Difference between Project Management Office (PMO) and Project Managers (PM)

Project Management Office (PMO) exists in the central organization to monitor all the running projects in the company. PMO controls the management of the projects, programs or the combination of both.

Thus, in a nutshell, PMO support and control Project Manager (PM). In details, the difference of PM and PMO are below:

• PM controls the resources achieve the project objectives, while PMO optimizes the resources to be shared among running projects.
• PM manages the scope, schedule, costs, and quality of the products. In line with that, PMO manages overall risk, opportunity and the relation between running projects.
• PM focuses on specific project objectives, while PMO oversees the major programs scope changes and interpret them as potential opportunities to better achieve business objectives.

Qualities that the Project Team Should Have

The term project becomes so familiar in our every day work. The successful projects running in companies often tempt to have more projects to be launched simultaneously. Upper management could easily forget the important of solid project team member to drive the projects to be successful.

As defined in "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) Third Edition", the project management team should understand and use knowledge and skills from at least five areas of expertise:

- The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)
- Application area knowledge, standards, and regulation
- Understanding Project Environment
- General Management Knowledge and Skill
- Interpersonal Skills

One project member is not required to master of the areas above. However, as a project team, they should have covered all aspects. Details of each expertise area are discussed below:

1. PMBOK can be illustrated as sets of knowledge and skills that are generally accepted to have project management. Read details in some PMBOK guides/books.
2. Application area knowledge is the area that has common element to the project but does not need to be present in the project. Such area has standards and regulations that project team member should be aware of. One example is when having a construction project. One should aware that in the application area of construction there are sets of standard (with or without ISO) for building constructions, and sets of regulations that are imposed by government.
3. Understanding Project Environment. Environment could be cultural, social, international, political, or physical environment.
4. General Management Knowledge Skills are the skills required to carry out planning, organizing, staffing, executing, and controlling the project phases. The knowledge and skills could be varied like financial, accounting, sales, marketing, logistics, supply chain, information technology, etc. Project manager should have strong skills on this point.
5. Interpersonal Skills includes the skills like: effective communication, leadership, motivation, negotiation and conflict management, problem solving, etc.

Therefore, an organization should identify the right persons to be included in the project and make sure they (as a team) can encompass all aspect discussed above. This is to ensure the project objectives can be achieved at the targeted time and costs.

Analysis and Design Phase - Pay Attention to it!

"Analysis and Design" Phase is a phase in Project Management for Application or Software. During this process, a consultant or analyst will do depth analysis on the current situation and relate them with the application, software, or system that are going to be implemented or enhanced.

Though it is one of very important phase in the project management, there seem to be ignored or not paid attention to. Below are the common reasons:

1. The Analysis and Design considered as a "boring" phase in the project. The analyst need to document all activities and gaps that we identified. The design created is sometime too general. Client or parties being interviewed are sometime just tell the problems in general without going into details. They get bored telling the problems and assuming that the consultant or analyst should pick up their own from any documentation available.

2. Lack of of time dedicated. With limited time, analyst often relies on client's documents or interview. The important part is too see or experience him/herself the current system and understand the behavior and problems of the current systems.

3. Related to point 1 and 2, the design is not detailed or not yet verified by the technical people that are going to do the enhancement. The design is supposed to be detailed with proposed print screens of the enhancement or functionalities. Clients or users does not tend to understand the detail design during approval. In their mind, they will wait until the development is finished and will do the review afterwards. But this is not how it suppose to work. Both parties should understand in details what the design is and how the end product will be to avoid arguments during product testing.

In order to avoid problem and make a good analyst and design, project manager or team leader should allocate enough time and good analyst on this phase. Analyst should understand fully about the system and create as detailed design documentation as possible. All proposed windows, functions, and button should be presented if applicable. Analysis on cases, what if, should be documented as well.

On the other hand, client or user should put more effort collaborating with analyst to inform him/her all concerns. When the design documentation if finished, client should understand completely what are in the document.

In the end, it is better to re-work on design documentations until both parties are satisfied with the design. It is more cost and time savings to re-do the design documentations instead of to re-do the development in future.

Data in Email Communications

Communication in project management are mostly relied on email exchanges. Data are passed as well trough email communications. Email accounts should be able to be accessed and downloaded using Email application in laptop so that the emails can be read even though the project team members are off line.

To minimize the cost of having reliable email server, project management can look for hosted exchange available online. The cost of having email server will be reduced without sacrificing the quality and the security of our emails data. Make sure you find the service that offer exchange hosting with latest technology like hosted exchange 2007 and provide you money back guarantee to test their services and reliabilities.

Additional features that can synchronize with Blackberry or Windows mobile device can be something to think of if you have your project members always mobile and owning these devices. If data integrity and security are concerning you the most, try to ask them to explain how they secure the data that will not be able to be accessed by unauthorized people. If you do not understand their explanation, post in on IT forum so that other people can verify the security.

Knowledge Management in Project Implementation

Project Implementation, especially in Utility System Project Implementations, requires specialist consultants to do the tasks. Each consultant has his/her role and responsibility to carry out the project implementation. Mostly, there is no overlap knowledge to minimize the cost of consultants in the project.

The situation like above creates a fragile project environment if a one consultant is absent due to any reasons. The project could be affected or worst it could be stopped temporarily if the consultant who are absent has the knowledge that could create a bottle neck in the project implementation.

This is where knowledge management should be considered in project implementation. There should be another person or consultant that could handle the task if a certain consultant is absent. Of course the result could not be maximum as the replacement consultant is a current consultant working on the project implementation handling other area. Knowledge management could be implemented by assigning a buddy consultant (from different area) to each consultant (say consultant A). The buddy consultant should attend all meetings attended by the consultant A to make sure he/she knows the progress and some tasks done by consultant A. This ways, a buddy consultant could handle temporary some tasks if consultant A is absent temporarily?

Another question is that... how if consultant A is absent permanently because of resigning? Well, a good human resource department in a company should require 1 month advance notice for a consultant to resign. This time could be enough for a company to hire another consultant with the same or similar profile.

Online Project Documentation Management

It is normal for a project documentation to have a tons of documentation. Each phase of the project often mark by documentation deliverables. Not to mention all the minutes of the meetings that needs to be documented. Due to high quantity of the documentations, proper documentation management is required. However, hard copy documentation management is not anymore a trend in project implementation. Most of the consultants and project managers are mobile, thus, most of the informations should be shared online. This is where a proper online project documentation is needed.

A project usually started online project documentation using an intranet within the organization. This way, all members in the intranet network could share the resources that were organized properly. The problem is that if the internet could not be accessed online from outside the office or network. This will be useless as project managers and most of the consultants are mobile.

UK based company created an innovation to offer Small Business Intranet UK. A web based intranet solution that allow all defined members to access the folders based on the privilege that have been set. You will be able to access your files remotely from home with the secured connection to protect all your project documentations. Small Business Intranet UK offers a 30 day free trial so that you can make sure if the customizable solutions fit your online project documentation management. Project manager can ensure to monitor all day to day activities with ease even if he/she is traveling.

Clear Responsibilities in Project Implementation

Even if during first step of the project all responsibilities have been defined for both parties (client and vendor), there will be new areas or work that need to be done and monitored. These new tasks should be make clear who are the entity that will be responsible.

It is important that during monthly meeting, these new responsibilities were declared to avoid misunderstanding in future. A chart displaying new tasks and responsibilities will be helpful.

This process should be repeated every time new tasks appear on the duration of the project implementation. It is better to anticipate and make every thing clear in term of responsibilities. Avoid blaming each other when the tasks are going wrong. You will not benefit anything from blaming other party. Instead, learn from the mistake and strategize better for the next phase.

Project Management Tracking and Control

One way of Project Management Tracking and Control is using Communication Management. What are the purpose of communication management? It will:

• Identify and describe all project stakeholders
• Describe the communication needs of the project stakeholders
• Define how project stakeholders will be kept informed about the project
• Identify the communication paths within the project structure
• Ensure all information is consistent, accurate, and timely
• Common project communication methods include status reporting, correspondence, meetings, and formal presentations.

And what the methods for communication management?

• Project Status Documents
• Project Planning and Control Documents
• Inter-Office/Inter-Project Communication
• E-mail
• Meeting
• Presentations

For effective tracking and control of project management using communication management, all project audiences should be defined with their roles and responsibilities.

Then, the communication matrix should be developed to identify activities, who should receive the communication (audiences), method of communications, and suggested time frame. Example Below can be seen for the communication matrix:



Using simple communication matrix, the project can be easily controlled and tracked. Any deviations should be detected as early as possible for faster resolutions. This as to avoid the problems or hindrances grow and affect other activities of the project.

Report any abuses in your project implementation

Since the project implementation life cycle is mostly short, the monitoring done by the project manager often loose. Authoritarian project manager is focussed on the end product without much participation. Due to this, you will encounter many abuses by the project team members. The most common is by claiming the work that was not done by himself/herself. This could be done with or without the knowledge of the person doing the job. How unfair the world is, right?

Even if the person knows that his/her task was claimed by another team member, he/she just kept quite because he/she does not want to ruin the relationship with the team member who claimed the work. Well, if you have the same experience and afraid to report, you might try informing your boss using Anonymous Email. Be sure that you put enough evidences. I am sure your boss will appreciate that. If you do not want to make it obvious, you can link it with different cases not related to your case. The main point is to teach the lessons to the abuser, right?

Why we called it Project? What differs Project with Operation?

Many of us have heard about the term “project”, even during our college days we often heard “mid-term project” or “final term project”. Project involves organization of people and other resources to perform work. But what makes it different with Operation? As we know that operation also involves people and resources to perform work. The main differences can bee noticed because projects are:
• Temporary
• Resulting a unique product or service

“Temporary” means that the project has a definite start time and finish time. The project starts when the initiation process has been launched. The project finishes when the project’s objectives have been achieved. The project duration can be short like matter of days. On the other hand, the project can take years as well. Take note that even the project can take year, this is because the scope of the project is huge. Small scope of the project should not take time to manage. If the project keeps on deviating from the objective or having delays in most of the time, then, the project management should think and act if the project should be terminated.

Even tough the project is temporary, the end result are mostly a permanent product. For example: project of implementing new customer information system for electricity company. The project itself is temporary to implement new system. When the project’s objective is achieved and the project closes, the system is going to be used by the company in permanent basis. The work will then become an operation work.

“Resulting a unique product or services” means that the project carries out a unique product or services. Let us continue the example of implementing customer information system for Electricity Company. One may say that the customer information system is not unique. It is a common system used by many electricity companies. So what makes it unique? The one that make it unique is because the project is implemented by different vendor. It is unique because the electricity company that is going to be implemented the system is different. It is unique because the customization of the customer information system for that electricity company is different. And many more but I think you get my point already.

As the project results into a unique product or service, the characteristics of the product or services should be defined clearly in the project scope. This is usually clearly stated in the contract if the project involves other party outside the company.

Why PMBOK is commonly used in project management?

In implementing a new system to a company, project management is the key in planning, staffing, executing and monitoring the whole process. Project implementors often use different approach to make sure that the system can be implemented with minimal risk. In general, this methodology for project management can be generalized into several steps. Most well known project management is PMBOK.

PMBOK stands for Project Management Body of Knowledge. It is combination of knowledge in the area of project management. It becomes a standard of project management because it has been proven in many project managements. It is a practice or methodology that is generally accepted. Generally accepted means that it could be applied to any projects in general. However, generally accepted means as well that in some of the projects, some methodologies are not obligatory.

PMBOK can be used by anyone interested in the project management, namely:
• Project managers
• Project team members
• Managers of project manager
• Customer of the project or project’s stockholder
• Consultant involved in the project management
• Trainers or educator in the area of project management

PMBOK can be summarized into 5 general processes:
1. Initiating Processes – in first step is to recognize that the project should begin. Commitment from all parties should be available to initiate the project.
2. Planning Processes – the process should define a workable scheme to achieve the goal of the project.
3. Executing Processes – in this process, the available human resources and other resources should be coordinated to carry out the plan.
4. Controlling Processes – measurement to detect any deviation from the goal and plan should be implemented. Necessary corrective action should be imposed to align the project into the plan.
5. Closing Processes – the project should end and acceptable by all parties. This step is related to formalize the closing of the project.

In next posts/articles, I will discuss in details about each processes and everything related to project management to ensure you do not miss the concepts of it. Make sure you sign up in our mailing list (you can find on upper left of the site) to be notified for any new post related to project management.

5 Minute Review Before You Sign Off from Work

As a project member, you need to work smart to keep everything under control. Working hard alone is, nowadays, not enough.

More positions and tasks in the project are minimal supervised by our boss. In the end, our boss just needs the end result. He/she does not care how we manage your time to do the task. If you work with each day has been defined what you should do, then, Congratulation! you are a winner.

Planning the things to do is no secret anymore for any time management. One thing that I recommend you to do is to review your things to do 5 minutes before you are heading off from your work. You will not image how this can help you a lot in monitoring your task for the next day.

Ok. To be more specific, just say that it is 5 minutes before going home. Get your things to do list and review one by one which one:

- pending

- finished

- finished but create another item.

For item 1 and 2, there are self explanatory. For point 3, this is the task that you have finished but in the end, it creates another task that you need to do. For example in the list of things to do is: Obtain finance data from John. Once you get the data, the format is not as you expected. Thus, the next day you can not create a report in the time that you have allocated. You need to reformat the data and it will surely take 1/2 day of your time (for example). It means that "Obtain finance data from John" is finished, but "Reformat data from John" is created and will be included in your things to do for tomorrow.

Using this simple review, you will benefit much. You will know where you are now as compared with your goal or achievement for the week. You will also be up to date with all the progress that you have. Imagine if all the sudden your boss call you and asking when you can finish the finance report. You will be able to answer with confidence and explain a delay in reasonable answers.

Once you finish reviewing your shot list, you can include the pending and new items for your things to do for the next day. Giving priority will enhance your time management so that you know what to put down first thing in the morning for the next day. No equal priority should be given. Next day when you come to the office, you just need to tackle down all the things in your list one by one. You will fell well when you see how many tasks you are able to cross out in your list.

I hope that this 5 minute review before signing off from work can be beneficial for you as it is helping me a lot. The key is persistent on doing this. Make it as a habit for you.

Agile Project Management for Utility System

There are quite number of articles or argument on Agile Project Management. One thing that interest me is the discussion whether this Agile Project Management is only applicable on software development project or any other projects?

This summary from ccpace.com could answer our mind bugling:

The best project managers aren’t just organizers – they combine business vision, communication skills, soft management skills and technical savvy with the ability to plan, coordinate, and execute. In essence, they are not just managers – they are leaders. While this has always been the case, agile project management
places a higher premium on the leadership skills than ever before.

For example, XP teams create and monitor their own iteration plans in collaboration with the customers. The customer creates stories (features) and prioritizes them based on business value. The developers divide up the tasks themselves as they work and measures progress for each iteration (time-boxed development cycle), adjusting plans with the customer as necessary. So, if the project no longer needs a detailed master project plan, why does it need a project manager?

Because every project needs a leader. Agile methodologies free the project manager from the drudgery of being a taskmaster thereby enabling the project manager to focus on being a leader – someone who keeps the spotlight on the vision, who inspires the team, who promotes teamwork and collaboration, who champions the project and removes obstacles to progress. Rather than being an operational controller, the project
manager can become an adaptive leader – if she can relinquish her reliance on old style management.

The basic phases of an agile development project are really no different from those of any other project. You still must define and initiate the project, plan for the project, execute the plan, and monitor and control the results. But, the manner in which these steps are accomplished are different and require the project manager to retrofit what they know about traditional management to a new way of thinking – the thinking of complex adaptive systems.

Failing Rate of Project Implementation

Implementing Electric Utility System is quite similar like implementing IT Projects. The rate of failure projects is quite high.

Based on the study done on IT Projects quoted from CIO.com

n 1994, the researchers found that 31 percent of the IT projects were flat failures. That is, they were abandoned before completion and produced nothing useful. Only about 16 percent of all projects were completely successful: delivering applications on time, within budget and with all the originally specified features.

"As of 2006, the absolute failure rate is down to 19 percent," Johnson says. "The success rate is up to 35 percent." The remaining 46 percent are what the Standish Group calls "challenged": projects that didn't meet the criteria for total success but delivered a useful product.

This rate should aware us everytime we are going to start the project. Typical reasons in implementing the Electric Utility System is lack of knowledge of project scope. Or maybe... misunderstanding of project scope from both parties.

Marketing people at the starts tries to sell the project with no clear definitions of the project. Or the client as well sometimes did not see on the details. Thus, when the project starts it is difficult to implement strict milestones to close some stages. Protocol of acceptance becomes difficult to sign and vendors becomes more lenient to give some modifications. When modifications are given, the client does not stop asking for more modifications.

Thus, before starting the project both parties should know in details and agree upon the scope. When the project starts, many project management tools or methodologies can be use to monitor critical path and problems arises that can hinder the objective of the project.

Simple Time Management for Project Manager

I read an article of a Project Manager who are running off the time to monitor his ongoing projects. And in the same time he has to obtain more projects. He was wondering why some of his colleagues can spend more time in playing golfs and their quotas are always reached.

I like the discussions that was presented there because one of the writers told him to do simple time managements to handle all the task. The time management described composes of 2 categories, namely:

1. Overall Project Timeline.
This was done by creating a huge board of project timeline. Put this board in our office and you can update it using pencil because most of the time, the schedule can change.
2. Daily Things to Do.
Before end of day, create a list to do for tomorrow with its prioritization. The next day, attack your things to do one by one.

Most of us know how to use simple time management. But only few of us implement them religiously. So... start your simple time management today. For details discussions about the article I read, it can be found here Project Management Issues