In any phase of a project people may demand or request for something. The level of this requests may even reach to a conflict. Claims administration is all about controlling and giving a pre-controlled direction to requests, demands and conflicts. Therefore it is important. Because it is never possible to stay away from disagreements in any project, so you don't have such an option. An example of such discussions is a change in the project's predetermined parameters. Or you may have a disagreement on something you initially agreed on. These may come as a claim.
Schedule Compression in Project Management
As a project manager, you go with your project schedule to the stakeholders, to the sponsors, and you tell them that this is going to take, say, seven months. What answer can you expect? They will say, 'Can you shrink it? Can you do something about it so this can be compressed in five months rather than seven?' Now, this is a usual problem, or I would say, a usual challenge a project manager will face where they need to figure out how can we compress the project schedule. And in many situations, the need might be really valid. There are business reasons for shrinking that project schedule, and you may also want to do things faster for your own project life, for your own things.
Affinity Diagrams in Project Management
This diagram is used in project management to group and categorize large amounts of data based on their similarities. This enables us to see the sequence of events, and issues that may not be immediately noticeable at first glance.
Focus Groups in Project Management
A focus group is a gathering of individuals who are brought together to discuss a particular topic. In focus groups members of groups are selected by taking their former experience into consideration. Of course this knowledge and experience should be in a relevant subject.
Decision Tree Analysis in Project Management
Decision tree analysis is a widely used tool in many fields, including business, engineering, and computer science. This method involves visually representing decisions and their potential outcomes, consequences, and costs, helping individuals and businesses make more informed choices.
Change Control Board in Project Management
What is Change Control Board? It is also known as Change Control Board, like I mentioned before. A Change Control Board is basically a group of people, right? So, it's a board. It involves a group of people. And these people, this group of people, what they do is they review, approve, or reject the changes, right? So, you know, a change pops up. The project manager or whoever is authorized or whoever has the duty of creating the formal change request document creates the document. That is not sufficient for that change to come into effect, right? That Change Request document that's your document that has been prepared, right? It needs to be reviewed, approved, or rejected by the Change Control Board. And Change Control Board is this group of people that does this job, right? It should ideally include the project sponsor, the person involved, the person providing the budget, right?
S-Curve in Project Management
S-curve is a graphical display of cumulative data that is plotted against time. And that cumulative data here can be anything, such as cost, man-hours, quantity progress, or different types of project information that you want to plot against time. And don't forget, an S-curve is the cumulative plot of unit data that you plot against time. You may find S-curves with other names; you might hear it called an S-plot, or another name could be cumulative distribution chart, or velocity diagram, or in an earned value management environment, they call it a performance measurement baseline or PMB. So, don't be surprised if you hear it called other things in projects that you have been working on. But the bottom line is you're drawing an S-curve in projects.
Ambiguity Risk in Project Management
In risk management, ambiguity risk represents a potential issue, stemming from confusion, vagueness or obscurity. These uncertainties can be present in a range of project areas, such as goals, specifications, timeline, resources, etc. Not addressing ambiguity risk effectively can cause prolonged project durations, increased scope, poor results or even complete failure.
Context Diagrams in Project Management
A context diagram is composed of a single circle or box representing the project, surrounded by other circles or boxes representing the project's external entities such as other systems, departments, organizations or customers. By understanding how the project interacts with these external entities, project managers can identify dependencies and risks and gain a clear understanding of the project's context. It is a tool used in collect requirements process.
Monitor Risks Process
These days, nearly every smartphone comes with a weather app as a standard feature. And if you search an app store, you'll find hundreds of weather apps, apps that tell you about the weather in a variety of ways. These weather apps are a great example of risk monitoring because weather is a source of risk. The weather can affect what we do, how we do it, what we wear, and even our health and safety. In fact, emergency services monitor weather conditions and use the information to evacuate communities at risk from floods and fires.
How to Create Risk Response Strategy?
How to choose the best risk response strategy is an important question because the risk response strategy, when we implement it, is the thing which is actually going to manage the risk. So, until we implement a risk response strategy, all we've done is identify, analyze, and decide what we could do. And then we implement the risk response strategy, and then we manage the risk. So, we need to choose the right one. If we choose the wrong risk response strategy, then maybe we don't change the risk at all or actually, we could make things worse if we choose something completely inappropriate. And certainly, we could be wasting time and money. So, it is important to choose an appropriate risk response strategy.
Change Request in Project Management
Change request is a formal proposal for an alteration to some product or system. In project management, a change request often arises when the client wants an addition or alteration to the agreed upon deliverables for a project. Such a change may involve an additional feature or customization or an extension of service, among other things. Because change requests are beyond the scope of the agreement, they generally mean that the client will have to pay for the extra resources required to satisfy them.
One of the more challenging aspects of change management is ensuring that all details are sufficiently explicated and that all parties are in agreement as to what is expected. Explicit and detailed documentation makes it easier to identify when a change request must be submitted. Change requests can also organize internally. Internal change requests can invoke a wide variety of actions, including patching in software and hardware upgrades.
Once a change request has been made, the process of change control should be undertaken to make sure that the request is satisfied efficiently and without unnecessary use of resources. As a project manager, you know that made project pivots are just part of the game. Often it's not the change itself that causes the most disruption; it's the process or lack thereof for requesting and implementing the change that throws a wrench in things. That is why proper change request management is so critical.
What is change request management?
Change request management is the implementation of tools, systems, or processes to identify, document, and resolve project change requests. A change request management plan should include change request templates or change request forms to ensure consistency in the process.
Why is Change Request Management Important?
First and foremost, a documented change request process is critical for increasing your organization's project success rate. Change requests may impact a project scope, budget, resource requirements, and timeline. Without a clear change request process though, you wouldn't have a clear grasp of the full ramifications of a given change. Change request management is also crucial for keeping project stakeholders and team members in the loop with regards to changes. A change request process ensures that all those involved with the project understand what the change is, why it's happening, what it will mean for them specifically, and how it will impact the project overall. Remember, communication is key when it comes to successful project management. A change request management process ultimately helps ensure that change requests are communicated and understood by all affected parties.
Key Steps of Change Request Process
So, how do you implement a change request management within your organization? Here are some key steps:
Understand what is scope change. The first step of a change request process is to understand exactly what the scope of the request is and what will be required to implement it. Keep in mind that change requests may originate internally from a project sponsor or externally from a client. Either way, you need to ensure your change request process captures the necessary data for you and all concerned stakeholders to make informed decisions on the requested change.
Determine the Impact: Along with understanding the full scope of the change request, you need to determine and consider the ramifications of incorporating the change. How will the change impact the project manager, project budget, what about the timeline? How many departments and team members will be touched by this change request? These are all questions that will help you, your team, and your leadership decide whether to approve or deny the change request.
Seek approval or disapproval of the change request: Many organizations have multiple levels of approval. For instance, if the change request only requires an hour of additional work, it may only need approval from the PM or the primary sponsor. However, a change request that has a more significant impact on resources typically requires approval from higher-level management as well. Then, your organization's change request management process should stipulate criteria for the different levels of change request approval.
Communicate and Implement the Approved Change Request: Of course, once a change request form has been approved, it's essential to communicate that change to the project team and all other vested stakeholders and parties. This also means following up with the client if the change request originated with them.
Types of Change Request
Change requests can be sorted into different categories depending on the objective of the change. Here are the four key types of change requests to be aware of. Each of these four can apply to both projects and organizations as a whole.
Normal Change: A normal change request addresses a significant alteration to operations, existing systems, or infrastructure. This type is not uncommon, but it does imply substantial, far-reaching changes need to be made. And as you can imagine, normal change requests often result in additional ones.
Standard Change: A standard change request proposes a low-risk change that occurs often. As we already mentioned, many changes are perfectly natural over the course of a project or in an organization. These changes can be thought of as evolution. They are proposals outlining what needs to be modified, but the modification itself will follow a pre-existing system.
Major Change: A major change request proposes a significant change that will require substantial financing. Major changes cause a high risk, but they can also reap high rewards. These changes don't occur often, and if they are handled poorly, they can do serious damage. That being said, they are necessary to make extreme modifications.
Emergency Change: The last one is the emergency change. An emergency change request means that it is a high priority proposal for immediate change. This type is generally the result of a mistake or something not going as planned and can be used to prevent these unexpected circumstances from wreaking havoc.
See also: Change log
What is Gold Plating in Project Management?
In project management, gold plating means adding more abilities or specific capabilities or services to a project than needed to meet the requirements. It is indeeed one of the crucial definitions in scope management. Addindg more abilities or capabilities for sure may sound like a good idea at first but unfortunately it can actually harm the project's success.
Lead Time Charts
By employing lead time charts, teams are able to keep track of the amount of time taken for the completion of a specific task or job. These diagrams show the duration starting from the initiation of the task to the final result. Having this information helps project supervisors to pinpoint any inconsistencies in their procedures and make suitable changes.
Information Radiators in Project Management
Tracking progress in real time is done with the usage of information radiators. It is a tool providing a representation of the present condition of the project. This tool incorporates details about what has been completed, what is still required to be accomplished, and any errors that transpired, granting all individuals of the team the capability to stay effective and take corrective action rapidly.
Histograms in Project Management
A histogram is a visual representation of data that shows the frequency of occurrence of a particular set of data. Through the use of histograms in project management several benefits emerge. Primarily they make it easier to identify patterns and trends in data. When represented in a visual manner, histograms illustrate the rate of a certain set of values, providing project managers with perceptiveness that could have gone undetected through simple numerical figures. For this reason they are capable of furnishing more informed decisions on resource provisioning and scheduling.
Gantt Charts in Project Management
Gantt charts are widely utilized in project management. However, have you ever pondered their origin, functionality, and practical application? In the 1910s, Henry Gantt, a management consultant and engineer, introduced a chart that not only delineated task timelines but also depicted start and end times for each task. Over time, the Gantt chart has evolved to encompass task interdependencies, offering a comprehensive view to project participants regarding task sequence and prerequisites.
Cumulative Flow Diagram in Project Management
The Cumulative Flow Chart provides project managers a visual timeline used by project managers. To me it is an invaluable asset for teams that want to stay on top of their projects. Keeping a good track of project progress gives us numerous benefits. The most important of these are being one step ahead of potential problems, reaching goals, being aware of deadlines and budget constraints. Once having this awareness everything will be easier.
Cycle Time Charts in Project Management
Cycle time charts provide an invaluable asset to project management. With them, we can quantify the amount of time spent to accomplish projects or tasks and identify areas for increased efficiency in our operations. Not only do the charts enable us to effectively process the data, but they also display it in a visual format for straightforward communication with our staff.
Make or Buy Analysis with Examples
Make or buy analysis is a crucial tool used in procurement knowledge area in project management. In our example make or buy decision, the relevant cost we're focusing on is the revenue from banking our product. Whether we make the product or purchase it from a vendor and then go ahead and turn it around and resell it, we're going to sell it for the same price. So revenue, since this is not going to change under either alternative, is irrelevant or unavoidable costs or revenue and therefore we can exclude it. Remember, only cost or revenue that's different from each decision gets part of our analysis here.
Communication Requirements Analysis
To guarantee success, clear communication is paramount to any project, helping participants to comprehend the mission's expectations, timeline, and demands. This heightens cooperation, efficiency, and the likelihood of achieving the desired objectives.
Check Sheets in Project Management
When it comes to successful quality management, having relevant information stored in a safe place is of the utmost importance. This is where check sheets come into play as they provide a structured system for aggregating and organizing data associated with the project. In addition to that they also enable the accurate and even collection of data which can then be used to discover various sequences and trends. Moreover this type of checklist can be used to monitor multiple aspects of the project from product issues to discussions held during its development.
Story Maps in Project Management
In any project, all stakeholders should be aware of the project's objectives, and desired outcomes at a similar level. This is a starting point for the successful results. Story mapping is a model that is strongly recommended to be used by project managers and their teams to have an idea about the customer experience. By doing this, we can create a roadmap for value delivery at the end of the project.
Rolling Wave Planning in Project Management
We continue to share with you the basic concepts related to project management on our website. All the content we provide is constantly reviewed and updated by our expert team. Today our topic is rolling wave planning in project management. Rolling wave planning is a project management method that focuses on short-term goals during each phase of the project. This allows project managers to adjust their strategies according to the feedback they obtain. This way they are enabling them to continuously update their plans as the project advances.
Acquire Resources
Acquiring resources is an essential element in the successful completion of any project, and an essential part of the resource management k.a. involving the identification, procurement, and deployment of the people, materials, infrastructure, and tools necessary for the project's aims to be fulfilled.
Schedule Forecast in Project Management
Have you ever worked on a project and wondered when it would finally come to an end? Or perhaps you’ve been a part of a team that underestimated the time needed to complete a project leading to missed deadlines and frustrated stakeholders? If you can relate, then you might be interested in learning about schedule forecasting in project management.
What is Scatter Diagram (Plot) in Project Management?
In project management, you may need to see repeated regular behaviors of things or you may want to see the direction that something is changing and use them to determine the amount of effort and resources that need to be allocated to ensure successful outcomes.