Project Management Steps - The First Step to Starting Your Project the Right Way

It is important to have basic project management knowledge before getting started. For many us, we became project managers accidentally. Whether your project succeeds or fails, however, will be no accident. Successful project managers don't need to know everything, but they know enough to get started and learn as they go. In its essence, project management is preparing, executing, and closing. By the end of this article, you will have the basic foundation on the project management steps.

The first step is preparing. When it comes to preparing, your focus should be on answering the basic questions. Writing a project charter is a great way to get started. The reason is because it answers the important question: why are you doing this project? A project with a weak purpose will go no where. In addition to giving the project a reason, it will also say what are the expected benefits. The most common benefits are making more money, saving money, and saving time (by making things more efficient).

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Another tool to help you in preparing is to speak with the people who are affected by the project. These people are referred to as the stakeholders. Getting their feedback will help you focus on what's important. This is commonly known as the scope. It is equally important to write down both what will and will not be achieved. You want to make sure you know what the stakeholders are expecting.

The next component of preparing involves writing the project plan. This establishes the ground rules. The plan will detail what will be delivered and when, who is doing what, and how will things be done. For example, the communications section will let everyone know when and where they can find status updates. Setting budget and deadlines will give you a target. Remember, a project is temporary. Therefore, every project has an ending and finite resources.

The plan doesn't need to be perfect, because it will change throughout the project. More important is that you have a plan. Once you are done preparing, it's time to execute.

Executing is where the rubber meets the road. All the work done in the preparing step is used to guide you. The key thing to remember is to record everything. Following is a checklist of what should be recorded daily:

• Write down how the project is progressing.


• Review the work completed by the project team and make notes of any quality issues.


• If there is a problem, write it to a problem log.


• When new risks arise, write those down as soon as you think of it.


• At the end of the day, record anything you learned.

The last point may seem trivial, but it will make your life easier in the closing step.

In addition to logging information, you will also conduct meetings. These are essential and an effective way to follow up with everyone and to get things done. Notably, you'll get information from your team and make sure everything is on track. If not, this is when you make adjustments to your earlier forecasts.

Depending on the complexity of the project, the executing step may be longer or shorter than the preparing step. You will know the executing step is over once you present the final deliverable mentioned in the plan. That does not mean the end, however. The last step is the closing step.

Closing is a controlled way to end a project. Specifically, this is where you find out if you did a good job. You will look back at the project plan and see if the objectives were met. Was everything in-scope completed? Just as important is to ask the stakeholders if they feel the project was a success, and why or why not? You will also provide a lessons learned report. What did you feel went well? What could you do to make things better? What steps can be combined or omitted? If you've kept a daily lessons learned log, this step will simply be compiling everything you have already written into a report.

You now know the basic project management steps. They are preparing, executing, and closing. While project management is not easy, you have the basic foundation. The best way to learn how to manage a project is to get out there and start managing projects. Don't forget to have fun along the way. If you aren't having any fun, it isn't worth doing.

Project Management Steps - The First Step to Starting Your Project the Right Way

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Introduction to Project Management Steps

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Handling Office Stationery Effectively

If you are really concerned about cutting down the office expenditure but do not want to pinch your employees' pockets, the best suited way would be to handle the resources in the best possible way.

The most important department that costs you quite a bit is the office stationery. Here is where one needs to have a check so as to cut down on the total expenditure figures.

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The following tips would help in this regard -

1. Always encourage your employees to reduce the paper work. Some people have the weird habit of printing out the stuff just to check them out. Ask them to do it directly from the computers.

2. Lay strict rules of not taking home the office stuff even if it is not for personal use. By doing so, it is possible to control the misuse of the office stationery.

3. Recycle stuff - Always look in for notepads, pens, files and other stuff that were disposed off even before half of its utility was done. By doing so, you can cut the costs incurred by buying new ones for it.

4. Have a close check on the stationery inventory and always keep track of all the inward and outward movements. This will in turn reduce the unwanted usage of stationery in issues of very less priority.

5. Always order stationery in bulk. This will help out in saving a considerable amount of money as well. On the downside, you might end up spending more than required up-front, yet, it's a saving in long-term.

These steps may seem simple but they definitely yield good results.

Handling Office Stationery Effectively

Martin Ward is a well known personality in the consultancy business. He offers his expertise for businesses to come to terms with optimization of spend and resources. He deals with various suppliers starting from IT Infrastructure up to office suppliers. He is also a known green supporter across UK and other parts of Europe. Martin recommends Ahoys which is a well known brand for cheap office supplies.

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How to Manage Change - 8 Guiding Principles From John Kotter

There are many theories about how to manage change. Many come from change management guru, John Kotter, a professor at Harvard Business School. Kotter introduced his eight-step change process in his 1995 book,"Leading Change."

Step One: Create Urgency

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Kotter suggests that for change to be successful, 75% of a company's management needs to "buy into" the change. So for change to happen there needs to be a shared a sense of urgency around the need for change.

And this will result from honest and open dialogue with your people about what's happening in your market and with your competition. If many people start talking about the change you propose, the urgency can build and feed on itself.

Step Two: Form a Powerful Coalition

To successfully persuade people that change is necessary takes strong leadership and the very visible support from key people within your organisation.

This isn't just about managing change - this has to be led and you have to be seen to lead it.

To lead change, you need to bring together a coalition, or team, of influential people whose power comes from a variety of sources, including job title, status, expertise, and political importance.

You can find effective change leaders at all levels within your organisation - they don't necessarily follow the traditional company hierarchy. It is important to get an emotional commitment from these key people as you build a team to support your change initiative.

Step Three: Create a Vision for Change

You need to create a clear coherent vision that people can grasp easily and remember and that can help everyone understand why you're asking them to do something.

When people have clarity about what you're trying to achieve, and why then you stand a greater chance of communicating with them

Step Four: Communicate the Vision

How effectively and consistently you share and communicate your vision will have a big influence on the success of your change initiative.

There will be resistance and competing messages from many other sources and influences within your organization so you need to communicate it frequently and powerfully, and embed it within everything that you do.

It's also extremely important to "walk the talk." What you do is far more credible than what you say. You have to demonstrate the kind of behaviour and attitudes that you want from your people.

Step Five: Remove Obstacles

There will be resistance to change. You need to identify it early and take steps to deal with it finding and resolving the root causes.

Put in place the structure for change, and continually check for barriers to it - especially with your organisational structure, job descriptions, and performance and compensation systems - it is vital that these are in line with your vision.

Step Six: Create Short-term Wins

Success breeds success - so early wins are very motivational and very important for morale and for overcoming resistance.

You can help achieve this by setting achievable and believable short-term targets.

This is very much in line with Ken Blanchard's ideas in "The One Minute Manager" of "catching them doing something right" [and praising them for it].

Step Seven: Build on the Change

Kotter argues that many change projects fail because victory is declared too early - he teaches that real and lasting change runs deep.

This is really all about building momentum and making continuous improvement an embedded part of your culture. In practice this means keeping things fresh with new ideas and regular review of what went right with each win identifying areas for improvement.

Step Eight: Anchor the Changes in Corporate Culture

Finally, to make any change stick, it should become part of the culture of your organisation as this is the biggest determinant of how people will behave.

It's also important that your company's leaders continue to support the change. This includes existing staff and new leaders who are brought in. If you lose the support of these people, you might end up back where you started.

In my opinion there are many aspects to Kotter's 8 principles of how to manage change that resonate with, and are totally consistent with, the holistic and wide view perspective of a programme based approach to change management.

How to Manage Change - 8 Guiding Principles From John Kotter

For more on this: " John Kotter - Leading Change "

I invite you to take advantage of this FREE download: Starting the Change Process "

Find out the 3 main reasons for the 70% failure rate of all step change initiatives and how to avoid it. This FREE 29 page document offers a brief introduction to some of the key themes and key points that you need to consider in starting the change process.

Stephen Warrilow, based in Bristol, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Stephen has 25 years cross sector experience with 100+ companies in mid range corporate, larger SME and corporate environments.

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