The Template Collective Blog

Project management templates… and more
Meetings

Eliminate Excess Meetings

March 23, 2015 – 5:01 pm

Six Tips to Eliminate Excess Meetings

  1. Encourage Accessibility. Many times meetings are scheduled because decision makers have been inaccessible. They are holed up in their office with the door closed all day, or they may be road warriors that rarely return phone calls or emails. Encourage these key decision makers to make themselves accessible for quick questions, return calls and prompt email replies. This will eliminate the need to drag them, and a whole bunch of other people, into a meeting.
  2. Use a Good Project Management Tool. Affordable project management tools have reached a level of simplicity and sophistication that just a few years ago was reserved for expensive enterprise level solutions. Take advantage of these tools to do things that otherwise call for a meeting: task assignment, collaboration, and discussions. These can all occur virtually and eliminate the need for scheduling another meeting.
  3. Change Your Culture. Unnecessary meetings can be a result of people not wanting to make their own decisions. They may not realize they have permission to make decisions on their own. Work on changing your culture from one of indecision to it’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission. Good people will make good decisions. Trust them to do the right thing without having to call a meeting for every decision. They will infrequently also make bad decisions. Work with them to show them what they could have done differently, but don’t chastise them to the point that they revert to the old culture of meeting madness.
  4. Know How Much Your Meetings Cost. Understanding the cost of personnel when you hold a meeting can be an eye opener. A one hour meeting with eight average-salaried employees will easily run into the hundreds of dollars. In a mid to large sized company it quickly adds up to up to thousands of dollars spent weekly just on meetings! Is there a better use of everyone’s time that provides a greater ROI to the company? Most likely, there is.
  5. Review the Need for Recurring Meetings. Project managers love recurring meetings. When a project starts out, one of the first things we typically do is set up a weekly meeting where everyone can touch base about the project. These meetings are invaluable during the project’s early days, but they begin to lose their utility as the project progresses. Review the frequency of your recurring meetings to see if perhaps they could be moved to every other week, or maybe even once a month if things are going well with the project.
  6. Pay Attention. You need to lay ground rules at the outset of meetings that encourages everyone to pay attention. Kindly remind them to take their hands off their laptops, check their digital devices at the door, keep their eyes up, be attentive and engage. It’s a waste of your time if you have to schedule a one-on-one meeting to discuss something that was covered – but that they didn’t catch!

Meetings are indispensible when it comes to sharing information, collaborating, and making decisions. However, be mindful that meetings can also be time wasters and productivity killers. Implement these suggestions and you will easily gain up to a full day of your work life back each week!

Permalink | Comment (0)
Uncategorized

Manage Virtual Teams

March 9, 2015 – 5:11 pm

Manage Communication
Eight Steps to Manage Virtual Teams

 

There are some special techniques that can be used to manage these virtual teams.

  • Establish team objectives. The team members need to know and understand what it is that they are doing together. If people only understand their own role and their own work, they will always just be individual contributors.
  • Remind everyone they are a team.  If the team members think they are all working independently, they will act independent.  If they know they are part of a team working on common objectives and deliverables, they will tend to feel better about their work and be more active in their collaboration with other team members. 
  • Obtain the right technology. The technology is there to support virtual teams – there is really no reason to be without it. This includes fast access to the Internet, audio conferencing, videocams, collaborative software, shared directories, etc.   
  • Look for opportunities to “socialize.” Team members located together have opportunities to socialize throughout the day. Virtual teams don’t usually have this same opportunity to interact with each other, so it is more important for the project manager to look for ways they can bond.  This might include getting everyone together one time in a face-to-face setting – perhaps a Project Kickoff meeting. 
  • Be sensitive to cultural difference. It is possible that your virtual team all thinks and acts the same way. However, more and more virtual teams consist of people from multiple countries and multiple cultures. If you are the project manager on this type of team, make sure you have some appreciation for the differences in how people work and how they behave.
  • Communicate, communicate, communicate.  The project manager needs to be extra proactive in his communication to make sure everyone understands what is expected. People can start to feel isolated if they do not receive regular communication. It is hard enough to keep everyone informed on a “regular” project.  The communication lines on a virtual team must be opened up especially wide. The project manager can provide this steady stream of communication.
  • Adjust and compromise on time differences. The project manager needs to recognize that what is convenient for the project manager is not always convenient to the team members. For instance, if you are a manager in a global company it may not be practical to start all project meetings at 9:00 am. That may be convenient to the manager but it can result in resentment from people in other global locations that need to stay very late for these meetings.  
  • Give people shorter assignments. This is not the time to give people long assignments and hope that they are completed by the deadline.  Instead of assigning a six-week activity, for instance, the project manager should assign the work in three two-week activities. In the former case, you would not know for sure if the work was done for six weeks. In the later case, you can tell every two weeks if the work is on track.

These techniques will help your virtual teams be as successful as your co-located teams. 

Permalink | Comment (0)
Uncategorized

Quality Cost and Benefits

February 23, 2015 – 5:04 pm

The Cost of Quality

Building quality steps in the schedule adds a certain amount of effort and cost to the project. However, these incremental costs will be rewarded with shorter timelines and reduced costs throughout the life cycle of the solution. Examples of the cost of quality include:

  • Deliverable reviews. There is a cost associated with the time of the people attending the reviews. This includes any preparation, the actual review time for all participants, and the resulting follow-up work from the review.
  • Creation of the Quality Management Plan. The time required to plan quality into the project and the solution, including identifying completeness and correctness criteria.
  • Client approval. The time and effort required for the client to review interim and final deliverables and formally approve them as being correct and complete.
  • Testing. Testing is a part of the project life cycle and it is done to ensure the solution meets requirements and quality standards.
  • Quality control standards. The time and cost associated with defining relevant standards utilized throughout the project and/or the organization.
  • Audits. Audits are opportunities to have an outside party review the processes used to create your deliverables. Third party auditors provide a fresh perspective and unbiased opinion on whether good work processes are defined and are being followed. However, there is no question the audit takes extra time and effort on the part of the project manager and the person doing the audit.
  • Checklists. These are usually used to validate that all steps of a process were completed or all the components of a deliverable are in place. There is a cost to create them and a cost to fill them out.
  • Quality Control and Quality Assurance Groups.  If your company has distinct groups that specialize in quality control or quality assurance, their costs are part of the overall costs of quality for the organization.
  • Gathering metrics. Metrics are normally gathered to show the status of a process and to correct or improve the process if necessary. Collecting metrics takes time and there is an associated cost.

The Benefits of Quality

The costs of quality must be weighed against the benefits of providing a quality solution. Whereas many of the costs of quality show up in the project, many of the benefits of quality show up over the entire life cycle of the solution. The benefits of quality include:

  • Increased client satisfaction. Fewer defects mean that the client will be more satisfied. Higher service quality will also make the client experience much more pleasant. If you are in a “for-profit” business, this will result in goodwill and may translate into additional sales, or higher margins on future products.
  • Higher productivity. Fixing errors and reworking previously-completed deliverables are a drain on productivity. In fact, they contribute to negative productivity. If the deliverables are produced with higher quality and less rework, the overall project productivity will go up.
  • Lower costs / shorter duration. Although there is an initial higher cost to a quality process, this is more than made up with less rework toward the end of the project. This will save time and cost on the project.
  • Higher project team morale. Team morale suffers if there are many errors uncovered during the project. People feel bad when errors are uncovered and it can be frustrating to have to correct errors repeatedly. Team morale will rise (or at least hold steady) if deliverables are created with fewer errors the first time.
  • Fewer errors / defects. Higher quality shows up over the life of the solution with fewer defects and errors. If you are producing a product for sale in the marketplace, higher quality means fewer returns, less warranty work, fewer repairs, etc. If you are creating a long-term solution, this means less support and maintenance problems over the life cycle.

One of the key points of formal quality management is that if you spend more time and cost on the QA and QC side of quality management, you will be able to save substantially on the internal and external failure costs. In fact, the savings for external failure costs can be substantial. In some case you might deliver a product that your organization will utilize for many years. If you build a poor quality product, the support costs (external failure costs) could be substantial. On the other hand, if you spend more time focusing on building a better quality product during the project, the cost of operating and supporting the product long-term may be dramatically reduced.

 

Permalink | Comment (0)
project management process Quality Plan

Manage Quality

February 2, 2015 – 4:16 pm

Many people find quality management to be one of the more difficult project management processes to implement. This is because quality is hard to define, and formal quality management requires you to collect metrics to validate the state of quality. The following process will help create a framework for the quality management process.

1. Create a Quality Management Plan

Develop a Quality Management Plan to identify the major deliverables, completeness and correctness criteria, quality control activities and quality assurance activities. The Quality Management Plan also describes how you will ensure that the client’s quality requirements are achieved. It is the place to describe the processes and activities that will be put into place to ensure that quality deliverables are produced. 

2. Determine the customer requirements for quality

Work with your customer to determine their requirements for quality. The high-level characteristics of quality can be uncovered during the project definition process. The detailed quality requirements should be uncovered when you gather business requirements.

3. Define a set of metrics to validate quality requirements are met

Identify a set of metrics that will provide insight into the quality of the deliverables. The project manager should already be capturing overall financial and duration metrics. The quality-related metrics need to be more sophisticated. There are two areas where you are trying to manage quality – in your project work processes and in the actual deliverables you are building. You should try to capture metrics that will measure each.

4. Execute quality control activities

Quality control refers to activities that validate the quality of your deliverables. It is also referred to as “inspection”. Ensure that the quality control activities for every deliverable are performed while the project is underway.

5. Execute quality assurance activities

Quality assurance refers to the processes used to build deliverables. It is also referred to as “prevention”. Having good processes should results in good quality deliverables.

6. Monitor and resolve deliverable quality

You need to validate the quality of your deliverables on an ongoing basis. When quality problems are found, implement a process to determine the cause and to make improvements in the process.

Using this process will help you understand, plan for and manage the state of quality on your project.

Permalink | Comment (0)
agile

Four Key Elements of the Agile Model

January 26, 2015 – 6:23 pm

For many years, those were your choices. But now there is a different choice for IT development – Agile.  Calling them methodologies is probably too broad a word. It might be better to refer to them as approaches for doing development, or even philosophies.

There are four general beliefs that light methodologies have in common.

Develop in short cycles. Agile “sprints” usually take no more than 30 days each – or shorter. Partial solutions should be up and running in a very short time, with very tight iterative cycles designed to deliver continually working code that is built up to a final solution.

Value the people. People should be valued and treated with respect. Managers should trust them to do a good job and get out of the way. Agile teams work on a challenging but steady pace that can theoretically be sustained indefinitely.

Involve the client. If you are going to achieve the rapid results, the client must be an integral part of the project team. In fact, they should be assigned full-time and co-locate in the same physical space as the rest of the team.

Strive for simplicity. The basic thought is that if you have a choice between building something in a sophisticated way or a simple way, choose the simple way. Requirements should be simple, design work simple, and the coding techniques should be simple.

 

Over time, the Agile model has evolved to co-exist along with more traditional thinking of project management and development activities. You can also adopt hybrid mixtures of Agile and more traditional development approaches. This has made the movement more mainstream and safe for most organizations.

Can it work – yes! Can it fail – yes! I have spoken to companies that are highly successful and have cut development times dramatically. I have also spoken to organizations where Agile failed miserably. The bottom line – I think all IT organizations should have Agile projects. All projects are not candidates for Agile, but many are and every organization should probably be doing some Agile work or at least experimenting so that you see how it works.

Permalink | Comment (0)
Project Time

The Digital Timesheet

January 12, 2015 – 6:21 pm

The digital timesheet is one of the many project management tools that do more than its analog counterpart. They still do keep track of your employees’ time at work, but the information collected can now be easily relayed,  along with more information on just what was accomplished in that time.

The old days of punching a clock are gone for most of the business world except in the production floors where manual labor is still needed. Those workers and the task they attend to are well known and documented. A digital timesheet is used more by the professional at your organization. It is the most efficient manner of monitoring the time spent on a project.

The modern day digital timesheet is a way of knowing just who is performing what on your project. It is also an excellent tool for determining just how efficient your work force is performing in their duties against the standards of the industry, and each other. This will also make a formal record of what is accomplished and the time it took to complete each segment of the project.

One of the largest reasons a project is considered a failure is because it did not meet the time constraints set forth in the business case. By utilizing the timesheet in the most productive manner, you will have a written record of all the events involved in your project. This resolution of time usage can then help you to resolve any timing problems that might exist. This will help the project manager in determining just where time was lost or wasted so it can be corrected in future projects.

Along with the time spent on a task, the digital timesheet can also be set up to include specifics about how the time was spent and if there were any deals in completing the tasks at hand. This is a great way to get to the root cause of lost time during a project.

The digital timesheet is the best way to keep track of this finite resource. Since you can never recover lost time, it is best to manage it in the most constructive manner all the time.

Permalink | Comment (0)
project management process

Reasons for a Quality Management Process

December 29, 2014 – 6:09 pm

The reasons for a quality management process to be documented for your next business venture will help to set your credibility level amongst your customers. This document is where the specifications are laid out, in detail, for your customers to know just what to expect when they receive your deliverable. It is also the place your quality assurance team will be able to locate the information they need.

The quality management process specifically puts into writing just what level of quality your deliverable will be at. The specifications in these documents will be in a range. This will allow your target audience to be aware of just what they will be receiving when they purchase your product for use by their organization. This is necessary since with an increase in quality generally comes an increase in price. Most organizations look for the lowest cost products that will meet their needs or specification.

The quality management process will also have the information that is necessary for your quality assurance team to create the necessary methods and procedures so you’re deliverable can be inspected to make sure it attains the goals of the documents. When the quality control department records the findings from inspecting the deliverable, you will have the proof necessary to prove to your target audience you are producing what you claim to be making.

This proof is how the quality management process will help you to attain the requirements now necessary that are set by the internationally accepted standards for the global market place. By having this record readily available when entering a new region of the world, the red tape and delays to this new market place will be reduced. This makes it easier and faster to begin the selling of your product so a new revenue stream can be developed.

By having a quality management process documented and in place, your organization will become more efficient in creating new and profitable revenue streams. With this proof, you can show any possible regulator or inspector that you are in compliance with the standards they require.

Permalink | Comment (0)
Change Management

Change Management Theory

December 15, 2014 – 2:24 am

The change management theory that is the most effective is the one that can implemented the change successfully without any disruption in to the daily work routine of the staff. Unfortunately this does not occur to often. To help increase the odds of implanting the change in the most effective manner, the creation of a change management plan is needed.

The creation of such a plan has to take into account the change management theory of little disruption. This will then require that the project manager who is creating the plan to know their staff. The information needed is their ability to learn, follow orders and their ability to accept change. This knowledge will help set the path to which is the best way to introduce the changes and how to introduce them.

The change management theory is usually a generic model that looks great on paper. This does not always mean it is practical to follow precisely within all organization. Adjustments need to be made for the staff and their real life expectations on accepting the change.

Change is not something that is general welcomed. Most workers get set into a groove or routine and do not want is disturbed. The average change management theory does not take this into account. This is the responsibility of the project manager to make the two meld together so the implementation can occur seamlessly. While this is difficult, it is possible.

What the project manager has to include from the change management theory into their change of management plan is the goals and scope of the change. These have to remain unchanged so the final results will be achieved as wanted by the upper management. This is where the disruption usually takes place even if the change is for the good of the staff that have to use it.

The change management theory is a great thing to have on paper, but can rarely be followed precisely. The staff are living beings with feelings and emotions along with different learning capabilities. All of them must be taken into account when formulation your change management plan.

Permalink | Comment (0)
Risk Management

Risk Management Worksheet

December 1, 2014 – 5:39 pm

The use of a risk management worksheet is similar to that of a risk management plan, but for big projects, they will have a limit of effectiveness. This is because of the size and number of the risks involved that could impact the larger business ventures.

You can use the risk management worksheet as an accompaniment to your risk management plan. It would be like a cheat sheet of sorts. To be effective you will have to list all of the possible risks you already placed in your risk plan. Not only will the names and nature of the risks that could impact your project be listed on this worksheet, but also the paths for mitigation. This will allow for an even faster response to the risks damage when they impact your project.

Not all of the information in your risk management plan needs to be listed on the risk management worksheet. Some of the items in the plan can be eliminated. The leading ones are the risks that have already been mitigated before the project enters its execution phase of its project lifecycle. The mitigation can be from someone in your project team or an outside source. The only ones that will fall into this category will be the risks that need no action taken if and when they impact your project.

One of the most important components of the risk plan that should be on the risk management worksheet is the contacts for the third party vendors who are the alternates for supplying your raw materials. The risk that makes an impact could be as simple as a vendor not meeting your schedule. To keep your project going, you will need to fill in this gap of supplies with another party. The sooner you contact them, the faster you will be receiving the raw materials you need for your deliverable.

The risk management worksheet is just another handy little tool the project manager can use to keep their business venture progressing towards a successful conclusion. Like all tools, the proper use of it and acting fast will make all the difference in just how effective it really is.

 

Permalink | Comment (0)
Uncategorized

Purchase Order Form is a Simple Line of Approved Credit

November 17, 2014 – 2:19 am

In a purchase order form, there is a complete description of what your organization is in need from by a particular supplier. The greater the detail that is includes will mean the less ambiguity the message will hold. This will allow for the correct item or material to be sent as requested.

When using a purchase order form the best ones today that are used will be created with the aid of a computer program. This is one of the many project management templates that most project managers have access to today. This type of template allows for the vital information to be placed in the form in the same manner each and every time this particular third party vendor is contacted. This makes it possible for a concise and consistent message to be sent out each and every time you are in need of suppliers or material from another organization.

This use of a purchase order form that is made this way also helps to ensure the message you are sending will be received as it was sent. This allows for the correct material or items you need to be sent. This will reduce the number of errors that can occur when dealing with a third party organization that is outside the control of your business. The receiving of the wrong material can be hazardous to the schedule of your project.

Inside the purchase order form is also the information for the billing requirements and data necessary for both parties to make this type of transaction. This is the portion of this business deal that is important to the third party vendor. They need to know how much they are going to make off of this transaction and when they can expect it.

The use of a purchase order form is very common today in all sectors of business. The more complete it is with accurate information on every aspect of the transaction, the smoother it will be preformed. A successful transaction of this type builds the credibility and reputation of all parties that are involved

Permalink | Comment (0)

« Previous Page — Next Page »

« Previous Page — Next Page »