Читать книгу Project Management For Dummies - Stanley E. Portny - Страница 34

The short-term pressures of your job as a project manager may tempt you to act today in ways that cause you, your team, or your organization to pay a price tomorrow. Especially with smaller, less formal projects, you may feel no need for organized planning and control.

Don’t be seduced into the following, seemingly easier shortcuts:

 Jumping directly from starting the project to carrying out the work: You have an idea and your project is on a short schedule. Why not just start doing the work? Sounds good, but you haven’t defined the work to be done!Other variations on this shortcut include the following:“This project’s been done many times before, so why do I have to plan it out again?” Even though projects can be similar to past ones, some elements are always different. Perhaps you’re working with some new people, using a new piece of equipment, and so on. Take a moment now to be sure your plan addresses the current situation.“Our project’s different than it was before, so what good is trying to plan?” Taking this attitude is like saying you’re traveling in an unknown area, so why try to lay out your route on a roadmap? Planning for a new project is important because no one’s taken this particular path before. Although your initial plan may have to be revised during the project, you and your team need to have a clear statement of your intended plan from the outset.

 Failing to prepare in the carrying-out-the-work phase: Time pressure is often the apparent justification for this shortcut. However, the real reason is that people don’t appreciate the need to define procedures and relationships before jumping into the actual project work. See Chapter 13 for a discussion of why this preparation step is so important — and get tips on how to complete it.

 Jumping right into the work when you join the project in the carrying-out-the-work phase: The plan has already been developed, so why go back and revisit the starting-the-project and the organizing-and-preparing phases? You need to do so for two reasons:To identify any issues that may have overlooked by those who developed it.To understand the reasoning behind the plan and decide whether you feel the plan is achievable.

 Only partially completing the closing phase: At the end of one project, you often move right on to the next. Scarce resources and short deadlines encourage this rapid movement, and starting a new project is always more challenging than wrapping up an old one.However, you never really know how successful your project is if you don’t take the time to ensure that all tasks are complete and that you’ve satisfied your clients. If you don’t take positive steps to apply the lessons this project has taught you, you’re likely to make the same mistakes you made in this project again or fail to repeat this project’s successful approaches.