How Agile Supports Change

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Photo by Ian Flores on Unsplash

Agile methodologies are designed to handle change easily, which is why they’re called -er- agile! Most aspects of agile work can change without causing problems. But a couple of things are best left alone. Here’s what you can and shouldn’t change when working in an agile environment: 

Priority.  At the beginning of each sprint, the team reviews and re-prioritizes the stories in the backlog.  So you can change priority at the beginning of every sprint.  When stories are completed, stakeholders learn from using the functions that were produced. That can lead to re-prioritization of what’s in the backlog. The same goes when new business challenges arise and benefits of functions are understood. One constraint on re-prioritization is that the priority changes must comply with technical practicalities and logical business sequences. For example, you can’t build a balance sheet until you can process revenue and expenses!

Schedule. When you review the functional backlog, you can adjust the schedule by moving functions the business needs or wants into upcoming sprints. You need accurate estimates of effort to reschedule work. Developers learn as they produce functions, so they can estimate effort more accurately as the project progresses.

Scope. New scope ideas often crop up after a few functions are produced. Scope changes are expected with agile approaches. However, scope changes often involve trade-offs. For example, you might negotiate budget and time. And you might drop existing scope to make room for new and important functions.

Deadlines. In agile projects, people are usually assigned for a pre-determined amount of time. For that reason, scope becomes the variable. As you talk with the team about scope changes or reprioritizations, you can adjust sprints to change deadlines for specific functions. The overall project deadline can even be changed — if the whole team is still available.

What Doesn’t Change in Agile

Don’t count on changing cadence or personnel! Building your agile team and setting a sprint schedule — and sticking to them — are important for the success of an agile project. A big benefit of agile is what is learned along the way. Changing the people on the team upsets that learning and reduces the benefits you achieve. Changing the sprint cadence can also be disruptive. Schedules are built around focused sprint meetings and activities. Changing the schedule can throw the team off their rhythm and mess up existing estimates and sprint plans.

For more on agile, check out the Become an Agile Project Manager learning path.

Do you have any stories about how you’ve changed aspects of your agile projects? What worked? What didn’t? Share with us in the comments section.

Coming Up

My updated Project Management Foundations course is so close! I reviewed all the movies, so we’re down to a few last corrections. I clarified things that were confusing or unclear in the 2019 edition. Feeling good about this latest update.

October will be a big month of Office Hours. Keep a lookout for announcements as I nail down the details with my co-hosts.

When Business Value Doesn’t Meet Expectations

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It might seem like a hopeless situation when business value doesn’t meet expectations. Here are a few things to look at for potential opportunities for improvement.

Revisit your estimates. Compare the estimates used to justify the project to the business results. Opportunities may arise from this, including:

  • Business activities included in project justification aren’t being executed. Investigate whether you can launch these activities to generate business value.
  • Assumptions might have been inaccurate. You might achieve business benefit improvements by bringing those assumptions to fruition. For example, the project assumed internal resources would run a new system, but expensive contractors were assigned instead. Switching to internal resources could generate a positive return for the business.
  • Estimates might have been inaccurate. Understanding those inaccuracies can help create better estimates in the future. 

Cut underperforming elements. For example, in a building, you can convert extra ground floor conference rooms to leased retail space. You can apply this concept to IT as well. Consider cutting IT components that aren’t generating benefits. 

Re-examine your deliverables and training. Evaluate whether people are using your project deliverables as intended. If they aren’t, they might not have received adequate training. Find the root cause for the disconnect between intent and actual usage. Update and deliver new training to improve results. In addition, redesigning deliverables might help improve outcomes.

Trim maintenance or licensing expenses. Most project deliverables have ongoing operational costs, such as maintenance, software, other product licensing, and help support. Look for opportunities to trim the costs of these services. Although this cost cutting might reduce the efficiency and quality of your deliverables, changes that result in benefits that exceed costs is worthwhile. 

Look for secondary benefits. Business cases don’t address secondary benefits because they are hard to estimate. However, now that deliverables are in place, you can get measurement data. For example, a product might not sell as much as expected. Yet, discussing that product with customers might generate sales of other products. Also, project outcomes could free up employee time. That time might provide the opportunity to pursue other beneficial projects.

While it’s never good when a benefits shortfall occurs, don’t give up! These are a few of the possibilities you can explore to end your benefits shortfall.

What other actions might you take to bring business value back on track? Share with us in the comments section.

Coming Up:

September 15th Office Hours with Chris Croft, Doug Rose, and Bonnie Biafore

Project managers experienced a 70% change in the top 10 skills in the industry since 2015. Few teams can function without a project manager in seat to help them adapt to the whirlwind changes of the past few years. Join us to learn the top trending project management skills today and tactical tips to ensure you have the skillset for what’s next.

I’m almost done updating Project Management Foundations. In a few months, you can look for the updated edition, which includes some info on PMBoK7 and other changes.

Are You Ready to Close Your Project?

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You have delivered every component of your project, and your project team has started to disperse. It’s time for project closure, right? Not so fast! Here are other critical steps to take before closing your project. 

  • Confirm that business value is being generated. A project shouldn’t close until the business acknowledges value. However, some projects won’t generate business value for several months, for example, until new products sell. In other instances, cost savings trickle down over time.  keep a project open to track outcomes. This helps the project team understand if there are shortcomings in the project deliverables. Addressing those shortcomings educates team members so they can improve their skills for future projects.
  • Verify allocated costs. Check to see whether costs are still showing up in your project accounts. If they are, further work might be required, such as confirming final contractor payments. It could also mean someone is incorrectly allocating costs to your project. Correct these errors before closure so your project costs aren’t inflated.
  • Determine if your sponsor is still engaged. If your sponsor continues to call meetings and discuss the project, it’s too soon to close the project. Work with your sponsor and review any outcomes they believe are missing.  If the sponsor pushes for items beyond the scope of the project, seek to understand their point of view. Try to convince them to allow you to close the completed project and launch a new one. This new project would have its own business case to create the extra outcomes your sponsor desires.
  • Confirm stakeholders are using project deliverables without help. Business value should be generated without assistance by the project team. Otherwise, the cost of helping stakeholders may negate the value achieved. Before closing a project, ensure your deliverables are being used as intended. All stakeholders should independently use your deliverables in a consistent manner. If not, revisit your training and make corrections.

If you perform other steps before closing a project, tell us about what you do in the comments section.

For more about closing a project, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming up:

I have an Office Hours in the works for September with Doug Rose and Chris Croft, two of my (many) idols in the LinkedIn Learning instructor community. Look for more info soon!

I’m almost done updating Project Management Foundations. In a few months, you can look for the updated edition, which includes some info on PMBoK7 and other changes.

What If Your Project is Cancelled?

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Any project may be cancelled due to changing corporate priorities or cost constraints. It can even happen to projects that are running perfectly.  If your project is cancelled, here’s what you can do to make the best of the situation.

  • Communicate with your team. Emotions will be high and people will have questions.  Talk with your team, even though you might not have all the answers. Share whatever you do know about the cancellation. This news can be demoralizing, especially if your project was going well. Be prepared for a wide range of emotions. Team members might think they did something wrong. Reassure them that they did not.

Note: Be sure to ask management if they plan to reallocate resources to other projects and share what you learn with your project team members.

  • Share the business rationale with stakeholders. Stakeholders might not be aware of the reasons for cancellation. Brief them on the details and any conditions that could prompt the project to resume. Collect the stakeholders’ views and questions. Discuss them with the project sponsor. Follow up with stakeholders when you receive answers.
  • Install viable deliverables. Despite the cancellation, some deliverables still might generate business value. Produce proper documentation for the deliverables or request the resources needed to complete it. If you can’t get the resources, check with your stakeholders. They might be able to produce the documentation themselves. Be sure there is a process to capture the business value that’s produced.
  • Archive partially completed deliverables. If your project is reinstated, you will want to retrieve any already completed work. Partial deliverables also might be useful for a future project. Capture the work performed and document where the materials can be found for future use.
  • Follow formal project closure procedures. Use your project closeout processes, as if a normal closure had occurred. Terminate vendor contracts and process final payments. Close any time recording codes associated with your project. Get sponsor sign-off on closure documentation.

Have you had a project cancelled? What other steps did you perform to close the project? Did you run into issues trying to close out the cancelled project? Share your experience in the comments section.

For more about closing a project, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming up:

I have an Office Hours in the works for September with Doug Rose and Chris Croft, two of my (many) idols in the LinkedIn Learning instructor community. Look for more info soon!

I’m almost done updating Project Management Foundations. In a few months, you can look for the updated edition, which includes some info on PMBoK7 and other changes.

Handling the Pressure to Deliver Early

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Photo by Jeshoots on Unsplash

Getting pressured by management to deliver a project early is common, so you should be ready for it. It’s important to note that pushing an early delivery doesn’t mean you’re in crisis mode. It’s a risk vs business value balancing act. Here are tips to balance risk and bring in the project delivery date. 

Cut requirements and initial product reviews. When working with a homogenous stakeholder group, cutting reviews can save you time, with controllable risk. Before proposing this, ensure your stakeholders all have the same business goals. Also, ensure they are attending status meetings, so they understand project decisions. Alternately, you can perform requirements and product reviews while development continues. This introduces the risk of needing to back up to make corrections. But it is less risky than skipping reviews.

Logically cut testing. Logically approaching test plans can be effective when looking to deliver early. Test only those functions where faults will have a notable business impact. That way, you can fix errors found after delivery with minimal impact on stakeholders. This is different from cutting testing altogether. Broad testing cuts deliver mixed results, at best. Often, the impact of recovering from substantial errors overcomes any time savings.

Reduce scope. Cutting scope can be the easiest way to deliver early but often has hidden risks. Stakeholders’ disappointment with the reduced scope can diminish confidence in the project outcomes. Also, confidence in the project team, and in project management can suffer. Before cutting scope, poll stakeholders. Understand their views on delivering early, versus reducing scope.

Fast tracking or crashing tasks. Save time by changing your schedule and working on tasks in parallel (fast tracking). Or, you can add people to complete tasks earlier (crashing). Fast tracking adds product risk, as working tasks in parallel can create rework. For example, let us say I decided to write book chapters in parallel. The risk is what end up with in Chapter 5 might mean I have to change something already written in Chapter 6. Crashing adds a different risk. Crashing adds cost, as you spend more to perform the task. This is because crashing requires more coordination between people to avoid errors. The lesson? Apply fast tracking or crashing with consideration to the added risk.

Deploy agile methods. Agile often results in early delivery of business value. But it isn’t for every project. If you aren’t using agile techniques, before making the switch ensure you have a leader versed in agile. That leader can confirm what projects are right for agile. They can also guide the team, and management, through agile to improve success.

Do you have any tips and tricks to handle the pressure of delivering a project early? Share with us in the comments section.

For more about how to handle the pressures of delivering a project early, check out my project management foundations course.

Coming up:

I have an Office Hours in the works for September with Doug Rose and Chris Croft, two of my (many) idols in the LinkedIn Learning instructor community. Look for more info soon!

The Relationship Between Project Management and Supply Chain Management

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Guest post by Daniel Stanton, Mr. Supply Chain

Main point up front: Project management and supply chain management are both relatively new professions, and they are highly complementary. Supply chain managers have always spent a lot of their time working on projects to reduce costs and increase efficiency. These days, many project managers are learning the hard way about “supply chain issues” and the risks that they can pose to a project. And there is a growing demand for supply chain project managers – professionals who have the skills and experience to lead projects and transform a supply chain. Aligning project management with supply chain management can help companies increase resilience, improve sustainability, and enable digital transformation. 

This newsletter was inspired by a recent conversation with Bonnie Biafore. If you know us, then it won’t be a surprise that Bonnie and I found ourselves talking about the relationship between project management and supply chain management. We agreed that project managers need to learn about supply chain management, and that supply chain managers need to learn about project management. You can listen to our chat here: 

Project managers can’t truly address the risks to their scope, schedule, and budget if they don’t understand the supply chain in which they are working. On the surface, this involves learning about the procurement processes and systems. But supply chain management is really about integrating all of the processes that a company uses for creating value, which goes deeper than just procurement to include operations management, logistics, and more. 

In many cases, project managers have to work with procurement people a lot more closely. (Bonnie Biafore) 

Supply chain managers can’t implement or adapt to changes effectively if they don’t understand the tools, rules, and language of project management. Project management is about delivering value by developing or changing products, systems, and processes. Depending on the situation, today’s project managers can draw on a range of tools such as Waterfall, Agile, and Lean Six Sigma. 

It’s particularly interesting to see the growing demand for supply chain project managers – professionals who have knowledge and experience with supply chain management, and who understand how to lead projects which focus on improving supply chains. (At last count, there were more than 20,000 job postings for Supply Chain Project Managers in the U.S. on LinkedIn.) Given the rapid pace of change that’s being driven by technology, geopolitics, and the pandemic, I think the future is particularly bright for supply chain project managers!

Project Management Tips for Supply Chain Managers 

Projects are how businesses make changes. Project management is about defining and balancing constraints such as scope, schedule, and budgets. There are lots of different techniques for managing projects that can be tailored to the needs of your business. In construction projects, you will typically use the predictive Waterfall technique. For manufacturing and distribution, it will often be a Lean Six Sigma approach. For software development projects, Agile techniques have become common. Regardless of the techniques that are used the project leaders always have six key responsibilities to their project teams, that I describe as the DIRECT framework: 

  • Define the objective. Be clear about the change that needs to happen.
  • Investigate the options. Research alternatives and benchmark with others.
  • Resolve to a course of action. Build a plan and get buy-in from your stakeholders.
  • Execute the plan. Monitor the progress and address challenges as they emerge.
  • Change over to the new systems and processes. Manage your acceptance and launch.
  • Transition the people. Make sure that your stakeholders are prepared.

Supply Chain Management Tips for Project Managers 

A supply chain is a complex network made up of people, processes, and technologies that is engineered and managed to deliver value to a customer. Supply chain management requires you to view each business as part of a complex system that creates value for customers. In part, that involves integrating the internal functions in a company – especially procurement, operations, and logistics. But it also involves collaborating with customers and suppliers. In simplest terms, the goal of supply chain management is to get the right stuff, in the right quantity, to the right place, at the right time, for the lowest total cost. 

Supply chains are dynamic. How do we make improvements in a supply chain? By making changes. How do we respond to disruptions in a supply chain? By changing what we’re doing, or how we’re doing it. In other words, supply chain management professionals are responsible for launching and managing projects all of the time. 

The Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) Model illustrates the six groups of processes that are key to managing the supply chain in any company. 

  • Plan. Develop your supply chain strategy and forecasts.
  • Source. Build and manage relationships with suppliers.
  • Make. Assemble products and create service capabilities.
  • Deliver. Take and fill orders from customers.
  • Return. Build and manage a reverse supply chain.

Enable. Manage all of the additional processes, including project management.

How does this affect supply chain professionals? Supply chains are how businesses create and deliver value. Projects are how we make changes in a business. Project management skills can help supply chain managers be more flexible and adaptable, and supply chain management skills can help project managers mitigate risks and be more resilient. Combining both skill sets can set you up to be a supply chain project manager, leading projects involving process improvement, sustainability, digital transformation, and more. 

What do you think? Have you needed to lead and manage projects in your supply chain? Would learning about supply chains help project managers anticipate and respond to risks? 

To watch the Office Hours session where Bonnie and I talk more about the relationship between project management and supply chain management go to https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6958149360392056833/. 

Early Indicators of Project Trouble

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Photo by Airfocus on Unsplash

A slipping schedule, lack of engagement, and cost overruns are common and easy to spot indicators of project trouble. Here are five other early indicators of trouble that aren’t often recognized.

Team member hours are less than planned. Hours dedicated to project tasks can fall short due to differing business priorities or lack of confidence in the project direction. These shortfalls often start early and get worse as the project continues. Check the actual hours worked by team members. If those hours fall below plan, find out what’s going on to see whether there is a problem.

Stakeholders aren’t arguing (when they should be!) Stakeholders often have different opinions about project requirements, priorities, or the solution approach. If stakeholder response to projects requests is lackluster, hidden dissension may be present. Ask your stakeholders direct questions about their concerns. This helps you avoid problems before it’s too late to change priorities or direction.

Inadequate sponsorship is in place. An effective sponsor must:

  • Have access to funds
  • Control areas where the project will create process change
  • Secure team members for the project
  • Be able to establish project-related business priorities 
  • Have time to be the sponsor

Sponsorship inadequacies can create project delays and arguments. If this happens, encourage management to form a sponsorship committee. This can help cover the authority needed to guide the project.

Requirements address “what to do” and not the business problem. Requirements often convey how something is to occur. An example is “Reconfigure the mail room business processes.” What’s the intended outcome? Is it a desire for fewer people, or is mail processing taking too long? Is automation to support mail processing working as hoped? Requirements that don’t specify the actual business issue are a problem. Projects that satisfy these inappropriate requirements might not fix the underlying business problem. Ensure that every requirement focuses on the real issue. Perform business analysis to figure out the best options to address the problem.

Requirements and deliverables are validated with the customer and NOT the end user. Let’s start with definitions. The customer is the person who supplies requirements and reviews your deliverables. They sometimes provide funding. The end user is the person or group who will use the deliverable regularly. What if the end user and the customer differ? For example, the customer and end user are different when a project is creating a product for the marketplace. In this case, validate requirements more thoroughly. More testing might also be appropriate. Extra validation and testing can be time-consuming and costly, but it is vital to success. 

If you have experienced other situations that cause problems early on, share with us in the comments section.

For more about identifying indicators of trouble early on in the project management process, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming Up:

Overcoming Obstacles for Global and Remote Project Teams

Working remotely is a reality today: it’s increasingly important to pay attention to the quality of our interactions with our distant colleagues. Language, culture, and distance influence the way we work together with stakeholders on our projects. We can either leave these factors to chance, or we can learn to leverage them to improve our project outcomes.
https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6950852588556722176/

August 9, 2022 11am MT
I’m almost done updating Project Management Foundations. In a few months, you can look for the updated edition, which includes some info on PMBoK7 and other changes.

Is Your Project Ready to be Re-launched?

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Management might put a project on hold because other priorities take precedence or it needs recovery. When it’s time to relaunch, you don’t pick up where you left off. Here’s the sequence of steps to take to relaunch a project:

  • Document what changed. Team members must understand that things will be different. Otherwise, they might not dedicate themselves to the project for fear of failure. To restore confidence, share changes, such as changed priorities, new project management approaches, and scope changes with all stakeholders.
  • Meet to review or revise project goals. Revisit project outcomes in case business circumstances have changed. Talk to business stakeholders and technical team members about reprioritizing outcomes or proposing new ones. Make sure that the project is still feasible. Communicate any changes to project goals to all stakeholders.
  • Hold a re-kickoff meeting. A relaunch is like a new project starting. At the meeting have the sponsor reaffirm the organization’s dedication to deliver the project and share the schedule and budget. Communicate any reprioritized project goals. Introduce new team members that are joining the relaunched project.
  • Expand project monitoring and reporting. Focus status reporting on the root cause of the project stoppage. Senior leaders will want assurance that priority or process issues won’t reoccur. Use status metrics that can provide that assurance. Discuss any other concerns senior leaders have with the relaunched project and tailor your status reporting to address those issues.
  • Be positive. People will watch your attitude and behavior as project manager as the relaunched project progresses. Maintain a positive attitude, and you’ll inspire confidence in the relaunched project.

If you have other tips for relaunching a project, share with us in the comments section.

For more about launching projects, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming up:

I’m thrilled to share that my course Project Management Foundations is LinkedIn Learning’s #5 Most Popular Course of the year globally! These skills are important today and into the future because change drives new projects and the pace of change continually increases. The course is free through August 2022.

 

The Hot New Skill for Project Managers: Supply Chain Management

Daniel Stanton and Bonnie Biafore were talking about why project managers need to understand supply chain management as well as why supply chain managers need project management skills. In this Office Hours, we’re going to dive deeper into career opportunities for project managers expanding their expertise into supply chain management. That’s right, supply chain management is the hot new skill for project managers

August 5, 2022 12pm MT

Overcoming Obstacles for Global and Remote Project Teams

Working remotely is a reality today: it’s increasingly important to pay attention to the quality of our interactions with our distant colleagues. Language, culture, and distance influence the way we work together with stakeholders on our projects. We can either leave these factors to chance, or we can learn to leverage them to improve our project outcomes.
https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6950852588556722176/

August 9, 2022 11am MT

How to evaluate a large project change request

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Project change requests are a common occurrence. Occasionally, a change request can be extensive, requiring additional analysis. Here are questions to ask to provide the change review board with the information it needs to approve a major change request.

Will the change increase project complexity? Organizations often have a standard set of parameters for assessing a project change. Cost, scope, schedule, and quality are common. Very few organizations assess the impact on complexity. The number of stakeholders, technology required, use of innovative tools and other items contribute to complexity. Increased complexity can increase risk, cost, and necessitate additional resources. 

Could the change increase tension between key stakeholders? Evaluate project changes to determine whether they will increase stakeholder tension. For example, changes that increase tension include: 

  • Prioritization issues – where different areas of the business assign different priorities to the use of project funds and time
  • Process conflicts – where a process change benefits one area of the business and burdens another. For example, streamlining processing of travel reimbursement may make the Human Resources job easier, while creating issues for finance.

Are there schedule and expectation differences? – When new stakeholders are in different time zones or countries, answering questions and reviewing deliverables may take longer. In addition, stakeholders who are already expecting a specific timeframe could be unhappy about the delay. Also, the deliverables may be more complex when other countries’ requirements are integrated into the solution.

Do risks impact hard constraints? Many projects have hard constraints – conditions that can’t be compromised. For example, a project to make changes to meet a new law must finish before the law goes into effect. In another example, you must add certain features to your product to leapfrog your competition. Any change that puts a hard constraint at risk needs to be scrutinized before approval. 

Does the sponsor support the change (in private)? A sponsor may voice support for a change in a public setting due to hierarchical or political realities. They may share concerns with you in private. You change analysis should investigate those private concerns. This conversation with your sponsor can be useful downstream as well; if the change is approved, you know impacts to monitor to keep your sponsor informed. 

What additional analysis do you do for large change requests? Do you process them differently? If so, share with us in the comments section.

For more about project changes, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming Up:

Office Hours– On August 9, Sam Yankelevitch and I will talk about overcoming obstacles for global and remote project teams. Working remotely is a reality today: it’s increasingly important to pay attention to the quality of our interactions with our distant colleagues. Language, culture, and distance influence the way we work together with stakeholders on our projects. We can either leave these factors to chance, or we can learn to leverage them to improve our project outcomes.

Is Your Project Idea Ready for Launch?

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Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Project ideas pop up all the time, but that doesn’t mean they are all worth pursuing. Companies want to reap enough benefits from the time and money they spend on projects. To make sure a candidate project is worthwhile, someone needs to complete some prerequisites before the project is launched.

Who gets these prerequisites in place when the project idea is so early in initiation? Management might ask a project manager to work on them. And that person might become the project manager if the project is approved — but also might not. If the organization has a project management office, a PMO staff member could take on this work.

Here are the prerequisites that ensure a candidate project is worth pursuing:

An engaged sponsor. For a project to succeed, the sponsor needs to believe in the project’s business value. That’s because the sponsor:

  • supplies time and funding to determine if the project is viable
  • identifies the research the project requires
  • decides the degree of risk the business is willing to accept
  • figures out business priorities
  • works through conflicts if key stakeholders disagree about the project’s focus

A clear goal. There should be a clear definition of the candidate’s project outcomes. The definition can be high-level. The sponsor and key stakeholders need to understand and agree on these outcomes. (Project initiation then focuses on picking the approach to create those outcomes.) The viability of the project also depends on resource availability, the ability to change business processes, and dependence on old systems that may be difficult to alter.

Available business analyst skills. Some projects focus on improving the way the organization does business. Others produce a new product or service. Business analysts and members of the business need to work together to evaluate these opportunities. It’s tempting to sketch out new processes or envision new products without thorough research and engaging business analysts. Skipping this effort adds risk and increases the chance of inaccurate assumptions that lead to project failure.

An understanding of priorities and budget. Organizations have only so much money to spend on projects. And they also prioritize projects based on how they support the organizations’ goals and objectives. Whoever evaluates the candidate must identify the candidate’s budget and priority. Otherwise, people might view the project as a waste of time or out of line with management’s objectives. 

An experienced project manager. The chance of project success increases when an experienced project manager takes the helm. The level of experience depends on factors like the project’s significance, complexity, and size. For instance, someone trained in project management but with little experience could handle a small, lower-priority project (and gain experience at the same time). A critical and complex project will need a senior project manager.

Who has performed these early steps in projects you’ve worked on? Are there other steps you’ve seen performed before launch? If so, share with us in the comments section.

For more about launching a project, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming Up:

Office Hours– On August 9, Sam Yankelevitch and I will talk about overcoming obstacles for global and remote project teams. Working remotely is a reality today: it’s increasingly important to pay attention to the quality of our interactions with our distant colleagues. Language, culture, and distance influence the way we work together with stakeholders on our projects. We can either leave these factors to chance, or we can learn to leverage them to improve our project outcomes.