The Rising Need of Project

In last few years modern business are no longer based on just operations। More and more key business initiatives are now subject to a defined project plan, with specified deliverable and time constraints. These days every manager is expected to do more with less. In such an environment, a good saying for project management is, "Do It, Do It Right, and Do It Right Now." Creating clear directions, timely response and quality outcomes are the demand of current scenario. The art of project management has gradually changed and as a result of this today the art of effective project management requires a new type of skill base. Project managers need to develop a new type of skill base। It's very unfortunate that today accidental project managers' are on the rise. Moreover, it is estimated that almost 2/3 of employees in project manager roles lack the necessary guidance and understanding essential to accomplish successful projects. A recent survey conducted by independent research agency has shown that 58% of people surveyed agree that their projects rarely meet time, cost and quality targets. Accordingly the importance of project management training and certification is on the rise. Project management is a critical role within a project that acts as the ‘glue’ in bringing diverse competencies together and coordinating the current of information between them. In fact it is the demand of present scenario and project manager must be able to play several functions including an adviser, a planner, a manager, and effective communicators and a businessperson. The challenge for the Project Manager consists of attracting the correct resources, shaping a solid team, keeping the team motivated, meeting individual aspirations and getting the work done - all within scope, cost, time, and customer satisfaction. Thus project management training can help project managers understand the what, why, and how of the discipline। Apart from this, project management training also help these project managers in understanding: *What are the fundamental skills project managers need to be effective and how to develop them *Why business and project alignment is essential for project management success and how to get आईटी The basic purpose of project management training is to educate and train project managers with the ability to foresee as many dangers and problems as possible and control activities so that the project is completed as successfully as possible in spite of all the risks. Today, project management training has revolved around the benefits of a set framework of principles and various practices that are a part of effective project management. The result-oriented approach of effective project management training makes it easy for project managers to develop concepts of good project management and deliberately apply their knowledge into their projects. AstroWix is one of the leading organizations to offer world-class training on project management. AstroWix project management training service helps project management professionals understand the fundamental project management skills and different ways to develop them. AstroWix project management training program also helps candidates learn different project management methods and pass professional exams. It helps professionals get certifications from PMI: PgMP, PMP and CAPM. To know more about Project Management and Project Management Training, visit: www.astrowix.com Kindly give your feedback, once you go through my blogs...you suggestions are always welcomed।

What is Agile Project Methodology?

What is this agile project management and how does it matters in IT industry? In this blog, I am going to throw some light on Agile Project Management. This blog is s about Agile Project Management, which is a set of simple practices, which can easily be understood by development teams and enable them to concentrate on the most important aspect of the project, "delivery of the product to the users". As we all know business continue to change at a rapid pace and in this entire process, we have always been in the midst of a chaotic business environment.

Today, every big and small organization relies on software, to be competitive and be successful. Well, it’s good news for technology / software professionals, but one should also note that today customers want the projects to be delivered as promised, on time and meeting or exceeding the quality expectations. In order to deliver any project well, as a project manager, you need to have a methodology or a process in place. According to Merriam Webster, a methodology is a body of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline: a particular procedure or set of procedures.

Many organizations have been employing traditional development methodologies like Waterfall, Capability Maturity Model and others. However, in most of the cases it has been found these methodologies have not been able to deliver results in a typical short-cycle project. This is because, in most of the cases either they were predictive or they impose a disciplined & repeatable process, to increase predictability.

So, what type of methodology would help you and your team to deliver the product and satisfy the customers?

The methodology should be simple. The chosen methodology must be simple enough to enable the smart people to concentrate on business and technology and deliver products at a high speed. A methodology should be as simple as possible to get the job done. . One methodology that meets all these features is Agile Methodology. This methodology has helped many leading and mid-sized companies deliver results in complex project areas.

Agile places a lot of emphasis on teamwork. Customers & developers are on the same team. So, customers are always available to the developers for feature prioritization or product feedback. Simplicity is another essential component of Agile project. Simplicity provides a real value in high change situations. The team employs simple approaches in design and coding. It is very much people-oriented and empowers the developers. It is very suitable for a typical current day short-cycle project.

Kindly give your feedback, once you go through my blogs...you suggestions are always welcomed.

Why Projects Fails?

In this world every project is planned and meant to get completed right on time and within the predefined budget. But reality presents a totally different story. It's not uncommon for projects to fail. Today, even if budget and schedules are met, one must ask "did the project deliver the results and quality we expected?” True project success must be evaluated on three components i.e. time, quality and cost, otherwise a project could be considered a failure.

When projects begin to demonstrate signs of failure, everyone looks to the project manager for answers. It may seem inequitable that the burden of doom falls upon a single individual, but being a project manager, he or she must be able to recognize and deal with these types of situations. It is essential for project managers to have a better perceptive of the enterprise's business objectives so that they can continually measure their projects in terms of delivering these business objectives.

These days, business requirements change frequently and so it has become vital for project manager to be fully aware of the issues at a business level. Even a project that delivers the planned scope within time and cost may be deemed unsuccessful because its deliverables are no longer relevant to the business. the question is why project fails? Have you ever wondered why some projects go smoothly and others seem plagued with problems?

There are many reasons why projects (both simple and complex) fail; the number of reasons can be infinite. Some projects do not meet the strategic vision of the company. If business needs are not clearly defined, it will result in a project that does not add value to the bottom line or enhance business processes. Apart from this, some projects also fail due to in-complete project scope and unclear definition of the project's benefits. Moreover, inadequate funding, and incorrect budgeting is still a main cause for projects not delivering their objectives within the quality framework.

In addition to this, the lack of enforcement of policy and procedures also cause a project failure. Even though a policy has been established, it is not enforced. As a result, inconsistent results emerge. If a standard and consistent approach to project management is devised by a company, it must be routinely policed in order to assure accuracy and uniform results. It is one thing to enact legislation, quite another to enforce it.

Even with the best of intentions or solid plans, project can go awry if they are not managed properly. Thus it's the project manager's responsibility to correct the listing no one else. During the course of managing a project, the project manager must monitor activities (and distractions) from many sources and directions.

Project Management in IT Industry

Managing an IT project is not an easy job and today it is just like a juggling chunk of Jell-O. Information technology is especially slippery because it's always moving, changing, adapting and challenging business. Generally all projects are constrained by three factors: time, cost and scope and for any project to be successful, these three constraints must be in symmetry. If any constraint is out of equilibrium, the project increases its chances to head for disaster. In case of IT industry, all projects move through five phases in the project management lifecycle, i.e. initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. Each phase contains processes that move the project from idea to implementation.

However, in most of the cases IT projects frequently fail. According to the Standish Group, which tracks IT project success rates, only 29 percent of IT projects conducted in 2004 were completed successfully. The numbers are discouraging for a various reasons. A surprising statistic reveals the majority of IT projects, despite being planned, still end up not meeting outlined project goals throughout their planned course, both in terms of keeping with time and budgeting available money.

IT projects fail because due to a lack of sufficient planning. An IT organization must think the resources it needs to devote to a project, the skills required, the people who need to be involved, and practically judge the time it will take to implement the project deliverables. Nevertheless, with modern-day emphasis being on getting more bangs for the cash, IT has to manage projects more effectively. The constant growing challenge has led many IT firms from all across the world to turn to Project Management as a way to boost IT efficiency, cut costs, and improve on project delivery in terms of time and budget. Looking at the present picture of global IT industry, the ratio of IT projects has increased dramatically. In addition to this, with the constant increase of IT projects the call for IT Project Managers have also boomed. The IT project manager is the person who is responsible for the management of all activity necessary for the delivery of IT project so that it meets the expectations and satisfaction of the customer, within an agreed time frame and within budget constraints.

Though information technology training for IT project managers can help them upgrade their technical knowledge, but may not know how company’s technology fits into the bigger picture from a business perspective. The success of a project often rests on the understanding of related people and management issues, rather than technical issues. That’s where project management training becomes important.

Project management training addressing different areas of IT project management i.e. software, systems integration, communications and human resources can help project managers gain the experience, techniques and tools to manage each stage of project. By extending project management concepts into the IT arena, the IT professionals can gain an understanding of the strategies essential to handle IT projects of any size.

Risk Management Process - A Practical and Effective Approach

It is said that a strong risk management process can decrease problems on a project by as much as 80 or 90 percent. In combination with solid project management practices having a well-defined scope, incorporating input from the appropriate stakeholders, following a good change management process, and keeping open the lines of communication a good risk management process is critical in cutting down on surprises, or unexpected project risks. Today, one cannot deny from the fact that such risk management process can help in problem resolution.

However, there are certain steps whose absence can affect project risk management process. Here are seven-step risk management processes that can be effectively utilized to accomplish desired project result.

Step 1: Each person involved in the planning process individually list at least ten potential risk items. Often with this step, team members will assume that certain project risks are already known, and therefore do not need to be listed. For example, scope creep is a typical problem on most projects. Yet it still must be listed because even with the best practice management processes in place, it could still occur and cause problems on a project over time. Therefore it should be addressed rather than ignored.

Step 2: Collect the lists of project risks and compile them into a single list with the duplicates removed.

Step 3: Assess the probability, the consequence and the detect-ability of each item on the master list. This can be done by assigning each item on the list a numerical rating such as on a scale from 1 to 4 or a subjective term such as high, medium, or low. Detect-ability is optional, but it can be simple to assess if a risk is harder to see, such as with scope creep, then it's a riskier item. If it's easier to catch early, such as loss of management support or loss of a key resource, then it's lower risk.

Step 4: Break the planning team into subgroups and to give a portion of the master list to each subgroup. Each subgroup can then identify the triggers warning signs for its assigned list of project risks.

Step 5: Subgroups must be able to identify possible preventive actions for the threats and enhancement actions for the opportunities.

Step 6: At this stage the subgroups must create a contingency plan that should includes the actions one would take if a trigger or a risk were to occur. This plan has to be created for those risks scoring above a certain cut-off point, which are determined after looking at the total scores for all risks.

Step 7: Determine the owner of each risk on the list. The owner is the person who is responsible for watching out for triggers and then for responding appropriately if the triggers do in fact occur by implementing the pre-approved and now established contingency plan. Often, the owner of the risk is the project manager, but it is always in the best interest of the project for all team members to watch for triggers while working on the project.

Often, the steps in which triggers and preventive actions are identified are overlooked. However, these are vital to the entire risk management process. After a team has completed this exercise once, the members will be better conditioned on what to pay attention to while managing the project so they are more proactive in catching changes or issues early. If these steps in the risk management process are skipped, the team can find themselves in constant reaction mode, simply implementing a contingency plan for each risk after that risk catches them by surprise.

A risk management process does not have to be complicated or time consuming to be effective. By following a simple, tested, and proven approach that involves seven steps taken at the beginning of each project the project team can prepare itself for whatever may occur.

Transparent Project Management

Building effective partnership is closely connected with one of the basic and well known rules of business: you should learn what your clients really need (or help them determine their need) – and do your best to follow their interests and expectations when offering them corresponding products or services. Of course, understanding your customers is of vital significance at the stage of pre project negotiations. But aren't we often loosing this perspective once the deal gets to the implementation phase? The key requirements remain essentially the same: you should be able to listen to your vis-􀀂-vis and really understand them, as well as to be open and responsive when you have already started co-operating.Thus, the magic word of constructive communication between service provider and customer is TRANSPARENCY. So, what does transparency actually mean in terms of modern project management? 1. Tasks setting and estimation (a) Clear scope: correspondence to Company's skills and competencies (b) Structure: hierarchy and links (c) Timeline: fixed, realistic, but flexible – within evaluated amount of work hours (according to risk estimation) 2. Completeness and wholeness (a) The complete project management process includes post-project support and analysis – as well as updates or debugging, if necessary. (b) Wholeness means that the project has no “black holes” Avoid gathering all documents and data in a stressful manner on the stage of the final report (unfortunately it still often happens so in practice). In the perfect case scenario your communication program will save all the project communication for you, so that it is all documented on the spot and you can trace it easily. 3. Visibility of all project activities Meaning that for knowing what page you are on, a project manager should see and control the tasks progress as well as the group (or an individual participant) progress. 4. Daily / weekly project reports for each task Let's imagine the usual situation: you set the project plan, and defined the milestones and assigned the tasks within the project team. Now, you can wait for the interim reports.or ask about the progress every day. Or you can start using the system, where all project participants have to report their job every day, and where you can track the progress daily. The last option is the way to go. The issue of progress and efficiency tracking we emphasize as especially important for the project transparency. 5. Efficiency and workload tracking per each project participant Those help you determine if you need additional resources for each particular task, or if you could re-allocate some project participants to different tasks. Efficiency tracking also let's a manager see if project participants are on track with the tasks assigned, and if the project time-line is observed. 6.Openness. It is the real result of all transparency-oriented measures. Frank and as a result cooperative project atmosphere could be named one of the key factors for effective and constructive team work. It makes real value for topexecutives and managers in charge at the customer side. Discussed components are of even greater significance in the case of big projects, where participation of several teams (and remote coordination of their work) is expected.

Importance of project management

Why is project management important and what awesome power exists with project management in today’s business environment? The first reasons that come to my mind about why project management is important are tighter budgets, diminishing resources, more and more time constraints, and competition to improve the ways we do business. Project management is applicable to many industries and organizations. Some key industries that use project management include: telecommunication, construction, information technology, software development, banking, manufacturing, professional engineering and architecture, computers, etc. Project management is very important in today’s business environment when one considers the consequences of the absence of good project management. Here are some of the consequences that can be experienced with the lack of or poor project management: missed deadlines, cost overruns, poor workmanship, conflicts among team members, redoing work to correct errors, unclear directions for the project, continuous changes in project scope, forgotten key tasks, poor morale of team, duplication of effort, etc. Because of these potential consequences, project management is critical to a project’s success. Today, one cannot deny from the fact that an effective project management can help in meeting or exceding customer expectations, maximize the use of your resources (time, people, money, space, etc.). Looking at the current prospective, one can actually bring the project to a successful conclusion on time and within budget and build confidence in his or her team for future projects.