Project Management for Non-Project Managers

Tony Marks (CEO of 20/20 Business Group): All organizations now undertake projects to some extent or another. For that reason, it should be part of any leader or manager's development program to understand at least the principles of project management.

A project is fundamentally different from normal operation work that an organization might be involved in. It's unique features is that it always has a start, a finish, a measurable outcome, usually a budget, and a time scale associated with it.

A work-based task that could be run with small projects could be implementing a new IT system, it could be an office move, it could even be the Christmas party. It's something that's different from normal operational activities that happen every day, routinely, in the organization.

One of the most important things to think about when approaching a project is to think about what the scope of that project is. In other words, what's definitely gonna be part of that project and what isn't gonna be part of that project, which is most important, and to make sure that all the stakeholders have agreement over what the scope of the project is.

Then to basically move through a series of stages agreeing what the project is all about, agreeing the way that you're going to approach the project, planning the project properly, and spending time doing that.

Then, finally, moving into executing the project and then completing the project, and learning any lessons that you might learn from the project.

One of the other important things is to consider risk. At every stage of the project, risk management is one of the most important factors of running a successful project. Some of the classic mistakes that leaders and managers can make when starting out working on a project is to jump too quickly into working on the project itself and not spend an adequate amount of time defining the project properly, looking at the different options, thinking about risks in the project, and all that important preparatory work, before work on the project actually begins.

Other classic mistakes are not considering all the stakeholders in the project and thinking about their needs, and the communication that you're gonna have with those stakeholders through the project life cycle.

Also, not thinking in as much detail as required about the resources that are going to be required to execute the project, the budget that's gonna be required, and to make sure there's a clear understanding in the organization of all those factors before the project commences.

There are a variety of tools that leaders and manages can use to help them manage work-based tasks projects. At its most simple level, Microsoft Excel can be used to hold basic details about tasks and activities, durations, the resources being used to perform those tasks and so on. Microsoft Project provides a bit more sophistication, particularly in terms of the reporting that the leaders and managers can use for their projects. Or, at the most sophisticated level, Primavera can be used for very complex and very large projects.

The most important things are that the managers... leaders understand the basics of planning and task management, and these tools are mostly of value for reporting purposes.

It's worth thinking from the outset about the complexity of your project. If, for example, it's the office Christmas party that's something that you can run yourself, informally as a project manager. It's fairly well understood, in terms of the scope of what's required for a project like that.

If you are running a much larger... a much more complex project, it's then worth thinking about the project organization that might be around that. There might be a project team, a number of different individuals with different roles within the project. There might be a formal project manager. There may well be a project sponsor, so someone senior in the organization, and there may even be a project board, which represents a number of different stakeholders, getting regular reports, overseeing the project through its duration.

Again, it's just all a question of scale. If the project is large and complex it's worth considering using and adopting a formal project management methodology. There are a number of these methodologies that exist, whether it's sprints, the Association for Project Management's methodology, the Project Management Institute's methodology, but they all share a common approach in terms of organizing your project into a series of stages and providing lots of useful tools and techniques to help you bring the project to a successful conclusion.

About Tony Marks

Tony Marks is the founder and CEO of the international project management training and consultancy 20|20 Business Group. Tony is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management, Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, and Fellow of the Institute of Leadership & Management.

He draws on a long career in project management and describes his work with a wide range of leading international companies, including case studies, in his book "20:20 Project Management," published by Kogan Page.