Project Management for the Real World

Trainer: Steve Caseley

This video training course with Steve Caseley provides a real-world experience by following a project through the complete Project Management lifecycle.

This Project Management in the Real World course provides a “day in the life” approach to successfully managing a project. By following a project through its compete lifecycle, the course covers the PMI PMBOK Guide® processes: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing, as well as the PMBOK Knowledge Areas: Integration, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Human Resource, Communications, Risk, Procurement, and Stakeholder Management.

This course follows a real-world project, implementing a Software-as-a-Service Warehouse modernization solution, from inception through to successful delivery. At each stage in the project, Initiating, Planning, Delivery, and Closing, the course reviews Project Management deliverable templates and explore real-world samples from the SAS project. The course concludes with tips and hints and lessons learned from Steve’s 20+ years of other real-world projects.

Course Outline

1. About PM in the Real World (22 min)

Welcome to this course! In this Nugget, Steve talks about how this user-directed course works. He also covers the definition of success, what makes a project fail, and project management processes and Knowledge Areas.

2. Next Steps (24 min)

This Nugget introduces how the PM in the Real World course was developed based on the feedback received from the survey. The Nugget outlines how the rest of the course evolved, based on following a real world example. This course was developed in two major sections — the first series of Nuggets will follow a “real” project from its origins thru to the Project Charter, then the Project Plan and into delivery and closing. The course will close with a review of my Lessons Learned from projects that I have managed over my 20-year career.

3. Project Origins (27 min)

This Nugget will review the various sources of projects, paying specific attention to the implications on successful Project Management. The Nugget starts with a review of the various sources of projects. Next, the Nugget reviews the criteria for successful delivery and compares this to reality where you get little of the required components. The Nugget closes with a review of the things that a PM can do try bridge these gaps and establish the material needed for successful project startup.

4. Where do I start? (24 min)

This Nugget covers the very first steps to ensure that your projects gets started right, focusing on working with the business to create the project vision and/or business case. It then reviews the process to formally document the project with a project vision/business case. The Nugget then reviews the steps to review and validate business-level support. The Nugget closes with a review of the project delivery approach.

5. Project Initiating (36 min)

This Nugget begins with a detailed evaluation of the business vase to ensure that it is still current and relevant. With the business case validated, the next step in the Nugget is to understand the business environment, specifically the political structures the project will be delivered in. Next, the Nugget reviews the importance of reviewing existing organizational project assets to understand what delivery approaches, lessons learned, samples, and templates exist to help kick start this project. The Nugget completes with a discussion on identifying the project stakeholders to understand who cares, why they care, and how can we satisfy their concerns.

6. Project Charter (35 min)

This Nugget reviews a Project Charter Template and develops the Project Charter for our real-world project – SAS Warehouse Modernization. In this Nugget, we review the Project Charter for our real world project and discuss the Executive Summary, Project Purpose/Justification, Project Approach, High Level Requirements, Objectives and Success, Key Risks Mitigation, Project Delivery Approach, Project Milestones, Project Budget, and Key Project Stakeholders.

7. Project Planning (34 min)

This Nugget kicks off the Project Planning activities for the SAS Warehouse Modernization project. Project Planning is focused on validating the Scope, Time, and Budget. This Nugget will focus on the activities required to define the Scope for our real-world project. A Context Diagram (Scope Box) is presented as a good way of beginning a definition of the project. The next Scope Definition process reviewed in the Nugget is the definition of the project scope as a bulleted list of the detailed requirements that the project will support.

8. Scope Deliverables (38 min)

This Nugget wraps up the Scope Definition portion of our Real-World Project. The Nugget will review the Requirements Traceability Matrix and the Scope Statement (which is part of the formal Project Management Plan deliverable).

9. Project Schedule (31 min)

This Nugget focuses on expanding the deliverable list defined in the Project Scope Statement to define and create the schedule. This Nugget is focused on using a Project Scheduling Tool (Microsoft Project) to complete the tasks associated with developing the project schedule: creation of WBS, assignment of resources, estimation of tasks, identification of dependencies, and finally the creation of the schedule.

10. Project Budget (26 min)

This Nugget reviews all the work required to create the all-important project budget. It reviews in-depth a Budget Spreadsheet to accumulate all project costs to develop the total project budget. This Nugget also reviews the importance of including costs for risk contingency plans as part of the total project budget. The Nugget concludes with a review of how project budget preparation and management needs to be carefully integrated into the overall financial cycle in an organization.

11. Identify Risks (23 min)

This Nugget reviews the steps to be taken to identify, qualify and develop risk strategies to ensure that uncontrollable future events don’t seriously impact the overall project success. This process starts with “unlimited” dreaming and worrying about anything and everything that could impact the project’s success. Then with a very large list of risks, we review each risk to determine the impact and probability of each risk to develop a more realistic list of risks. Finally, with a manageable and realistic list of project risks, we develop mitigation strategies to help ensure project success. The Nugget reviews a Risk Register to track, quantify and manage the project risks.

12. Project Management Plan (33 min)

This Nugget concludes our discussion on project planning. The Project Management Plan summarizes the results of project planning and defines the scope, schedule, budget, quality, communications, human resources, risk, procurement, and stakeholder management strategies for the project.

13. Project Startup (29 min)

This Nugget reviews the recommended processes that should take place once the Project Management Plan is approved. The first step is to work with Human Resources to identify the project team members and deal with any variances in terms of planned skills and availabilities and the actual skills of the assigned team members. Next, we prepare the project environment. The Nugget then reviews the importance of ensuring that the appropriate tools are in place. The next area covered is establishing team norms. The Nugget concludes with a review of the importance of having a Project Kickoff meeting to get the project started appropriately.

14. Procurement Planning (33 min)

This Nugget reviews all aspect of procurement of the needed supplies, vendors, support, and equipment needed for the project. The Nugget first reviews Procurement Planning which identifies what needs to be purchased for the project. Next, the planning process determines how to purchase; commodity purchase, unique RFP, or purchase order. The Nugget then reviews the steps for actually going out and purchasing all the components identified. The Nugget reviews a sample vendor evaluation spreadsheet that can be used for select the most appropriate vendor based on RPF responses. The Nugget concludes with a review of the processes for managing and then closing each contract developed for the project.

15. Delivery and Time Tracking (30 min)

With this Nugget, the focus changes from planning to delivery and the real-world activities associated with delivering a project. The Nugget begins with a brief review of the actual project delivery, which is where the team delivers the project by completing each of the project deliverables. The Nugget then moves on to Monitoring and Controlling the project with a review of receiving and processing timesheets from the team members. Examples are given using Microsoft Project on recommended processes for managing timesheets and the resultant analysis required to understand the project impact of processing the timesheets.

16. Status Reports (35 min)

This Nuggets focuses on the processes for developing the weekly, monthly, and quarterly status reports. It reviews the evolutionary approach to status reporting beginning with the team members submitting weekly status reports, followed by the consolidation of the individual reports into the project weekly status and then the consolidation into the monthly and quarterly status reports. The Nugget also reviews how Microsoft Project is a key source of project status reporting information.

17. Communications (34 min)

This Nugget focuses on the single most important thing that can make or make break the success of a project: Communications. The Nugget reviews the importance of having a Project Portal, whether it’s a simple shared network drive or a formal commercial project portal. Next, the Nugget reviews the role the Status Report plays in effective communication as it is the report that relays the project status, good and bad, and is vital in keeping all project stakeholders informed about the project. The Nugget then reviews the importance of meetings and provides series of recommendations for ensuring the project meetings are effective and efficient. The Nugget concludes with a review of how to manage project action items to ensure that all “promises” are followed up on and all expectations have been managed appropriately.

18. Changes and Replanning (36 min)

This Nugget addresses two key topics of ongoing project management, changes and replanning. Project managers must be ready to replan a project based on sudden changes, present the impacts to management, and obtain approval to implement new changes. Replanning consists of three key components: weekly replanning to adjust the schedule based on processing weekly timesheets, regular replanning to adjust for resource over-allocations, and on demand to determine the impact of other project changes.

19. Quality and Acceptance (27 min)

This Nugget focuses on two very related subjects, Quality and Acceptance, with the assumption that if the project delivers high quality, then acceptance should be easily achieved. The Nugget begins with a discussion on Quality Assurance, specifically ensuring that the right things are done on this project. In support of this, the Nugget presents a Document Review Checklist that can be used as part of Quality Assurance. Next, the Nugget discusses Quality Control, specifically ensuring that things are done right on the project, and reviews a Document Review Minute template that can be used as part of Quality Control. The Nugget concludes with a review of a Personal Acceptance Document that should be used for Document, Phase, and Project acceptance.

20. Team Management (28 min)

This Nugget focuses on the PM activities to be performed during project delivery to ensure effective team management and performance. It then reviews the importance of understanding the project’s role and interaction with the organization. Next, the Nugget reviews the strategies needed for team rotation and changes. It concludes with a review of general team management techniques necessary to keep overall team morale at a high level.

21. Risks and Issues (20 min)

This Nugget reviews the actions needed during project delivery to effectively manage risks and issues. The Nugget focuses on the risk log and the actions needed to regularly review and update the risk log, on at minimum a weekly basis. The second part of risk management reviewed in the Nugget is “dreaming and worrying” about what new risks can be identified as a result of better knowledge. Each new risk is added to the risk register using the same processes identified in the earlier Identify Risks Nugget.

22. Budget Management (22 min)

This Nugget reviews the processes to ensure that the project budget spreadsheet is maintained to reflect both the current project costs as well as updated estimates for remaining work. While the project budget spreadsheet is the “system of record” for all project costs, the Nugget reviews the processes for extracting the needed information from other project tools, specifically Microsoft Project.

23. Closing (13 min)

This Nugget reviews the activities associated with closing a project: Obtain Final Acceptance, Close Procurement, Identify Lessons Learned, Harvest Documents for Reuse, and Complete Performance Reviews.

24. Lessons Learned Part 1 (29 min)

This Nugget is the first of two reviewing Steve’s real world experiences delivering projects over his 20+ years PM career. This Nugget is focused on lessons learned in business management; acceptance; team dynamics; technology; methodology; and Agile.

25. Lessons Learned Part 2 (30 min)

This Nugget is the second of two reviewing Steve’s real-world experiences delivering projects during his 20+ years PM career. This Nugget is focused on lessons learned in testing; optimism versus realism; IT management; and implementation.

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Project Management for the Real World – CBT Nuggets, Steve Caseley