Essential Documents to Manage Your Projects
Speak to an experienced project manager, and they can give you a wealth of good advice on the do's and don'ts to successfully manage any project. All this advice, in a nutshell, would be about how to manage the people doing the work (that includes you too), to deliver their results on time and to a budget, while keeping the risk of failure to a minimum.
It really doesn't sound that difficult to do, but for some reason, many people think that project management is a massive overhead to any project. I often hear phrases like "oh, don't waste your time planning the work, just do it!" or "why are you wasting your time writing the objectives, we all know what needs to be done!"
So the number one shortcut to successfully manage any project is:
"Understand the few essential brief documents you need to create and regularly review during the life of your project."
Document 1 - The Project Charter
For example, at the beginning of your project, you need to create a one-page document called the project charter. This document will make sure that you and your customer understand the general goals of the project. After all, if you don't know where you are going, how are you going to get there? Remember, you could also be your own customer!
To get this information, have a meeting with your customer and ask the following 3 essential questions:
- What are the objectives of your project?
- What do you want to produce or deliver?
- What is the business reason for doing this project?
After the meeting write the answers to these questions in your project charter and email this back to your customer and ask them for their approval.
You have now successfully completed the most important aspect of any project, and that is to understand and agree with your customer where you are going with this project.
If you look at the time spent to achieve this important step in a project, you are looking at one or two meetings and about 30 minutes to write up the information, say 2 hours in total for a small project. Not a big overhead at all.
Document 2 - The Plan
You can now get on and create the second document call the plan. This will include a list of the work that needs to be done (also referred to as the scope of work), who will do it, the cost and time to do this work, and finally a simple review of what will go wrong, known as a risk assessment.
Document 3 - The Progress Report
On a regular basis, anything from weekly to monthly, you need to create a progress report and deliver this to your customer. They want to know what work was done, when, and how much was spent. They also want to know if you need their help to solve any problems. Your major challenge is just collecting this information so that you can create your regular progress report.
A Final Thought
I have described the absolute minimum information you need to manage any project, and the key to success is understanding the few essential brief documents you need to create with this information - the project charter, the plan and the progress report. I hope it leads you to success in your projects.
Essential Documents to Manage Your Projects的更多相关文章
- (转) [it-ebooks]电子书列表
[it-ebooks]电子书列表 [2014]: Learning Objective-C by Developing iPhone Games || Leverage Xcode and Obj ...
- P6 Professional Installation and Configuration Guide (Microsoft SQL Server Database) 16 R1
P6 Professional Installation and Configuration Guide (Microsoft SQL Server Database) 16 R1 May ...
- A Framework for Programme Management
In business today organisations manage multiple projects concurrently with shared or overlapping res ...
- [转]Extending the User Interface in Outlook 2010
本文转自:https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ee692172%28v=office.14%29.aspx#OfficeOLExtendin ...
- Auto updater for my side loaded UWP apps
原文: Auto updater for my side loaded UWP apps As I described before, i have a few tasks to solve for ...
- 使用 JavaScriptService 在.NET Core 里实现DES加密算法
文章<ASP.NET Core love JavaScript>和<跨平台的 NodeJS 组件解决 .NetCore 不支持 System.Drawing图形功能的若干问题> ...
- .NET Core系列 :4 测试
2016.6.27 微软已经正式发布了.NET Core 1.0 RTM,但是工具链还是预览版,同样的大量的开源测试库也都是至少发布了Alpha测试版支持.NET Core, 这篇文章 The Sta ...
- .NET Core Windows环境安装与体验
1.安装.NET Core SDK 在windows下开发.NET Core最好使用Visual Studio工具.下载地址与安装: VS2015最新版本:Visual Studio 2015 Upd ...
- 基于轻量型Web服务器Raspkate的RESTful API的实现
在上一篇文章中,我们已经了解了Raspkate这一轻量型Web服务器,今天,我们再一起了解下如何基于Raspkate实现简单的RESTful API. 模块 首先让我们了解一下"模块&quo ...
随机推荐
- Insert Function before and after main function
Source code: 1: #include<stdio.h> 2: void myStartupFun (void) __attribute__ ((constructor)); 3 ...
- vi/vim键盘图-----又一张桌面背景好图
也许还是有很多人不能愿意用CLI的vi/Vim来写东西,不过,当你真的习惯了,它的高效性就是不可估量了.下面的这张图,一看就明白了,从此,学习变的不再艰难^_^ 补注: 图中没有关于查找和替换的,应该 ...
- 苹果应用商店DNS修改加快下载速度
具体方法:依次点击进入[设置]→[无线局域网]→[WiFi网络右侧小i图标]→更改DNS地址,可以按照自身需求选择以下某个DNS进行更换. OpenDNS:208.67.222.222和208.67. ...
- 【Vijos】1431 守望者的逃离
题目链接:https://vijos.org/p/1431 算法:贪心 描述 恶魔猎手尤迪安野心勃勃,他背叛了暗夜精灵,率领深藏在海底的娜迦族企图叛变.守望者在与尤迪安的交锋中遭遇了围杀,被困在一个荒 ...
- html5文章 -- 应用HTML5 开发手机APP
因为HTML5暂时无法短期内在PC普及,主要方向在使用高端浏览器的高端移动设备,所以可以用作开发Android系统的App.但只有Android2.2以上.iOS3.2以上均支持HTML5,两大平台有 ...
- 校内OJ 1128 词链(link)(Trie+DFS)
1128: 词链(link) 时间限制: 1 Sec 内存限制: 64 MB 提交: 23 解决: 7 [提交][状态][讨论版] 题目描述 给定一个仅包含小写字母的英文单词表,其中每个单词最多包 ...
- HTTP 笔记与总结(7)HTTP 缓存(配合 Apache 服务器)
在网络上,有一些缓存服务器,另外浏览器自身也有缓存功能. 例如: <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> ...
- jQuery 复合选择器的几个例子
<!-- 本文例子所引用的jQuery版本为 jQuery-1.8.3.min.js Author:博客园小dee --> 一. 复合选择器对checkbox的相关操作 1 <inp ...
- Yii源码阅读笔记(十八)
View中的查找视图文件方法和渲染文件方法 /** * Finds the view file based on the given view name. * 通过view文件名查找view文件 * ...
- Oracle存储过程java 调用
1.nest表组合成结果集,然后以游标变量的形式返回 --创建类型 create or replace package mytest is -- Author : ADMINISTRATOR -- ...