By Thomas Bering, CfL, November 2020
Project management is about ensuring that a project is successfully brought to completion. Typically, this ranges from the initial description and planning, through implementation and execution, to the final closing – including everything in between.
In project management, it is commonly stated that the project manager has two roles: project control and project leadership. The project manager must steer the project and ensure that schedules, budgets, etc. are adhered to. At the same time, the project manager must assume a leadership role toward the project’s other participants.
In project control, the primary focus is on steering a project safely to its destination based on the agreed plans, budgets, and resources, as well as navigating around any potential risks. In this role, the focus is on the factual circumstances.
Most projects involve a number of people, and when dealing with people, leadership is required.
In project management, the project manager takes on a more leading role toward the project group and other stakeholders. Typically, a project includes a group of stakeholders working directly on the project, and another group of people who are indirectly affected by the final product.
In many cases, a project brings about changes for a range of end users. In short, this means that besides mastering project control, the project manager must also ensure that the members of the project group are motivated and able to collaborate, and possibly exercise change management toward the end users.
Without project management, many projects would end up in chaotic states with unclear goals, a lack of resources, unrealistic or insufficient planning, unexpected risks, poor-quality deliverables, projects that go over budget, or are delivered late.
When working with both large and small projects involving several suppliers and stakeholders, it is simply necessary that one or more people are responsible for, first and foremost, ensuring a thorough plan for the project and its stakeholders, and then for leading the project’s stakeholders through unforeseen risks and changes.
Good project management creates more efficient deliverables through motivating leadership and effective project control.
Simply put, we use project management when we work on projects. To be more specific about when project management is employed, we must first define what a project is.
A project has certain characteristics, one or more of which are often present simultaneously:
Based on these characteristics, we can define a project as:
A project is a temporary effort carried out through unique deliverables, aimed at creating a business impact.
As mentioned, the project manager has two overarching roles:
Under these two overarching roles lie many tasks that the project manager must accomplish. Let’s take a closer look at them:
The most important task in project management is to ensure that the project ultimately solves exactly what it was intended to solve. The project manager must ensure that all stakeholders – ranging from top management, the project group, to the end user – agree on the project’s purpose and the goals set for the project.
The project manager is responsible for ensuring that everyone in the project group understands their role and is motivated to complete their tasks.
As in any other team, leadership challenges will arise that the project manager must be prepared to address. However, the project manager typically does not have direct personnel responsibility for the various participants in the project.
Project participants are often borrowed from other departments and likely have other tasks to complete besides those associated with the project. Being a leader without direct personnel responsibility is a discipline in itself, and the project manager is well placed if they master this.
When you do not have direct authority over the project participants, the project manager’s ability to support and motivate is crucial for the project’s success. The leadership philosophy of situational leadership is therefore effective and popular in project management.
One important but sometimes overlooked leadership task for the project manager is to ensure that end users are involved in the project and prepared for the changes the project will bring them. A project can be executed and delivered efficiently, but if the end users are not prepared to receive it, it will not yield the expected results. Change management is a valuable tool for the project manager.
A project manager’s success largely depends on the ability to communicate clearly and effectively. Beyond the fact that leadership is highly dependent on communication, the project manager is also responsible for conveying the project’s progress, challenges, goals, and timelines to the various stakeholders and participants
It is the project manager’s responsibility to ensure that the steering committee can make decisions based on a strong foundation. This demands the project manager’s ability to communicate complex subjects in a precise and easily understandable language.
Examples of what the project manager must communicate to the steering committee include: project description, progress, risks, daily/weekly/monthly reporting, minutes from steering committee meetings, challenges, and changes in the schedule.
The greatest communication task is to ensure that everyone in the project group understands their role and why they are important to the project’s overall purpose. At the same time, the project manager must continuously keep the individual participants informed and motivated.
In most projects, conflicts, opposing interests, unforeseen challenges, and obstacles arise. This requires the project manager’s ability to handle conflicts and steer the group back on track.
The other stakeholders include everyone who is, in one way or another, affected by the project – for example, end users or those who must provide resources for the project.
As mentioned earlier, it is important that end users are well-prepared to receive the project. Therefore, it is crucial that the project manager communicates which problems the project solves, why the upcoming change is necessary, how the project can be turned to the advantage of the end users, and, not least, provides thorough instructions on how to use the delivered product.
To ensure good and effective communication of the project’s progress, it is wise for the project manager to develop a communication plan. Read more about communication plans further down in the text.
The project manager must ensure that the project runs according to plan and that focus is maintained throughout. This is done, among other things, by setting goals and sub-goals. Without concrete goals, there is a risk of a dysfunctional team where work is done in different directions and no one really knows where the project is heading. The project manager must ensure this does not happen. Later in this article, we will explain how to set concrete and achievable goals and sub-goals – what we call SMART goals.
In this phase, you must develop a plan for how the project will proceed. This is done by creating a project plan. The project plan can advantageously be based on some of the agile methods for project management developed for this purpose; for example, PRINCE2® or Scrum.
The project plan is the compass for the project manager and the steering committee. It is here that all the individual elements of the project are documented and planned so that the project can be executed safely. The more thoroughly you plan the project, the better your starting point will be for reaching your goals without major surprises or obstacles.
Projects are often carried out under significant time pressure and tight budgets. To ensure this doesn’t compromise the quality of individual deliverables, it is the project manager’s responsibility to implement thorough quality control.
Quality control ensures that each deliverable has been tested and provides the expected value. It can also help ensure that project processes run smoothly and don’t cause friction or delays.
Thorough risk management is critical to the delivery and quality of a project. Most projects involve some level of risk, and it is the project manager’s responsibility to identify these risks and develop a plan for how to manage them.
The project manager should conduct a risk analysis, in which each risk is assessed and prioritized. This ensures there is a plan for how to avoid individual risks and how to respond if they occur.
No project unfolds exactly according to plan, but effective risk management can help prevent many challenges and ensure the project is prepared to handle any changes that may arise.
Through continuous reporting on the project's progress, the project manager ensures that the project stays on track and does not exceed deadlines, budgets, or other key parameters. Reporting also helps identify and address challenges in time, before they escalate.
The reporting is directed at the steering committee and stakeholders. It also ensures that all stakeholders can maintain confidence that the project is proceeding within the agreed framework and commitments.
The project manager handles a variety of tasks ranging from leadership and planning to analysis and documentation. To succeed as a project manager, specific and well-developed competencies are required.
Every project is different, and you’ll find that it’s difficult to create a one-size-fits-all template you can use repeatedly. That said, there are certain phases that you’ll go through in every project:
Each of these phases includes underlying tasks that should be addressed to ensure an efficient process from start to finish. Fortunately, there are plenty of digital project management tools available to help streamline the process.
A project is never better than the analysis it’s based on. That’s why it’s absolutely critical to develop a thorough business case that outlines the problem the project is intended to solve, why it needs to be solved, and what the benefits will be from solving it.
In addition to including a project description — that is, the purpose of the project — the business case must also define tangible goals. Without clear and concrete goals, it’s impossible to set a direction for the project, and in the end, it will be difficult to determine when the project is complete.
There are many ways to define goals, but one of the most popular methods is the SMART model. The SMART model is a framework that ensures your goals are both realistic and measurable.
Your goal should be clear and specific. By making your goals as precise and well-defined as possible, you make it easier to determine when the goal has been achieved. Consider using these five “W” questions when defining your goals:
A goal should have clear criteria for tracking progress. Without defined measures, you won’t be able to determine whether you’re on the right track to achieving it.
You can make your goal measurable by asking questions like:
How much?
How many?
How will I know when the goal is achieved?
The goal must be appealing to achieve. If reaching the goal isn’t motivating — if there’s no reward at the end — it becomes difficult to keep yourself and your project team engaged and driven.
A SMART goal must be realistic in the sense that it should be achievable within the available resources and time.
To validate whether your goals are realistic, ask yourself:
Do I have the necessary resources to reach the goal?
Do I have the necessary time to reach the goal?
Every goal should be time-bound, meaning the project must have both a start and an end date. Once you’ve ensured that achieving the goal is attractive, you need to make sure active efforts are made to reach that reward. The simplest way to do this is by setting a clear deadline.
In this phase, you need to develop a plan for how the project will proceed. This is done by creating a project plan. The project plan can advantageously be based on one of the agile project management methods designed for this purpose — such as PRINCE 2® or Scrum.
The project plan serves as a compass for both the project manager and the steering committee. It is where all elements of the project are documented and scheduled, enabling the project to reach its goal safely. The more thorough you are in planning the project, the better your chances are of completing it successfully without major surprises or obstacles.
As mentioned earlier, there must be a clear and well-defined goal for the project to ensure that it addresses the issue it was created to solve. The goal should also be formulated in a way that makes it obvious when it has been achieved.
What is the project’s budget? It’s essential to establish a fixed budget at this stage in order to develop a realistic project plan.
Who is the project owner? Who makes up the steering committee, the project team, and who is the project manager?
This is where roles and responsibilities are assigned, so there is no doubt during the execution phase about who is responsible for what.
The project manager’s role has been described earlier. The remaining roles are:
Project Owner: The person or group who has commissioned the project and to whom it will ultimately be delivered.
Steering Committee: Functions as the project’s board and holds the ultimate responsibility for its success. This group is responsible for allocating the necessary resources and acts as a reference point and sparring partner for the project manager.
Project stakeholders include everyone with an interest in the project — those who are affected by it, can influence it, have expectations of it, or might resist it.
The purpose of a stakeholder analysis is to understand how external factors might affect the project and to allow you to create a plan for how to handle those potential influences.
For example, it allows you to address skepticism before it turns into resistance.
As a project manager, you need support wherever you can get it. A stakeholder analysis helps you identify who can act as ambassadors for your project and provide support and positive advocacy.
Many risks lie in wait when executing projects, but most of them can be anticipated through a risk analysis.
A risk analysis is essentially about identifying all potential risks associated with the project. These risks are then prioritized based on how likely they are to occur and how severe the consequences would be if they did.
Timeline
To ensure that the project stays on track and is delivered on time, you need to create a timeline. This requires knowing all the tasks that need to be completed, so you should break the project down and identify each task and set milestones (interim goals).
Milestones represent a series of intermediate results that must be achieved throughout the project.
The advantage of dividing the project into phases is that it becomes more manageable overall, and it allows you to clearly define when one phase is completed and a new one can begin.
Once you have identified the tasks and milestones, it’s time to create a timeline indicating when each task should start and finish. It’s important to be realistic based on the resources available to you.
A Gantt chart is a simple and clear tool for visualizing the project's tasks, milestones, and timeline.
The advantage of the Gantt chart is that it is easy to grasp and understand, making it an effective tool when presenting the timeline to the project’s stakeholders.
WBS is a visual way to break down the project into tasks and subtasks.
The advantage of the Work Breakdown Structure is that it divides the project into smaller, manageable tasks and visualizes how these tasks are connected and impact one another. It’s an easy way to assess the order in which tasks should be completed
As a project manager, you have a large and important communication task. It is your responsibility to keep the steering committee and the other project stakeholders informed with relevant information about the project’s progress and any challenges.
Many of the challenges and misunderstandings that arise in projects are due to poor or insufficient communication. By developing a thorough communication plan, you do yourself and the recipients a great service.
A communication plan ensures that you communicate timely to the right recipients with the right message.
When creating your communication plan, consider what type of information each group of recipients needs. Different stakeholders require different information and levels of detail.
For example, the steering committee should be informed to the extent that they can make decisions on a solid basis, while the project group typically needs daily information at a different level of detail.
Now you must reap the benefits of your thorough preparation. The plan is set and approved by the steering committee, and the project group is ready to carry out the planned tasks. You have prepared a plan for what to communicate to whom and when, and you have conducted a thorough analysis of the potential risks the project might encounter.
The project manager should also establish a quality control policy to ensure that all deliverables meet the expected quality and fulfill their intended purpose.
It is during the execution phase that the project manager’s leadership role truly comes into play. No matter how thorough the planning phase has been, unforeseen challenges, changes, or disagreements must be expected. This means that the project manager must be able to motivate the project group throughout and respond with rapid and effective conflict management when conflicts arise.
When the project’s goals have been achieved and all deliverables are submitted, it is time to close the project. It is typically the project owner or the steering committee who has the authority to decide whether the project can be concluded.
As a conclusion to the project, it is a good idea to evaluate the process and the results.
Consider:
Risk analysis can save you from many challenges and sleepless nights. Read how to analyze and manage risks in project management.
