3 Keys to Simplify Project Management
Project Management can seem overwhelming, especially what tool to use and when. The MPM (Manager Project Mastery) model is a view all of the Project Items essential to delivering a successful project, and also a model of how to successfully manage a project on a daily and weekly basis.
Sure, there are some great web tools now for creating, sharing, and managing your project. But if you build your project incorrectly in the tool, or create an ineffective plan, no tool, however sexy, shiny, or new is going to help you get your project done or inspire your team.
Project Management Strategies and Tools can be Overwhelming
You still have to lead the team. You still have to control what the project creates and how it spends money. And you still have to manage and adjust the plan.
You need some simple strategies and tools and that starts with a simple model for how to view Project Management.
Key 2: Project Management – Start with the Foundations
As a manager, managing a project on the side is just one of your jobs. So, you have to figure out how to simplify it, make it easier to do, have it use less of your time, all while still allowing you to deliver the excellence expected of you and you expect of yourself?
Simple PM Strategies created a model to help you understand how all of the pieces fit together, how and when to use them, and hopefully in a format that makes the pieces easier to remember.
Start with Foundational Questions
The model starts with the foundational questions. You know, those ones you learned all through school (and maybe began to detest) that you start with whenever there is something important to understand that you need to begin with the foundation of, in order to build upon that.
Those foundational questions are the “Who?”, “What?”, “Where?”, “When?”, “Why?”, and “How?”. And it was most likely in that order. But we added a couple of twists.
The PM Model Starts with the Foundational Questions
The 5Ws and How - with a Twist
We changed “How?” to “How Much?” and inserted it between “What?” and “Where?”; (because then “What?” is surrounded by the two that have the same three letters – OK lame, but it works). That’s it.
The result, going clockwise from the 1 o’clock position: Who, What, How Much, Where, When, Why.
Key 3: Put the Foundational Questions in a Model
We then put the questions into a model that looks a lot like a 3-leaf clover. Why not? It saved Ireland, maybe it can save Project Management.
The Foundational Questions in the MPM Model Going Clockwise from the 1 O’Clock position
To help remember it, the MPM Model looks like a 3-leaf clover
Time to Change How Projects are Managed
Most Projects are late and over budget, they don’t achieve what they set out to do, and this results in stress and weariness.
It’s time to change that by making sure that when we are doing Project Management, we use a simple model to remind us of those fundamentals and then extend that model to help us know what actions we have to do, and when, on a consistent basis.
Daily and weekly habits of simple strategies and tools create predictable project success.
Now Add in Project Management Context
The next blog, the second one in this series, covers applying the context of project management to these questions.
We need to interpret the fundamentals from the perspective of a project and how the project manager applies the questions to the discipline of project management.
Understanding these broad fundamental knowledge questions from the context of project management then lead us to the appropriate items for managing a project which is covered in the third blog post in this series.
Summary
Knowing what project management strategies and tools to use at what point can seem overwhelming and hard to remember, especially given all of the other management responsibilities a manager is faced with.
Looking at project management from a simplified model, like the MPM model, can be a way to view what is necessary to manage a project successfully. This can help to see that the critical project items are really just answering foundational knowledge questions, only from a project management perspective.
It’s time to change how projects are managed by using a simple model to remind us of the fundamentals and then extend that model to help us know what actions we have to do, and when, on a consistent basis.
Action Steps / Apply This Knowledge
- Think of the fundamental questions from a project perspective and ask yourself, which project management items do you regularly create and which of the 6 buckets they fit best in?
- Ask yourself, which one of the 6 buckets you might spend the most time in or the most time creating items for, and which ones draw a blank because you don’t spend as much time thinking about items related to that fundamental question.
Learn More
In an upcoming workshop, for which you can subscribe to be notified when it’s available, we cover project management examples in detail.
Also, in the workshop, we go into greater depth on many of the project management items in the Project Management MPM model. As well you can ask questions about any of your current projects during the Q&A.
MPM - 5Ws and How
© Simple PM Strategies 2021