Define the scope and objectives

Firstly, understand the project objectives. Suppose your boss asks you to organise a blood donor campaign, is the objective to get as much blood donated as possible? Or, is it to raise the local company profile? Deciding the real objectives will help you plan the project.

Scope defines the boundary of the project. Is the organisation of transport to take staff to the blood bank within scope? Or, should staff make their own way there? Deciding what’s in or out of scope will determine the amount of work which needs performing.

Understand who the stakeholders are, what they expect to be delivered and enlist their support. Once you’ve defined the scope and objectives, get the stakeholders to review and agree to them.

Define the deliverables

You must define what will be delivered by the project. If your project is an advertising campaign for a new chocolate bar, then one deliverable might be the artwork for an advertisement. So, decide what tangible things will be delivered and document them in enough detail to enable someone else to produce them correctly and effectively.

Key stakeholders must review the definition of deliverables and must agree they accurately reflect what must be delivered.

Project planning

Planning requires that the project manager decides which people, resources and budget are required to complete the project.

You must define what activities are required to produce the deliverables using techniques such as Work Breakdown Structures. You must estimate the time and effort required for each activity, dependencies between activities and decide a realistic schedule to complete them. Involve the project team in estimating how long activities will take. Set milestones which indicate critical dates during the project. Write this into the project plan. Get the key stakeholders to review and agree to the plan.

Communication

Project plans are useless unless they’ve been communicated effectively to the project team. Every team member needs to know their responsibilities. I once worked on a project where the project manager sat in his office surrounded by huge paper schedules. The problem was, nobody on his team knew what the tasks and milestones were because he hadn’t shared the plan with them. The project hit all kinds of problems with people doing activities which they deemed important rather than doing the activities assigned by the project manager.

Tracking and reporting project progress

Once your project is underway you must monitor and compare the actual progress with the planned progress. You will need progress reports from project team members. You should record variations between the actual and planned cost, schedule and scope. You should report variations to your manager and key stakeholders and take corrective actions if variations get too large.

You can adjust the plan in many ways to get the project back on track but you will always end up juggling cost, scope and schedule. If the project manager changes one of these, then one or both of the other elements will inevitably need changing. It is juggling these three elements – known as the project triangle – that typically causes a project manager the most headaches!

Change management

Stakeholders often change their mind about what must be delivered. Sometimes the business environment changes after the project starts, so assumptions made at the beginning of the project may no longer be valid. This often means the scope or deliverables of the project need changing. If a project manager accepted all changes into the project, the project would inevitably go over budget, be late and might never be completed.

By managing changes, the project manager can make decisions about whether or not to incorporate the changes immediately or in the future, or to reject them. This increases the chances of project success because the project manager controls how the changes are incorporated, can allocate resources accordingly and can plan when and how the changes are made. Not managing changes effectively is often a reason why projects fail.

Risk management

Risks are events which can adversely affect the successful outcome of the project. I’ve worked on projects where risks have included: staff lacking the technical skills to perform the work, hardware not being delivered on time, the control room at risk of flooding and many others. Risks will vary for each project but the main risks to a project must be identified as soon as possible. Plans must be made to avoid the risk, or, if the risk cannot be avoided, to mitigate the risk to lessen its impact if it occurs. This is known as risk management.

You don’t manage all risks because there could be too many and not all risks have the same impact. So, identify all risks, estimate the likelihood of each risk occurring (1 = not likely, 2 = maybe likely, 3 = very likely). Estimate its impact on the project (1 – low, 2 – medium, 3 – high), then multiply the two numbers together to give the risk factor. High risk factors indicate the severest risks. Manage the ten with the highest risk factors. Constantly review risks and lookout for new ones since they have a habit of occurring at any moment.

Not managing risks effectively is a common reason why projects fail.

Summary

Following these best practices cannot guarantee a successful project but they will provide a better chance of success. Disregarding these best practices will almost certainly lead to project failure.

I find, however, that many people with too much to do, or with large projects looming in front of them get into a state of complete overload because they haven’t prepared themselves by keeping very simple action-item lists.
What’s an Action-Item List?
There are many kinds of lists, and each is useful in its own way. A list can range from “100 things I want to do before I die” to a list of reasons that you want to stay in your current career (hopefully you have 100 reasons for that, also.)

Here is my definition of an action-item list:

An action-item list consists of discrete actions, broken down into the smallest reasonable behavioral steps that you need in order to finish a project (or even a portion of a project.)
A Peek Inside Your Brain
Let’s say that you are a writer who has just gotten back an article you had submitted to an editor. You intend to begin at the beginning and just start revising. Unfortunately for many of us, our brains don’t function well in this mode.

Here is a peek inside the brain of a typical person in this situation:

“I can’t believe there are so many corrections.”
“He/she’s an idiot – these are ridiculous suggestions.”
“I’m an idiot. I can’t believe I wrote such a terrible article.”
“Maybe I’m not cut out for this.”
“No matter what pathetic drivel I manage to write, it won’t be good enough.”
“Just that first suggested revision will take me hours, no, days to complete.”
“I really need to run some errands. I’ll get to it next week.”

Your brain can be a scary place.

How can you stop this maelstrom of negative thoughts and get started accomplishing something? One way is to make an action-item list.

Here is an example of such a list:

1. Rewrite paragraph introducing Concept A, being more specific.
2. Check accuracy of 3rd paragraph.
3. Create more elegant connecting sentence after Concept A on page 3, paragraph 2.

By breaking down the overwhelming, negatively-charged project of revising the entire article into discrete tasks, you can get over the avoidance hump and start on task number one.
Why Action-Item Lists Work
Why can such a simple act as making a list work? A list can do the following:

· Make an overwhelming task seem doable by breaking it into discrete written parts
· Calm you because it’s no longer floating in your head – it’s there in black and white
· Prove to you that the task will end some day
· Be a touchstone for when you feel unclear about what to do next
· Provide that all-important feeling of accomplishment when you put that check mark next to an item, or cross it out!
· If you are working in 15-30 minute increments, as I often suggest, you will have your work already broken up into separate items, so you are oriented as to where to start no matter how long a break you’ve taken

Make sure you add the action-item list to your repertoire. It’s those little techniques that build the good habits that add up to being productive!

While distance learning has grown tremendously over the last few years, it is still a relatively new means of instruction.

And teaching online requires different skills and expectations than teaching in a classroom. Many faculty members are hesitant to learn these skills. But simply putting a few notes and other materials from a classroom does not make for a very effective online experience.

What are the 3 most important skills that you need to be a truly outstanding online teacher?

1) You must communicate frequently with the students.
Frequent communication does NOT mean that you must be online every hour of every day. But it does mean that you need to be in contact with students frequently. How frequently? At least every other day. Rather than teaching in 2-4 hour blocks in a single day, like you would with many college classes, spend 15-45 minutes a day answering emails and monitoring your online course. At the end of the week, the time spent teaching online should be similar to the amount of time spent teaching in a classroom.

2) Be organized & be clear
Let students know from the beginning exactly what is expected of them. And set the ground rules for the course. Let students know how often you will be online, so they don’t expect an immediate response regardless of the time of day. Explain to students how they will be graded, how quickly they will receive feedback, how they should submit assignments, how they should contact you, etc. The more students know ahead of time, the less time you’ll spend responding to problems.

3) Engage the students in the learning
Lecturing and testing are standard in many campus classes (not they there necessarily promote effective learning, but that’s another story!). Teaching online offers the opportunity to reach students in many different ways – projects, discussions, comparing ideas, sharing knowledge with other students. Use as many different ways as possible to engage students, and promote active learning. Without the confines of time that are present in a campus course, and with the ability to share and discuss ideas online, not making good use of these opportunities leads to lost “learning moments”.

There is no better way to learn how to teach online than to learn online – so, before you decide to teach online, take an online course yourself.

You’ll understand what it is like to learn from a distance, without an instructor standing in front of you. You’ll understand what it is like to have to wait for answers to your questions. And you’ll learn more about how the technology can HELP you teach.

You certainly DO NOT need to be a technical expert to teach online. But you should be:

• comfortable with the Internet
• familiar with sending and receiving email
• ready to spend some time setting up your course for the first time
• aware that becoming an effective online teacher takes some time (often several courses)
• excited about learning a new skill that will help you!

Some will say there is no substitute for seeing the student’s faces. Others will realize that many students will flourish because they have more time to prepare thoughtful answers, and won’t be fearful of speaking up in front of a large group.

Teaching online can be very exciting, and very rewarding, as long as you are prepared!

There are distinct advantages to online training that may apply to your organization. With an online training course you have the ability to consolidate education and training across geographical and time constraints. Courses can be delivered to people in different offices without the expense of travel and with less interruption of work schedules. For individuals with busy schedules, online training courses offer the flexibility of being available when the people are able to take the training.

This flexibility is the strongest facet of online training and the flexibility extends beyond scheduling. For many people, an online training course supplies material in a more palatable manner then instructor-led courses. This certainly isn’t true for everyone, but the power of online training to help many people makes it an important tool for your training program. Online training is self-paced and includes interactive tutorials, questionnaires, case studies, self-assessment, and other features that easily assimilate to individual learning styles. Because people have more control over their training experience, online training offers the opportunity to learn in a non-stressful environment.

An online training course combines the advantages of uniformity in training and self-paced training. The basic course is the same for each trainee (while still offering you the chance to tailor instruction more easily) but can be delivered to different people at different times. While a human instructor is only available a limited time, online training materials don’t “go home” and trainees can review the subject matter as needed or desired. Support can be supplied via e-mail or phone.