days), Plumbing and sanitary works (5 days) Gas installation (2 days), Electricity works (3 days), Telephone line and internet service installation (2 days) Paints (7 days), Apartment cleaning and Moving furniture (2 days). 5- Determine the list of required resources and how to manage them, i. e. what do you really need to do the tasks (i. e. resource planning, who will do each task and when) In our example you will need, sanitary wares, electrical switches and wires, paints, cleaning and installation tools. 6- Draw Gantt Chart, Gantt chart is just a tool that helps you to track the project development. It is a bar chart that shows the project schedule and also shows dependency relationships between the tasks, in addition it shows the status of each task according to the time set for implementation. In the first column, you record the “Task names”, in second column you record “Planned duration” of each task.

In addition to the start date and the end date, as a result those bars will be drawn automatically based on the data you have recorded in the columns. 7- Define the critical path, A critical path is a set of series succession tasks that takes the longest time-period to be done, that defines the project completion date. In our example the first path is (Ceramic flooring works + Plumbing and sanitary works + Gas installation+ Paints + Apartment cleaning and Moving furniture). First Path = 7+5+2+7+2 = 23 days the second path is (Ceramic flooring works + Electricity works + Telephone line and internet service installation + Paints + Apartment cleaning and Moving furniture). Second Path = 7+3+2+7+2 = 21 days As a result the critical path is the first path that will take 23 days. This means that the project cannot be finished before 23 days. If you want your project to be finished on time, pay close attention to tasks on the critical path Define ways to communicate effectively and easily between the team members and all other involved parties and clearly define the role and responsibility of each of them, in our example, use phone calls to communicate all day or written messages on WhatsApp any time. Your friend who will help you; for example, is responsible for the installation of gas and telephone line 9- The last point, challenge potential risks how to deal with them? What is the possibility of occurrence and seriousness/severity of it? In our example: the occurrence of compulsive circumstance of the electrician and the delay in the task carried out by him, the probability of that is 50% and finding a replacement electrician quickly You have to do all of these steps before committing to be the project manager, because once you say "OK / YES", you are accountable to everyone in completing the project, God willing. Be strict/firm with yourself and with others, if you encounter any illogical or insufficient factor (time is short or budget is few) do not accept the project, meet with the concerned parties again and ask for an increase in budget or more time or refuse to implement the project you are not a magician you are a project manager. In order to deliver a project with the quality of the Mona Lisa master piece, you have to have enough time and budget, otherwise I will deliver a project at that bad level Wise/Careful planning makes you confidante and able to complete the project and achieve exactly what is needed. The third stage: implementation In this phase, the project’s tasks are executed according to the plan in place daily work progress is monitored, and a periodic meeting is held with the team to find out the extent of the achievement, and solve any problem immediately. It is very important in this stage to take notes for each step that will be the reference for you in the next project. In our example write in your notebook, the plumbing technician is committed to his appointments and his orderly work The electrician is skilled and follows safety procedures, but there was an error installing a switch today, and so on. The fourth stage: monitoring and control This stage is very related to the implementation phase (Interchangeable), where the actual cost is monitored versus the approved budget, also, monitoring the rate of completion of tasks against the scheduled time-line, if there is any defect (such as increased spending or delay in completion) then take corrective action quickly according to the plan. In our example: the task of Ceramic flooring works is late, talk to a flooring technician to provide a worker with him to finish on time. The fifth and final stage: closure Deliver all projects’ deliverables, all reports and documents, and pay all financial obligations. The most important thing for you as a project manager is the lessons learned that you learned from project management, whether it was good lesson or bad one. In our example Hand over the apartment’s keys and all the expense bills to your father. Success factors for any project are: Choose a professional team and treat them with respect, be one of them, cooperating with them, not ordering them.

Precise holistic planning of the project is very important factor Continuous monitoring of each step in terms of cost-time and quality Open and clear communication with all parties on time Last but not least, the project manager must be a true first-class leader who has knowledge, sufficient skill and flexibility. The most accredited/credible certificate in project management is Project Management Professional (PMP) By PMI You can know all the details about it in the link below. To have both (knowledge+Experience) As we said before, any study or certificate gives you knowledge, but it does not give you the practical experience, you gain experience by practicing if you read all the equestrian books in the world, you will not be a knight unless you actually rode a horse. I wish you all success in managing any project you have in future (God willing).