NonProfit NGO Project Help Archives - Simple Project Management

PMP Summary + Lessons Learned: Planning Phase of a project

The planning phase of a project is a crucial stage where the project’s objectives, scope, resources, and timelines are defined. It involves creating a comprehensive project plan that outlines the key tasks and activities required to successfully complete the project.

The planning phase is accomplished thru many meetings with all stakeholders to gather both facts and ask open ended questions in order to uncover hidden expectations and find out how open various stakeholders are to accept the new change.

The primary outputs of the planning phase include:

Project Charter: The project charter is a formal document that authorizes the project’s existence and provides a high-level overview of its objectives, stakeholders, and overall approach. It sets the project’s direction and establishes the authority for the project manager to proceed. You will find out what constraints you have to work with, eg fixed timeline. This is a good document to also reiterate the company’s commitment to ethical and responsible behaviour.

Project Scope: The project scope defines the boundaries of the project, including what is included and excluded. It outlines the deliverables, features, functions, and constraints of the project. Defining the scope helps ensure clarity and prevents scope creep during project execution.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): The WBS breaks down the project’s work into manageable and hierarchical components called work packages. It provides a visual representation of the project’s tasks, sub-tasks, and their relationships. The WBS is a key tool for organizing and understanding the project’s scope and structure. Lessons Learned: You *will* need 3rd party help from experts to help list tasks and get estimates. These key experts are often senior staff, and are very busy, but are critical to your project success. They may try to put you off for weeks, as this may not be a priority for them. You may need to escalate to get their time. Try to come to them with a start of a task structure, from a template, so that they are not being asked to create a plan from zero.

Project Schedule: The project schedule is a detailed timeline that identifies the start and end dates for each activity and task within the project. It includes dependencies, milestones, and deadlines. The schedule helps the project team understand the sequence of tasks and their estimated duration, facilitating resource allocation and coordination.

Resource Plan: The resource plan identifies the resources, both human and non-human, required to complete the project successfully. It outlines the roles and responsibilities of the project team members, identifies any external resources needed, and considers factors such as equipment, facilities, and budgetary requirements.

Risk Management Plan: The risk management plan assesses potential risks and uncertainties that could impact the project and outlines strategies for their identification, analysis, response, and monitoring. It helps mitigate potential threats and exploit opportunities, ensuring effective risk management throughout the project lifecycle.

Communication Plan: The communication plan defines the project’s communication objectives, stakeholders, channels, and frequency of communication. It ensures that the right information is communicated to the right stakeholders at the right time, facilitating effective collaboration and coordination. Lessons Learned: Take care to define if this includes working with marketing or social media/PR teams. Too many status meetings can drain your time as a PM, taking your focus away from building relationships and trust. Try to deliver status reports via re-useable templates, and only hold meetings to raise exceptions or escalations.

Quality Management Plan: The quality management plan outlines the processes, activities, and standards that will be used to ensure that the project’s deliverables meet the required quality expectations. It includes quality assurance activities to prevent defects and quality control measures to identify and address any deviations.

Cost Estimation and Budget: The planning phase involves estimating the project’s costs based on the identified activities, resources, and timelines. The cost estimation helps create a budget that outlines the expected expenses and provides a financial framework for the project’s execution and monitoring.

Procurement Plan: If the project requires external resources or services, a procurement plan is created to outline the procurement strategy, selection criteria, and contractual arrangements. It ensures that the necessary resources are procured efficiently and effectively, aligning with project goals and requirements.

Change Management Plan: Your project will affect certain stakeholders both in positive and negative ways. You need to find out who will be responsible for this preparation communication and training, and who the managers are that will enforce or manage non compliance with the new changes. Usually this scope is forgotten or neglected, but internal politics will cause a project to fail.
Think of this like “marketing” where you are selling the benefits and getting them to visualize the “future state” to make this extra work and change worthwhile.

As you can see, this is a LOT of work. You will also need time in your schedule to write these plans up, AND get them reviewed and approved by your PMO / or Manager.

Overall, the planning phase focuses on defining project parameters, establishing a clear roadmap, allocating resources, identifying risks, and setting up effective communication and quality management systems. The outputs generated during this phase provide a solid foundation for the project’s execution and control.

Basics Of Project Management: Communication and Risk

Any project can just succeed if the individuals behind the tasks leverage appropriate project management skills or hire a respectable and reputable project management group.

Like every other project, a project management strategy ought to include an appropriate and realistic plan for human resources as the staff will need to be onboarded at the proper time, to keep schedules on track.

Task management might sound like a complex term and it actually is as it involves the procedure of arranging the different aspects involved in creating and completing a project. But task duration can change based on WHO does the work.

All tasks need to start out with a good understanding so that the worker will understand the important things needed for the job to continue in addition to the required timeframe within which these requirements must be accomplished. The task strategy must recognize the scope of the project and the people responsible for the different inputs of the task.

The strategy should consist of the costs associated with managing the job. That can consist of the costs involved in working with human resources and products for the task. A realistic strategy will enable the project manager to satisfy the project requirements on time and in a quality manner.

Once the project is underway: how should you communicate with team members AND stakeholders?
The fastest way is the best. I’ve seen everyone added to a MS-Teams chat (or Discord) or tool where a PM can add a quick sentence to be read by all. It’s transparent, timely, and builds trust that you’re not hiding anything.

You may also need a good communication plan with the outside world if you have public stakeholders.
eg. Twitter Feed or other social media.

If the task has any effect in a certain neighborhood, the task manager need to be more careful to plan an excellent communication strategy. If this is the case, the project supervisor ought to likewise make sure to include public relations content in addition to a communications plan in cases of emergency situation or unfavorable reaction from the general public.

A Communication Management Plan Guideline:

Work together with stakeholders to ask what they want and how often. Make it your guideline to plan with those people who will be the affected by the plan. Do not wait until the project has actually gone south to get their assistance. Start with mock scenarios – Ask “How would you want to handle X situation?”.

Continue collaborating:

Do your workplans, resources, and efficiency metrics give a solid readout of what is going on with your project and the quality of your work?

Lessons Learned: Are we utilizing project management as a data repository for FUTURE jobs? I.e. are we utilizing it as our monitoring and control tool? Ideally, job supervisors are utilizing the info for HR performance and quality checks.

Leaders who master Project Management learn to lead enhancement initiatives that lead to quantifiable growth in ROI, financial value added, sales growth, customer complete satisfaction and retention, market share, time to market, staff member satisfaction, and staff member inspiration.

Other Risk Management Elements for the Communication Planning:
Risk/Danger management should be one of the most important elements of the task plan. The job supervisor must avoid being reactionary whenever emergencies or unfavorable publicity turns up. To avoid this and to become proactive you as PM need to develop a contingency plan for possible scenarios.

Sudden Change in Reqirements:
One of the most difficult tasks to handle as a PM is when emergency scope situations may occur.
A CHANGE MANGEMENT Plan discussed and signed off at the beginning of project will tell the team how they should get approval for the abrupt changes in expenses and the sudden modifications in technical scope associated with the project.

However, a project supervisor must constantly be prepared for any possibility for any kind of project they are managing. The very best thing to do is to prepare an extremely effective Projectplan and Charter with stakeholders approval so that you are not blind-sided by really important elements of the project.
Knowing how and when to communicate and escalate will help you, the PM in managing any change.
Good Luck!

Nonprofit Project Management Best Practices (Part 1)

nonprofit project management best practices

Clearing the scope/ Clarifying the key deliverables

Clearing the scope is a fundamental step in the nonprofit project management process. This step ensures that no part of a project is outside its scope, and it also facilitates project monitoring and evaluation. It helps nonprofits avoid adding new requests and wasting resources on projects that are too broad or too narrow. There are lots of great ideas out there, and analyzing if a group should take on a project or not can be a product unto itself! Watch out for “pet” projects 🙂

The scope statement should be set up early in the project life cycle and should state clearly what work is to be accomplished in order to deliver the end result. It should be reviewed frequently by the project team. It should also be referenced whenever any new tasks or work items are introduced.

Make sure you as PM continue to have buy in from everyone, as people follow their leaders, and internal politics need to be overcome to be successful.

Defining the requirements

A nonprofit organization must clearly define the requirements of the project before launching it. A properly defined scope helps nonprofits execute the project and measure its success. It also helps nonprofits assess the scope of any new requests made by stakeholders, clients, or program recipients. The documentation of project scope can help nonprofits make better decisions about resources and priorities.

Nonprofits face many challenges when it comes to defining and evaluating their success. Kaplan (2001) suggests that nonprofit organisations should measure success according to how efficiently they meet key stakeholder needs. However, managers in the nonprofit sector often choose units of measure that they believe are important and are relevant to funders and other stakeholders.

Bringing in Subject Matter Experts

A subject matter expert is someone who has extensive knowledge in a specific field. This can be a technical, business, or social area. This type of person will not only have expertise in a field, but also know where to find the answers to your questions.

Your organization should avoid being too “proud.” Leverage the experts around you. Yes you may have to pay for their help, but NP’s can always ask for a reduced hourly rate. Focus on asking questions and being curious about your subject’s experience and insights. You will want to ask them questions about challenges, lessons learned, or share a story about a successful moment to help your staff visualize the “END GOAL” and the benefit of working towards that goal.

Keeping controls in place

One of the most important aspects of nonprofit project management is keeping data and finance controls in place. Internal controls can prevent misappropriation or misuse of assets. They are typically described in written policies that lay out procedures and responsibilities. The goal is to establish business practices that serve as checks and balances against outside forces. These are often compromized for the sake of SPEED. “We need to book that flight right now”. “I just paid for it on my own credit card”. etc.

Using project management software

Using a project management software for nonprofits can help organizations reduce the number of needless status meetings and encourage collaboration. It can also help organizations create better future estimations. Unfortunately, choosing the right software solution can be difficult. And the migration from conventional project management to digital project management can be time-consuming.

For nonprofit organizations, a good software solution should have excellent communication features. It should integrate with email software and have features like messaging apps. As many nonprofit employees work in different time zones, this is especially important for effective collaboration.

I’ve guided many organizations to improve their PMO “Project Management Office” and helped train staff on the new tools. But key is always the PROCESS. What you used to do, and what you will start to try now, going forward. Read all you can about behaviour and motivation….