Project Execution – Running the Project¶
❤ Documents created in this phase:
★ Manage & Monitor - The progress – Oversee teams’ efforts & make sure they understand what is expected of them - What tasks need to be done - How & when tasks need to be done – Alert the right people if there might be a delay to the project – Help keep team aware of schedule & deliverable expectations.
★ Remove Barriers to Progress - Breakdown barriers that would slow down or stop the team from completing tasks - Removing barriers is one of your most important tasks as a project manager. But you cannot always do it alone. When your team encounters issues you will write an escalation email to get support & advice from senior stakeholders. Communication Practices
★ Communicate - With your team & anyone else involved in the project through meetings, written communication (emails, memos, chat tools, reports & documents) - overcommunicate. -Daily Standups (each team member briefly describes any in progress work, completed work, & any barriers that stand in their way. You can also discuss next steps.) – Daily Check-ins for status updates, see if anyone needs help on a task/s.
★ Make Adjustments - Make adjustments to plans throughout the project as required & make sure they’re communicated to all the correct stakeholders – Address weaknesses in your process or examine places where your team may need additional training – Adapt to changes in the project as they arise.
★ Follow the ROAM Analysis - To help your team stay organized you will categorize issues as Resolved, Owned, Accepted, or Mitigated. Knowing how you will handle these issues keeps you on track to complete the project.
★ Meetings – Create presentations for your team to keep them informed on the project – To make your presentation engaging & memorable, you will tell a story using key data points, summarize take aways, & outline next steps. – Plan meetings to discuss open issues, after your presentation you will meet & discuss areas to improve as you prepare for launch. To ensure a focused & productive discussion create a meeting agenda that lays out open issues & lists topics for discussion. Meeting Agenda
★ Project Status Reports - Red, Yellow, Green (RYG) reports improve & simplify communication across the team, keep everyone informed, including key stakeholders. Request more resources & support if needed. Create structure & transparency by recording the project status in a centralized place.
★ Conduct Ongoing Surveys - To gain essential feedback from users & improve processes, Implement surveys when possible. Create Survey Questions
★ Conduct Retrospectives - Throughout the project or after major milestones – Retros give you a chance to discuss successes & setbacks that took place within the project or phases – Form of process improvement.
Types of Tracking Methods¶
★ Gantt Chart – Lots of dependencies & used primarily waterfall methodologies.
★ Roadmaps - Used for tracking big milestones. High-level tracking of large milestones.
★ Burndown Charts - Typically used by Agile Scrum teams. Burndown charts reveal how quickly your team is working by displaying how much work is left & how much time remains to complete the work. Used near closing when needing to hit hard deadlines.
◆ Commonly Tracked Items:
Schedule – Tasks & Activities
Status of Action Items
Tracking Progress Towards Milestones
Costs
Risks
Scope
Dependencies
Collecting & Analyzing Data¶
★ Six Steps of Data Analysis
Ask
Prepare
Process
Analyze
Share
Act
❤ There are six main steps involved in data analysis: Ask, prepare, process, analyze, share and act. Let’s break these down one by one.
During the Ask phase, ask key questions to help frame your analysis, starting with: What is the problem? When defining the problem, look at the current state of the business and identify how it is different from the ideal state. Usually, there is an obstacle in the way or something wrong that needs to be fixed. At this stage, you want to be as specific as possible. You also want to stay focused on the problem itself, not just the symptoms. For example, imagine you are doing data analysis for a gym that is losing memberships. You could ask: Why do we keep losing members? But a better and more specific question would be: What factors are negatively impacting the member experience? That way, when you set off to do your research, you know exactly what to look for.
Another part of the Ask stage is identifying your stakeholders and understanding their expectations. There can be lots of stakeholders on a project, and each of them can make decisions, influence actions, and weigh in on strategies. Each stakeholder will also have specific goals they want to meet. It is pretty common for a stakeholder to come to you with a problem that needs solving. But before you begin your analysis, you need to be clear about what they are asking of you. For example, if your manager assigns you a project related to analyzing the gym’s business risk, it would be a good idea to confirm whether they want you to analyze all types of risks that could affect the gym or just risks related to weather or seasonal trends.
After you have a clear direction, it is time to move to the Prepare stage. This is where you collect and store the data you will use for the upcoming analysis process.
Let’s turn back to our gym membership example. To collect data on the member experience, you decide to send surveys to the gym’s members asking for feedback about their experience. To make sure you get specific answers, you ask them to offer feedback in three distinct categories: upkeep of the facility, customer service, and membership cost. You also leave room for them to write in a response. When you get the member surveys back, it is important that you have an organized system for tracking and filing them.
This stage is when it is time to Process your data. In this step, you will “clean” your data, which means you will enter your data into a spreadsheet, or another tool of your choice, and eliminate any inconsistencies and inaccuracies that can get in the way of results. While collecting data, be sure to get rid of any duplicate responses or biased data. This helps you know that any decisions made from the analysis are based on facts and that they are fair and unbiased. For example, if you noticed duplicate responses from a single gym member when sorting through the surveys, you would need to get rid of the copies to be sure your data set is accurate.
During this stage, it is also important to check the data you prepared to make sure it is complete and correct and that there are no typos or other errors.
Now it is time to Analyze. In this stage, you take a close look at your data to draw conclusions, make predictions, and decide on next steps. Here, you will transform and organize the data in a way that highlights the full scope of the results so you can figure out what it all means. You can create visualizations using charts and graphs to determine if there are any trends or patterns within the data or any need for additional research.
In our gym membership example, let’s say you notice 50% of the members wrote in an additional response on the survey citing that the equipment is outdated. The survey also showed that 75% of the responses cited “expensive membership fees.” When looking at the 50% of responses citing “outdated equipment” and 75% of responses citing “expensive membership fees” side by side on a graph, you may be able to deduce that these responses inform one another. Members feel like the experience just isn’t worth the price. You might conclude that the gym should invest in new equipment if they want to keep members and add value to the membership fee.
Once you have asked questions to figure out the problem—then prepared, processed, and analyzed the data—it is time to Share your findings. In this stage, you use data visualization to organize your data in a format that is clear and digestible for your audience. When sharing, you can offer the insights you gained during your analysis to help stakeholders make effective, data-driven decisions for solving the problem.
And finally, you are ready to Act! In the final stage of your data analysis, the business takes all of the insights you have provided and puts them into action to solve the original business problem.
Conducting a data analysis is an essential process for understanding a business’ needs and challenges and determining effective solutions. These six foundational steps— ask, prepare, process, analyze, share, and act—will help set you up for success!
◆ Common types of data PMs collect & analyze.
❤ Analyzing Data Benefits in Project Management - Use data to make decisions, solve problems, improve performance, improve processes, & understand your users. Data defines information you need to know about your project such as, productivity, quality & engagement. The more engaged your team is the more productive they are.
❤ Become familiar with how to collect data & measure data.
❤ Metric Categories - Happiness, productivity, quantity, engagement: You can analyze data to predict future outcomes & make predictions about productivity trends, project duration, cost, performance, or quality. Allowing you to proactively manage your project, resources, & measure accuracy if your projections throughout the life of the project.
★ Prioritize Data - Need to be aware of the signals that threaten the overall health of the project. A signal is an observable behavior change. Use signals to focus on tasks that have the biggest impact on the projects goal & aligning to your stakeholders’ priorities.
★ Data Ethics - When sharing data with team present in a way that maintains integrity & does not include any PII. Protect the data you collect.
Data Visualization¶
★ Dashboards - Is a type of user interface, typically a graph or summary chart, that provides a snapshot view of your project progress or performance
★ KPIs - Is a measurable value or metric that demonstrates how effective an organization is at achieving key objectives.
★ Burndown Chart - Is a line chart that measures the time against the amount of work done & amount of work remaining.
★ Infographic - Visual representations of information such as, data or facts & are typically in the form of what is called a google “one-pager.” They are typically concise summaries of that data. Primarily done through graphics or drawing emphasizing the biggest points with added text for further explanation.
◆ Other Data Visualization Tools:
Scatter Plots – Show Relationships
Bar Graphs – Compare Value, Clarify Trends, & Identify Patterns
Pie Charts – Demonstrate Composition & Shows how much each part makes a whole
Line Graphs – Analyze Trends & Behaviors & Shows Change Over Time
★ When it is time to present you data to your audience, you do not just want to tell them about your findings & what they mean. You want to show them. Data visualization helps us organize data & turn it into information that is clear & easy for your audience to digest. Figure out what data you want to show your audience & why.
Presenting Data to Tell a Story¶
❤ Step 1 - Define your audience – Know who you are presenting to – figure out what matters most to them.
❤ Step 2 - Find the data that connects to the question you want to answer – Collect the data.
❤ Step 3 - Filter & Analyze the data – Once you collect the data you will need to vet it for credibility & filter the information.
❤ Step 4 - Choose a visual representation – Dashboards, Charts, Mapping, Infographics, Graphs, etc.
❤ Step 5 - Shape the story – Tie it altogether into one cohesive narrative. Take time to think about what you hope to achieve, the points you want to make, & the questions or concerns you want to answer.
❤ Step 6 - Gather your feedback – Do a trail run – Get feedback from someone not connected to the project.
Did it make sense?
Was it interesting?
What questions did they have?
What was unclear?
Make adjustments
★ Include KPIs - A countdown (dashboard) that shows the number of days until the project launch or a percentage of number of issues resolved. Many dashboards also summarize project plans, documents, & reports in one place & provide visual status of each item. Dashboards are great visualizations for efficient status updates – they enable you to group, summarize, & highlight top project data points.
◆ Tips for Presenting
Speak slowly
When making a point try elevating your tone of voice for emphasis
Pace yourself by using intentional pauses & keep sentences short.
Make eye contact
Keep facial expressions warm & friendly
Be precise, flexible, & memorable
Good posture
Use repetition to help audience
Have confidence!
◆ Preparing for the Meeting
❤ Be clear & specific about what you want to get out of the meeting, frame the discussion with that goal in mind. Tell them exactly what you are looking for & send slides to audience in advance.
❤ If appropriate send a follow-up email with summary notes, action items, & time frames. Communication Practices
❤ Ask for feedback what went well & what could have gone better?
Continuous Improvements¶
❤ Conduct Retrospectives – Throughout the project or after major milestones – Retros give you a chance to discuss successes & setbacks that took place within the project or phases. You can conduct retros when you miss deadlines, miscommunications, end of sprints, etc. This is a form of process improvement.
Encourage Team Building
Improved Collaboration
Promote Positive Changes in Future Procedure or Processes
Blameless – Change Perspective (do not use you statements)
Do Not Focus On Negative
What Went Well (Fun Things)
Make People Feel Included
◆ Retro Best Practices
❤ Project Summary - Fill in basic project information.
Goals & Objectives
Duration
Team Members
Methodology
★ Also include links to key documents including the project charter, production plan, & scene requirements.
❤ Key Accomplishments - Being the meeting on a positive note by encouraging the team with a list of what went well.
❤ Lessons Learned - Team discusses things that need improvement, as well as instances when they were fortunate that went in their favor.
❤ Action Items - Turn their lessons into action items where appropriate.
❤ Future Considerations - Ask team to think about next steps in their list & risks that could come up & impede their success. Project manager should take notes on risks & mitigation plans.
❤ Resources & Notes - Retro serves as a reference for how that project went & what was accomplished. Add project notes which the team found valuable.