To build a high-performance project team, a positive team environment is required.
Ground rules that describe the work patterns and values of the team.
This is important to the team members what to do and how to work in the group.
A team identity built on commitment to a shared goal.
It is tough to unit each individual's mind together. So communicate the goal with group members and have them involved in defining and planning the project will stronger their sense of ownership for the project.
Always have goals appeared in any time will enhance the memory and keep the goals in mind.
Get to know group members and show respect and trust to them will tighten the relationship of each member.
The ability to listen.
Listen to others opinion is a way to show respect. Meanwhile, you watch and learn from someone else' idea or experience.
The ability to effectively manage meetings.
A meeting says anything, it is a beginning, and also a finish. It demonstrated all the characteristics of a high-performance team and produce a result that is beyond what any team members working individually could achieve.
Chapter 11: Clear Communication
Communication is the foundation of relationships. A person with good communication often time has a good relationship with others, and it applies to any situation: in a family, in a working field, friendship...It is not just vital but also essential skill everyone should learn.
As a project manager, strong communication skills will make the project achieve the goal easier and maybe sooner. Project tam members have clear message what they are doing and what their responsibility is. Regular meeting setup will keep team members on track and ensure that all the details are discussed. This is also a way to increase team cohesion since a status meeting is the only time the entire team gathers together and share information and solutions.
A project contains three elements: cost, schedule, and quality, each one is equally important to another. How to balance between each of them is a skill that a PM needs to learn.
A number of ways of balancing the project at the project level:
Reestimate the project.
Change task assignments to take advantage of schedule float.
Add people to the project.
Increase productivity by using experts from within the firm.
Increase productivity by using experts from outside the firm.
Outsourcing the entire project or a significant portion of it.
Crashing the schedule.
Working overtime
For me, I will rather working overtime than adding more people to the project. The same people working on the same project have more understanding both to the project and each other. There are fewer distractions in the workplace. Unless the new people are familiar with the project, it will end up wasting more time on training and practicing, it is not an efficiency way to make the project better.
I will avoid outsourcing the entire project or a significant portion of it. Every project is different from each other, and there is always something can be learned from. Time-wise this might be a way to solve the problem temporary, but for long-term, it might damage the company's capacity and image.
In this chapter, the term "resources" means the people, equipment, and raw materials that go into the project. The cost of a project needs to be clearly listed out at the beginning in order to control the project from over spending. If the cost estimates approximately accurate to what a project really needs, the work would go smoothly and complete on time.
Gantt charts and time-scaled networks are two useful tools to calculating the schedule of the work. The chart shows clearly the work breakdown and the schedule of each work. Participants are able to follow the process without being lost. Chapter 8
Make the estimate more accurately, estimator must be experienced with the work. We learned that risk can be reduced by learning from the past. Even though every project is not exactly the same to one another, experienced estimator can make better estimate based on past performance data.
There are several estimating methods.
Apportioning. This method is to begin with a total project estimate, then assigns a percentage to each of the phases and tasks of the project. This technique is usually used in conjunction with phased estimating.
Parametric estimates. This method is to use a basic unit of work, and then multiple the size to the entire project. This is usually based on historical data, and the estimator must develop a solid parametric formula.
Bottom-up estimating. This one estimate from the detailed tasks and roll-up. It is the most accurate than other methods, however, it takes most effort and time.
Everything that has not been happened contains risk. How do we prevent the risk from happening?
First step is to identify the risks. There are several ways to get information, ask stakeholders or learn from the past. It is true that the project may be varied by different stakeholders involved, however, the past project is certainly able to give some ideas for present not to repeat the same mistake.
Second step is to analyze and prioritize the risks. Once the risk is defined, we need to figure out the consequence of the risks in terms of cost, schedule and possible damage to the project. Ex. If the possibility of raining tomorrow is 50%, it might be traffic due to the rain, and I might be stuck on the traffic and might be late for work.
The third step is to develop response plans. If we know the risk might happen, and we know the consequence of the risk, we now have to do the response plan. Ex. If it is raining tomorrow, it will be traffic. In order not to stuck in the traffic and late for work, I will leave from home earlier, or go another way that might be less traffic.
Chapter 6
Work breakdown structure. (WBS) It is a technique to break down a project into small pieces for better executing and managing. Before the WBS, we need to identify all the tasks in a project. Once the WBS made, every participants will know his or her role and focus on it. So, how to make a good WBS is really important.
Getting started on a work breakdown structure is always the hardest part. Sometimes the beginning doesn't plan well may effect the following steps.
There is a key concept I see it is really important: planning for quality. A famous example that just happened lately is Toyota vehicle recall. Either short-term impact on stock prices or long term impact on fixing customer opinions and damage to brand equity, it is uncountable for the quality mistake.
Before a project starts to run, there are several items need to be confirmed. The first one is that all parties need to agree on the goals of the project. There is a guideline for participants to follow in order not to get the project out of control, and it has to be written down to prove that the project gets agreement. A success project means that it meets stakeholder expectations.
The second one is controlled scope. Before a project begins, we have no idea how much it will cost or how much ingredients will be needed. We can only predict and make an estimate quantity statement, but our prediction may go wrong sometimes. To avoid project overruns,the project rules should be made carefully. I have a personal experience would like to share. There was one time I got a chance to design an identity system for the customer. I have no experience working as a freelancer at that time, so there was no contract signing idea in my mind. The project didn't go well because the customer keep asking for revising. I was really upset because I spent all my time just to change little of this and change little of that. It was like they can do whatever they want because there is no rule and no limit. From this bad experience I have learned that a project should make certain guidelines for stakeholders to follow and be written down. The project will turn out more productive.
The third one is management support. This is what I mentioned earlier about project rules being written. This is to make sure that every stakeholder understand the project and agree to the guideline.
In chapter 3, the most important point is to identify who are our stakeholders. The reason is that stakeholders has direct or indirect stake in an organization, and they may significantly influence the success of an activity or a project. If a business organization want to success on a project, identifying stakeholders is a primary task.
So, the question is " Who are our stakeholders?" The chapter listed out stakeholder roles by different perspectives. They can have positive or negative views regarding a given project. The point I have learned here is that the more disagreement those stakeholders have with one another, the more difficulty the project may be done with. Therefore, knowing the key stakeholders and also win their cooperation is the most challenge.
Each stakeholder is important to the project, and the customer is the most unpredictable and hard to deal with for me. In my job, I sometimes have to deal with customers when they are unsatisfied with my work. Maybe I am more professional than the customer in my field, but I am in no position to argue with them but follow their desires, because they are the one paying for it, and my salary is actually indirectly from them. If the customer doesn't satisfy with the project, then the project directly fails no matter how good the manager or project team think. The customer holds the final decision on if the project success or not.So, how to get an agreement between an organization and the customer is a skill we need to learn.
I totally agree with the point of "Team members who understand project management make the entire project run smoother. They make the project manager more effective because they make better estimates, identify risks, and participate in planning and problem solving." As I mentioned before, I am working at a start-up Chinese newspaper firm which is having no more than 10 employees. The team is small, even though we performs our duties differently, we are required to participate meetings and have a free say to the project. I think it's smart to have all us understand the project and involved in planning, because participation will make us more responsible to the project. Once we have sense of ownership, we are willing to pay extra effort to make the project achieve the goal. Let employee feel themselves important to the project is a key!!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On the chapter 1, it mentions that every technique in the book is a communication technique, designed to improve the formal and informal ways we communicate critical project information.
We are individual person who grow in different environment, so even though we receive the same message, we might come out different thought. I was watching the movie "up in the air" the other day and totally saw that communication is important theory. To lay off people is difficult, but to tell the person who gets laid off is even tougher. How to make the person feel not so bad truly needs some communication skill, and I think that skill applies to everything.
Caketail Music Café (CMC) is a start-up bakery and coffee retail plan to establish in Palo Alto, California. CMC expects to catch the interest of regular loyal customer base with its broad variety of coffee and pastry products. The company plans to build a strong market position in the city, due to the partners' experience and mild competitive climate in the area.
CMC aims to offer its products at a moderate price to meet the demand of the middle-to higher-income local market area residents and college/ university students.
CMC will also introduce the ‘Sports and Music’ elements as the connection between human. These two elements allow human to get together, express themselves and improve social interaction.
CMC is equally owned and managed by its two partners.
Miss Cherri Chiang has extensive experience in bakery & beverage, sales and marketing.She has 5 years of experience in food industry (Restaurant/ Bakery & beverage) in Europe, US and Taiwan
Mr. Edmond Low brings experience in the area of operation, management and administration with 8 years of experience in food industry (Bakery/ Banquet/ fast food chain) in US, Malaysia, Australia and Thailand.
CMC offers a broad range of coffee and espresso products, all from high quality Brazil grown imported coffee beans by providing each customer coffee and espresso products made to suit the customer, down to the smallest detail. CMC also offer others non-caffeine/ alchoholic beverage products.
The bakery will provides freshly prepared bakery and pastry products at all times. CMC will be introducing the main and new product of “Caketail” that expect to be the all time favorite for it consumer.
Vision
CMC will be the hub of entertainment for 58,598 Palo Alto populations. It will soon attract customers around Bay area (with approximately 7.4 million people).
Mission
CMC aims to offer high quality coffee, espresso, and pastry products at a competitive price.
CMC will create an atmosphere conducive to creative expression and promote the creative process.
CMC is the inspiration of the current social life around the world especially those that live in the urban metropolitan life. People will get together with their friends and families to watch a game or to listen to music. CMC will also be the focal point for businessman to meet up and create business opportunity for Palo Alto city.
Goals
Our primary goals over the 1st year are:
1. Secure financing for start-up of at least $100,000 for space and equipment.
2. Locate the strategic space in Palo Alto.
3. Acquire equipment necessary for business, i.e. coffee pots, cappuccino machines, blenders, etc.
4. Make agreement with Brazil coffee distributors, and bakery vendors.
5. Create a cozy, artist friendly environment that suits CMC concept(i.e. choice of colors, choice of music, decor)
6. Open for business and aims to be listed among the top 10 hub of entertainment in Palo Alto by first half year of operation (within 6 months)
7. Break even by the fourth month of its operation as it steadily increases and achieve sales of $1.04 Million in Year 1.
CMC SMART goals analysis
With the Vision, Mission and goals statement above, it is crystal clear that CMC defined the specific plan to success with the aim to be the hub of entertainment and high quality products offered as we understand the business needs and nature well with all the market segmentation and analysis done.
We have also clearly stated the primary goal is to secure the start up cost for space and equipment purchasing.
Also, CMC target sales of ~$1million by end of Year 1 of operation with expected break even by 4th month of operation is measurable.
CMC partnership of Cherri Chiang and Edmond Low co-operate and agree to set the following humble yet realistic goals with their background of MBA knowledge and experience in food industry globally.
With the network established, we will be able to secure high quality raw material and supplies to support the business needs.
A year of prep and timeframe is reasonable for CMC to establish themselves as one of the most frequent café and entertainment spot in Palo Alto.
I am Pei-Jung Chiang. In school my major was graphic design and I thought I would always in this field untill taking MBA program. I still keep my passion on art and design, but I have more interests in business right now since it teaches me how to make more money. (don't know if it's true yet...we'll see :))
I am now working in a start-up Chinese newspaper company as an art editor. Since it is a start-up, almost everyone is required to participate in each project. I like it personally because that makes me learn more by intergrate with each other. Project management has became so important to us because the news update every moment and we need to generate it before releasing to the public. So, if we don't have good management, the project will be affected immediately.
So does other business, project management plays an important role of making good product or not. I guess I will have to learn the knowledge if I get a chance to own a business.
What I expect to learn? Well, I would say everything since it's a new field to me. Looking forward to learning something new!!
