Keys to Successful Project Management

Providing project managers with the right skills and tools can help your firm more
effectively manage projects, meet client expectations, and achieve more
successful project outcomes.

 Incorporate additional structure into project management.

 Recognize the value of a broader set of project management skills.
 Better understand how ongoing risk identification impacts a project’s
success.
 Gain tools to assist in your firm’s support and buy-in for new project
management techniques.

PERT (Performance Evaluation and Review

Technique)/CPM (Critical Path Method)

A PERT network is a graphic illustration of events connected in logical

sequence by activity lines that show all the activities necessary to complete
a project and the interrelationship and dependency between the events in
the project. Networks are built from events, activities and activity time
estimates. PERT events are definable points in time by which an activity
can be said to have been started or completed.

Te – Expressed Time

To – Optimistic Time

Ta – Average (most likely)

Tp – Pessimistic Time

A project team is a team whose members usually belong to different

groups, functions and are assigned to activities for the same project. A
team can be divided into sub-teams according to need. Usually project
teams are only used for a defined period of time. They are disbanded after
the project is deemed complete. Due to the nature of the specific formation
and disbandment, project teams are usually in organizations.
A team is defined as “an interdependent collection of individuals who work
together towards a common goal and who share responsibility for specific
outcomes of their organizations”.[1] An additional requirement to the original
definition is that “the team is identified as such by those within and outside
of the team”.[2] As project teams work on specific projects, the first
requirement is usually met. In the early stages of a project, the project team
may not be recognized as a team, leading to some confusion within the
organization. The central characteristic of project teams in modern
organizations is the autonomy and flexibility availed in the process or
method undertaken to meet their goals.
Most project teams require involvement from more than one department,
therefore most project teams can be classified as cross functional team.
The project team usually consists of a variety of members often working
under the direction of a project manager or a senior member of the
organization. Projects that may not receive strong support initially often
have the backing of a project champion. Individual team members can
either be involved on a part-time or full-time basis. Their time commitment
can change throughout the project depending on the project development
stage.
The Six Stages of Incident Response

As the Manager for IT Security and Identity Services at Griffith University,

Ashley Deuble has to manage a complex environment with a massive
number of internal and external users. Securing such a wide gamut of
customers, often with very specific needs is very challenging, particularly
when it comes to securing the environment so everyone has appropriate
and reliable access.

1 - Preparation
The preparation phase is about ensuring you have the appropriate
(response plans, policies, call trees and other documents in place and that
you have identified the members of your incident response team including
external entities.

2 - Identification

In the identification phase you need to work out whether you are dealing
with an event or an incident. This is where understanding your environment
is critical as it means looking for significant deviations from "normal" traffic
baselines or other methods.

3 - Containment

Deuble says that as you head into the containment stage you will want to
work with the business to limit the damage caused to systems and prevent
any further damage from occurring. This includes short and long term
containment activities.

4 - Eradication

During the fourth stage the emphasis is on ensuring you have a clean
system ready to restore. This may be a complete reimage of a system, or a
restore from a known good backup.

5 - Recovery

At this point, it’s time to determine when to bring the system back in to
production and how long we monitor the system for any signs of abnormal
activity.

6 - Lessons Learned

This final stage is often skipped as the business moves back into normal
operations but it’s critical to look back and heed the lessons learned.
What Is A Key Player
A key player is a stakeholder who has an important influence on the
outcome. They can be a performer, subject matter expert or manager at
any level - an integral part of the project team or a sponsor, functional
manager or client. According to the Business Dictionary, a key player is an
"Individual whose knowledge, creativity, inspiration, reputation, and/or skills
are critical to the viability or growth of an organization, and whose loss may
cripple it.

The Impact Of Losing A Key Player

Of course, no one is entirely indispensable, and everyone is important to
the project outcome. However, a key players' impact is often proportionally
greater than the average stakeholder's, and they are much harder to
replace.
For example, if there are 6 programmers on a software development
project, all with roughly equal capabilities and working on well-defined
functions, the loss of one of them would impact the schedule, but they
would be fairly easy to replace. It is much more difficult to manage the loss
of the team-lead who has been onboard for several years, has
comprehensive knowledge of the entire product, a sense of where the
software fits in the business context, the ability to translate computer-ese
into non-technical language, knows the technology intimately and is a
strong influencer of how team members relate to the project and one
another.
The impact of the loss of this key player will affect the schedule as well as
the momentum and direction of the project. This player may be impossible
to replace during the course of the project and, maybe, for years to come.