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This week's tip continues the series of the 10 project management fallacies with fallacy number 7," My project is the most important". Read more at http://bit.ly/9hdM9H.

The Ten Fallacies of Project Management

#7 - My Project is the most important project

Yes your project may have the highest priority but is it really the most important to the organization? Does having a high priority guarantee that you will get budget or resources that you need? The answer is not always. Companies live in the moment when it comes to most projects. They want what they want today. Thus your project may be a high priority but if sales is hgearing up for a new campaign that launches in 6 weeks their IT project that supports that campaign will be front and center on evrybodies mind.

As a PM it is important to understand the other projects in the portfolio that may impact your project. Does your project and the sales project need web developers? If so then that is a risk that you need to manage to. Paying attention to the company portfolio of projects will help you idenyify these risks quicker so you can mitigate and manage them more effectively.

The Ten Fallacies of Project Management

#8 - A schedule is a plan

Running a project with only a schedule basically makes the assumption that everything will go well. What happens when the first critical task is late or a vendor misses a delivery? That is where the project plan comes in. The project plan includes sub-plans  such as communication plans, risk management plans etc that help you manage the schedule more effectively.

Project Management Tips

Check out the Project Right Track website at http://bit.ly/9hdM9H for our weekly project management tip

Planning Contigency With The Business Owners

I am running a project for a client. Today I met with the business lead to discuss potential contigency plans in case the project runs late. One of the things we discussed that I think is important is what are the must do tasks for a business area vs other tasks that they should do. For example in claims processing you must be able to open and pay a claim. Voids however can be done later. So our plan is to identify the must dosand build our contgency plan around those only.

The Ten Fallacies of Project Management

#9 - Setting overly aggressive schedules / goals works.

 I've worked for many CIOs who beleive that setting a very aggressive schedule sets up a project to deliver quicker than if it was planned on a more paced schedule. I have never known this to work. When you have an overly aggressive schedule you have no contigency time. The smallest hiccup or delay will have an enormous ripple effect. Once the first ripple hits, the rest follow just like a bolder thrown into a pond. If a project has to meet an aggressive date then you need to identify the most critical scope items and focus efforts on delivering those. On IT projects with aggressive schedules you will have to increase your testing effort as it is likely the aggressive schedule will result in a higher defects rate.

Its like a full time job

I am working at a client with another PM who recently received his PMP. We always joke about something he said to me a while back. One day he looked at me and said, "This PM thing is like a full time job". For most of us who have been PMs for a while we can appreciate this comment. The truth is that project management never ends or lets up. From start to finish the PM has to be on top of their game. This includes planning for contigencies. To me the sign of a really good PM is one who not only plans the project well but plans the contigencies equally well.

And what if you win the lottery?

Many of us are not very good at keeping our project management documents up to date. So what happens if you are suddenly gone? Can the PM who replaces you find what they need to pick up the project? Better yet what if you are the PM replacing another PM who went off to Alaska for a reality show. (I love Ice Road Truckers). Encourage your fellow PMs and yourself to keep the docs current and archive the old stuff!

No it is not a horse ...

Every contigency and risk in your plan needs a trigger point. This is an event or date that results in the contigency being invoked or risk mitigation to begin.

So what is contigency

Contingency is a buffer of time or money that is established to handle anticipated but unknwon events or changes in the project

Ten Fallacies of Project Management

#10 - Weekends are contigency time.

Weekends are for recovery, rest, and relaxation. If you don't plan in contigency time for the project up front then people may have to work weekends when the schedule slips. If this happens too often the team can get burned out and more than likely cause the project to slip further behind. There are two ways to build in contigency time. One is to build a resrve bucket of hours that is some percentage of the overall project effort in hours. The other is to add in placeholder tasks that have durations of 1 or more days. Check out the tip of the week starting 8/7 at http://bit.ly/ciyf0W  for more thoughts on this item.