Project Management- series 3

Project management is the art of leading a team to achieve a project’s target within budget and time. It involves conceptualization of idea, initiation, planning, and managing the available sources to complete a particular project.
Project management processes fall into five groups:

1. Initiating

2. Planning

3. Execution Phase

After the Planning Phase, it’s the time for action- the execution! In this phase, the intended product or deliverables are delivered to the customer for approval.

In official terms – The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) states – "The Executing Process Group consists of those processes performed to complete the work defined in the project management plan to satisfy the project specifications."

Project execution involves:

• The team carries out all the planned activities, constructs deliverables, as per the master project plan.

• As a project manager, you have to consistently evaluate the processes and plans involved to deliver the output as per the agreed specifications.

The project manager has three main goals during the execution phase:

• Manage people

• Manage processes

• Manage communication

The outcome of execution phase:

• Execute the project scope

• Acquire and Manage the team’s work

• Recommend changes, bug fixing, and corrective actions

• Manage project communication with stakeholders

• Implement approved changes to the processes

• Conduct team-building exercises

• Celebrate project milestones and motivate team members

• Hold status review meetings to make sure everything is on schedule

• Document all changes to the project plan

Project deliverables

Project deliverables are the expected outputs of the project. They need to reviewed, tested, and meet the acceptance criteria given by the clients.

Change requests

When client expectations change or there’s a gap between the team’s understanding of the client’s requirements, scope changes happen. These are documented in the change requests, which are then reviewed and approved.

Performance data

The execution stage produces a lot of data points that you can use to optimize your team’s performance. You can find where your team is spending most of their time and how you can cut down on time and costs.

Issue log

Whenever there are bugs, issues, or defects, you document them in the issue log. This will help you get back to the issues and fix them.

Documentation updates

Any changes to the documents created during the planning phase like the project scope and project schedule will be documented.