How Much Aware Are You About PBL

Many of you would not be aware about the abbreviation PBL. Well, it is Project Based Learning. Simple. What do you do with it? Can I see a single document that you made during or after a project that comprised only and only of learning acquired from the project? What? There is no document. Well! Then where is the learning gone? How long will it remain in memory? What will be the final resultant of this learning? Has there been a long term beneficial learning from this project?

Project ending successfully in time or called off after spending some extra months over the stipulated ones; give lot of learning. It all depends on the project team, how much matured it is, so as to get the best pieces of learning getting recorded in their knowledge management and keep referring to it as and when required during the ongoing projects in future.

Project based learning can be termed as learning only if each and every success and failure during the project is minutely observed, documented and analyzed deeply to find out the top 5 reasons that made that success of failure happen.

Delays and achievements of milestones, team member’s strengths and weaknesses, identification of real heroes, achievers, motivators and strategists of the project; all that matters a lot to record.
Someone in the management has to intelligent enough to understand what all is happening during a project that is getting ignored and can become a big knowledge base for future projects.

Project Estimation And Project Team Can Become Big Wrongs In Project Management

Any activity that is not done right becomes wrong. Probably it is not the management of project that matters more but it is the learning from previous projects that can help you in running a project well and completing it in time. There are lot of factors that can help in running a project in a well-structured manner and ensuring achievements and success of milestones during each phase of the project.
It is the struggle that project team has to face and win over.

Various wrongs that can ensure project failure are:

Project Estimation: Project estimation, if not done appropriately, can lead to wrong team sizing, wrong direction and wrong milestones selection. A small hole appearing as no warning in the beginning may become cause of the sinking of large ship in deep waters at a later stage.

Project Team: Project team is the real bunch of warriors that make your success happen in the war known as project. A team needs to be rightly selected, so that all members respect each other, stay in sync, keep motivating each other along with being self-motivators and above all need to be success hungry. Any shortcoming in understanding the core requirements of a team can lead to wrong selection of team and hence giving a wrong shape to the project at every step.

Three Goals Of a Project Manager To Ensure Project Closure In Time

Most of the projects get delayed worldwide. There could be various reasons for that. Anything can hamper the progress of a project – be it logistics, demographic, person based or decision based reason. A material getting stuck for delivery could hamper the progress of a project. Any local issue also may arise as a showstopper for a project. Persons involved in a project may become a bottleneck. A major decision could even mar the progress.

Why it happens becomes historical and a reason of analysis to work on at a later stage. As a project manager one needs to be proactive to anticipate a problem in advance and find out the reason to mitigate the risk arising out of it. First goal of a project manager should be to ensure that no risks evolve during a project. Though it is impossible to run a project and complete it without encountering any unanticipated risk but then the second goal of a project manager should be to be prepared for any unalarmed risk and promptly finding out a solution for it so that the risks get minimized and progress gets saved from getting derailed.

Third goal of the project manager should be to mentally prepare himself for any kind and any level of problem arising during the project. He should have means and measures to encounter such unwanted weeds growing vigorously in between the useful crop. For each vertical of a project, project manager should work out alternative routes well in advance so as to take a planned diversion in case of a crisis.

What Is ETL Testing - An Overview

ETL stands for Extract Transform and Load. ETL can be treated as wider and broader horizon of normal testing that is done for business applications. Technically the process remains same as is there in any other kind of testing. First and foremost step is to understanding of requirements and business.

Once the requirements are well understood and business concepts are clear, it needs to be mapped various aspects like what is there at presents, what is required, in what timeframe and with what kind of resources. In fact once the requirements are clear as well the business goals are understood, one needs to validate and get them vetted by the respective process/business owners. After this estimation needs to be worked out on the basis of timelines being proposed to be consumed.

Once this gets approved, test planning is prepared. Basis of test planning is always the test estimates, business requirements and scope of work. Test cases are built along with the test scenarios based on the requirements and understanding. After the test cases are ready and get approved by test lead, test bed is prepared, pre testing assessments are done, approvals are taken and tests are executed to find out the results.

What Analytics Tools Do You Use For Project Management

CPA (Critical Path Analysis) and PERT are well proven age old tools to use for scheduling and management of large and complex kind of projects. They came into existence in mid of 1950 when in US huge projects were looking for ways to control them in a systematic and objective manner rather than their get going in subjective manner without any monitoring or control over them. There are many other planning and analysis tools that can help you in driving your project in right direction with right pace.

Tools are nothing but means to equip you to measure your project at any instance; and take corrective measures in case if required so. Tools help you to assess project in an objective manner proactively rather than taking it for granted going in right direction without any real measurement of it.

It is not necessary to invest big amounts for such tools. Simple but effective templates built in-house can be used for the same purpose of analyzing the progress of a project.

Learning From Failures Is An Art

Failures do happen in projects. There are definitely sizing and severity of failure in a project. The size and severity of a failure is measured by the impact a failure poses on business in various terms – reputation, financial and future loss in growth impacted by such factors. Some organizations are wise enough to understand the gravity of failure and start working in direction of mitigation of risks that arise out of it.

In fact chances of failures go higher in a project if there is a major component missing during the management of project and that component must be taken care of well in the beginning of a project as a whole; and at the beginning of each phase of the project. This component is nothing but is termed as Risk Management. Risk management in simple terms is how you manager risks. To manager risks it must be clear to you what can pose as a risk in a project and how much impact can it have on the project if it occurs. Measurement of impact needs to be objective.

More realistic assessment of risk, planning preparation to mitigate the risk and actions taken for the mitigation – all deliver to higher chances of progress of a project and its success.

Basic Ingredients Of A Project

Project comprises of many components. There are people to manage project, there are others who drive the project. Managing and driving a project is not similar though there might be some overlapping forming a common area between the two. Managing could be more of controlling and monitoring whereas driving could be more of actions so as to make management easier.

It is quite possible that ultimate goal could be same – to complete the project in time; but there will be two differential activities happening in the project. One would be more based on strategy forming and planning; second would be acting/ working on those strategies and giving them a real shape.

Planning and implementation go hand in hand – head to head – in a dynamic mode. The moment one becomes static and other remains dynamic; there will be a deadlock. By nature – both are supposed to be dynamic – as there is nothing like planning and then implementing. If it could be that simple, management part could have been required only in the beginning of a project. But in reality it does not happen. Planning keeps changing based on the project taking shape during its implementation. The pace of dynamism in both is actually required to be progressing in sync.

Communication Is Perhaps The Most Serious Thread During A Project

Irrespective of whether it is offshore project or the whole team is sitting within the same building; communication does play a major role in project management. No project covers its trajectory painlessly. It is the communication that keeps all teams attuned and intact in terms of staying together in a project. It is only communication that can revive back a derailed project; if done timely and appropriately. Else a project going in going in high speed in right direction may lose its track and start moving in a wrong direction.

It is not only important to receive proper information. The story does not end here. It is more important to understand the right kind of gravity of information in right time and on top of that – taking action on the same. Closing of loop happens only once you have received an information and understood its impact on ongoing project; and act accordingly in right direction.

How do you treat and build up communication as - as Thread or as Threat?

Do you take Problem as Opportunity?

Project Management Started Around Six Decades Back

Project Management Started around 6 decades back when it was felt by top engineers, builders, designers and architects; the need of a systematic and structured approach to manager complex projects so as to stay focused and informed throughout the project about its progress and achievement of landmarks or milestones. The management tools designed during that period spread all across various streams like civil projects, defense projects, engineering and of similar kind.

It was Henry Gantt during 1950s who is known to create some systematic approach to project management by means of concrete planning, monitoring, controlling and measuring techniques. And hence he is also known as the Father of Project Planning. Gantt charts are as famous, popular and effective today as they were in the beginning. Even today Gantt Chart is established as one of the most effective project controlling tool. Henry Gantt was highly influenced by his mentor and teacher Fredrick Winslow Taylor. Taylor is known to be the original creator of theories for the management of projects in a scientific manner.

It was firstly in Taylor’s papers that something known as WBS or work breakdown structure emerged as a good source of cutting down your huge and complex project into simple and small tasks and hence achieving success in each task one after the other. Gradually a group of tasks’ completion earmarks an achievement of a milestone. Completion of certain set of milestones completes a project phase. And ultimately completion of certain phases overall finishes the project.

Once you have created WBS for your project, then comes another effective tool produced by Taylor, known as Resource Allocation.

Project Management Is A Zero Balance Account

What is takes in a project is to plan, organize, and manage - time and resources so as to optimize commercial part of the project. And managing it in some way or the other is known as Project Management. The way could be any legacy, orthodox, manual process to a modern, fully automated, state of the art, well proven and well established project management tool.

Basically Project Management is nothing but to run the show in most disciplined manner. Resources, Planning, organization and management is all inclined to gain achievement and success in any project being part of. What you know in a project is scope of work, start time, target time, and usually based on this you have to work out the size of your various teams, financial goals, project plan and its smooth implementation. It is not difficult to achieve results, provided you are well aware of the goals and objectives. There is no project where constraints do not arise during its lifecycle - related to finance, time, objectives, team or customer.

Management of project is a mix of two ingredients - managerial skills and technical capabilities. A right amount of balance is a must in project management. Although these are two entirely different streams of management but somehow at times have a singular goal of achievement in target.