5 Key Project Management Processes

“Do you know the process for booking train tickets?” a new colleague asked me recently. She needed to travel to another office and was planning to use public transport. We have a travel agent that she could use to make the booking, but she wasn’t sure how to go about it.

The process is relatively simple. Call up for a quote, get your manager to approve the travel request, forward the approval to the travel agent and then receive either ‘real’ tickets or e-tickets, depending on what you have ordered and where you are going. You probably have something similar in your own company.

So what’s so significant about that? It’s because it’s a process. Even something as easy as buying a train ticket has a defined process. There are lots of processes in project management and they help us manage things consistently, whether we are working on large projects or small ones. Here are 5 key project management processes.

1. Project Initiation

Project initiation is a project management phase: it’s the stuff you do at the beginning of the project to ensure that it starts off on the right foot. But it is also the process of getting your project scoped and approved.

Project initiation involves making sure that you know what you are doing, that you have the appropriate resources (including the budget) to do so and that your project is approved. It should also include a check to make sure that you have a project sponsor allocated to the project as well as the team members who will be doing the work. That last point is probably the most important. The approval process could involve several steps including a business case review and final approval to proceed from your project sponsor. Don’t start work without it.

2. Risk Management

The risk management process ensures that you are adequately managing the risks on your project. This process includes steps to identify risks, assess them and prepare an action plan to mitigate against them. Your risk log is the key place to record all of this activity and ensure that you are following the process accurately.

This is a good point to mention that process steps tend to result in actions, and actions need owners. In the risk management process, once you have prepared an action plan you will need to allocate someone to work on those activities to ensure the risk is managed appropriately. You can delegate this work to them using your project management software, which will also give them the opportunity to update their progress in real-time so that you’ll always know how they are doing against managing those risks.

3. Change Management

All projects suffer changes – as project managers we just have to accept that! However, it is important that the change management process is handled properly so that the changes on your project do not get out of hand.

Changes should be specified, assessed to see their impact on the project and then approved or rejected. If a change is approved, there is another process to follow to ensure that all the project documents and the schedule get updated with the new information. You can use a change log to record all the proposed and accepted changes on your project, along with the date and who authorized them. This gives you a central record so that everyone can see what has changed and how this will impact their work.

4. Project Reporting

Project reporting might not seem like a process, but think about it! Each week (or day, or month) you gather status updates from team members, prepare these into a short report or include the data in a template, review the report and get it approved and then circulate it to the relevant stakeholders. It has inputs (updates from the team) and outputs (the finished report). The finished report could be in any format, from a spreadsheet to a short email. Templates make the process faster as you can speed up the data entry. Dashboards make the process faster still as they pull information in real-time from your project management software and present it graphically so that everyone can see at a glance how the project is progressing.

This is a key process because communication is such an important part of making your project successful. Inadequate communication can lead to misunderstandings which in turn often lead to rework or delays on the schedule.

5. Issue Management

Unfortunately, issues happen on projects. Things go wrong from time to time and it is not always possible to foresee these situations. It is important to make sure that you deal with problems consistently and effectively so that they can be properly managed and resolved. The issue management process achieves this.

When something goes wrong on your project you should start off by identifying the problem. Use your issue log to record the situation. Assess the impact on your project including the budget, resource plan and schedule. Then you are in a position to work out what you need to do next to resolve it. This becomes your action plan – probably the most critical part of the issue management process. Assign a resource to take the lead with managing the issue through to resolution. Ask them to record their progress in real-time using their project management software to update the status of the issue. That helps with communication, as you’ll always be able to see how much progress has been made towards resolving the problem.

These are 5 key project management processes, but as you’ll discover on the way through a project, there are many more processes that help keep you project on track and your team on target to deliver their tasks effectively. Without these processes, project management would be much harder and the results far less successful!

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What is the Reason Behind Your Process and How Can That Lead to Success?

Proper understanding of your project is necessary to ensure success. The success of a project can be easily defined by meeting your deadline and finishing under budget. However, as a project manager you must take in account the customer’s reaction and keep that in mind during the life cycle of the project. You need to understand the customer’s needs and to make sure that your project delivers just that. When you start out a project you need to look at some key factors.

First, you should take the time upfront to understand the need of the customer and establish that before the start of the project. You should then implement goals that your team needs to reach in order to meet the customers’ needs. Of course there will be variables in the project and unforeseen conflicts that will arise, like every project, however, you should map out all possible variables and resolutions to them as much as possible. Part of the role of a project manager is to analyze these issues up front before they become real fires.

For example, a project may be designing a custom textbook for a particular education course. By understanding students and their needs, you can analyze, set goals, problem solve, and make decisions along the way with the customer, or students, in this case, in mind. Let’s say that the custom book you are designing is a biology or scientific textbook. Since science textbooks often come with a number of vital terms, a project manager may identify that a proper glossary or index is maintained through the life of the project. Ultimately, by knowing that the custom book is directed and will land in the hands of a student who is taking a difficult science course up front, a project manager is able to make decisions based on this.

You should always measure and report the three standard measures of a successful project. The first to make sure that the project is completed on time. This can be achieved by following a rigid time table and by making sure all milestones within a project are met and are met on time. Second, you need to look at cost. Tracking how much you spend to make the product and how much effort is going to be put into it is essential for a successful product. The third, is to always measure your progress towards your established goals.

You will want to report progress throughout the whole project including any decisions that were made or changes in the specifications along the way. By reminding your team of the customers’ expectations and needs, they will ultimately keep those needs in check. You will want to keep coworkers and clients up to date on the status of every project. If there are any decisions or problems that arise that you aren’t comfortable with, always address the issues with your team or with the client. This will reinforce progress and help boost morale among the team and trust from your customers. Customers that are happy with their final product will ultimately count on you for their next project.

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Necessity of Involvement of Top Management and Project Sponsors in the Project Management Process

The role of top management and project sponsors is absolutely vital for the success of any project. The project manager must ensure their active involvement in every stage of the project so that they can add real value to the project and seriously contribute for its success. Especially in all sorts of decision making process, their involvement in a proper and timely manner must be ascertained.

Before starting any project, the job of project planning, scheduling and project costing must be done in an efficient manner. The project manager must sit together with the top management and project sponsors in order to get their suggestions and recommendations so that the whole planning process becomes successful. Specifically in budgeting and scheduling, their opinions must be given proper value. Otherwise, in case of necessity, they will not come forward to assist the project manager so that he/she can get out any disastrous situation that will lead the project towards ultimate failure.

Again, the project sponsors should comprehend the full scope of the project, both from technical and business point of view. The sponsors must be knowledgeable about the progress and obstacles of the project timely and regularly so that they can act effectively whenever necessary. They must render their helping hand to the project manager which may boost his/her confidence and this will make him/her capable of contributing significantly for the success of the project.

The top management or project sponsors can assist the project manager in many different ways. For example, they can make sure about the availability of necessary resources in a proper and timely manner. In certain cases when the budget is running down, they can ensure the availability of necessary funds for the smooth progress of the project. Whenever the project manager feels that the complete project will not be finished within the deadline set previously, he/she can start discussing with the top management or project sponsors and try to make them convinced about the necessity of increasing the deadline. Their participation and overall support is really crucial to make the project a successful one.

The business owners or project sponsors must be proactive and always make sure about backing the project manager’s decision even publicly. This will establish the authority of the project manager regarding the issues like making decisions about hiring appropriate staff. This sort of authority is absolutely vital to maintain discipline between the team members. All should keep in mind that it is the project manager who is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the project, so his/her authority must be properly established in the project.

Risks are common in every project. The success of any project totally depends on how efficiently these risks are handled. Proper risk management always requires top management support. They must acknowledge the reality of these risks properly and must assist the project manager so that he/she can make effective steps to minimize the effects of these risks on the project.

In some cases, it is also seen that the top management or business owners, sometimes even the project sponsors poke their nose in every single matter which ultimately hampers the smooth progress of the project. The project manager must come forward in this regard and sincerely try to convince them so that they can rely totally on him/her for the success of the project. The project manager will have to take their ideas and suggestions, but must limit their involvement in project activities.

In my project management career, I always tried my best to ensure the total participation of the top management and project sponsors in major decision-making processes, which always ensured my confidence regarding running the project activities in a successful manner. Whenever I felt necessary, I always consulted with them and informed them about any serious issue, and their suggestion and ideas always helped me to proceed in a confident manner. I always believed that the proper communication with them and their participation would make me free of tension.

Hence, it can be concluded by stating that the project manager must make all sorts of major decisions regarding a project after informing the top management and project sponsors in an appropriate manner. It is only the active participation of business owners and project sponsors that can guarantee a project’s success. That is why, the project manager must give proper heed in this regard and try his/her level best to involve them in the project.