So you're going to manage a project...

By Tom D. Conkright

But what is managing a project all about? Few of us have been trained to be project managers. Ever hear of a GANTT chart? What’s ETC (Estimate to Complete) or WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)? (Check out the glossary at the end of the article.)

Managing projects is riskier than everyday management. The expectations are more specific, the resources more diverse (usually some are not even in your department), and a deadline always looms just a few months (weeks, days) away. But like most other business endeavors, the greater the risks, the greater the potential rewards. If nothing else, you know when you’re done with a project, and you can usually look upon a completed something--a new assessment, a new course, new learning center.

Most project management concepts and tools came out of the construction Industry-- building an office tower or remodeling a shopping center. A lot of projects are also related to product development, especially high-tech products such as hardware and software. Projects like these are usually large-scale, expensive, and require full-time managers and support people.

But trainers can learn a lot from the techniques used to manage these activities. Although training projects may have different characteristics, there is just as much need to plan, track, control, reallocate, report, and conclude them. We have to admit that training dollars are usually more closely watched than some other budget categories. So while a training project may represent a smaller investment, the trainer/project manager is subject to the same level of accountability.

We'll assume that most of the projects you will do are related either to developing a new course or rolling out a new training program you bought from someone else. (You may also get handed the United Way "project," or the third-anniversary-of-the-founding-of-the-company "project," but we’ll stick with training.) We’ll use an example here of developing a hybrid CD-ROM program--that is, one that operates in both CD-ROM and Internet environments. Multimedia training projects are generally more complex and diverse than classroom efforts, and often require more formal project management.

Getting started

The Project Management Institute (PMI), a professional society in Upper Derby, PA, defines five project phases: initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing. If you’re educated and experienced in instructional design, don’t confuse ISD's five phases--analysis, design, development, delivery, evaluation--with project phases. A software-skills needs assessment, for example, might be only "analysis" in ISD, but it would take you through all five project phases. Initiating and planning a project has to do with the project itself, not with analyzing or defining what the training product will be.

Initiating is setting the scope of a project. Of course, if your boss comes in and says you’re going to create a leadership skills assessment and training program, she may consider it already defined and initiated for you. But be sure you're clear about the scope and goal of the project. The PMI suggests you set measurable goals for your project--very much like behavioral learning objectives, for you ISD-types. If you can write learning objectives that will pass muster with Bob Mager, you can write project goals that will pass PMI.

The goal for our CD-ROM project was this: Develop a single-disk, hybrid CD-ROM program with video, sound and graphics by Oct. 31 with a budget of $200,000. It's a commercial multimedia product, capable of dialing up the internet, that allows users to assess their leadership skills, identify courses they can take to improve their skills, and provide access to Web-based training modules. While the assessment piece already existed in print, the bulk of the content would be new and would need to be extracted from 10 leadership experts. In other words, the project goal had to be specific, defining what would be produced, when, and any constraints, such as budget and resources.

Your boss may have set the start and end date for you, but that’s not a plan. You need to do a Work Breakdown Structure, which lists all of the tasks and subtasks, complete with who will do each subtask, how long each will take, and what the dependencies are (I.e., task B depends on the completion of task A). Most projects even get a GANTT chart that shows the duration and milestones in the project. (see figure page 66).

In a multimedia course development project, you may have two or three people designing the course (instructional designer, media specialist, and programmer or authoring specialist). Then you bring in a team of writers, media producers, and finally programmers or authors for production. And don’t forget about editors and quality control people.

Finally, remember to calculate and plot your own time. Like any managerial role, project management requires leadership and communication skills, accounting ability and business savvy. The difference is one of degree: Since the members of your project team likely do not report to you or even work in your department, you’ll have to use all the influencing, negotiating and motivational skills you can muster.

A good project plan will allow an hour of project management for each six or seven hours of work by other people. Keeping track of the status of each piece of the program through scripting, editing, media production, programming, and quality control tasks is time consuming and tedious.

A wealth of software, such as Microsoft Project, is available for helping plan a project. But use caution: Most of this software was developed for major construction or new-product projects. On a smaller project, you can invest more time in updating your charts, resource allocations, and so on than you receive in value. For this CD-ROM project, for example, we used a detailed plan to get started, and used EXCEL to track and report progress, but we did not revise the formal plan.

Just do it

Now you’re ready to execute. This means you put your plan into motion. Sounds pretty simple. You’re tracking each task and subtask, encouraging each member of the team, and conducting regular meetings.

In our CD-ROM project, it wasn’t enough to track the task of writing, we needed to document when we received input from our subject matter experts for each of the 20 sections. Then we noted when the script was drafted, edited, sent to the client, edits made, edits reviewed, sent back to the client for final review, and approved so that production could begin. We had to keep the process flowing because a full time media specialist and a full time programmer were waiting for the next packet of approved material.

Then comes controlling. Sooner or later, at least one of your carefully planned subtasks will take longer or require more effort than you anticipate. In our case, we hit a technological glitch: Everyone assured us that we could automatically dial the internet from a CD-ROM. There are already commercial products that do it. But come to find out, not with this authoring package.

The product support people for the software package were no help, and the internet chat group only provided some hints. We had to decide how much extra time and effort (translation money) we were going to invest to solve this problem. We found a good solution for Windows 95/NT, but could not solve the Windows 3.x problem without going far over budget and sending the project careening out of control. The upshot: Some program users may have to access the Internet manually.

There’s an old cliché that applies to almost any business endeavor: You can have it good, fast or cheap—but you only get two out of the three. This is the golden rule of project management. Every project is a balance of time, money, and expectations or quality. With enough time and money, you can have premium quality. If you have less money to spend, either takes more time or cut quality. And when something goes wrong--and something always does--it will take a toll in time, money, or quality.

If you are dealing with outside vendors, have a written agreement that covers deliverables, prices, deadlines, and assumptions. This should include explicit language and procedures to handle change of scope. Nearly every project changes as it moves forward, so consider how you are going to document the need for a change, who will do what, how much it will cost and so on. Not every change of scope will cost you money—it may only affect the contractual arrangements or it may slip the schedule, without incurring additional costs.

Au revoir

Eventually, every project comes to a close. It may be completed pretty close to the original plan or months later. Our CD-ROM project came in about a month later than we had planned, but had grown somewhat in size. Not too bad, given the complexity of the project and the new design elements involved.

By closing time, all the excitement has gone away, as have most of the people. You are left to pick up the pieces--get out the final deliverable, close the books, pack up archives, and report to your boss how well you did. This is a lonely time, but it also allows you to look back, reflect on what happened, and resolve to avoid the mistakes in the next project. Call a meeting of all the key team members, get their feedback, and share with them the results. Of course you should write all this down.

But hurry up with that meeting, because the next project is already ready to kick off. The core team is waiting next door for you to join them. Don’t reflect too long. Grab your charts, and charge ahead with confidence.

 A Short Project Management Glossary