Project Execution

Overview

• What to do when a risk actually materizalizes.

• How to track and measure your project's progress.

• Use continuous improvement and quality management techniques.

• Use and analyze data to inform your decision-making.

• Team management and fundamentals of influencing.

• Effectively lead your team to the finish line.

• Tools for effective team communication.

• Organizing and facilitating meetings.

• Closing a project.

Tracking and Measuring Project Progress

Tracking: A method of following the progress of project activities.

Deviation: Anything that alters your original course of action. Deviations from the project plan can be positive or negative.

Tracking allows for transparency by making information accessible, and transparency is essential for accurate decision-making.

Tracking keeps all team members and stakeholders in touch with deadlines and goals.

Tracking is also curcial for recognizing risks and issues that can derail your progress.

Tracking helps build confidence that the project is set to be delivered on time, in scope, and within budget.

Common items to track

• Project schedule

• Status of action items, key tasks and activities

• Progress towards milestones

• Costs

• Key decisions, changes, dependencies and risks to the project

Tracking Methods

• GANTT Chart

  • Useful for staying on schedule

  • Useful for projects with many dependencies, tasks, activities, or milestones.

  • Useful for larger project teams

• Roadmap

  • Useful for high-level tracking of large milestones.

  • Useful for illustrating how a project should evolve over time.

• Burndown chart

  • Useful for projects that require a granular, broken-down look at each task

  • Useful for projects where finishing on time is the top priority

Tips: Use a combination of the above methods to effectively track during each phase of the lifecycle. Ex: Gantt chart for initial scope work and burndown chart as you approach a key deadline or launch.

Changes

Change: Anything that alters or impacts the tasks, structures, or processes within a project.

Types of changes:

• New or changing dependencies

• Changing priorities

• Capacity and people

• Limitations on budget and resources

• Scope creep

• Force majeure

Identifying and tracking dependencies

Dependencies: The links that connect one project task to another and often the greatest source of risk to a project.

Internal Dependencies: The relationship between two tasks within the same project.

External Dependencies: Tasks that are reliant on outside factors, like regulatory agencies or other projects.

Mandatory Dependencies: Tasks that are legally or contractually required.

Discretionary Dependencies: Tasks that could occur on their own, but the team chose to make them reliant on one another.

Dependency Management: The process of managing interrelated tasks and resources within the project to ensure the overall project is completed successfully, on time, and in budget.

Once dependencies have been identified via a brainstorm, they must be noted and a risk register must be prepared.

Risk Register: A table or chart that contains your list of risks and dependencies.

Risk Exposure: A way to measure the potential future loss resulting from a specific activity or event.

ROAM Technique

• Resolved

• Owned

• Accepted

• Mitigated

Categorize risks based on these criteria.

Escalating issues

The process of enlisting the help of higher level project leadership or management to remove an obstacle, clarify or reinforce priorities, and validate next steps.

• Act as checks and balances

• Generate speedy decision-making

• Reduce frustrations

• Encourage participation

Escalation standards should be setup before starting work on the project.

Escalate at first sign or critical issues which may:

• Cause a delay on a major milestone

• Cause budget overruns

• Can result in loss of customer

• Can push back completion date

Escalation mail tips

• Maintain a friendly tone

• State your connection to the project (when relevant)

• Explain the problem

• Explain the consequences

• Propose a course of action and make a request

Quality Management and Continuous improvement

Quality: When you fulfill the outlined requirements for the deliverable and meet or exceed the needs or expectations of your customers.

Quality Standards: Provide requirements, specifications, or guidelines that can be used to ensure that products, processes, or services are fit for achieving the desired outcome. Set them at the beginning of the project.

Quality Planning: The actions of the project manager or the team to establish a process for identifying and determining exactly which standards of quality are relevant to the project as a whole.

Coming up with a quality plan may involve answering:

• What outcomes do my customers want?

• What does quality look like for them?

• How can I meet their expectations?

• How will I determine if the quality measure will lead to project success?

Quality Assurance: Evaluating if your project is moving towards delivering a high-quality service or product. QA happens throughout the project lifecycle.

Quality Control: Involves monitoring project results and delivery to determine if they are meeting desired results or not.

Fostering Customer Relationships

The key to foster a good relationship with the customer involves:

• Negotiation

• Empathetic listening

• Trust-building

Ask open-ended questions and actively listen to understand the customers' current state versus their desired state.

Set clear expectations about when you'll communicate certain things to customers.

Measuring Customer satisfaction

• Feedback surveys: Users provide feedback on features of your product that they like/dislike.

• User acceptance tests: Helps a business make sure a product or solution works for its users.

  • Welcome users and thank them for participating

  • Present your product to the team

  • Start UAT test cases

  • Critical user journey: The sequence of stepsa user follows to accomplish tasks in your product.

  • Walk users through a demo

  • Identify edge cases

  • Recap findings, identify issues, prioritize which issues should be addressed first.

Continuous improvement and Process improvement

Continuous Improvement: An ongoing effort to improve products or services. It begins by recognizing when processes and tasks need to be:

• Created

• Eliminated

• Improved

Process Improvement: The practice of identifying, analyzing, and improving existing processes to enhance the performance of your team and develop best practices, or to optimize consumer experiences.

Data-driven improvement frameworks

Techniques used to make decisions based on actual data.

DMAIC: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control

PDCA: A four-step process that focuses on identifying a problem, fixing that issue, assessing whether the fix was successful, and fine tuning the final fix.

Plan, Do, Check, Act

Retrospectives

A workshop or meeting that gives project teams time to reflect on a project.

• Encourage team building.

• Facilitate improved collaboration.

• Promote positive changes.

The emphasis is on continuous improvement and change, instead of recycling old and potentially bad habits, procedures, and processes.

Reasons to hold a retro:

• Missed deadlines or expectations.

• Miscommunications between stakeholders.

• Reached end of a sprint.

• Product launches and landings.

• Record key lessons that other people can learn from.

Gathering data for a project

Data benefits:

• Make better decisions

• Solve problems

• Understand performance

Metric: A quantifiable measurement that is used to track and assess a business objective.

Project Metrics:

- Productivity Metrics

    - Milestones

    - Tasks completed

    - Projections

    - Duration

- Quality Metrics

    - Number of changes

    - Issues

    - Cost variance

Discerning important Data

Signal: An observable change that helps determine the overall health of a project and identify early signs that something isn't quite right.

Looking for signals:

- Identify which tasks contribute the most to the overall goal.

- Prioritize the data or metrics that are most valuable to the stakeholders.

Biases in data:

• Sampling bias: The sample may not be representative of the whole population.

• Observer bias: The tendency for different people to have different views/observations/conclusions of the same data.

• Interpretation bias: The tendency to improperly interpret data when there is ambiguity within it.

• Confirmation bias: The tendency to interpret data in a way to conforms to current beliefs.

Data analysis: The process of collecting and organizing information to help draw conclusions.

Presenting data

Storytelling: The process of turning facts into narrative to communicate something to the audience.

• Define your audience

  • What would the audience want to know about the project?

  • What are the audiences' most urgent concerns?

  • Which key data points influenced the story and project outcome?

• Collect Data

• Filter and analyze data

• Choose a visual representation

• Shape the story

• Gather feedback

Data vizualization tools

• Filter info by focusing the audience on the most important data points and insights.

• Condense long ideas and facts into a single image or representation.

Graphs cheat sheet

• Show relationships w/ scatter plots.

• Compare values w/ bar graphs.

• Demonstrate trends w/ line graphs.

• Show compositions w/ pie charts.

Great PMs

• Support people to do their best work.

• Enable people to build things they're proud of

Team: A group of people who plan, solve problems, make decisions, and review progress in service of a specific project or objective.

Work Groups: People in an org who work toward a common goal. Work groups are more likely to be coordinated, controlled, or assigned by a single person or entity.

Teamwork: An effective, collaborative way of working in which each person is committed to and heading towards a shared goal.

• Fosters creativity

• Encourages accountability

• Helps you get stuff done

Factors impacting team effectiveness

• Psychological safety

• Dependability

• Structure and clarity

• Meaning

• Impact

Leading high-functioning teams

• Create systems that turn chaos into order

• Communicate and listen

• Promote trust and psychological safety

• Demonstrate empathy and create motivation

• Delegate responsibility and prioritize

• Celebrate team success

Team development and managing team dynamics

Using Bruce Tuckman's stages of development:

• Forming

  • Team gets to know one another.

  • PM should clarify project goals, roles, and context about the project.

• Storming

  • Frustrations and obstacles are identified.

  • PM should focus on conflict resolution, listen as the team addresses the problems to solve, and share insights on how the team might better function as a unit.

• Norming

  • Conflicts are mostly resolved and team is working together.

  • PM should codify the team norms, ensure that the team is aware of those norms, and reinforce them when needed.

• Performing

  • Team works together seamlessly

  • PM should focus on delegating, motivating, and providing feedback to keep up the team's momentum.

• Adjourning

  • Project wraps up

  • Team disbands

  • Celebrate final milestones and successes

Why managing team dynamics is important

• Teams have individuals with different skill sets, varying degress of autonomy, and competing priorities.

• Create a collaborative and psychologically safe environment.

Effectively influencing Teams

Influencing: The ability to alter another person's thinking or behaviors

• Establish credibility

  • Why should they listen to you?

• Frame for common ground

  • Make the case for how your idea can benefit the team.

• Provide evidence

• Connect emotionally

Donts

• Approaching the audience aggressively

• Resisting compromise

• Failing to establish credibility, frame for common ground, or connect emotionally

• Assume agreements can be worked out in a single conversation

Using sources of power to influence

Two buckets of power sources:

• Organizational

  • Role

  • Information

  • Network

  • Reputation

• Personal

  • Knowledge

  • Expressiveness

  • History

  • Character

Effective communication

Project document responsibilities:

• How documents get used

• Who has access to documents

• How often documents are updated

Some information must be communicated multiple times in different ways.

• Some people learn by listening

• Some people learn by watching

• Some people learn by doing

Effective email communication

• State what you want clearly

  • Include your request in the subject line

  • State your request within the first 2 paragraphs of the body

  • Indicate the specific call-to-action associated with the request(for ex: reply, review, RSVP)

  • Write clear, concise sentences

  • Define terms, avoid acronyms, and use proper nouns.

• Keep the content short and concise

  • Summarize the contnet you want to convey, and remove anything in your email that doesn't contribute to your goal.

  • Aim to write "question-less" and "self-standing" emails. This means that the message contains enough information to stand on its own. The reader shouldn't have any questions about what you want adn when you want it.

  • Know your audience. Some people-such as executives and other busy leadership-may not want to read emails of more than a few sentences or click on external links for further information. Try to tailor your emails accordingly.

• Structure your writing

  • Use bullets

  • Use labels

  • Use hyperlinks

  • Write a strong topic sentence.

• Check your grammar, spelling, and punctuation

Organizing effective meetings

• Structured

  • Start and end on time (timeboxing)

  • Carefully selected attendees

  • Prioritized topics

  • Designated notetaker

• Intentional

  • Send any pre-reading materials to set context for the meeting

• Collaborative

• Inclusive

Types of Project meetings

• Project kick-off

• Status updates

• Stakeholder reviews

• Project reviews

Project Closure

• Assure all work is done

• Agreed upon PM processes are executed

• Formal recognition and agreement that the project is done by key stakeholders

Never-ending Project: When the project deliverables and tasks cannot be completed.

Abandoned Project: When inadequate handoff or transition on the project deliverables occurs.

Conducting a closing process after each phase or milestone:

• Refer to prior documentation

  • SoW

  • Request for Proposal

  • Risk register

  • RACI chart

• Put together closing documentation

• Conduct administrative closure of the procurement process

• Make sure all stakeholders are aware that a phase, or project, is ending.

Impact reporting: Presentation that is given at the end of a project for key stakeholders.

• Highlight key performance areas.

• Use metrics

  • Revenue growth

  • ROI

  • DAUs

  • Cost v Margins

  • Customer satisfaction

  • Overhead reduction

  • Time saved

Project closeour report

Document created by PMs for PMs

• Blueprint to document what the team did, how they did it and what they delivered.

• Provides an evaluation of quality of work

• It evaluates the project's performance with respect to budget and schedule