Project Management 

We sometimes tend to forget all the tasks involved in a project. We find it hard to estimate the effort, duration and resources that each task will involve, because at first we only have a global vision of the project. There are several things that we want to accomplish with this step:

• Avoid forgotten tasks

• Assign responsibility for tasks

• Define task interdependencies

• Provide realistic estimates of time, resources and cost

• Provide a baseline against which progress is measured

• Act as a communication aid

It is much easier to develop the plan if we take a top-down approach, called Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS is a hierarchical explosion of tasks where each level has a greater level of detail than the previous one. One good thing about WBS is that it lets you think first of the global, intuitive tasks. Once you have each high-level task, you begin to think about what are the main tasks that are necessary to complete that high-level task. This process should be repeated as many times as necessary. No

task should have a duration longer than three weeks, because the longer the duration, the harder it is to estimate accurately and control the progress of the task. Has it happened to you that you find that there is no progress the last scheduled day?

This is the time to assign an owner to each task. It's important that only one owner be assigned to each task. This doesn't mean that the owner has to do all the work, but that he or she is responsible for the timely completion of the task. The fastest way to miss deadlines is to name two or more owners or, even worse, companies or departments. When a department is the owner, it's not clear who in the department is accountable. Make sure that the owner really buys into the project. Don't designate and distribute ownerships because many times people will not even know what the task is about. Remember that every task must have a measurable deliverable. Set the criteria for completion of the task and make sure that everyone understands it.

Now we can determine the dependencies for each lower-level task (LLT). Every LLT must have at least one predecessor and at least one successor. No dangling tasks are allowed. These depend­encies will allow us to determine the "slack" that each task has, or when the earliest and latest start and completion dates are, and will give visibility to any overloads or underloads of resources (project team members, machinery, office equipment, etc.) Now we can move the tasks within their slack time or modify their duration in order to smooth the utilization of resources.

Once the project is in progress, we should compare what is happening against what is planned. In this stage we will reap the benefits of well done infrastructure planning. There should be meetings to discuss progress and obstacles, and to take corrective action. There are several benefits of a systematic tracking process. It's essential to be proactive in managing the project; it reduces project uncertainty and team stress, it reduces excessive optimism or pessimism, it helps anticipate potential problems, it reduces reliance on the hope that things will "work themselves out," and it helps to center discussions on project issues.

The process of managing the project requires several steps: First, we have to collect progress data and update the schedule and resource database. Second, generate status reports and analyze the impact of any variances. Third, recommend and take any necessary adaptive actions. Fourth, disseminate appropriate project status to relevant people inside and outside of the project team. This process should be repeated as frequently as it was determined during the planning the infrastructure step.

Project Management is an art that requires many different skills, like good estimation capability, ability to foresee problems, and good people skills. However, there are processes that can help us to make the implementation of a project, a process of change, much easier and less painful. The role of the Project Manager is not to be an expert in Manufacturing, Finance, or Information Technology, but to be an expert in the process of leading the organization to meet its goals through the management of change. There are big opportunities in cost reduction, higher employee morale, and improvement of the competitive position of our organizations.

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