 Welcome to the Unit 5 review for Strategic Project Management. My name is Dr. Lucinda Stanley. For the past few units, we've been looking at the phases of the project management lifecycle. We'll continue that here in Unit 5. But first, a bit of a reminder of how this works. There are seven units in this course. In Unit 1, we learned what a project is, who makes the decision to take a project on, and what the triple constraint theory is. In Unit 2, we were introduced to the project lifecycle. In Unit 3, we looked at the initiating phase. In Unit 4, we looked closely at what goes into planning a project once it's been chosen. So in Unit 5, we're going to look at executing or implementing the project now that we have a plan. There are a number of learning outcomes for Unit 5. The first one is all about creating an effective project team. Managing a successful project is not just about getting to the finish line. It's about how you can assemble and work with a team who has together a project there as efficiently as possible. Understanding how teams work together and putting processes in place to facilitate communication and collaboration is going to be a big factor in keeping a project working within the triple constraint. Speaking of the triple constraint, once the project is underway, it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day activities and forget to keep an eye on the budget, the schedule, or the scope of the project. A good project will refer back to the planning documents to ensure that the project is still in line with the original plan. If it's not, the project manager and their team need to have in place controls that will help them manage things that need to be changed from the original plan. Project management isn't just about the project team that has been assembled who have the skills required to complete the project. It's also about managing the other stakeholders of the project, anyone who has an interest in the outcome of the project and how they will impact the project needs to be kept in the loop and having good interpersonal skills will help those relationships run smoothly. Risk management is a necessary reality in managing a project. Having a risk assessment and plans for dealing with risks laid out in the planning process will help minimize the impact of known risks, which gives the project team more time to deal with the risks that weren't predicted. Not only do we want our projects to come in on time and under budget, we want the work product to be of high quality so that all the stakeholders are happy with the outcome. Getting back to risk management once again, project managers keep an eye on risk factors to see how they will impact the scope, schedule, or budget. A risk factor that will have minimal impact on our triple constraint isn't as high a priority as a factor that could potentially derail the entire project. Just a reminder about why learning outcomes are important. Every resource in the course can be tied back to one of the learning outcomes, which means that all assessments, including the final exam, are directly linked to the learning outcomes. Once you get to the end of the course, review the learning outcomes and see which ones you feel comfortable with that you know. If there's some that you're not sure about, it's a good idea to go back to the units that cover that outcome and review the material. This will ensure that you have all the knowledge you need to be successful in the exam. So in this unit, we'll look at some definitions and review some concepts based on the learning outcomes. Well, you'll find many more vocabulary words in the study guide. In this review, we're going to concentrate on these few. So keep an ear or eye out for them as they come up. Remember this graphic from the Unit 2 review? As we noted in Unit 3, we're going to be seeing this over and over in the next few units as we look at each of the five processes of the project lifecycle. Initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and closing. So in this unit, we're looking at executing the project. But notice that there's also an arrow that goes back to planning, which means that we are going to go back to the planning stage, either to finish what we hadn't finished before we started the project or to make adjustments to our original plan. One of the most important duties of a project manager is to build an effective team. There's a lot that goes into building a team, finding people with required skills, understanding the goals of the project, building trust and accountability. First, every member of the team must have the skills needed to complete the project. That isn't to say that all team members start at the same time. If there's a skillset that isn't needed until the last quarter of the project, that team member is likely more useful someplace else until his or her skills are needed for the project. So assemble those team members whose skills are needed now or needed throughout the project. Another important element of an effective project management team is that each team member understands what the goals of the project are so they know what will be expected of them as the project develops. The project manager needs to hold each team member accountable for their part of the project. Remember the days of doing group work in high school and how irritating it was when one of the group members didn't put in the same amount of effort as the rest of the group. Project managers don't want that situation to develop on their teams, so they must hold each team member responsible for the work they are expected to do. To create the most effective project management team, it's vitally important to build trust between you and the team members and between the team members. There are a number of strategies a project manager can use to establish trust, and we'll take a look at some of them a bit later. We have talked in previous units about the stakeholders of the project. A stakeholder is anyone who has an interest in the outcome of the project. Team members can certainly be stakeholders. Their advancement within the company may depend on the project outcome. The sponsors of the project or those who initiated the project have a clear stake in the outcome of the project. Vendors who perform work that cannot be performed in-house as well as suppliers who provide the raw materials for the project also have an interest in the outcome of the project, since they would probably like to be paid for their work or the materials and they would like to build on their reputation for future projects. No matter which stakeholder the project manager is managing, using these essential interpersonal skills will lead to a successful project. For articulate and able to persuade stakeholders, we'll help get them on board and willing to help you succeed. Any one of your stakeholders can come to you with a problem and they will likely expect you to have an answer for them right away. Having the answers gives them confidence in you that they can also be successful. Having a good understanding of how things work in your organization will help you see the big picture of where your project falls and who might have influence over it. They can also keep your project moving forward. Building internal and external teams with people who have the necessary skills to complete the project means everyone has a purpose and will work together to accomplish the goal. And of course, recognizing when there's a problem between team members and working toward resolution before it impacts the success of the project. Remember units 3 and 4 where we discussed project documents and project planning? We talked a lot about the project scope. The scope document details exactly what the project will accomplish and what its deliverables will be. Remember when we said we might and likely will revisit the scope document once the project is underway? Has things come up that call for a change to the original scope? Well, here we are. We're executing the project and as we get into the actual tasks involved it's quite likely that some things may need to change. Perhaps the raw materials we thought we could find easily are no longer available. Perhaps the contractors who are going to install lighting in a new facility are having difficulty finding workers. These are pretty major changes to the scope of the project if we need to use different raw materials or if we find we need to provide the human resources to accomplish a task. But changes could also be relatively minor. Maybe the end user decided to change the background image from blue to green. Probably not enough of a scope change to significantly impact the successful completion of the project. Every time some little change is made to the tasks of the project it affects the original idea of the scope and leads to what we call scope creep. It starts out as just a little change and it gets a little bigger. And eventually it gets so much different that it affects our triple constraint. So how do project managers keep scope creep from happening? Most project managers will include a section in the planning documents that detail the process that is to be used to make change requests to the scope of the project. The change needs to be justified in that it is necessary for the project. Remember back in Unit 1 when we learned about the triple constraint, the three areas of project management that need to work together and stay in alignment in order for the project to be successful. We've revisited the triple constraint a number of times since then. And here we are again looking at those three elements. But now we want to consider what happens to the balance between the scope, the schedule and the budget when there's a risk factor. Risk factors have the potential to interfere with the delicate balance of the triple constraint. The more risk, the more unbalanced the triple constraint can be which could lead to project failure. So what can a project manager do to keep risk from derailing their project? There are a number of strategies and plans that a project manager can employ to help manage project risk. The first is to have a risk mitigation plan. That is a plan to reduce as much as possible the impact of known risks. When we were talking about the various planning documents in Unit 4, one of the plans was risk management. The project manager, the team and the stakeholders brainstorm any possible risks that may impact the project. With enough experience, most project managers have a good idea of what sorts of risks could happen. Once the team has a list of potential risks, they develop contingency plans for what they will do should the risk factor occur. They would also develop a contingency plan for unexpected risks. No matter how good a project manager and their team is, they may not be able to think of everything that could possibly happen. So they build in a contingency plan. For example, there's a possibility that the cost of the project will end up being more than originally planned. A project manager could have a contingency fund set up that will help cover the cost of unexpected changes. The project management team will also develop a risk assessment chart. They will gather the risk factors, those things that could happen to impact the scope budget or schedule of the project, and determine what its likely impact will be on the project. Those risks that are designated as high impact will be the ones the team will work to create a contingency plan for and put processes in place to mitigate that risk as much as possible. If there's still time or money available, they'll do the same for the low impact risk factors. The idea is to concentrate on those risks that can make an impact big enough to lead to the failure of the project. All of this information, mitigation plans, contingency plans, and assessment charts are all saved in a risk register. It's a one-stop shop for the project management team to keep track of risks, add to the list if necessary, and understand at which point in the project an identified risk is no longer a factor. A risk register is a tool for managing the risk of a project. We've talked about the elements of the triple constraint before. Many project managers consider quality to be another equally important element leading to the success of a project. It won't make much difference if the project comes in under budget meets its deadline and matches the scope of the project if the result of the product isn't high quality. The team will often conduct quality control analyses to make sure the product they are working on meets specifications for quality. They can use a variety of tools to help them gather and analyze quality data, including checks, histograms, run charts, control charts, and Pareto charts. All are designed to visually show a pattern of quality. In this unit, we looked closely at the execution phase of the project lifecycle by learning about creating effective teams, managing those teams, managing changes, managing risks, and analyzing the quality of the project delivered. Unit 6 will look more closely at the monitoring and controlling phase of the project lifecycle.