Identify the Project Needs

Thanks to Intel’s Gordon Moore, it is a common belief that the processor chip speed of technology doubles every 18 months. This law has spread to practically all areas of technology, which, in turn, means the role of an IT project manager can be expected to change just as rapidly. IT project managers everywhere struggle with keeping teams, budgets, and goals focused. IT project management becomes even more tedious when you consider the economy, the instantaneous expectations of stockholders and management, the constant turmoil in the IT industry, and the flux of each team member’s commitment to their own career.

According to the Standish Group, a respected IT industry analysis and research firm, IT project management is getting better, but still out of control. Consider these statistics from their 2004 version of the CHAOS report:

Project Attribute	1994 Statistics	2004 Statistics
Cancelled before completion	31 percent	23 percent
Missed deadline, over budget, or both	88 percent	51 percent
Average cost overrun	189 percent	45 percent
Schedule overrun	222 percent	63 percent

While this news is encouraging, it’s still far from success. Some would argue that these tighter values put more requirements on the project manager because they have less “wiggle room” on their projects than just a few years ago. You could also make the argument, however, that the education, expertise, and granular approach to project management provides more successful projects than ever before.

Still, there’s that 23 percent of project cancellations and the 51 percent of projects that are late, over budget, or both. How can this be? Why do so many projects fail from the start? Projects fail for many different reasons: other projects take precedence, team members lose sight of the purpose of the project, and project managers try to do the work rather than lead the team, among others. At the root is a fundamental problem: vision. Vision, in project management terms, is the ability to clearly see the intangible and recognize the actions required to get there. One of your jobs is to develop, nurse, and transfer the vision to everyone on your team. The project manager, however, cannot have a clear vision of the project if the project needs are never clearly established.

Creating Reasonable Expectations

Once you’ve discovered your vision, create a goal. A goal should be a clearly stated fact, for example, “The new database will be installed and functional by December 6 of next year.” A goal sums up the project plan in a positive, direct style. Every member of your team should know and pursue the goal. It’s not all up to you. The goal establishes the direct need and purpose for undertaking the project.

When creating a goal for your project, be reasonable. Just like it would be foolish for a fat man to say, “I’m going to lose sixty pounds this month,” it would be as unreasonable for you to create an impossible goal.

A logical goal is not just an idea, a guesstimate, or some dreamy date to be determined. A goal is actually the end result of a lot of hard work. Each IT project will, of course, have different attributes that determine each goal. Let’s say, for example, that your company is going to be migrating your servers and desktops to the latest and greatest operating system.

With this scenario, certain questions would have to be answered to determine the ultimate goal: Is the hardware adequate for the new OS? Will the applications work with the new OS? Will the team have adequate time to be trained and experiment with the new OS? These questions will help you create the end date for the goal.

Creating the Project Charter

Once you’ve determined the business needs for the project, it’s time to create a project charter. A project charter is similar to the goal, but more official, more detailed, and in line with your company’s vision and goals. Obviously, a project can stem from a broad, general description of an IT implementation. A goal narrows the description and sets a deadline. A project charter formalizes the goal and serves as a map to the destination. Above all, however, a project charter formally authorizes the project.

Not only does a charter clearly define the project, its attributes, and its end results, it also identifies the project authorities. The project authorities are usually the project sponsor, the project manager, and the team leaders (if necessary), and the charter specifies the role and contact information for each. See Figure 1-6 for the evolution of a project charter.

Figure 1-6: The project manager must lead the process to create a project charter.

Why do you need a project charter? Why not just hop right in and get to work? In a small company, plowing right into the project may turn out just fine. However, in most companies, including smaller ones, a project charter is the foundation for success. Consider what the charter accomplishes:

Authorizes the project
Defines the business need in full
Identifies the sponsor of the project
Identifies the project manager
Makes the project manager accountable for the project
Assigns authority to the project manager on behalf of the project sponsor

Project Charter Elements

When you create the project charter, you can include just about any information on the project that you’d like. Generally though, consider these elements:

Official project name

Project sponsor and contact information

Project manager and contact information

Purpose of the project

Business case for the project (reasons why the project needs to happen)

High-level results and deliverables of the project

General statement about how the team will approach the work

Basic timeline of when the work will be implemented (A more detailed timeline will exist in the project plan.)

Project resources, budget, staff, and vendors

Every project needs a charter. It authorizes the project, creates a sense of responsibility for the project manager, a sense of ownership for the sponsor, and a sense of teamwork for the project team. The project charter will save you headaches, establish who’s in charge, and move you to your goal more quickly and with more confidence.

Following is an example charter, based on a fictional company called Best Enterprises. The company’s network currently consists of 380 computers running Windows NT, 11 Windows NT 4.0 servers, and 5 Novell NetWare servers. It has made a decision to move all the workstations to Windows XP and all the servers, including the NetWare servers, to Windows 2003 Server.

Sample Project Charter

Project: Operating system upgrade: XP and 2003 serversProject Sponsor: Sharon Brenley, Chief Information Officer (x. 233)Project Manager: Michael Sheron, Network Administrator (x. 234)Project Team: Edward Bass, Ann Beringer, Brad Bobich, Carol Fox, Charlotte Harving, Don Khunle, Casey Murray, Mick Suskovich, Mark Turner, Stephen Utmeyer

Project Purpose All desktops will be upgraded to Windows XP by December 3, 2005. All servers will be upgraded and moved to five Windows 2003 Servers by December 20 of the following year.

Business Case Windows NT has served our company for the past five years. We’ve learned to love it, embrace it, and grow with it. However, it’s time to let it go. We’ll be embracing a new technology from Microsoft, similar to Windows NT, but far superior: Windows XP. Windows XP will allow us all to be more productive, more mobile, more secure, and more at ease.

In addition, there are new technologies that work excellently with XP, such as infrared networking for our manufacturing shop floors and new accounting software that will be implemented later this year.

Of course, our company will continue to embrace our web presence and the business we’ve earned there. XP will allow us to follow that mindset and create greater opportunities for us all.

As our company has experienced over the past year, our servers are growing old, slow, and outdated. We’ll be replacing the servers with six new multiprocessor servers loaded with RAM, redundant drives, and faster, reliable tape arrays—which means faster, reliable, more productive work for us all. The operating system we’ll be implementing for all of our servers will be Windows 2003.

Windows 2003 will allow our users to find resources faster, keep our network up longer, and provide ever-increasing security.

Project Results

Windows XP on every desktop and portable computer
Windows 2003 Server installed on six new servers
All implementation complete by December 20 of the following year

Basic Timeline

September Test deployment methods, capture user and application status, finalize deployment image, and create scripts.
October Initial deployment of 100-user pilot group. Test, document, and resolve issues. Redeploy 100-user pilot group with updated images and scripts. Begin Windows 2003 Server testing and design.
November Begin month-long four-hour training sessions. While participants are in class, XP will be deployed to their desktops. Troubleshoot and floor support in coordination with Jamie Bryer, Help Desk Manager. Continue to test Windows 2003 Servers. Three Windows 2003 Servers will go live on November 15.
December Finish deployment of XP. Install new 2003 servers and create infrastructure. Convert each existing server to Windows 2003. Project completed December 20 of the following year.

Project Resources

Budget: $275,000 (includes XP, 2003 server, client access licenses, consultants, training)

Test lab reserved for four-month duration

On-site consultant from Donaldson Education

Your project charter can include as much or as little information as you deem necessary. Project charters are often shared with the entire company (with the exception of the budget) so you may have a few revisions before the charter is complete. Sharing a project charter with the entire organization, especially one that will affect all users as in the sample charter, can get everyone involved, excited, and aware of coming changes. A project charter also creates a sense of responsibility for all involved.

Your project team members will get distracted, pulled in different directions, and lose interest. Vacations pop up, kids get sick, people quit. Realize at the onset that not everyone will be as dedicated to your project as you are. Do your best to inspire, motivate, and lead. Set aside politics, egos, and aspirations and work toward the goal.

Finally, keep in mind that a charter can be called different things in different organizations and that the level of detail can vary depending on the company or the project being created. Most charters, however, accomplish two primary things: authorizing the project work and defining the project work.

Finding the Completion Date

There’s a cartoon that’s probably posted in every auto mechanic’s garage. In the cartoon, there’s a bunch of people rolling around laughing uncontrollably. Above all this mayhem is the caption, “You want it when?” Of course, as an IT project manager, you can’t take that same approach, but a reasonable deadline has to be enforced.

A firm end date accomplishes a few things:

Creates a sense of responsibility toward the project
Gives the team something to work toward
Signifies a commitment from sponsors, team members, and the project manager
Confirms that this project will end

How do you find the completion date for a project and how do you know if it’s reasonable? The magic end date is based on facts, research, and planning. In upcoming chapters, you’ll get a more detailed look at project end dates and how you establish them. For now, know that projects are a sequence of steps, and each step will take time. The completion of each step will predict when a project should end.

Some project managers create a flexible deadline. Don’t do it. If you allow yourself a deadline that is not firm, you’ll take advantage of it. And so will your team, your sponsor, and your management. Set a deadline based on an informed opinion, and then stick with it. The charts in Figure 1-7 demonstrate how a missed completion date is bad for the project, the company, and morale.

Figure 1-7: If a project stays on schedule, so will the budget and the morale.

A rule of economics that affects scheduling is “Parkinson’s Law.” Parkinson’s Law states that work will expand to fill the time allotted to it. In other words, if you give yourself extra time to complete a project, the project will magically fill the extra time. A firm deadline gives the project manager and the project team a definite date to work toward.

Some projects have a self-contained deadline. Remember the Y2K scare? With the year 2000 rolling in like a summer storm, every programmer and company found a way to make the deadline because it wasn’t moveable.

Other factors can have impact on your projected deadline:

Business cycles Does your project deadline coincide with busy times of the year? Think of a retail giant. How willing do you think it would be to overhaul the database that handles shipping and store management around December?
Financial situations A company may be more (or less) willing to invest in new hardware or software at a particular time of the year due to taxes, fiscal year ending, or the advent of a new budget. You’ve got to consider these factors when you request finances for your project.
Times of the year When will your team members take vacation? How will their vacation plans coincide with your deadline? What other internal time commitments do they have? Will they be traveling to other sites? These factors can delay a project for weeks and months—ultimately resulting in a missed deadline. Work with your team members to ensure their availability coincides with their responsibilities within the project plan.

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Identify the Project Needs