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THE MASS BLOG THE MASS BLOG
Project

Management Communication – who needs to
be communicated with about the
project, by what mechanism and
how frequently? This covers
at MASS project progress meetings as well

as updates to management and
other stakeholders.
2019 Issue 1
I was once told that Project Management involves just two things – deciding what needs to be HR – Human Resources. What are
done, then making sure it gets done. the skills needed to deliver the
project, and where will the
This is like saying Physics is the study of matter and energy – it’s true, but kind of skimps on the people come from? Permanent or
detail! temporary, how do we find them,
interview them, train them and
A better definition, or more accurately framework, says that Project Management covers the incentivise them to deliver? Planning may not all be done at the beginning
management of eight areas – scope, cost, schedule, quality, risk, communication, HR and – we can only plan for what we know, and there
procurement. Procurement – do we need to buy anything in to may be some successive elaboration/detailing
complete the project? Goods or services? What as the project progresses.
Scope – what exactly are we delivering? How is it agreed with the client, and how will we contracts do we need to put in place, and how
manage any changes to the agreed scope? do we specify exactly what we need? Having a defined and agreed closure is very
It sounds like a lot, but of course the good news important to project profitability and
Cost – creating a budget for the project and monitoring that we keep within as we deliver. is that no Project Manager acts in isolation, and customer satisfaction. Any organisation selling
not many projects require all of these things project work must be able to demonstrate that
Schedule – the timetable for delivery, with estimates for all the tasks, and resources (human and from scratch. it has done what was agreed for the price, that
other) allocated to them. Often represented in the famous Gantt chart (which many people think a particular project has been delivered, and any
of as the core of Project Management) it also shows the inter-relationship and Most mature organisations will have an new work forms a separate project or part of a
dependencies between tasks. infrastructure in place that covers some of these maintenance agreement.
things, for instance: existing staff, a
Quality – the Project Manager is responsible Risk – Identifying risks to project delivery, purchasing department, a cycle of project Project Management at MASS specifically
for the quality of what is delivered, normally by likelihood and impact. Having a mitigation plan meetings or management update
designing systems of testing and quality and monitoring. (A risk is something which will mechanisms. At MASS, projects vary from small, 3-4 person/
assurance that form part of the delivery. delay or prevent delivery if it happens – an day changes, to complete brand-new
issue is something which is delaying I don’t know Phases…. installations containing many person-years of
delivery). work. Typical tasks in such a new system would
The same framework says that all projects are include hosting arrangements,
delivered in natural, overlapping phases – application configuration, server configuration,
inception, planning, execution & monitoring, then installation, requirements workshops,
finally closure specification writing, data extraction and
loading, commissioning subcontractors for
As you may see from the above, the bulk of the specialist services (e.g. asset collection), user
“work” involved happens during execution, whilst training, database design and customisations
the inception and planning are usually involving bespoke development for database,
performed by the Project Manager and team web and apps.
leaders or other specialists.
Blog continued overleaf...

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