5 Tips for Levelling your Resources

As a Project Manager, would you like to spread work evenly across your team? This task is called "resource leveling" and it's one of the hardest things you will have to do. To help you out, we've listed...

5 Tips for Leveling your Resources

It's easy enough using tools like Microsoft Project, to create a Project Plan and allocate resources against it. But how do you make sure that each resource has an amount of work allocated which exactly matches the amount of time they have available, i.e. how do you know they are not under or over loaded?

Very few tools actually provide sound resource leveling features, so we've described here 5 generic tips for doing it yourself...

1. Create a Bullet Proof Plan

The first step is to create a Work Breakdown Structure that includes ALL phases, activities and tasks. The worst thing you can do is to level your resources and then find that you've missed critical tasks in your plan and have to start again. Once your task list is complete, list all resources that are allocated to the project. Miss no-one. If you later find you've missed someone, then it could play havoc with your leveling. Only with a complete list of tasks and resources are you truly ready to level your resources.

2. Start with Critical Tasks

Now, identify the most critical tasks in your plan and calculate the amount of effort required to complete them. Then allocate your best resources to completing these tasks and make sure that the effort allocated is sufficient.

3. Perform Leveling

Great - so every critical task has the resources needed to complete it. But in doing this, were any of your resources over-allocated? For instance, is Bob Smith allocated for 60 hours a week instead of 40? The process of reallocating people against tasks to even out their workload, is called "resource leveling" To do it, take these steps:

• Identify the number of hours that each person in your team has available for work.
• Then calculate the number of hours they are allocated to tasks, in your plan.
• If the number of hours allocated is greater than the number of hours they have available, then they are "over-allocated". If it's the reverse, then they are "under-allocated".
• For any resources under or over allocated, you need to change the tasks they are allocated to, in order to try and perfectly fit their available hours against their allocated hours.
• Only when you've completed this, are resources considered as "levelled".

4. Tackle Non-Critical Tasks

It's now time to perform all of the above steps for your non-critical tasks. This is a time consuming process, but by starting with your critical tasks first and your non-critical tasks second, you know that the project has a great chance of succeeding.

5. Constant Surveillance

Your Project Plan is a living and breathing document. It changes every time you complete a new task or finish an old one. You need to constantly monitor your resource utilization and make sure that your team are allocated to tasks in the most efficient manner. This will give you the best chance of succeeding.

Work smarter by purchasing the Project Management Kit of templates. They will save you time and make life easier!

Kick Starting Your Projects

Want to kick start your projects into life in the New Year? By reading this newsletter, you’ll find out how to rally your team and give your project that boost needed to finish on time.

Kick starting your projects...

Welcome to 2008. As a Project Manager, the New Year is a challenging time for your project. You have staff away on leave, you may have deliverables from last year that you need to catch up on and the clock is already ticking. So how do you catch up and then give your project the edge you need to get ahead? Here are 5 tips for doing just this...

Tip 1: Playing Catch up

Projects are always ahead in some areas and behind in others. When starting the New Year, make a list of all of the areas that you’re behind in. Then prioritize the list and calculate the amount of effort needed to complete them. Are there any tasks that can be completed by others outside your team? If there are non-critical tasks that you can outsource, then now is the time to consider it. Use whatever resources you can find to complete these tasks as soon as possible. This will allow you to start the new year with a clean slate and a fresh mind, which is critical to motivating your team.

Tip 2: Re-planning

Once you've caught up as many tasks from the prior year as possible, revisit your Project Plan. Update every task in the plan and recreate your project schedule for 2008. You need to make your team feel like they're getting a fresh start, without dragging stresses from the prior year into the New Year. This will boost motivation and enthusiasm for completing the revitalized plan.

Tip 3: The Road Ahead

Now that you have a crystal clear plan for 2008, you're ready to get the team behind it. Wait until everyone is back from leave, and then take them out for lunch. Walk them through this year's challenges and the timeframes in which they must be achieved. Try not to talk about last year. Instead, focus on the road ahead and gather their support. If possible, ask a customer to come along, to impress on your staff what it is that they need to deliver. Tell them you're proud of them and what they're capable of achieving.

Tip 4: Individualization

The trick now is to make each person feel like they are a critical cog in the wheel. Meet them individually, reward their successes and recognize achievement whenever you see it.

Tip 5: Quick wins

A winning team like to know they are winning right from the start. Focus on delivering a couple of critical tasks early, then shout about the success. Then get more quick winds under your belt and shout again. This creates the feeling of achievement and it creates momentum in the team. Sure, the project may not be finished until you've crossed the finishing line, but half the fun should be in getting there.

By taking these 5 tips, you can kick start your projects in the New Year and boost motivation levels to an all time high...

Work smarter by purchasing the Project Management Kit of templates. They will save you time and make life easier!

Building your Project Management Career

Would you like to boost your career in Project Management? Christmas is often the perfect time to reflect on your Project Management career to date and set a new path for the coming years. If you’re interested in getting the most out of your career, read this newsletter which gives you tips and tricks on...

Building your Project Management Career

Most people find themselves in Project Management by chance. They were offered a role, took it because it looked like fun and now they're running on "go-go juice" (pure adrenalin) trying to coordinate people, time and money to meet the expectations of the customer. It's pretty hard to schedule a career around this.

However the Christmas period usually gives people a chance to reflect on the year to date and plan ahead for the following year. So use this time wisely, by reflecting on our advice below...

Your dream job

It may be something like "to be a professional baseball player" or "leading climbers up Mount Everest " and it may have nothing to do with project management at all - but by defining your dream job and what it has to offer, it will set the scene for where you are in your career now and will paint a clear picture of the road ahead. It will also help you define where you want to be in 5 years time, which is critical to setting a clear career path.

The long term goal

How will you ever achieve your long term goal if you don't know what it is? Give it a try by thinking about the type of role you want to be doing in 5 years time and what it would involve. For instance, do you want to have your own business, be a PM high flier, an industry expert or to retire? Whatever it is, write down a detailed description of your 5 year goal and what it is about this goal that makes it attractive.

Navel Gazing

Now think about where you are and how that matches your long term goal. How far are you from meeting your goals? List in detail all of the things that are different between your current role and your long term goal. Then prioritize those differences, so you know which is more important to you. For instance, is taking on more challenging projects more important than earning more money?

Decisions

Take a little time to decide how serious you are about achieving your long term goal and what you are prepared to do about it. For instance, if it requires more responsibility, a larger team and more stress, are you really willing to take this on board?

Decide on your goal and feel proud about it. Only a fraction of the workforce actually succeed in setting a long term personal goal. Tell others about what you have decided. The more you tell others about what you're going to achieve, the more you will believe that you can achieve it. Self-motivation is critical to a promising career.

Action Plan

It's now time to set out an action plan. Between your current role and your ideal long term role, which interim roles will you need to fulfill? Create your own career plan, by defining each of these roles and how they are going to help you to realize your dream.

Describe what it is that you expect to get out of each role (e.g. what you will learn or the types of experience gained) and then add timescales to each role, so you have a plan of attack.

Taking the Plunge

Talk through your plan with your current boss to get their feedback and support. Bounce it off a mentor, friend or colleague. If you believe in it yourself and it feels right then stick to it.

Constantly look for opportunities that match your action plan and when you're ready, take the plunge. By driving your career yourself, you will feel more empowered and confident in your abilities. And you'll boost your chances of achieving that dream job.

Note: Most employers require "indepth knowledge and experience in using a Project Management Methodology", such as MPMM. So boost your career by purchasing MPMM now.

Motivating Project Staff over Christmas

As a Project Manager, the Christmas period coming up can be a real worry. You have a backlog of project work to complete, yet many of your team will be on leave and the remaining team members want to "wind down" over the Christmas period. So how do you keep on track? Read this newsletter to learn tips for...

Motivating Project Staff over Christmas

The Christmas period often results in substantial delays for projects. With staff holidays, reduced productivity and a lack of focus, teams often fall way behind with their deliverables. Besides - when your peers are all away in the Caribbean, who wants to work, right?

It takes a talented Project Manager to keep their project on track over this period and deliver an outstanding result. To help you do this, use these 5 tips...

Tip 1: Plan Ahead

Often, Project Managers have no idea who is taking leave until the week before Christmas. So they suddenly become short of resource and unplanned delays occur. You need to plan ahead.

Find out right now, who in your team wants to take leave over the Christmas period (December and January) and for how long. Then negotiate with them as to when that leave is taken. Try and schedule the leave for a timeframe that fits with your project plan. For instance, if you're in the design phase over Christmas, try and convince your construction workers to take their leave over this period.

Tip 2: Make it fun

It's fair to say that most people don't want to "slog it out" between Christmas and the New Year. They really want easy, interesting work that is fun to do. They don't want to do anything repetitive, anything stressful or anything too big, while others are on holiday. So get the most out of their performance by giving them work that fits their needs.

Every project plan is full of "fun" tasks and "mundane" tasks. Try and give your team members that stay behind and work over Christmas, some of the fun tasks to do. Whether it's researching a new solution, designing a concept, creating a marketing plan or creating prototypes, as long as the work is fun then your staff are more likely to maintain a high level of productivity.

Also, by giving them shorter tasks to complete over this period, it makes them feel like they're achieving more.

Tip 3: Don't burn-out on the run-up

Project Managers often try and finish as many deliverables before Christmas as possible, so that they can show that they have delivered more within the current year. So teams are usually stressed around this time.

It's fine to increase the work slightly before Christmas, but remember; only a percentage of your team will be taking a holiday and will be able to wind-down afterwards. So be careful not to overload the guys that will be staying around over the Christmas period, or they might burn out early in the new year. Remember: overloading only works if it is short term and is followed by a period of complete rest.

Tip 4: Regroup

Post Christmas day, many staff quickly become de-motivated. The Christmas cheer has finished, the office may feel empty and the telephone never rings! Now is the perfect time to regroup by taking your team out to lunch and revisiting your work goals for the next few weeks. Get your team together frequently over this period, so that they feel like a team within a team, while the others are away.

Tip 5: Reward and Recognize

And finally, make a special effort to reward achievement over this period, as you normally would when everyone else is there. A valued team will always be more productive!

By taking these 5 tips, you'll be able to keep team motivation levels high during the Christmas period and allow your team to gain the time to regroup, refresh and gain new energy for the coming year ahead.

Work smarter by purchasing the Project Management Kit of templates. They will save you time and make life easier!

How to use Project Standards...

Have you ever heard a Project Manager say "we use best practice" or "we applied project standards" to projects? If you have, then what do they really mean and how do they do it? Read on, to learn...

How to use Project Standards...

A "Project Standard" is an agreed best practice way of managing a project. We say agreed, as the standard will usually have been reviewed and used by thousands of project managers around the world, before it becomes formally recognized as a "standard" practice.

There are 3 common standards in the Project Management industry:

1. PMI "PMBOK" Standard
2. OGC "Prince2" Standard
3. APM "Body of Knowledge" Standard

These standards give you a generic way of managing projects. They don't give you a prescriptive "step-by-step" approach to managing projects (as MPMM does), but they do give you a set of practices and principles that you can apply to your projects, to boost your chances of success. So how should you use them? Here's how...

Make your selection

Review each of the above standards and select the one that has the closest fit with the way you run projects now. Each standard will have a completely different approach, terminology and lifecycle to the rest.

Only by selecting the standard that closely matches the way you work, will you really be able to immediately boost your efficiency.

Pick and Choose

Standards are typically generic, so that they fit all industries and all project sizes. So they will probably include stuff you won't need. Pick and choose the elements of the standard that you know you need to deliver projects successfully.

Customize to Fit

Then take the parts you've chosen and customize them to fit your environment. Keeping within copyright law, you'll probably want to change the terminology, the language used and the sequence of activities used.

Break it Down

To be able to use a standard properly, you really need to take it to the next level for your projects. You need to define the next level down. So for instance, if it talks about "risk management", then you'll want to list and describe the exact steps needed to manage risk within a project. For every step, describe what should be completed, how, by whom and in which order.

Use it for projects

Now that you have chosen your standard, picked the relevant parts, customized it by adding your own terminology and described it in a little more detail, you're ready to use it for your projects. Here are some tips on how to use it:

	Use the same standard for every project. Only by applying the same principles over and over again, will you gain "economies of scale" allowing you to manage projects faster.
	Don't always apply the standard in its entirety. Only apply the bits that are relevant to the particular project you're managing.
	Continue improving the standard. On every project, identify the elements of the standard that help and those that didn't. If you continuously improve the standard used , then it will become a "living and breathing" tool to help you improve your projects.

By using standards to improve the way you work, you'll soon be known as "that guru who always gets their projects done on time!"

Use these templates which are based on project standards.
Download this methodology to help you implement standards.

Create your own Project Lifecycle...

It you don't want to have to start every project from scratch, then it's worthwhile creating your own Project Lifecycle.

How should you do this? What should it look like? And how do you use it? Keep reading to find out how to...

Create your own Project Lifecycle...

A Project Lifecycle is a series of steps that you take to complete a project from start to finish. Of course, it implies that you can complete the same steps for every project— so is this true?

In principle, yes. Every project will have an Initiation phase, a Planning phase, an Execution phase and a Closure phase. However within these phases, the steps you take may vary slightly between projects.

The trick is to create a lifecycle that is generic enough to use for all of your projects, while still being specific enough to add value and save you time on delivery. Here's how to do it...

Map it out

Every project is delivered in some form of lifecycle. You probably usually define your project upfront, then you'll hire your team, you'll plan and complete a set of tasks to create some deliverables and then get your customer to signoff the output. This sequence of steps are what is called a "lifecycle" and chances are that you're using the same generic lifecycle every time you deliver a project!

So start by mapping out your current project lifecycle on a blank sheet of paper and identify the elements that you know work well, and those that don't.

And improve it

Then try and improve your lifecycle by analyzing why certain steps don't work well currently. Analyze the root cause and identify which steps you could take instead, to improve your chance of success. For instance, maybe "scope creep" is an issue for you, so by putting in place better steps for managing changes to scope, it would help.

Once you have identified the sequence of steps that you know will deliver your projects successfully from start to finish, the next thing you need to do is to "get detailed".

Get detailed

With a clearly defined series of steps, you now need to define the tasks and activities that are needed to perform each step efficiently. For instance, if your first step was to get funding for your project, then do you need to create a Business Case or Financial Plan to do it? What type of person will authorize the funding and what information will they need to do it?

For every step, describe how you intend to do it, the tasks and activities to be taken, and as importantly, who is responsible for doing them (e.g. it is yourself or members of your team)?

Tool up

Great—so you have a crystal clear process for delivering projects. Now how can you do each step quickly and efficiently? Typically project managers use templates, software and examples to help them complete each step faster and more efficiently. With a well documented lifecycle, the right lifecycle steps and good tools, you will be armed and ready to tackle any type of project to succeed.

Get ready

And finally, with all of this collateral, you need to collect it into a single place, ready to use on projects. Many project managers use "MPMM" for this, as you can create a brand new Project Lifecycle and import all of your templates and examples into it, ready for use.

By creating your own project lifecycle or customizing that of another, you can apply a single approach to managing successful projects.

Download a complete Project Lifecycle within MPMM now...

Building high performing teams

So you're a Project Manager on a new project and you want to build a high performing team? Excellent, this is a great goal to strive for.

But it's not easy, especially in the project environment which has its own challenges. To do it, take these tips for...

Building high performing teams

What exactly is a high performing team? It's "a team that exceeds the goals you set, by working hard and smart, as a group, not individuals."

Whether you're in IT, construction, engineering or another industry, building a high performing team is critical to success. You can do it in just 5 steps...

1) Planning

Before you hire your first person, you need to document what it is that your team have to achieve and by when. You also need to create specific Job descriptions that set out your expectations for each role and how you'll measure their performance.

Don't stop there. Think about the team culture you want to build, the dynamics of your team and how they should work together. Only with a personal vision for how your team will perform, will you be able to meet that goal.

2) Recruiting

Recruitment is harder than it looks. It's easy to recruit the wrong person, and it's even easier to build a team that don't perform well. A candidate should only be recruited if they fit the job description, align with your personal vision for how the team will work together and they want to work in a culture that depicts your vision.

Take your time. Be swayed by your gut feel. Recruit "like-minded people". Introduce them to high performing staff you know of and get their feedback. Be choosy. Recruit the best. If you have to pay top dollar for top performer, it will often cost less in the long run, than a cheap resource who doesn't perform.

3) Culture Creation

If you've hired "like-minded people" then they will all like each other, and that's a great start. Get them working together on tasks. Constantly change the people you pair up, so that people get to know others in the team.

If your ideal culture is "performance through achievement" then shout out loud about each team success. And if you want "performance through happy customers" then strengthen the relationship between the team and your customers. Get them socializing. Try team sports.

4) Self Motivation

A happy motivated team will always out-perform an unhappy unmotivated one. And it starts with you! Are you happy and motivated? Get on track personally by working out, relaxing after hours, de-stress and set personal goals. Your motivation will rub off on your team.

Then when you're ready, focus on motivating your team. Use team building and group rallying exercises to get them pumped. Tell them how proud you are to work with them. Help them understand why the goals are important and how every team member contributes to them.

5) Recognition & Reward

People only respond positively to positive behavior. So you need to constantly recognize achievement when it's due. Tell the team about an individuals success. Make them feel proud. Spread the love—don't focus on one team or person too frequently.

And reward them when it's due. Reward them unexpectedly as people will appreciate it all the more. Meals to restaurants, tickets to the super-bowl. These things mean a lot to staff when they didn't expect it!

And there you are. If you plan for success, recruit a great team, build a positive culture and recognize achievement, then you'll build a healthy project team and boost your chances of success!

And if you want your team to perform even better, download the Project Management Kit now to save time completing projects.

Download the Project Management Kit now.