Project Management Companion

A PERT can assist in taking control of deadlines and project tasks, PERT is an acronym that stands for  P rogram  E valuation and  R eview  T echnique. It’s a statistical tool that can be very useful when working on a project, as it analyses and represents the project’s tasks. A PERT chart is a tool that can help project managers schedule, organize and coordinate tasks in their projects. It’s a graphic representation of the timeline of a project, which gives project managers the tools they need to breakdown each of the project’s tasks for analysis. There are milestones for the project indicated on the PERT chart by triangles. Circles represent the individual tasks and are connected by lines to show the duration of that task from start to finish, call nodes. The PERT chart is used by project managers to estimate the minimum amount of time that will be needed to close a project. This is done by examining the breakdown of the project and the connections there are between task

Capacity planning is an issue of supply and demand, which has the ability to derail a project .  It is a process that balances the available hours of teams against what the project needs. Capacity in this case is the most work that can be done over a certain timeframe. It’s a bit of a juggling act that has to keep several balls in the air, such as the availability of the team, the money in the budget for those hours and what is demanded by the client, stakeholder or customer. Capacity and planning obviously go hand-in-glove. Planning is how one schedules the hours of the team members so that the work gets done in time. The first questions to address when planning for capacity within an organization is whether or not there is sufficient capacity, or the resources, to do the work. Regardless of the situation, there will be a lack of understanding unless there is a way to measure and track resources, such as a  resource management tool . Only then can an educated decision on capa

Once stakeholders have approved the project plan, the execution phase begins. At this point, project monitoring, tracking and reporting become the core responsibilities of project manager. But everyone on the team must also be aware of monitoring and tracking, so if issues arise, they are addressed. Project reporting documents show how things are progressing. Effective  project reporting  requires clear, simple and concise communication. This communication flows in two directions. Not only top-down, from project sponsors and external stakeholders to team members, but also in the opposite direction. Many types of project reports are created during the execution phase in order to track the progress of a project.  Project status reports  act not only as important communication tools during project execution but also as important historical documents that inform the development of future projects. This makes estimating the scope of future projects less of a shot-in-the-dark, and