IT or Telco projects are going on to change our world with technologic developments. Companies are in a competitive race to convert their production lines with latest technology and this creates many IT or Telco Projects everyday. But how these hightec projects are managed and what problems arise for companies during development process? Most European companies are searching for Senior Project Managers with high qualifications to hire and they are ready to pay high salaries.Project Management is the highest level of IT development combines with Business Management skills.If this job requires this much qualifications, in some projects and cases, better to outsource this work to a professional PM.
If you are an IT professional and want to learn about Project Management business, here is some usefull advices as essentials:
Before starting you are supposed to know the 2 most important aspects of Project Management. First is the time duration and budget of project. You are expected to deliver on time with cost effective projects. So below details are addition to main 2 titles.
Project Documentation: Any level of projects needs well documantation for development team.So you must definetly work closely with employer(Project owner) to define all project features and translate into IT language. Simply, if your employer did not bring you any Project Document, this means you have to prepare this sheets and you will spent most time on this level. Naturally ,preparing documents have private conditions as type and expressions to define on the legal point.Project documents are very technical sheets and different than business contracts and may include diagrams,demos,drufts to explain better. Clear , well defined documents will save you many possible problems on the life cycle of your project.You must learn about ITIL(IT Infrastructure Library) qualifications if you havent heard yet. Using ITIL documents will standartise the common IT definitions for all people involved this project. (Detailed ITIL training information can be found at
http://www.itil.co.uk )
Planning: When you complete the documentation, you will have to plan the stages of development process with related to your resources. Effective usage of company resources(ERP) shows your level of management experience. This work needs to know your development team and their qualifications. If you are not familiar to your team, you must make planning by meeting with development team. You can distribute the tasks according to their title and speak to your team with their tasks and ask if each of team member can perform expected tasks and how much time it takes.
This is a hard Enterprice Resource Planning(ERP). A good PM should talk with his team and explain clearly their tasks against a misunderstanding. When your interactive planning completed, you need to use a Project Management tool such as MS Project or Prince2. These softwares are not easy to use but professional management needs these planning schedule for tracking the project by decision makers. MS Project is a commercial software by Microsoft and much easy to use according to Prince2(Projects in Controllable Environment). Prince2 is widely used in Britain public sector projects and contains many templates to fill and report to top level managers as development team. if you want to work in Britain, you should better to learn about Prince2 Certification programs.Last years it happened a sector standart in UK market, so learn it.Project Management tools will make controlling, tracking the project lifecyle and this is really important in large projects. All stages should be tracked carefully for not loosing money or wasting resources. Thus enables to repair or modify the problem when arises. All project documents and your final plan must be distributed to your team, review together, let them to ask their questions and explain what you expect on that point.
Calculate risks: There can be some risks whether in or out effects that can cause the project lifecyle. A professional PM needs to watch inside or outside environment and calculate possible risks to avoid with risk management skills. Your estimations or potential impacts can reason unsuccesful results, so try to analise possible risks and make you Plan B.
Meet your Team: Developer team will be introduced you before the development process starts. In this level, you have to posses some managerial skills as life experience, psychology and business management qualifications as task distribution according to members's skills. Not need to mention that you must read their CVs before indroduction. Having idea about their skills and experience will give you idea about right person to right task. Try to speak and measure their willingness to get involved this project. Skip the unmotivated ones. If you have emotional intelligence, easier to select right people. Their daily life, marital status, family issues or office relations can effect their job and can cost you as delay of entire project. Inside relations are subject of relations management and you are supposed to have high life experience, if not search for case studies on web and analise how experienced PMs covered human relations problem during their case.
Development: After your project plans are approved by the decision makers and got a hundred percent agreement, walk through the development process which is mostly performed by your development team.At this stage, you need to be in communication with team members. Since different parts will be developed different people, one mistake will effect the entire project and the communication is deadly important. Characters of team members and desire to help eachother is important inside your team. As a PM, its your duty to coordinate your team and maybe even responsible from their relations to eachother, so watch your team carefully and prevent possible disagreements between eachother memebers. Make dailly meetings with their previous work and their results and next day tasks. Ask if they have problem and remind them the integration process to create easy combining the pieces of work with explanations. After all project pieces are completed, you need to combine as final product. I personally never met a combining without a problem. There will be always something forgotten by one of your team member, always. To cover missing problem depends on your team members, this is why Im always reminding your team must speak to eachother as possible as they can. Once, one of our team mate did not checked the server software version and this caused 1 week to solve this stupid problem. That team still calls me and tell I was the best Project Manager they have seen even they are working on International Software projects. So , development process needs much patience and ability of coordination from you.If you forget the golden rule of development stage is "communication", get an aspirin, headache appear!
Testing:Combine all pieces of project and finalise your druft product.Never forget that this not a final product to deliver, just a druft before tests. Testing stage will always make you crazy and has to be long tested professionally. Multi possible tests better to be done by your developer team. Each member has to test his own work piece at first, as second tell them to change the pieces and go on testing. Sometimes, developers can miss very simple points on their own work piece and easy this to be found by another team member. Test each project piece with many combinations.If project is about a software, first suppose you are a normal level software buyer and what kinds of problems this software can cause . Second level is changing your mind and suppose you are a whitehat hacker and keep testing your product until your all pieces are confirmed on security reviews. When team has completed their tests, you personally test your product till you are sure on every point. Some projects requires third party professional testing services but I can assure you that your employers will test your product as well and you will get shamed when they have found bug on your project. In some cases, bugs can cause a legal case against Project Manager and vendor company.
Implementation: You are the highest risky stage. If you will integrate your work into an existing system, there will be possible conflicts between running and modified parts. Or some problems will be seen after new parts are implemented like unexpected reactions. Implementing a modification needs cooperating with existing system's operator. He will probably know his own running system features and you need to cooperate with him. Easy work if newly running system. There is not a running system, your product has to be deployed to environment, this is all.
As you have realised, project management is a hard job and needs many IT and management qualifications(6 sigma) syndicated. A high professional PM must deliver his work in project Budget and timely manners, no matter if its a software or marketing campaign .Ofcourse you have to focus on a particular area when you improve your PM skills in time, each area has hiw own tools and different diciplines but as a beginning you should realise the main points of Project Management. Never delay, never exceed your budget. Employers does not like suprises and your most strong competitor is a click away far. Worst thing is loose people's trust or disappointing them.Dispite everything project management is a prestige job in the society and pays good, not need to tell much travelling and knowing new people is other good points.
About the Writer: Mr. Erkan Meydanlioglu has a degree in MBA and professional IT Project Manager expertise in Online Marketing Projects. Recently working at
http://www.worldlancer.com. Get involves some projects as Freelance Project Manager and Team Leader in Europe if conditions are available. You can hire him as contracted project manager and reach him via email erkan.meydanlioglu at gmail dot com.
Resources:Project Management certification information or books to buy can be found at
http://www.pmi.org E-Learning courses can be applied at
http://www.butrain.com/About the Writer: Mr. Erkan Meydanlioglu has a degree in MBA and professional IT Project Manager expertise in Online Marketing Projects. Recently working at Worldlancer.com. Get involves some projects as Freelance Project Manager and Team Leader in Europe if conditions are available. You can hire him as contracted project manager and reach him via email erkan.meydanlioglu at gmail dot com.
