PROJECT MANAGEMENT LESSON LEARNED

PROJECT MANAGEMENT LESSON LEARNED

I learned it’s not a crime to ask for more time, even if it’s the first time you asked for that; that a selection of interests and skills can be framed as a legitimate proposal with the proper management of time, cost and quality factors; deliverables and project scope are intended to be flexible and match the needs of the stakeholders; the project lifecycle is meant to introduce component structural elements to the project; that the project justification defines the purpose; that managing time, cost and quality are interactive, interdependent and are the artful practice of “juggling”; that minimizing assumptions and constraints lends a greater chance of project acceptance; that stakeholders need to agree to work and cooperate together and that their familiarity is essential to consolidate credibility; that managing scope creep is a constant companion to reinforcing, defending and adjusting scope to ever changing circumstances requires prudence; that the WBS is not a sequenced chain of events but an ever evolving set of necessary actions; that the activity schedule can never match projected to actual results but is a useful method of monitoring progress and quality; that costs and resources are absolute measures of reward and benefit for whether or not benefits may outweigh costs or costs may outweigh resources which requires essential budgetary estimates to be useful; that quality planning in advance will minimize rework, and revision; that poor communications will sink a project perhaps before it is even started; that there are no miracles in terms of resources and that exceeding project cost estimates will over consume resources and require rework, reduction of scope or loss of quality; that project risks need to be anticipated so that a possible response may be found under surprising conditions although not all risks can be planned for; that monitoring and control allow for adjustments and tailoring of the plan to be consistently applied as its iterative nature requires iterative adjustments to time, cost and quality management; that project handover and evaluation provides an opportunity for feedback, review, and adjustments made for future planning projects. Finally, I learned to accept that the task at hand was possible and could be completed which is a real accomplishment and that beer tastes better after hard work like this and that I could not have done it without your help.