When it comes to successfully completing a business project, having good knowledge of each participant and their involvement is essential. Whether it involves a small job for a reduced group of employees, a project for an entire department or a large-scale project involving the entire company, success will depend on whether the pieces fit together as precisely as possible.

A company is based on two main cornerstones: productivity and efficiency. Employees who perform poorly affect the results and costs of the whole company. Hence, controlling performance and the hours of the employees they are responsible for should be a priority for any project manager.

Why control employee hours? There are some very good reasons to do this.

1. Calculate invoices and wages precisely.

When presenting invoices to clients, the company needs to know the real labor hours invested in completing the project. Invoicing correctly is a responsibility and this means it is essential to know how many hours in total and how many per person were needed.

Even when a project is carried out on a sealed budget, it is of the utmost interest to know the real labor hours needed in order to calculate efficiency and estimate results. Completing a project in one week is not the same as doing so in ten days.

Furthermore, this knowledge about the involvement of each employee can be used for certain wage and salary calculations. This would enable pay to be better adjusted to real working hours, whether this means an increase or a decrease.

Whether for billing the client or administrating wages, using work supervision and control software also allows rapid and precise calculation of all that information without the paperwork involved in using other management systems (or not using one at all).

2. Locate areas for improvement

Locating the waste or lack of labor hours and being able to relate it to the effectiveness of the employee or department enables an analysis of which sectors or areas are failing and management of their improvement.

The control software allows knowledge of which worker is wasting time or stands out in terms of productivity and efficiency. The overall total and crosschecking against accounting data could determine the effectiveness of the company, department, project team or specific worker.

3. Helping employees to improve

Once workers know they are being monitored and their activity recorded, even if only in terms of their hours, they will get more involved and improve productivity. Even the most efficient worker could be surprised by an analysis of their browsing habits and find that they spend more time than necessary on internal company communication, for example.

This is not a matter of finding inappropriate activity, because even writing emails from and for the company could be a waste of precious time. The information obtained allows each employee to see those areas where they are less productive and take corrective steps.

4. Facilitating assessment of work

By assessing performance, a project manager is just one click away from data on the work carried out, how it was done, how much was done and when it was done. This facilitates management and the immediate location of mistakes, enabling a boss to receive direct feedback from the employee, which will improve overall performance.

5. Knowing who is the best worker.

By crosschecking all this information against the results of each project carried out, the project manager can know who is most productive and most efficient. In short, those who are the best employees. By doing this, they can manage their team so the best can teach and push the rest, thereby increasing overall productivity.

There are two main control variables available to the Project Manager during the course of a project: hours and progress. These two variables enable us to apply Earned Value Management principles and thus gain insight into project performance at any time.

The “hours” variable is used to build a connection between project time and costs, both in terms of estimates and real values. Time and cost move together; “time is money”. Using “hours”, a Project Manager plans his or her entire project and calculates the time needed to complete it, as well as the resulting costs.

We should be clear that more work time does not equal more progress in a project, and a good Project Manager should be fully aware of certain concepts regarding types of hours:

• Budgeted hours: this represent the number of hours available for completing the project. This will lead to certain costs that the Project Manager can stipulate.

• Estimated hours: once the project is defined on a task level (with a schedule and time estimates, as well as a selection of resources involved), hours can then be assigned to users. An estimate will be made of the number of hours needed by each user to complete the task; in other words, the number of hours considered appropriate to complete the activity. Each user will have a cost per hour assigned to their professional category so that their assigned effort will be reflected in an estimated cost.

• Real hours: the number of hours effectively worked can be obtained at any point during the course of the project and reported by the project team members. Based on their individual cost, the real cost of the resources at any time can also be obtained.

• Accepted hours: the hours reported by users can be accepted or corrected manually by the Project Manager. It may therefore be the case that the real cost does not fully depend on the reported hours but also on whether they are accepted by the Project Manager.

The Earned Value Method (EVM) is used to measure progress on project completion in an objective fashion. This combines three vitally important aspects in the completion of a project: technical (compliance with the planned work); costs (whether more or less is spent than originally planned); and deadline (whether the project is ahead or behind schedule). The components of this are described below:

• Earned Value (EV): the progress on activities planned at the start of the project at any given time is determined. This gives rise to another series of data that is referred to as Earned Value (EV), indicating the progress made to date.

• Planned Value (PV): the detailed planning of the project indicates what is going to be done and on what dates, as well as how much it was thought it will cost (both in personal and material effort). These values are known as the Planned Value, which is nothing more than a budget spread. The total Planned Value is usually called the Budget at Completion (BAC).

• Actual Cost (AC): the cost incurred by the work carried out on a task during a period. This reflects the total cost to date in relation to the work completed. For a project to fall within estimated parameters, it would need to correspond to what was budgeted for the PV and measured by the EV.

• Analysis of Earned Value

• Cost Variance (CV): CV = EV-AC

• Schedule Variance (SV): SV = EV-PV

• Cost Performance Index (CPI): CPI = EV/AC

• Schedule Performance Index (SPI): SPI = EV/PV

As Project Manager, you should follow the advice of Benjamin Franklin in the 18th Century and “remember that time is money”. Do not forget to apply the best practices in Earned Value Management and thus monitor the status of your projects relatively easily and simply, being this the perfect time as well to get a good tool of project management, that aloud us to make our work more easy.

The Pareto Principle - or 80/20 Rule - states that 80% of the deliverable from a project is achieved with 20% of the effort and that the remaining 20% will require 80% of the effort.

Let’s begin with a little history to see where this principle comes from. It was first expressed in 1906 by the economist Vilfredo Pareto - who gave his name to the principle - while studying the property of soil in Italy.

However, it was actually Joseph Juran who popularized it as a rule that can be applied in general to a large number of contexts and uses. Since then, and in a simple and easily-remembered manner, the 80/20 Rule has stated that a large part of effort is focused on a contribution of residual value and that a large part of the final result can be achieved with little effort.

While it is true that these percentages are not precise and that this rule uses an arbitrary proportion, it is also true that it reveals a great truth that we can apply to project management and many other activities in our daily life. We devote a great deal of time to things that contribute little value in reality, which cause us to advance little towards achieving our goals. If we were capable of focusing ourselves and our team on that 20% of effort that obtains 80% of the results, everything would be much simpler.

Creating effort-value tables can help us identify this relationship. Prioritizing tasks based on their result and estimating the effort they require allows us to focus ourselves on the most efficient of them. We should identify which things are most important and bring us closer to established targets using the least effort and time.

It will not always be possible to apply the 80/20 Rule and we will sometimes need to accept that 80% of effort will be dedicated to tasks that contribute little value. However, if we are aware of this fact, we will be able to suggest measures to project clients or sponsors when needing to cut down on functionality, adjust deadlines or reduce costs because we will identify which tasks we should focus on.

Project management requires the application of considerable knowledge, skills, techniques and tools.

Running a project is quite a complicated task and the right balance between numerous tasks, departments and processes must be maintained in order to meet the project requirements and objectives.

The project manager must consider the organizational structures and enterprise environmental factors affecting project management, as they influence the management process by establishing the framework in which the project must be carried out and by defining the limits and relations that should be considered for correct completion of the project.

Project management tasks are generally divided into five stages or groups:

• Project Start
• Project Planning
• Project Execution
• Project Oversight and Control
• Project Close

Although these are the most accepted divisions, it should be realized that these processes overlap, are iterative and of an inclusive nature.

For example, Project Oversight and Control is equivalent to the set of “background” tasks for all the other stages as they are tied to the outputs generated when closing the project. These processes may also be established for major stages of the project, being repeated for each one.

Project management tasks can also be classified into two types:

• Project management processes: guaranteeing that the project moves forward effectively. The techniques and tools are used by applying skills from the Knowledge Departments.

• Product-focused processes: in which the project’s product is progressively specified and produced. They are defined by the project life cycle and vary according to the area of application and the stage of the life cycle they happen to be in.

Project management processes interact and provide feedback to one another throughout the project life cycle. They are rarely one-off or isolated incidents because the activities developed by each one of the groups tend to overlap and interact with one another. The conclusion of one process normally leads to the start of another or one of the project deliverables, subprojects or project stages.

Further analysis of all these processes will be made in the upcoming entries.

Without organization, it is impossible to meet the deadlines of a project. We live in a competitive society in which victory is only achieved by those business organizations capable of developing projects that are delivered on time and organized perfectly. Hence, organizing a schedule is essential for any project manager and at any company worth its salt as it represents the foundations on which the results from a project will be based. The manager must be a responsive and organized person capable of faithfully reproducing their ideas in order to communicate with the group, convey the schedule and meet the final targets and implementation goals.

So, how do we create an organizational program or schedule to suit our project? Below are the key pieces of advice for managing this successfully.

• Create a group and form a team
  The project manager must be capable of successfully influencing people so that they form a tight-knit group that works in unison. They will be able to delegate to other team members and motivate the rest. Furthermore, the overall outlook will help offer ideas that might perfect the schedule. Several brains together think better than one on its own.
• Include all aspects
  We should include all client requirements in the schedule, organize them and list the most important of them. A piece of advice: start with the most difficult and urgent, and leave the easiest until the end.
• Set goals and rewards
  There should be key dates for closing stages of the process - just like goals - in order to reveal whether or not we are on the right path. So, setting goals and offering rewards are factors that will enable the team to remain fresh and motivated.
• Estimate fairly
  It is important to take the time needed to create a roadmap and adjust activity based on the experience and tasks of each person. The ideal method is to assign duties based on what each person is capable of doing.
• Foresee last-minute emergencies
  No matter how careful you are, unexpected eventualities always arise that use up the time allowed at the start of the schedule. One good piece of advice is to include extra time for emergencies when creating the project organization chart.
• Create a control panel
  The army is an institution that works because it has a hierarchy that nobody disrespects. Therefore, a control panel is necessary and, although some decisions may be group decisions, final responsibility must lie with the project manager or leader.

In short, a project is a tough undertaking and depends on a combination of multiple factors, people and tasks for successful conclusion. If you follow this advice properly, the project will go smoothly and you will avoid additional problems (thanks to a schedule).

“Success is not achieved only with special qualities. It is primarily a work record, method and organization”. J. P. Sergent