User talk:Kobesam

Project Management for Offices

Doing projects for offices is perhaps one of the most underestimated project management job simply because most people thought anyone can do it. I mean, what can be complex in building a place to work compared to lets say building a production line in a manufacturing plant. I had the privilege to work for years in both cases and I am one that would say that managing office projects could even be more challenging to a trained engineer like myself because of the disproportionate amount of time spent on driving convergence to a common plan because of the amount of people that had a say about the project. And since most people thought their idea should be as good as the others, this makes office project management rather complicated.

But take heart, as I found out that the same discipline and tools that make a factory project successful are fundamentally the same with managing a project for offices. The same discipline of cost control, schedule management, quality control and even communications proved to be the same critical factors that spell success or misses in office projects. As such, goal of this webpage was to present tools and practices that I have found very effective for any office project management practitioner to learn if he/she wants to make it in this field. I invite you to take part and even share your own learnings as we we build this branch of learning virtually across the globe. There are too many pitfalls stemming from inexperience and wrong perception of the work that we could potentially minimize if practitioners could only learn at least the basics from more experienced project managers like us. Lets press on then!

Setting up your Project Management Work Model

Perhaps the most important initial step one has to establish in running a project is deciding the work process model that would be followed throughtout the duration of the project. This is absolutely necessary not only in keeping the project work consistent and integrated, but will also be indispensable in keeping the entire project team cohesive and following the same pattern of work. One of the major pitfalls of project especially at early stage is the failure to define the work process and communicating it to rest of the project team. Project teams are composed of individuals with different talents and viewpoints so it should be incumbent on part of the project manager that each understands how they will be working together as a team aimed at a common objective.

Different groups or communities of practitioners have different way of naming the phases of the project management cycle but they should be similar to the following 5-phase model:

Study Phase

Conceptual Phase

Planning Phase

Execution Phase

Turn-over and Close-out Phase