Top Deliverables in Project Management

[Music] hello i'm jennifer whitt project director for projectmanager.com if a picture is worth a thousand words a deliverables diagram saves a million meetings so today what we want to talk about is the deliverables diagram for project so i'm sure this looks familiar the actual project life cycle initiating planning executed controlling and closing and one of the most important things to know is the actual deliverables that are required to come into this process and the critical deliverables coming out so today what we're going to talk about is the deliverables for each phase we're going to talk

about the inputs we're going to talk about the outputs and how valuable they are the deliverables diagram sets a vision for not only for the project manager but also for the team and the stakeholders so everyone knows where are we going how we're going to get there and what's due when so the important deliverables for initiating is the business opportunity and really knowing why are we even doing this project so many times we get in the thrust of a project and everyone is so focused on their task that they actually forget why are we doing

this project and what is the main deliverable coming out from this project so we submit a business opportunity actually from the business and it can come in from many different directions for many reasons but the business opportunity identifies why we're doing the project so that's the main input coming into the initiating process so the process of working with the stakeholders and critical team members take that information and they process it and from the output of that becomes the project charter many people today may call that something different in their companies it may be a statement

of work it could be an estimate response document it could be called a proposal or anything but that's the main document coming out that identifies what's the scope what's the timeline a high level timeline and what's the high level budget of this project then the project charter feeds into the next phase the planning phase so the project charter and the lessons learned is very important to share the lessons learned even if it's not the same type project a similar type project lessons learned that we can clean things to actually improve performance of this project so

the project charter and the lessons learned feed into the planning process including all the important stakeholders and people on the planning team get that information and from there is produce the project plan and from the project plan all the subject subplans that identify the deliverables diagram again it's very important to identify a picture a picture for the team not only for the project manager but the team and the stakeholders to say what's going to be done when and what's going to be delivered so a very important document deliverables diagram communications plan communications plan is very

important one of the issues that i see over many teams is the communication plan and knowing what level of of information needs to be communicated to the right level of person as we know the project team needs to know information totally different than the executive committee or the stakeholders or the change control board it's different levels of information so it's important to identify who needs to know what when and how so in today's times people get so many emails so some people now are texting information the beauty of the the mobile market and the texting

or even collaborative software where collaborative systems people are using now social media so it's important to identify how the team needs that information they need it real time or how do they need it best as well as the risk and issues knowing what risks are how are we going to manage risk if risk occurs how are we going to identify them how we're going to mitigate them and who are the actual decision makers that make those important decisions for us and the issues what is how are we going to manage and track issues at what

point are we going to escalate those and who are the important decision makers and then the change management pro process we all know change will happen and so it's important to know up front how what is the process we're going to use to manage those changes how are those changes going to come in how are they going to be assessed and who are the people who need to decide how we're going to manage those changes and then procurement how are we going to procure our resources and the assets we need for the team are we

going to actually get those from in-house are we going to use those from important vendor partners what is the process that needs to be done what are the approval levels that need to be made at what time as well as the cost management how are we going to manage cost how are we going to measure the cost and so it's important to know upfront these important things and then the schedules how are we going to manage the schedule as as we know we're going to baseline the schedule we're going to baseline all of these things

and then but what happens when the schedule changes how are we going to manage that so those are the important sub-plans identified in the project plan and that's why it's so valuable it actually becomes the game plan or the execution plan that feeds into now the executing and controlling phase of the project so once we now have the project charter because we want the project charter actually remember maintains the baseline the agreement and approval for this project and what the project is what the budget is and the important stakeholders again really keeping us in line

of why are we even doing this project we find that so many projects fail because people aren't tracking the baseline against the original charter the original plan that's what taking the charter and the plan taking that into executing and controlling actually executing that and from there becomes the performance reports so now we take the performance reports and we measure those against baselines to know where are we in the progress of the project and one of the things that we need to do using the project plan how do we get those things back in line so

we're now meeting the original goal and if we're not meeting the original goal how we what are the steps we need to take to actually change it modify it modify the baseline and get the appropriate approvals and if we do that we actually find that we can decrease the project failure rate by actually implementing project management best practices then the issues and risk logs so again important to not only track them but log the the risk or the issues that occur so we know when they occurred what are the issues that occurred what are the

risks that occurred what action did we take and who actually approved or sign off on the action to be taken then the change logs as we know we said change will occur it's actually logging what change did occur when and what decisions were made who made the decisions and then the project progress knowing how are we doing against the baseline of the project and then the deliverables so at this point the executing and controlling we're now actually producing the deliverables for the project so we can actually begin of all the deliverables that get made the

the ultimate deliverable is the actual project so that the performance reports the project progress the project logs and deliverables as the project comes to a close i'll feed into the the closing proc part of the project so saving the best for last but not forgotten the closing phase actually is very important to get the product acceptance from the users the stakeholders the agreement that the project actually did meet the intent of the project and all the baseline or performance measures that had to be met the final and actual reports of how do we do against

the baseline how do we actually measure on this project the project document so that we're actually archiving saving maintaining the documentation the historical the the history of this project so if we need to revisit again what happened and when and if we need to take that information to the next phase of a project or maybe even a subsequent or similar project and then the lessons learned always knowing what lessons did we learn what did we clean what do we want to take forward because as we know it's going to feed back into the next project

so again we feel like if a picture say if a picture is worth a thousand words it's going to save a million meetings in project management so if you need any other additional tips tools techniques or templates please visit us at projectmanager.com thank you