Introduction: Project management is to apply all kinds of knowledge, skills, tools and methods to project activities to achieve project objectives. The following is a successful project management case I compiled for you. Welcome to read!
Background of dinner project: One day, I was preparing dinner at home. Decided to start the project at 4 pm, and the stakeholders involved in the project were my wife and me.
Why use this case? First of all, I can confirm that it is a project, because, for me, it conforms to the characteristics of temporality, uniqueness and gradual clarity. Secondly, this is a small project, which also involves technical activities (cooking) and management activities (starting, planning, executing, monitoring and closing). The advantage of small events is that they are easy to understand; Finally, everyone is familiar with this project, which is convenient to concentrate on learning the project management process.
Project start-up
? A good beginning is half the success of the project? The standard of project success is to achieve the project objectives, which were determined at the beginning. Specifically, this process should analyze stakeholders, determine project objectives, and find constraints and assumptions.
Identify stakeholders
Project stakeholders are people related to the project. They are either involved in the project process, influenced by the project or influenced by the project. For example, athletes, coaches, BOCOG personnel and volunteers from all over the world belong to the first category of stakeholders; Beijing citizens belong to the second kind of stakeholders, and some international forces that exert influence and interference belong to the third kind. Every project has many stakeholders. Usually, if you don't determine the stakeholders, it will have an unexpected impact on the progress of the project, so you must first determine the stakeholders.
The identification of stakeholders in the dinner project is very simple, that is, my wife and I. My wife is the project sponsor, initiating the project and putting forward the requirements of the project. My wife is also an expert in the team. I am a project manager and a team member, responsible for the planning and implementation of the whole project. At the same time, both are customers. If you decide to eat out, the hotel is also a stakeholder. If the project includes going out to buy food, the seller is also a stakeholder. Specifically, they are all suppliers (providing raw materials and services needed for the project).
Analyze the needs and impacts of stakeholders.
The standard of project success is to objectively achieve the project objectives and subjectively satisfy the stakeholders. The premise of satisfaction is to understand the needs of stakeholders. It should be noted that one is that stakeholders have not clearly expressed their potential needs, and project managers need to have excellent communication skills to understand their potential needs. The other is that the needs of project stakeholders are often inconsistent and sometimes contradictory, and project managers need to record their own needs and balance them. In large-scale projects, if many stakeholders are involved, the project manager needs to evaluate whether their influence on the project is positive or negative, and the project manager needs to pay close attention to which stakeholders have strong influence.
Style collocation should be reasonable; Because she needs to practice yoga after dinner, I hope the project will be completed as soon as possible; At the same time, I hope to do it based on the existing raw materials at home. As a project manager and team member, my needs are: I hope to get technical support from experts all the time; It is suggested that key tasks (such as cooking) should be completed by experts themselves. Impact assessment, we both have great influence, because she is the leader of the family, and her influence is a little bigger than mine.
Identify stakeholders' goals
After understanding the needs of project stakeholders, it is necessary to turn the needs into specific goals. Goals and needs are different. Demand is a feeling, and goals must conform to the smart principle (concrete, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-limited). The goal of the project can be described in four aspects: scope (what to do and what not to do), progress (when to do what and how long to finish), cost (how much to spend) and quality (to what extent).
After many exchanges among project stakeholders, the objectives of the dinner project are determined as follows:
1) Scope goal: The score must include four dishes and one soup as the staple food (rice or steamed bread), and the collocation needs to be fully prepared, and the rice and soup should be mixed with cold and hot.
2) Progress goal: The project must be completed within 2 hours. The current time is 4 pm and the completion time is 6 pm, so as to ensure that you can participate in the exercise at 7: 30.
3) Quality objective: rich nutrition and delicious taste.
4) Cost objective: The direct cost is the cost of raw materials, and the indirect cost is water, electricity and gas.
Determine target priority
Usually stakeholders will put forward many goals, some of which are sometimes contradictory, such as more scope, faster progress, less cost and better quality. When there are multiple targets, it is necessary to determine the priority of the targets. The advantage of this is that you can concentrate on achieving key goals.
Case:
After using the objective optimization matrix (see chart 1), the objective priority order is finally determined: schedule, quality, scope and cost.
Note: Compare the vertical axis items with the horizontal axis items in turn, and fill in 1 for relative importance, and 0 for relatively unimportant items. Finally, add up these figures and prioritize them according to the total value.
Find out the constraints
Constraints refer to the factors that will restrict the implementation of the project at present. Such as the size of the classroom in the training program, the scheduled budget of most projects in the work, the scheduled date and so on. Knowing this can make the plan more feasible.
Constraint list of lunch box:
1) must use the existing raw materials at home;
2) Limited tools: there is only one rice cooker, iron pot and kitchen knife;
3) The kitchen area is limited;
4) My work experience, ability and level are limited;
Find a hypothesis
Assumption is the prerequisite for the success of the project. If the training can be carried out as scheduled, teachers need to be present in time, students need to be present, and the projection works normally. These are all hypotheses. Assumption is full of uncertainty, and failure is risk. Assumptions need to be clarified step by step and confirmed step by step during the project.
Complete the case hypothesis list:
1) electricity, gas and water.
2) Iron pots, rice cookers, kitchen knives and chopping boards are all available.
3) Raw materials include vegetables and meat.
In this case, the project stakeholders are few, the needs are consistent, and the project stakeholders are easy to identify. In actual projects, most projects involve many stakeholders, so it is a very critical task to determine the stakeholders. In addition, the needs of stakeholders are vague, and the needs of some stakeholders are contradictory. This is the biggest challenge faced by the project manager in the start-up process.
In this process, the abilities required of the project manager include: communication ability (meeting strangers and quickly establishing good relations), negotiation ability (setting goals for * * *), persuasion ability (making stakeholders trust you and listen to your suggestions), observation ability (observing and understanding the environment), decision-making ability (making accurate judgments and helping stakeholders make choices when necessary) and coordination ability (coordination ability). In addition to the above six basic steps, large-scale projects also need to formally appoint a project manager and establish a project management team.
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