Harvard Business Publishing - HBR Guide to Project Management

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HBR Guide to Project Management

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

Copyright 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to , or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

HBRs guide to project management.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4221-8729-6 (alk. paper)

1. Project management. I. Harvard business review. II. Title:

Guide to project management.

HD69.P75H394 2013

658.4'04dc23

2012026957

eBook development by eBook Architects

Youve been asked to lead a project. You appreciate the vote of confidence, but are you panicking because you havent a clue where to begin? Do you worry that stakeholders will tug you in a million directions, making it impossible to set clear goals, let alone deliver the goods on time and on budget? How will you know when to stick to your original plan and when to be flexible? And how will you keep all your team members excited about this projectwhen they have so many other pressures on them?

This guide will give you the confidence and tools you need to manage projects effectively.

Youll get better at:

• Choosing the right team and keeping it humming
• Avoiding scope creep
• Zeroing in on critical tasks and mapping out a logical sequence
• Making heads or tails of Gantt and PERT charts
• Getting disruptive team members on board
• Keeping stakeholders in the loop
• Gauging your projects success
• Deciding when to cut bait
• Capturingand usinglessons learned

Whats Involved in planning, build-up, Implementation, and closeoutand how these processes overlap

Whos who in project management

Your marching orders

You cant eliminate uncertainty in the early stages of a complex projectbut you can manage it.

BY LOREN GARY

Learn from your project while its still alive and well.

BY GARY KLEIN

Set strict limits on scope, but be flexible when major opportunities arise.

BY LOREN GARY

Three steps for staying on track

BY RON ASHKENAS

Tips for getting your teams calendarsand yoursunder control

BY MELISSA RAFFONI

Put the horse before the cart.

When does speed trump quality?

BY TOM CROSS

Set your project up for success with a well-planned launch.

Mutual accountability leads to astonishing results.

BY JON R. KATZENBACH AND DOUGLAS K. SMITH

Run your meetings well, and infuse your project with energy and direction.

What to do when your usual decision tools cease to be useful in the face of uncertainty

The risks that come with big projectsand how to manage them

BY NADIM F. MATTA AND RONALD N. ASHKENAS

Dont be afraid to revise your plan.

BY RAY SHEEN

Make sure people stay on task, pull their weight, work together, and meet quality standards.

What to do when people disagree on goals, how to achieve them, or both

BY CLAYTON M. CHRISTENSEN, MATT MARX, AND HOWARD H. STEVENSON

How to avoid chasing after sunk costs

BY JIMMY GUTERMAN

Gauge your success before wrapping things up.

BY RAY SHEEN

Four steps to an effective after-action review

BY RAY SHEEN

Whether youre in charge of developing a website, designing a car, moving a department to a new facility, updating an information system, or just about any other project (large or small), youll go through the same four phases: planning, build-up, implementation, and closeout. Even though the phases have distinct qualities, they overlap. For example, youll typically begin planning with a ballpark budget figure and an estimated completion date. Once youre in the build-up and implementation phases, youll define and begin to execute the details of the project plan. That will give you new information, so youll revise your budget and end datein other words, do more planningaccording to your clearer understanding of the big picture.

Heres a chart that outlines the activities of each phase, plus the skills and tools you may need for doing the work:

When people think of project planning, their minds tend to jump immediately to schedulingbut you wont even get to that part until the build-up phase. Planning is really about defining fundamentals: what problem needs solving, who will be involved, and what will be done.

Before you begin, take time to pinpoint what issue the project is actually supposed to fix. Its not always obvious.

Say the CIO at your company has asked you, an IT manager, to develop a new database and data entry system. You may be eager to jump right into the project to tackle problems you have struggled with firsthand. But will that solve the