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Posts Tagged ‘steven macdessi’

Project Management: 5 Guidelines to Meet the Deadline

28 Nov

Project management is about setting goals, planning tasks, delegating the work effectively, and monitoring progress to meet deadlines. Depending on the scope of the project and its complexity, it can sometimes be difficult to meet deadlines. In some cases, a project may already be underway before problems are encountered – leading to panic and further railroading the project. To avoid deadline fiasco in project management, there are five guidelines to keep in mind:

Recognize the distinction between target date and deadline

The difference between the two lies in the consequences if the date is not met. When a deadline is missed, the project is basically killed. For example, in contest entries, there is usually a date by which your entry should be submitted by. If the entry was not submitted by that time, there is no point in continuing with a project. On the other hand, when target date is missed, the consequences are also dire but the work still needs to be finished.

Derive rational target dates

The target date should be the result of a detailed project plan. The critical path should make the earliest target date visible. Actual target date may be later depending upon the priority of the company and availability of staff. If the derived target date is unacceptable, there are several choices including (1) reduce project scope, (2) defer certain aspects of the project, and (3) accept the target date and provide strong support for the team.

Differentiate urgency from priority

Priority is a relative term. Without abusing its concept, certain tasks are given varying degrees of importance. Tasks become urgent when the benefits of its success are great while its failure will result to dire consequences.  Urgent tasks/projects move it to a higher level of priority, enabling it to tap otherwise unavailable manpower and funds.

Avoid self-imposed target dates

Whether it’s the target date or deadline, the timeframe should only be the result of a rational project plan or an external event (which influences the need to complete a project). However, in some cases, target dates come out arbitrarily out of management edict or self-imposed desire to complete the project as soon as possible.

Never give reward people to meet deadlines

Successful projects are those that meet the agreed-upon goals, meet the deadline, and are completed within budget. Every team member needs to understand what is expected of them without the need of additional incentives. However, in high-pressure projects, management might try to spur the team with bonuses.  This kind of incentive may undermine the entire project because people will be tempted to take shortcuts and do the barest minimum to meet deadlines.

Author: Steven Macdessi

 
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Steven Macdessi – Project Management Trends for 2010

13 Jul

By Steven Macdessi

For 2010, expect to see both old and new project management tactics in the industry. Best practices have been identified and inefficient practices discarded. The world is set to see more efficient and effective processes both within business organisations and outside of it. Here, we will talk about the key ingredient that will define project management for 2010’s: metrics. A group of global experts assembled indentified several trends:

An Increase on Requirements Metrics Performance Measurement

Business analysis, like before, will have a big role for requirements management and development. But greater focus on this may be seen this year. There will also be an increase on RMD reliance, which determines metrics tailing on project performance and helps quantifying management organisational performance improvements.

Project Value and Program Governance

Both project and program handling will have to be embraced from executive management to the project managers, to guarantee an improvement in organisational performance. Performance will be increased by ensuring portfolio, programs and projects work hand-in-hand with organisational resources and objectives.

Eyes on Risk Management

There is a lot of attention being given to financial risk management these days. This wariness will move to other aspects of enterprise where risk assessment is a key ingredient of performance growth. As a result, project management risk assessment will be emphasised on both the program and portfolio level. In 2010, it is expected that organisations will have a more thorough risk assessment that separates systematic from non-systematic risks.

PM Learning Measurement

In 2009, several major organisations put their bet on project management, to outrun their competition. These optimists utilized programs based on pre-conceived notional assessments that had changed leaning program designs, followed by ways of assessing progress and demonstrating performance improvement. Expect that in 2010, an unparalleled increase in the use of assessments to accurately focus on PM learning needs, track progress and identification of the ROI senior management is going to be a critical investment.

PM Learning

Organisations will find ways to use recent technological advances that aid in adult learning to improve hired employees, at the same time improve PM learning retention rates. This will be materialised by using “burst” learning as they call it. This focuses on certain skills for hours, on-demand reference tools, electronic performance systems, job-aids and increase in formal coaching.

Indeed, project managers should brace ahead for new requirements that are brought about for the changing trends. The practices we see in 2010 will hopefully lead to better results.

 
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Critical Chain Management

05 Jul

With traditional project management methods, 30% of the lost time and resources are typically consumed by wasteful techniques such as bad multi-tasking, Student syndrome, In-box delays, and lack of prioritization.

In project management, the critical chain is the sequence of both precedence- and resource-dependent terminal elements that prevents a project from being completed in a shorter time, given finite resources. If resources are always available in unlimited quantities, then a project’s critical chain is identical to its critical path.

Critical chain is used as an alternative to critical path analysis. The main features that distinguish the critical chain from the critical path are:

  1. The use of (often implicit) resource dependencies. Implicit means that they are not included in the project network but have to be identified by looking at the resource requirements.
  2. Lack of search for an optimum solution. This means that a “good enough” solution is enough because:
    1. As far as is known, there is no analytical method of finding an absolute optimum (i.e. having the overall shortest critical chain).
    2. The inherent uncertainty in estimates is much greater than the difference between the optimum and near-optimum (“good enough” solutions).
  3. The identification and insertion of buffers:
    • project buffer
    • feeding buffers
    • resource buffers. (Most of the time it is observed that companies are reluctant to give more resources)
  4. Monitoring project progress and health by monitoring the consumption rate of the buffers rather than individual task performance to schedule.

CCPM aggregates the large amounts of safety time added to many subprojects in project buffers to protect due-date performance, and to avoid wasting this safety time through bad multitasking, student syndrome, Parkinson’s Law and poorly synchronised integration.

Critical chain project management uses buffer management instead of earned value management to assess the performance of a project. Some project managers feel that the earned value management technique is misleading, because it does not distinguish progress on the project constraint (i.e. on the critical chain) from progress on non-constraints (i.e. on other paths). Event chain methodology can be used to determine a size of project, feeding, and resource buffers.

 
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Association Management

24 Jun

There are more than 25,000 national associations and 65,000 local, state or regional associations in the United States. These organizations employ more than 500,000 professionals. They are engaged in the profession of association management. Association management is a distinct field of management because of the unique environment of associations. Associations are unique in that the “owners” are dues-paying members. Members also govern their association through an elected board or other governing body, along with association committees, commissions, task forces, councils and other units. Typically, the board selects, retains and evaluates a chief executive officer or an executive director who is responsible for the day-to-day management of the association and paid staff. Managers within the association environment are responsible for many of the same tasks that are found in other organizational contexts. These include human resource management, financial management, meeting management, IT management, and project management. Other aspects of management are unique for association managers. These include: membership recruitment and retention; tax-exempt accounting and financial management; development of non-dues revenue and fundraising. Association managers must also be familiar with laws and regulations that pertain only to associations. To attain the knowledge needed to effectively operate in association management, its practitioners may choose to pursue the Certified Association Executive designation.

From Wikipedia

 
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Twitter Updates for 2010-06-17

17 Jun

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Building and Construction Industry Payments Act 2004 (QLD) Sections 15(2) and 15 (3) Qld – Interest

17 Jun

by Steven Macdessi

Question 1: If the contract does not provide a rate of interest and the parties make no submission on interest, how would the Adjudicator decide the rate of interest under s.15?

The adjudicator must, in every adjudication, determine the rate of interest payable on overdue progress payments (Section 26(1)(c)).

The assumption in this exercise is that the construction contract does not provide a rate of interest.

If the claimant makes a submission (and the adjudicator is satisfied with that submission) that the construction contract is a “building contract” as defined in Part 4A of the Queensland Building Services Authority Act 1991 (“QSBA”), then section 15(3) applies and interest is payable at the “penalty rate” under section 67P of the QSBA.

That section provides a “penalty rate” of interest on progress payments that are late. The rate is the sum of 10% a year plus the rate comprising the annual rate, as published from time to time by the Reserve Bank of Australia, for 90 day bills.

In cases where the construction contact is not a “building contract” as defined by the QSBA, then section 15(2) prevails and the rate of interest to be applied is the rate prescribed under the Supreme Court Act 1995, section 48(1) for debts under the judgement order.

Where the parties make no submission of interest, an adjudicator should not try to work out whether the contract is one to which the QSBA section 67P applies. Unless a party submits that interest should be at the rate under section 15(3), the adjudicator should not try to assist the claimant and proceed to apply section 15(2).

The adjudicator is to determine the rate only – not the amount – of interest that is to be paid. This can be expressed by way of the following examples:

“The rate of interest payable in the adjudicated amount is the penalty rate prescribed under section 67P of the Queensland Building Services Authority Act 1991”

or

“The rate of interest payable on the adjudicated amount is the rate prescribed under the Supreme Court Act 1995, section 48(1) for debts under a judgement order.”

It is the authorised nominating authority that calculates the amount of interest due at the date of issue of the adjudication certificate.

Question 2: Assume that the payment claim includes an amount for interest on previous progress claims which are not paid on time. Assume that the claimant claims that the amount is payable under s.15(2) or s.15(3) of the Act. Is the claimant entitled to include such a claim in the payment claim?

What difference, if any, would it make if the previous progress claim were not claims under the Act but were duly made under the terms of the construction contract?

The claimant has a statutory entitlement to interest on progress payments that are not paid on time irrespective of what the contract provides.

A progress payment is defined in Schedule 2 to mean a payment to which a person is entitled under Section 12. Section 12 provides that from each reference date under a construction contract, a person is entitled to a progress payment if the person has undertaken to carry out construction work, or to supply related goods or services, under the contract.

Given that “interest is payable on the unpaid amount of a progress payment that has become payable” (section 15(2)), then interest is payable on a progress payment whether or not the progress payment has been claimed under the Act.

The claimant is entitled to include in the payment claim an amount of interest on previous progress claims which were not paid on time, and claim that the amount is payable under section 15(2) or section 15(3).

If any payment claim is not paid by the due date, the claimant should ensure that the next payment claim includes interest from the due date for payment of the earlier payment claim to the reference date for the new payment claim.

REFERENCES

  • Davenport P, Adjudication in the Building Industry (2nd edn, Sydney, The Federation Press, 2004) p42
  • Jacobs S J, Security of Payment in the Australian Building and Construction Industry (2nd edn, Sydney, Lawbook Co, 2007) s95.670
  • Davenport P, Supplement to Adjudication in the Building Industry 2nd Edition by Philip Davenport, (2004), p2
  • Davenport P, Guide for Adjudicators in Queensland, (2004), p6
  • Davenport P, Adjudicate Today Adjudication Training – Examples of Decisions and Determinations, (2009), p13
 
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Steven Macdessi – The Art and Science of Project Management

16 Jun

By Steven Macdessi

Project management is the discipline of systematizing and managing all the different resources and aspects of a project in a manner that the resources deliver and execute all the output that is required to accomplish a project within a pre-determined range, schedule and cost constraints. Moreover, it is a method of making and attaining goals while maximizing all available resources over the entire course of a project. Project management is a vital business concept since it has been adopted to ensure that projects are completed within a specified timeframe and to the best of the company’s ability.

There are two basic approaches to project management. First is the traditional approach which considers the project as a process wherein there is an initiation, an end and everything in between. The other one is the non-traditional approach, also known as agile software development where the project is relegated into relatively small tasks. The difference between the two is that one approach is to view the project in its entirety (traditional) while the other is to view each step as a small task (agile software development).

Generally, project management involves setting up a timetable for three distinct phases: initiation, implementation and closure Each phase features a number of guidelines that must be met before moving on to the next. The extent to which a project needs to be managed depends largely on the scale of the project. For a simple project that has to be undertaken by a small company, pre-conceived goals, milestones, checklists and someone to oversee the project may be all that is needed. On the other hand, a complex project in a large company that involves several team members, multiple resources, time and budget will normally necessitate a more structured approach. The individual steps of the project are further broken down in order to ensure that it delivers the expected results upon its completion.

Project management is both an art and a science, it is an artistic science where methods are driven by specific goals. It is therefore a result oriented process which entails technical skills, scientific procedure and organizational methodology. In almost all cases, a project manager is designated to ensure that everything is moving smoothly and according to plan. The project manager is the most important part of any project management and he/she has the most precise idea of the project destination. As such, project managers are often required to get a certification or they should have a Masters Degree in Project Management. These assure that the manager not only has excellent time management skills but good people skills as well.

The whole concept behind project management may not be a too difficult to understand but it is of paramount importance. The life-blood of any business or organization is the successful completion of a product or the attainment of the goal that was set before the project was launched. Project management is employed to make sure that everyone involved on a particular project is on the same page and has a clear understanding of the goals and the steps needed to attain them. In the end, project management provides an effective solution that delivers results according to the standards required and within the specified time and cost budget, without compromising quality.

 
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Twitter Updates for 2010-06-16

16 Jun

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Twitter Updates for 2010-06-15

15 Jun

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Project Management: The Work Begins by Steven Macdessi

15 Jun

by Steven Macdessi

With careful planning, projects can be completed within time and budget. But it also needs to be controlled and managed effectively. In theory, the implementation of the task should be seamless because the work plan is already in place. In reality though, no project goes 100% according to plan. Unexpected issues that require quick and innovative solutions may come up and only the project manager is in a positive to resolve these difficulties.

The project work plan should be reviewed regularly to see whether things are progressing as planned. If you’re handling a complex project, these reviews must be more frequent. The schedule, budget, and output also need to be looked into. This requires discipline and dedication on the part of the project manager.

Warning Signs to Watch Out For:

  1. A lot of project managers tend to overlook small deviations from the original budget or schedules, thinking that these can easily be compensated for later on. However, if these variances aren’t corrected quickly, its impact can multiply tenfold.
  2. Unscheduled overtime starts being the norm to meet deadlines even at the beginning of the project implementation. If this kind of problem is occurring at the start, expect things to go downhill from there. Adjustments should be made; either the deadlines should be pushed further or the team might need to get additional members.
  3. Tasks that are supposedly completed are still being worked on. Don’t assume that every member of the team is responsible will keep to the deadlines. Some project managers think that team members will tell them whenever certain deadlines aren’t met. This doesn’t always happen in real life, they also have a tendency to overlook small deviations that can later become unmanageable.
  4. Team morale is declining. Morale starts to shift downwards when team members feel unappreciated. Some people also feel low when they see that the tasks aren’t progressing as planned. Keep them up-to-date about how well they’re doing and motivate them to do better.
  5. Quality starts to suffer. Quality is a serious issue in project management. There are quality control measures and testing that can ensure that company standards are met. But it is still better to address the issue at its root. Find out whether quality problems are caused by certain individuals or processes.

Watching out for these warning signs will help the project flow become smoother. As a result, tasks can be completed successfully as planned.

 
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