Category: Project Management

Portfolio – Project Selection and Prioritisation

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Portfolio – Project Selection and Prioritisation

As Portfolio / Program Manager, you will have lot of projects in your project backlog. As an effective Portfolio/Program Manager, you should prioritise the right project and select it for further planning and execution.

You need to prioritise projects by scoring/ranking projects on different prioritisation criteria. Some of prioritisation criterias that I recommend portfolio/program managers to prioritise projects are listed below :

  1. Strategic Alignment – You need to see if your projects is aligned to your organisation/department strategic goals and score it accordingly
  2. Financial Criteria – You need to see your projects ROI , Savings and Cost vs Benefit. Based on this , you can score the projects
  3. Risk Criteria – You need to also check how much risk is involved.

You can give different weightage and score for each of the above criteria and then prioritise your projects based on final scores.

This exercise will help convert your project list to prioritised project list. You can start planning and executing projects based on projects ranking in prioritised project list

Also, it is important to revisit the prioritised project backlog on monthly or quarterly basis to make sure you are working right projects which are high value to your organisation at that point of time

Author : Santosh Kumar Singh – Program & Product Management Professional

Project Management Questions

Question 1.
What are number of communication channels possible in a project with Team size of 8

Answer 1 .
If n is the number of people in project, then there are n(n-1)/2 communication channels in the project
Hence Answer is 8(8-1)/2 = 28

Question 2.
What is Parametric estimating ?

Answer 2.
Parametric estimating is the process of using historical data to compare against your project to determine a correlation and thereby a cost estimate for your current project

Question 3.
What is output of Plan Quality process ?

Answer 3.
Outputs of Plan Quality process includes :

  1. Quality Management Plan
  2. Quality Metrics
  3. Quality Checklists
  4. Process Improvement Plan
  5. Project Document Updates

Project Management : What is Fishbone diagram or Ishikawa diagram or Cause and effect diagram ?

 Fishbone diagram or Ishikawa diagram or Cause and effect diagram

Fishbone diagram or Ishikawa diagram or Cause and effect diagram are used to show causes of specific event. It is used for quality defect prevention and product design. Fishbone diagram illustrates how various factors lead to potential problem. Root cause is obtained by asking how and why along the lines.

The common cause categories in Fishbone diagrams are :

  1. Time
  2. Machine
  3. Method
  4. Material
  5. Energy
  6. Measurement
  7. Personnel
  8. Environment

So purpose of Fishbone diagram or Ishikawa diagram or Cause and effect diagram :

To break down (in successive layers of detail) root causes that potentially contribute to a particular effect

The fishbone diagram is expanded by brainstroming.

Below is a sample Fishbone diagram or Ishikawa diagram or Cause and effect diagram  :

Fishbone diagram or Ishikawa diagram or Cause and effect diagram
Fishbone diagram or Ishikawa diagram or Cause and effect diagram

Project Management : What is Pareto Chart ?

Pareto Chart

Pareto Chart is also known as Pareto Diagram. Pareto Chart is type of chart that contains bars and a single line. Individual values are represented by bars and cummulative total is shown by line. The left vertical axis is frequency of occurrence and right vertical axis is cummulative percentage of occurrences. The horizontal axis contains reason of occurences.

Pareto chart shows how many defects were created by category or type of identified causes. Then rank the causes based on number of defects caused. The project team should address the causes based on greatest number of defects.

Pareto chart or Pareto diagram also tries to highlight Pareto’s law i.e. small number of causes produces majority number of defects. This is known as 80/20 principle i.e 80% of problems are due to 20% of the causes.

Pareto Chart
Pareto Chart

  

What are project management processes in Planning Process Group ?

Project management processes in Planning Process Group

As per PMBOK guide , project management processes in Planning Process Group are listed below  :

  1. Develop Project Management Plan

  2. Collect Requirements

  3. Define Scope

  4. Create WBS

  5. Define Activities

  6. Sequence Activities

  7. Estimate Activity Resources

  8. Estimate Activity Duration

  9. Develop Schedule

  10. Estimate Cost

  11. Determine Budget

  12. Plan Quality

  13. Develop Human Resource Plan

  14. Plan Communications

  15. Plan Risk Management

  16. Identify Risks

  17. Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis

  18. Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis

  19. Plan Risk Responses

  20. Plan Procurements

What is Identify Stakeholders – project management process ?

Identify Stakeholders is project management process in Initiating Process Group. It is used to identify all people or organizations impacted by project. It also involves documenting information related to involvement , interest and impact on project success.

Inputs for Identify Stakeholders are  :

  1. Project Charter
  2. Procurement documents
  3. Enterprise environmental factors
  4. Organizational process assets

Outputs for Identify Stakeholders are  :

  1. Stakeholder register
  2. Stakeholder management strategy

What is Define Project Charter – project management process ?

Define Project Charter

Define Project Charter is a project management process in Initiating Process Group . Define Project Charter is process for developing a document which authorizes a project or phase. It also has initial requirements which meets stakeholder’s needs and expectations.

Inputs for Define Project Charter are below  :

Project Statement of Work
Business Case
Contract
Enterprise Environmental Factors
Organizational Process Assets

Output for Define Project Charter is Project Charter

Earned Value Management ( EVM ) – Important Terms , Definitions and Formulas

Earned Value Management ( EVM ) – Important Terms , Definitions and Formulas

1. Budget at completion (BAC) – The total authorized budget for the project.

2. Planned value (PV) – The budgeted amounts assigned to work planned to have been  completed.

   Formula : PV = BAC × (time passed ÷ total schedule time)

3. Earned value (EV) – The value of completed work, expressed in terms of the budget assigned to that work.

    Formula : EV = BAC × (work completed ÷ total work required)

4. Schedule variance (SV) – The difference between earned value and planned value. This value indicates whether  project work is proceeding as planned in the schedule.

   Formula : SV = EV – PV

5. Cost variance (CV) – The difference between earned value and actual costs.

   Formula : CV = EV – AC

6. Schedule performance index (SPI) – The ratio between earned value and planned value, which represents schedule performance. An SPI of one indicates the project is on schedule. A value greater than one indicates it is ahead of schedule, and a value less than one indicates it is behind schedule.

 Formula : SPI = EV ÷ PV


7. Cost performance index (CPI) – The ratio between earned value and actual costs, which represents cost performance. A CPI value greater than one indicates better performance than expected, whereas a value less than one indicates poor performance.

 Formula : CPI = EV ÷ AC