Is Your Project Procurement Plan Over-cooked?

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Procurement Plan

 

A procurement plan is one part of every project plan. However, these procurement plans are often beefier than they need to be, particularly when your organization has existing procurement processes and staff. Bob McGannon and I discuss what a project procurement plan truly needs to have in a lot of cases, as well as when you might need to add more detail to your plan.

 

Personal PM: Treating a Role as a Project

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Personal PM Treating a Role as a Project

 

A new role is much like a project, whether it is a job, a consulting gig, or a volunteer position. When it starts, you digest the avalanche of info you receive to get up to speed quickly. Initial planning helps you do your job well. And when your “role playing” ends, a smooth handoff to the next person makes everyone’s day just a little brighter. Here’s how managing a role delivers success and gains admirers at the same time. 

  • Plan for success. This is more than dressing for success. What are your goals? Doing good work, sure. Contributing to the organization’s success, of course. Perhaps climbing the corporate ladder or building your own business. Whatever you want to achieve, document your goals in your career/job/gig plan. This will help you keep your personal goals in mind. (If this is your career, you’ll be updating your plan as your goals and role change.)
  • What’s important about this role? For projects, we think about desired outcomes, objectives, requirements, etc. To succeed in a role, the organization’s goals and objectives tie directly into yours. You support the success of the organization success, whether that’s your employer, client, or the non-profit you support. Have a chat with your manager, your manager’s manager, the client contact who hired you, or the non-profit’s executive director. Add these goals, outcomes, and specific expectations for your role to your plan.
  • Identify what the role represents. Job descriptions might be well-defined, but they’re often so generic that you can’t tell what the work is. As a consultant, you usually prepare a statement of work, so part of the gig is coming to an agreement with the client on what you will do. Regardless, talk to the person who best understands the role and ask questions to collect as many details as possible. This could be your manager, someone with the same role, the person you’re replacing. Note: you will always (always!) learn more about it as you go.
  • Document your role. Add the specifics of the role to the plan whether you get the details from someone else or learn from experience. Maybe it’s paying invoices when they come in, submitting tax forms every quarter, prepping a presentation for board meetings, ordering supplies when inventory runs low, designing a new social media campaign. Document the tasks you perform and the schedule for each. Don’t forget all the user accounts you might set up, like software subscriptions, regulatory websites, and so on. If you use processes, create a section for all those how-tos. Also, keep track of your achievements large and small. These can help you snag your next role or the promotion you’re seeking.
  • Hand off the role to the next person (if applicable). The plan that you’ve built and maintained is a great start for a user manual for the next person, whether it’s your replacement, someone from an operations team, or a client employee. Remove your personal goals and you have a document that tells what has to be done and how, what accounts need to be reassigned, who needs to be informed, and so on.

What do you think? Do you see the value in this approach? If so, try it on something small, I’d love to hear your questions or results in the comments section.

For more about small projects, check out my Project Management Foundations: Small Projects course.

 

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 102,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Reining in the Destructive Habit of Padding Estimates

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Padding Estimates Project Pointers Bonnie-Bob

 

 

 

 

Supporting the Sponsor Who Takes Risks

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Supporting the Sponsor Who Takes RisksPart of a project manager’s job is to manage risk on behalf of the sponsor. It is NOT to stop the sponsor from taking risks, because risk is often necessary to move a business forward. Here are ways to support a sponsor when they decide to take risks.

  • Understand how taking the risk can advance the business. What are the desired outcomes that require taking this risk? If appropriate, take time to explore less risky ways to achieve those outcomes. Also, identify early success indicators that would show that the risk-taking will deliver the desired results. 
  • Make sure that project risks are fully understood. The project sponsor needs to know about all the risks the project presents. Share the risks, indicators of when risks might come to fruition, and any planned response actions. Also, communicate the costs and schedule impacts of those response actions.
  • Know when the risk becomes unsustainable. A risk that turns into an issue can significantly affect the project and even the business. Early in the project lifecycle, determine the limits or thresholds of cost and schedule impacts that the sponsor is willing to accept to achieve their goals.
  • Determine how to manage skeptical stakeholders. Pressure from key stakeholders about risks can be overwhelming. Work with your sponsor to understand what’s been communicated about the risks being taken, and how to communicate going forward to manage key stakeholders’ concerns. The key is to communicate consistently among all parties, especially the sponsor and project manager.
  • If you fail, fail early. Typically, project risks relate to a few key processes or assumptions about deliverables. Work on those as a proof of concept, as early as possible. That way, the project premise is tested early. If you find that the project’s fundamental concepts aren’t feasible, the business will save precious time and money.

For more about sponsors, check out Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez’ course How to Be an Effective Project Sponsor.

 

 

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 102,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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