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A project involves devoting effort, capital and human resources to achieve the satisfactory results expected. Early detection of the project not being carried out as well as desired is essential, it is imperative to take steps to improve the measures and its development in order to avoid any unnecessary costs.

In order to improve the management efficiency and detecting problems earlier, or even before they occur, it is essential to have a specialized project management software. Thus, in a simple and economical manner, improving the efficiency of your work an reducing your costs.

There are signs that allow for early detection if a project is not developing properly. In this article we discuss some of them.

1.- Spending too much time solving problems

Obviously, one of the most fundamental tasks of the project manager is to resolve project issues as they arise.

However, the best project managers are not the ones that solves problems, but who best avoids problems.

Anticipation is an essential characteristic of a project Manager and is related to their ability to predict the risks that may occur during the execution of a project, the impact the risks can have on it, and their occurrence.

Stopping the progress of a project because there has been a problem which needs the project manager to provide a solution. This leads to a delay in the delivery of the project and requires additional effort. This can be avoided if the project has been redirected so that the problem is avoided or there is a quicker solution to the problem which has been planned prior to implementing the project, avoiding improvisation at the time of submission.

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2.- Customers constantly ask for results

A customer who fully trusts you asks not for project results, but trusts that you perform the management of the project in the most appropriate way.

However, since the customer is primarily interested in the project achieving the expected results, it is reasonable for him to ask to be adequately informed of the development and implementation of the project.

Therefore, planning should include checkpoints at which the customer is informed of the results achieved so far, so he can see for himself that project management is still appropriate.

You can also use cloud resources for sharing real-time updates on the progress of the project. This way, the customers can see for themselves at any time how the project is developing.

If you do not use these resources, you can resort to more traditional methods, such as making periodic meetings. In this case you must be careful with the frequency and duration of the meetings, seeking to improve the efficiency and utilization of both your teams work time and your customer’s time.

Transparency generates trust between the project manager and the customer that will be beneficial for both parties.

3.- Workers spend too many hours

If the project is properly planned, employees should only be actively working in the allocated work time that has been planned prior to the implantation of the project, neither more nor less.

If less time than expected is used to execute the tasks, this could mean that the quantity or complexity is insufficient, therefore you should review the relevant work of each of the team members or assign any member of that team to another project.

However, if the opposite happens, it means that workers are overworked. This has negative consequences in both the short and long term.

In the short term, this will mean that tasks cannot be developed at the satisfactory level required.

In the long run, the employees will most likely end up burned out from being overworked, which will decrease productivity and, above all, creativity.

If there is a specific need, you can and should ask the team members to make an extra effort, but this should not be the norm. If so, project planning has been inadequate and must be reviewed.

It should also influence the work methodologies. It is possible that the workload is correct but the way to do it is not optimal.

4.- Too many changes to the project

If customers constantly demand more changes and this prevents you from staying on course for the project, it means that there is a planning problem.

In these cases, the most convenient way to deal with this would be to meet with the customers and talk to them about what they believe the purpose and scope for the project is. Once everything is clarified, the project should go ahead.

Proceeding aimlessly with the project, is a waste of resources and effort and will in turn decrease confidence that employees have in you.

Rethinking the project with the customers will allow you to plan it properly and find the solution together that is most satisfactory.

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Customer acquisition & sales funnel, inbound/outbound lead, MQL, SQL and more

Customer acquisition funnel

Customer acquisition funnels can be of much use for SaaS companies. They track and monitor leakages when prospects move between stages. It’s an effective way from companies to measure how well the company is doing in attracting and retaining customers. This is often a difficult step because moving prospects from the marketing team to the sales or customer success teams can create a high risk of losing data, miscommunicating between employees or mixing up responsibilities and metrics.

As you move through the funnel, you will realize that analyzing your content strategy is extremely important, especially when looking at it from a customer lifecycle perspective. Content strategy is a very effective way that you can get your company to increase the speed that your prospects take to pass through stages.

Customer lifecycle funnel

The customer lifecycle funnel consists of 6 stages with each one representing an action the customer must do. The first stage, at the top of the funnel is known as “Visitor”. This means that somebody must visit your company’s webpage and it isn’t until they apply for a free trial or submit a form that they can be considered a “prospect”. If you want the customer to become an “activated user” meaning they are actually using your product (either for the free trial or whatever you have offered them), you need to put in time and resources into creating a unforgettable experience for them. This will take them from being an “activated user” to an “active customer”.

However, once you have the sale, you can’t stop. Customers that pay for the product once, don’t guarantee they will pay for a second time. It’s important for SaaS companies to analyze and discover was usage related to high lifetime customer value and a high renewal rate. Once you have this information, you can work on improving these areas which will help to earn you some “loyal customers”.

Sales funnel

The sales funnels main goal is to demonstrate what internal processes companies should follow if they wish to efficiently move their prospects through the funnel. The funnel shows specific processes, actions and workflows which can augment the effectiveness of companies sales process. Sales funnels consist of a variety of different components which each need to be focuses on.

Inbound and Outbound Lead

Sales funnels begin by retrieving leads which can be either inbound or outbound. Inbound leads exist when prospects will provide the company with information in exchange for an asset, for instance a whitepaper or even a free trial. Outbound leads are created after SDRs (Sales Development Representatives) target individuals who may be unaware of the companies existence. This will often take place in many different forms including cold calling, mass emailing or targeted social media messages.

Marketing Qualified Lead

It can often be difficult to make the sale even if with a good lead. Marketing Qualified Lead, known as MQL for short, helps to calculate the probability of closing a lead. Companies can help to attract users and communicate to prospects through nurturing campaigns, newsletters, webinars, etc.

Sales Qualified Lead

After prospects reach a higher score, they will be considered to be a part of the Sales Qualified Lead stage. At this stage, your sales team should have enough information to decide what level of interest prospects have in your company.

Understanding all of these different concepts and definitions will help you immensely on your path to becoming a successful project manager.

If you wish to learn more about Kanban or other project management related topics, feel free to browse through the rest of our articles at http://www.itmplatform.com/en/blog/

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As quoted in the PMBOK, project scope is the portion of project planning that requires determining “the work that needs to be accomplished to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions.” Scope Management consists of 3 different processes: planning, controlling and closing. To understand how to successfully manage scope, you must have a detailed understanding of these 3 facets:

Planning

This is the first step. It requires you to define and document a list of all of the work that needs to be completed.

Controlling

Once you know what needs to be done, you’ll have to monitor scope creep, approve and disapprove project changes and track all processes. If you’re unfamiliar with the term scope creep it is also commonly known as function or feature creep. Scope creep refers to all of the continuous growth of a project’s scope or the unforeseen and uncontrollable changes that may occur.

Closing

This is the final process, it requires an audit of the deliverables where you will have to assess the outcome and compare it to what you originally envisioned the final product to be like.

As a project manager you understand that you’ll often bounce back and fourth between different project methodologies. However, regardless of which you choose to use, you’ll need to define the project scope. Make sure you are able to identify all of the following:

Project goals
Working schedule
Project phases and sub-phases
Budget

Once this is done, you should move onto completing the following 2 steps:

Step 1: Know what you need

You want to be able to develop a project timeline and get all of the resources you’ll need. To do so you should first start off by defining these needs- in other words the scope. Once you have completed this, you’ll be able to allocate tasks to specific team members.

Step 2: Understand what your objectives are

If you want to have a well-defined scope, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of what you wish to achieve through the completion of this project. For instance, you may want to develop an enhanced product or a new service. Regardless, you’ll need to outline all of the central objectives you have for your project. And as a project manager, it will become your goal and role to make sure that team members continuously aim to achieve these objectives.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

The WBS is a very important component of Scope Management, however many project managers don’t realize this and choose to skip the step. This can lead to developing inaccurate plans that create complications for the completion of the project. WBS is extremely useful because it allows project managers to break down their scope statements into small units of work that are much easier to manage. These units are frequently known as packages and the result of following the WBS is that you’ll have a list of all the work packages necessary to complete your project.

Advantage point

Being familiar with Scope Management and all of the concepts previously listed will absolutely provide you with numerous benefits. You’ll be able to manage your projects more successfully and with less uncertainty and risk of failure. However, even with the knowledge you’ve just attained, there is always the chance you’ll come across unexpected circumstances. While you can’t prevent this from occurring, you can prevent your business from crashing by depending on a strong project management tool like ITM Platform. ITM Platform has an abundance PM tools which will help you manage scope and decrease ambiguity, relieving you from unnecessary work and confusion. ITM Platform continuously guides you in the right direction by requiring you to follow the proper steps of establishing a scope: completely defining your scope, finalizing and distributing it to all team members with the help of an integrated communication system.

Scope Management is easy to implement but does require time and effort. The reason why ITM Platform would be so useful is because it aids in extending past human thinking and defining scope with little granularity.

Go to http://www.itmplatform.com to learn more and see how you can sign up for a free demo.

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The Monte Carlo Method in Project Management

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Isidora Roskic-Blogger ITM Platform

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What is the waterfall methodology?

Imagine the process of assembling a car, certain steps need to be completed before the car can move onto the next phase. The waterfall methodology is very much the same because it follows a sequential process. Each of the eight steps (conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction, testing, implementation and maintenance) will need to be completed chronologically. Extensive planning needs to be done before the project begins because there is no room for error.

What is the Agile methodology?

The Agile movement was first introduced in 1970 by Dr. Winston Royce who sought out an alternative to the traditional project management approach. Royce didn’t believe that project development should follow an assembly line routine. He thought project management teams could respond better to uncertainty if they first created a project design and then followed incremental work cadences also known as sprints. This allowed each aspect of the project to be reviewed and bugs to be discovered.

How to put the two together

While the two appear to be polar opposites they can very well co-exist in a single environment. The first thing that needs to be done is make sure all project managers, task performers and stakeholders understand their differences and appreciate what they both have to offer. Trying to find fault or prioritize one or the other is only a set back. Strong and continuous collaboration amongst team members will help to maintain calm even when frustration may arise.

Since waterfall methodologies require project planning to be done up front while agile teams prefer doing it progressively, it will be extremely important that synchronization between the two is maintained. Furthermore putting in place a project management office (PMO) will be beneficial. PMOs help maintain governance across all teams and monitor the overall progress of the project, making sure it follows the organization’s vision.

There’s nothing better to help you with managing the two methodologies than a good set of project management tools. PMOs in particular enjoy depending on tools that will quickly and easily provide them with project metrics and report upcoming deadlines, tasks that need to be completed, etc. This allows them to evaluate how well the methodologies are working and what may need to be done to improve. Take the time to find an efficient project management solution, such as ITM Platform, which is capable of gathering information from both agile and waterfall projects and merging the two into a single platform. This is very important because it will create a central repository for all the project data which will be used by all team members.

The biggest challenge companies face isn’t trying to decide whether they wish to use agile or waterfall methodologies but rather it’s their fear of change that holds them back. Forcing employees to change their ways and adopt a new model of work can be difficult and often disastrous. Luckily, it also isn’t necessary. Once again, adopting a flexible project management solution will allow team members to ease into changes and learn to adapt and work with both methodologies. This will allow you to achieve a successful union between the two, increasing productivity across all projects and the entire organization.

Register for a free trial here: http://www.itmplatform.com/en/programs-and-portfolio-software-de-gestion-de-proyectos-online/

Top 5 most read blogs on ITM Platform:

The Monte Carlo Method in Project Management

Extra Extra Extra!

Three disastrous project management failures

The project in the face of adversity: what should a project manager do?

What is the Virtual Sock Management or Periodical Online Management?

Isidora Roskic-Blogger ITM Platform

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When implementing a project portfolio management (PPM) model in an organisation, acquiring a project management software is not enough; usually the organization needs to adapt to the new way of working.

In this article we present some keys elements of success that we have learnt from our experience in implementing ITM Platform in more than 300 organizations: These advices are going to facilitate the adoption process as well as promote a truly project based management policy.

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Company design

1. Centralization:

One of the first aspects to keep in mind when adopting a project-oriented management style, is to decide what to merge and what to centralize.

Those are some of the most frequent aspects:

Terminology: To accurately communicate internally in a company (or externally with suppliers or clients), you must be able to convey precise feedbacks such as the state of the projects. Vague or ambiguous descriptions like “going well” do not help, because they don’t indicate the real state of a project and do not provide information that the sender or the receiver can truly understand.
Monitoring criteria: projects should be frequently monitored and quantitively measured. It is important to have everyone’s agreement on which criteria to use when measuring the project’s development.
Resources management: Depending on the nature of the project, centralizing the management of resources can be necessary. This decision will affect the organizational structure, the project manager’s work and the way day-to-day work is planned and executed.

These elements are the key to information and quantification. It is advisable for every department of the company to use a common reporting system to be able to rely on the necessary information to make decisions.

Other elements that should be consolidated are the processes (when a project is approved, when a project changes status, who must take those decisions…), standard costs or document formats to be used.

To sum up, you first have to think about what to centralize and afterward decide on how to do it.

2. Agile, predictive or both methodologies

Another critical decision that needs to be taken before starting a project is to decide which management methodology to apply. Each methodology has its advantages and disadvantages and, depending on the nature of the project, you should select the most appropriate.

Agile methodologies: The agile methodology is very good to manage uncertainties. It is ideal for those projects in which the results are not certain, or when you have an idea about the objective, but you do not clearly know how to reach it. It is frequently the case for IT projects, Start-ups and projects with high levels of uncertainty.
Predictive methodologies: Predictive methodologies are good to manage projects with low levels of uncertainty, for example projects in which processes are well known as well as the expected results. An example could be a project to produce a component that was already produced in the past. In this case, given that the processes are known, the objective is to maximize the productivity.

Both methodologies share some common points: tight monitoring, quantifications and measurements.

To fully take advantage of each methodology you should employ project managers that have expertise in both methodologies and who know how to adapt to one or the other depending on circumstances.

If you decide to use both methodologies, these will need to coexist in the same portfolio. Check out this webinar on how to make the 2 methodologies coexist.

3. Responsibilities of a project manager

It is fundamental to clarify the responsibilities of the project manager before the start of a project. That will empower him to properly do his work, focus on the most important tasks and properly report the results of his work.

Here are some of the most common decisions a project manager has to take:

Monitor the project progress
Canalize and encourage communication
Assign resources
Manage risks
Control Purchases and Revenues of the project

4. The Project Management Office (PMO)

Another relevant aspect is to decide whether a project management office is necessary or not. There are companies with high amounts of projects that do not rely on a project management office, while there are cases of less project intensive companies that actually need one.

This difference is motivated by the specific conditions of each business and by other factors. The most relevant are:

The level of maturity of the organization as well as their specific situation. Some companies are in a stable period with little variations in the business while others are in a phase of transition with high level of uncertainty and variability.
The complexity of the organization.
The nature of the business. For example, there are sectors where projects management offices are common because of the intrinsic nature of the business model.
The existence of interdependencies between projects. When such dependencies exist, the project management office is particularly important as it allows to coordinate the projects to take advantage of the interdependencies.
The degree of maturity of the project’s directors. Experienced project managers sometimes can cover the full scope of the project portfolio, thus becoming a one-man project management office. Unfortunately, this is not common, and it will be often necessary to create a dedicated team to constitute the project management office.
Strategic alignment. A project management office is particularly important when projects are not properly aligned with the overall strategy of the company.

To sum up, a project management office provides a strategic focus and allows the organization to reach levels of coordination that would not be possible otherwise.

5. Methodologies and structures in PPM

Another aspect that should be considered is the methodological framework. The guidelines provided by PMI or Prince2, for example, are very helpful. However, our advice is to adopt these guidelines with common sense and without applying them too rigidly. It is advisable to adopt only the aspects that best match with the organization and its needs.

Some key aspects that should be considered:

Process standardization: processes should to be standardized, be as simple as possible and be close to reality.
Inspiration from existing models: There are international associations that facilitate models of standardized project management. You can take inspiration from them, keeping in mind that it is best to adopt the best of each one.

We have explained how to design the organization to make the change possible, but we are still missing a very important part: How to do the transition? ¿Which method should be chosen to be successful?

Change management

To make a successful transition, the organization should fulfil several requirements and follow a series of steps.

1. Definition of the driving force

The initiative of a transition towards project-based management should come from the company’s top management. Directors should promote the use of project management systems and be the ones to lead the change.

It is important also to have the support of the management of the departments most affected by the change.

2. Implementation of change management

The transition can be done using 2 approaches, that we call the “pincer approach “.

On one hand we have a top down approach, where the use of new systems and methodologies is presented as a duty or obligation.

When adopting this approach, control models and reporting systems are key. They permit to verify that the new project management model is being applied correctly while, at the same time, monitoring the added value for the company.

For example, you can decide to use only the data previously registered in the system during follow up meetings.

On the other hand, you can adopt a bottom-up approach, with training and active listening. Employees know the reality of work circumstances and how to translate those into the new way of working.

Furthermore, team members should be persuaded that the change to their way of working adds value to the entire company, from which they are going to beneficiate in the medium and long-term.

Enthusiast employees motivated to adopt the new methods may greatly influence others. This can be an even more effective implementation strategy than having managers or directors forcing the adoption.

To guarantee the final success, it is necessary to start with relatively easy projects where the results should be quantified and compared with the ones pre-adoption. Make sure to successfully achieve the first steps and you will favour success in the next ones.

To sum up, it is advisable to progressively evolve, with clear and feasible objectives, reaching perfection step by step.

Webinar ITM Platform: Agile Deployment of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) from ITM Platform

Isidora Roskic-ITM Platform