Project Management Practitioner

Organizing, participating meetings are day-to-day affairs for the PM in any organization. These meetings are arranged for various purposes, sometimes initiated by yourself or invited to participate in others meetings.

A little bit prior preparation and planning will help the PM to use the meeting effectively to produce better results. These simple tricks are common for the both meetings hosted or participated by yourself.

Lets share some of the tricks.

1. Identify and invite all relevant stakeholders to the meeting
2. Draft the agenda and decide the meeting duration
3. Book the meeting room/conference bridge facility
4. Use Outlook/Notes Calendar to send the meeting schedule with agenda, meeting location, time and duration
5. Send a reminder email flagged with meeting time on the meeting day or one day earlier
6. Prepare a draft copy of MOM with agendas, action items, issues you want to brought up and leave blank spaces to fill-up during meeting
7. Use recording facility during the meeting, if available
8. Read out the entire agenda at the start and also check the participant for any new items to be included
9. Kick off the meeting from agenda 1
10. Moderate as and when required
11. Check the clock frequently and if required rush the discussion to wind up the meeting on time. Its very important to finish the meeting on time or earlier, otherwise people will start to ignore your future meetings
12. Take the minutes during meeting and use the same to complete the MOM
13. Send out the MOM on the same day or next day

-Posted by Dhana

Nowadays Virtual teams are more common in most or all organizations irrespective of matrix of functional type. Virtual teams offers various advantages for the companies such as low cost, ability to support across time zones, better resource utilization, availability of expert knowledge and so on.

Apart from the above benefits, some challenges are bundled and comes as freebies while setting up the Virtual Teams. Usually the organizations rips the benefits and the middle management people are left with the challenges to deal.

Lets look into some key aspects.

1. What are these challenges?

People, Culture, Time and follow-up are the primary challenges in managing any virtual teams.

People - It’s very difficult for the PM/Functional Manager to fully understand the virtual team member’s characters. Most of the time, he/she need some time to understand them and by the time they understand them either the project will be nearing to closer/in RED status.

Culture - The PM/Functional Manager need to know the local working/office culture of their virtual teams. The complexity will increase further if the team  spread more than one country. The PM/Functional Manager need to toggle quickly between various cultures while handling different team members.

Time - Need additional efforts to turn to office earlier, stay late or work in wee hours in order to stay in touch with the virtual team.

Follow-up - This is the most painful challenge in my opinion. The virtual team members have the luxury to restrict/allow/deny the PM/Functional Manager communication indirectly by choosing to pick the phone to their convenience and so on. I believe most of you face this challenge while managing your projects. Thus the PM/Functional Manager need to be innovative to reach the team to get the timely update.

2. Can we avoid them?

No, you can’t avoid/eliminate them. Its part and parcel of having Virtual Teams. PM/Functional Manager train and upgrade their skills to handle these challenges. Learning from experience, discussing with fellow PMs/Leads who already dealt with the respective team members will be handy while dealing with the Virtual Team

3. How to deal with them?

The best option is convert these challenges into Opportunities and try to extract positive impacts. Some of the tricks I use, 

a. Give ownership for their activities
b. Not to micro-manage the team
c. Ensure that you will go-out to reach them for the any follow-up
d. If possible, designate team lead in off-site for better and easier co-ordination
e. Try to hire resources who are capable to act independently

Learn from your and other experience and try to implement.

-Posted by Dhana

Process Group     : Planning
Knowledge Area   : Risk Management
Process                : Identify Risk
Type                     : Tools and Techniques

Interviewing is only of the tools and techniques in Risk Identification.

Interviews are question-and-answer sessions held with others, including other project managers, subject matter experts, stakeholders, customers, the management team, project team members,and users. These members will provide the PM with possible risks based on their past experiences with similar projects.

This technique involves sharing the WBS and the PM list of assumptions to help get them started thinking in the right direction.

-Posted by Sundar

Refer Exam Tips 3 - Key terms for PMP Exam for more key terms

Internal rate of return (IRR) is one the cash flow calculation technique for project selection.

IRR is the most difficult equation/complicarted formaula to calculate of all the cash flow  techniques  and should be performed on a  financial calculator or computer.

For PMP perspective and as per PMBOK, IRR is the discount rate when the present value of the cash inflows equals the original investment.

When choosing between projects or when choosing alternative methods of doing the project, projects with higher IRR values are generally considered better than projects with low IRR values.

-Posted by Sundar

Refer Exam Tips 3 - Key terms for PMP Exam for more key terms

Process Group     : Closing
Knowledge Area   : Integration Management
Process                : Project Closure

A type of project ending where the financial or human resources assigned to the project are diverted or reassigned elsewhere in the organization.

This would occur after the project ends or closure in the middle due project to discontinuity. However project closure is mandatory irespective of the reasons.

-Posted by Sundar

Refer Exam Tips 3 - Key terms for PMP Exam for more key terms