Innovation & Project Management Pills

Tag: basic pm

Milestones vs Deliverables – Pill 021
After Pill 020 where I wrote about what the Milestones are and Pill 004 where I discussed Outcome, Output and Benefit I think it is worth to clarify the difference between Milestone and Deliverable since many time they are confused on the work environment.

Deliverable

A deliverable is defined as any unique and verifiable product, result, or capability to perform a service that is required to be produced to complete a process, phase, or project. Deliverables may be tangible or intangible. So basically a deliverable is something required from the project charter. It may be a widget, software, or a change of some nature.

Milestone

A milestone is defined as a significant event or a point in a project. Milestones are an important part of the project schedule as they help to track the progress of a schedule against a baseline.

A project has at least two milestones
1. Project Start
2. Project End
A milestone is something that is established to know you are on track.
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3 Jan 2020
Project Milestones – Pill 020
Milestones! Those stumps that in ancient Rome marked – every thousand Roman steps – how much road had been done and how much to do, and remember that all the roads led to Rome so maybe that worked out!
In the Project management world the Milestone marks a point of control (or event) relevant in our path towards completion, it helps us to proceed in the right direction and to keep the correct pace, to arrive in time in the right place.

Of course someone is waiting for us there (date, time, place) and it may be necessary to deliver something (a deliverable) in order to continue, but let’s not confuse Milestone with Deliverable!

I will discuss the difference between deliverable and milestone on a new pill.
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30 Dec 2019
Contingency – Pill 008
That is a term widely used in project management, most of the time misused to justify a not well done planning or analysis. In project management Contingency is generally (and wrongly) used when talking about Times (when duration is uncertain) or Costs (the famous “safety bearings” to absorb some cost oscillation).

Actually that usage of Contingency is not correct, in fact it is a tool, and must be used as a tool, to manage risk.

The project total estimation

Contingency is about a risk we have already found, analyzed and assessed for which we decided to not do any pro-active action, but just hope for that risk to not happen. So the only action undertaken for that risk is to take into account that risk and that could bring to longer times or (and) higher costs.

The contingency must be taken into consideration in the budget estimation, it has to be always explicated and not be confused with some rounding of costs and times.

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27 Aug 2019
Output, Outcome and Benefit – Pill 004
It is always a hot topic, especially in project management: what is the difference between Output, Outcome and Benefit? Let’s talk about these three things we all hear about everyday.
- The Output (in PM world, the deliverable): that is the thing that is created/delivered with the project
- The Outcome: that is the performance reached using the Output.
- The Benefit: this is actually why we started the project, the reason why we invested time and money on the project.
The definitions can seem a little confusing but actually they are crucial and they help to clarify the accountability of the PM (for the Output) and Sponsor (for the Benefit), if the both actors take their responsibility there will be a win-win situation.

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21 Aug 2019
Project Complexity – Pill 003
If you know what complexity mean, you don’t need to check it on this link.

But, when talking about Projects, when can we define them complex? A useful method that can be taken in consideration when assessing projects is made up by 4 different areas, and each of them has different shapes and reasons that contribute to make a project complex:
- Dimension: it can refer to Team (is bigger than usual? smaller?), Budget and time.
- Innovation: it refers to how new is the product/process that we want to create with the project
- Instability: how likely the scope of the project will change (is changing) during the project?
- Hostility: given by adverse stakeholders, the visibility on all the phases and activities of the project or challenging constraints.
A good way to mix these 4 dimensions is to assign to each of them a value between 1-10 and, if you use these metrics during all your projects you will have a rational scale to compare projects and approach them differently based on how complex that will look.

Here a matrix that shows the relation between the different areas

The lower are the Stability and initial definition the more complex a Project can be

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20 Aug 2019
The Pet Projects (Yes, this post has a cat pic) – Pill 002
So you are reading it just to see a cute cat, and here we go:
So, what is a “Pet Project”? It refers to the project that we need (or want) to treat as our beloved pet: we need to cuddle and caress it, these are our favorite projects, the ones that give to the Sponsor, Project Manager or team member(s) more satisfaction and pleasure.

The needs that these type of project satisfy can be more or less evident (with more or less sense). Did it happen to you at least once to be the sponsor or the project manager of a Pet Project? It happens sometime to have motivation for a project that goes over the rational and expected one.

Of course, it is always better to be optimistic and excited for each project, but going over the average can cause some sense of blindness and be dangerous for the project results.

How to manage these “risks”? Yes, be too involved in a project can be a risk. There is only one way: The Project Risk register. That will help to have an objective view of the project risks (maybe insert that risk on a “private sheet” :).

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19 Aug 2019