My book, “Project Management for the Real World“, is now available in paperback and Kindle formats at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9S3D9MT
If you like this blog, you will benefit from reading this book.
My book, “Project Management for the Real World“, is now available in paperback and Kindle formats at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9S3D9MT
If you like this blog, you will benefit from reading this book.
The Project Management Institute (PMI) encourages its members to advance the profession. One of the ways to do this is by helping others increase their project management skills. The target audiences for this blog are professional PM’s early in their careers as well as those who manage projects but are not PM’s by title or trade. I will be posting every week or so, offering practical tips and tools on the full range of project management topics. I hope you will find this useful and help you advance your career.
In the prior post I discussed risk mitigation strategies, which can reduce the potential impact of risks that haven’t occurred yet. In contrast, risk contingency plans are meant to deal with risks after they have occurred. It is sometimes amusingly referred to as “Plan B” (and “C”, “D”, etc if necessary). Contingency plans answer the question “What will we do if …”.
It can be much easier to create contingency plans in advance because you are not under the stress of the risk having already occurred and you have more time to brainstorm the potential plans. Anticipating risks and having well vetted contingency plans keeps you in control of the project and minimizes “crisis mode”.
Here are a few examples:
As with all elements of Risk Management, conditions may change over time, so the contingency plans should be revisited on a regular basis to ensure they are still viable.
Note: Much more detail on Risk Management can be found in my book “Project Management For The Real World”, available in paperback and Kindle formats at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn
#projectmanagement
With your risks identified, prioritized and monitored, it is now time to develop strategies for managing the risks. The first type of strategy is “Risk Mitigation”. These are actions you can take before a risk occurs that can reduce the exposure to the risk. You should brainstorm these strategies with the members of the project team you identified in the Risk Management section of your “Project Management Plan” (refer to prior posts on this topic).
There are four mitigation strategies you can employ:
Documenting your mitigation strategies puts you in control of the project. You can manage your risks or they will surely manage you.
Note: Much more detail on Risk Management can be found in my book “Project Management For The Real World”, available in paperback and Kindle formats at
In this series Part 1, I addressed Risk Identification. In Part 2, I addressed Risk Probability, Impact and Exposure. In this entry I will discuss the concept of the “Risk Trigger”.
An important aspect of Risk Management is knowing and detecting that the risk has occurred. This is know as a “Risk Trigger”. In some cases it may be obvious. An example of this would be a risk such as “If the project team loses key resource “A”, then the task estimates assigned to “A” will need to be extended which may impact key milestone commitments”. In most cases the PM will know when they have lost a key resource. However, in the case of very large project teams, the key resource may be embedded deep in the project hierarchy, hiding the loss unless there is a communication plan to notify the PM
Your risk triggers must define the method you will use to monitor the risk. For example, if there is a possible change to a government regulation that will impact your project, you can engage your Legal team to monitor the status of this regulation on a regular basis and report any changes directly to the PM.
Here is another example: if there is a risk your server capacity is insufficient to meet peak demand, you might direct your technical team to establish monitors for CPU and disk usage and raise a flag if they are approaching the safe limits.
The lesson here is don’t assume you will just know when a risk has occurred. Define Risk Triggers (even the obvious ones) for all of your risks.
Now that you know your risks, exposures, and when they occur, the next step is to manage them with mitigation and contingency plans. I will tackle these topics in the upcoming posts.
Note: Much more detail on Risk Management can be found in my book “Project Management For The Real World”, available in paperback and Kindle formats at
amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn
#projectmanagement
After you have identified your risks, the next step is to prioritize them. We do that by assigning a probability rating and an impact rating, then combining the two to determine your exposure (i.e. priority).
The Risk Probability is a measure of the likelihood of the risk occurring. In most cases it is difficult to assign an exact probability. It usually will be sufficient to define probabilities as “High”, “Medium”, and “Low” and define these probabilities as ranges. Here is an example of the ranges I typically use:
You can use whatever definition you choose as long as all of the parties helping you assign probability are aware of the defined ranges.
The Risk Impact is a measure of the effect of the Risk occurrence on the schedule, scope, budget and quality of the project. Again, since in most cases this may be difficult to quantify, using ranges represented by “High”, “Medium” and “Low” will suffice. Here is an example of range definitions for Risk Impact:
The Risk Exposure is a product of both the Risk Probability and the Risk Impact. It is also measured as “High”, “Medium” and “Low” if that is the way you defined the probability and impact. Here is how the Risk Exposure can be determined:
Now that you have your Risk Exposure determined you should monitor and act on them in order of exposure, with the ones rated “High” given the most attention. This will help you allocate your risk management resources appropriately.
Note: Much more detail on Risk Management can be found in my book “Project Management For The Real World”, available in paperback and Kindle formats at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn
#projectmanagement
The first step in managing risk is to identify the risks you need to manage. This is the most important step in risk management and something new project managers tend to struggle with. I will present some techniques that have over the years have worked well for me.
You should state your risks in a consistent manner. A common way to phrase your identified risks are: “If (risk event occurs), then (impact to project in terms of scope, schedule, cost, quality)”
Here is an example: “If the vendor is late delivering Component X, then we may not be able to meet the project milestone for the first build”. Note that I stated “may” not “won’t”. Remember, risks are probabilities, not certainties. If it is a certainty, it is an issue, not a risk.
Note: Much more detail on Risk Management can be found in my book “Project Management For The Real World”, available in paperback and Kindle formats at
When I teach project management principles to non-professional PM’s, I emphasize that the two things you must do to greatly increase your chance of success are (1) create a complete Project Charter, and (2) manage risk. Those two practices, when done well, contribute to the bulk of project success.
In previous topics I discussed Risk Management in two places:
In the Project Charter, only the initially identified high exposure risks are typically listed and you may not yet have fully developed mitigation and contingency plans. In the Project Management Plan, the Risk Management Plan describes the process of risk management but it does not address the specific risks.
In the “Risk Management – Deeper Dive” series of posts, I will present the following topics in detail:
Part 1: Risk Identification
Part 2: Risk Prioritization (probability/impact/exposure)
Part 3: Risk Triggers
Part 4: Risk Mitigation Strategies
Part 5 : Risk Contingency Plans
Part 6: Risk Ownership
Part 7: Risk Monitoring
Managing risk is a key project management best practice. I strongly suggest you make this one of the first areas of mastering project management.
Note: Much more detail on Risk Management can be found in my book “Project Management For The Real World”, available in Kindle and paperback formats at
There are no secrets to project management success. It’s a combination of education in PM best practices (the Project Management Body of Knowledge, or PMBOK), communication skills, and staying confident, focused and cool under fire. Most successful Project Managers follow these five steps:
Step 1: Know Your Outcomes
In the Project Charter topic, I mentioned the first and most important step in your project is to properly define the business and project outcomes. If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know you have arrived? This is as true for personal projects and goals as it is for business projects.
Step 2: Have a Plan and Take Action
You can speak passionately about your desired outcomes but unless you do something about it they are as worthless as having no outcomes at all. Taking action starts with good planning and the topics on the “Project Management Plan” and the “Project Plan” are excellent places to start. Once you have a plan, you can begin execution.
Step 3: Collect Relevant Information Regarding Progress
It is a rare project that goes exactly according to plan. You need to regularly evaluate whether your outcomes are still achievable and the level of progress towards achieving those outcomes. Having this information leads to the next step …
Step 4: Be Flexible and Change Plans as needed
If your project is not proceeding according to the plan, be prepared to change the plan and do whatever it takes to achieve your desired outcomes. This could mean some combination of the following: changing the order of activities, reassigning resources, changing the scope, crashing the schedule, etc.
The Marines have a motto: “Improvise, Adapt, Overcome”. This is also a good motto for Project Managers.
Step 5: Look and Feel Confident
Your project team will take its cue from you. If you are expressing doubts, look worried and anxious, or show uncertainty, your team will start to feel the same. Using PM best practices and following Steps 1 thru 4 in this post will allow you to proceed with confidence.
Note: Much more detail on successful Project Management can be found in my Kindle book “Project Management For The Real World”, available at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn
#projectmanagement
After you have created your initial cut of the schedule, you will often find that this schedule will not meet the target date. Adjusting the schedule and adapting to changing circumstance is where Project Managers earn their money.
Here are some of the actions you can take:
You are likely to use some or all of the tactics listed above in any project of significant size. It is a critical skill for Project Managers.
Note: Much more detail on creating a Project Schedule can be found in my Kindle book “Project Management For The Real World”, available at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn
#projectmanagement
With tasks, resource assignments, duration/effort and dependencies defined, your project scheduling software will create a schedule. The path of dependent tasks that in aggregate take the longest amount of time is called “The Critical Path”. This is because if any one of these tasks is completed later than originally scheduled, your project end date will move.
When you are in the “Execution and Monitoring” Phase of your project, regular examination of the state of your critical path tasks is a top priority. It is important to routinely check in with the assigned resources to determine if the “days to completion” is still valid. If you wait until the task is late, it will be too late to do anything about it. Your only choice would be to examine the other tasks on the critical path to see if any task times can be reigned in to make up for the lost time. We will examine techniques you can use for this in the next post.
A technique you can use to make your critical path less volatile is to estimate your individual tasks more aggressively and aggregate the extra time you would have assigned to individual tasks into one “critical path buffer”. If critical path tasks come in early, you can add the time saved to the buffer. If critical path tasks come in late, you subtract time from the buffer. Using this technique, your schedule will not move with any one late task and it will encourage team members to work faster and ignore distractions. Also, the health of the buffer would be the key metric instead of the health of each individual task.
You can measure the health of the critical path buffer with two metrics:
For example: Your project has used 30% of it’s original buffer but you are only 10 weeks into a 50 week project (only 20% of the project schedule has elapsed), You divide 30%/20% and this equals 1.5 (greater than one) meaning you need to take remedial action.
If your project only used 15% of your original buffer, 15%/20% = 0.75, which is less than one indicating a healthy schedule.
When using this technique, it is very important to regularly update the “days to complete” for each critical path task so you can have confidence in the status of your buffer.
A side benefit of tight task estimates is that it should keep the task owners focused and minimize distractions.
Whatever technique you use, constant monitoring of the health of the critical path is one of the most important tasks for the Project Manager.
Note: Much more detail on creating a Project Schedule can be found in my Kindle book “Project Management For The Real World”, available at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn
https://www.amazon.com/author/lettera
#projectmanagement
Now that you have your lowest level scheduled tasks defined and have assigned resources, it is time to define the dependencies between tasks. This is where MS Project really comes in handy as it will create the schedule for you based on task dependencies and resource availability.
There are four types of dependencies:
When you initially define the dependencies, take care to only define “true” dependencies. If you have one person assigned to all the tasks you may be tempted to make all of the tasks dependent since the resource must complete one before starting another. Don’t do this. Let MS Project do this via resource leveling. The reason for not doing this is you may get additional resources later so some tasks can run in parallel. If you made them all dependent, the schedule will not show this possibility.
MS Project can now take your tasks, resource assignments, estimates and dependencies and create an initial schedule. I say initial because you often will find with your first cut that the finish date does not occur within the Sponsor’s expected time frame. In the next post I will discuss the concept of the “Critical Path” and what the Project Manager can do to rein in the target date.
Note: Much more detail on creating a Project Schedule can be found in my Kindle book “Project Management For The Real World”, available at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn
#projectmanagement