Gerard Laurent Project Manager The best way to fail is to not communicate adequately.

Transcription

1 Gerard Laurent Project Manager The best way to fail is to not communicate adequately. Gerard's main responsibility Create the schedule and identify resources to guide the project while managing issues and risks throughout the project's completion. Project Manager's main responsibility Understand client needs and set up the project plan to successfully fulfill those needs within the budget and given timeline. Persona summary Gerard is a 43 year old Project Manager for Renovations in France. He considers himself as an easy going person who is very efficient at his job. Gerard is highly organized and detail-oriented. As a project manager, Gerard's main responsibility is to manage and track issues and risks through a project's completion. This includes facilitating communication, managing cost, and scheduling resources and deliverables. He is currently managing 4 projects simultaneously, one is a new sales floor inventory device, one involves an internal initiative for streamlining request processes, and the other two are internal software initiatives for vendor tracking. Gerard's days are spent acquiring or collecting status information from various team members in back-to-back status report meetings, turning that information into reports for management and stakeholders, and working to resolve any issues or risks that come out of those meetings. He has the ability to make timely decisions and does well at managing the project's resources. Gerard knows that communication and collaboration are the most important factors in getting his job done and are tied into all activities of a project. Gerard is dedicated to his work and to the people on his projects, so he is willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done and make the projects run as smoothly as possible. He takes responsibility and accountability in order to deliver on all his project commitments. Gerard's biggest challenge is working with all the different tools in order to stay organized, be effective in managing the projects and getting his deliverables out to the various stakeholders. Day-in-the-life Scenario Gerard starts his day around 6:00am. After getting himself ready for work, he wakes up the kids, eats breakfast and may do a quick check of using a VPN connection before leaving for the office. He lives about 30 minutes from his office in Velizy, Yvelines (a small suburb outside of Paris) and is usually at work by 7:30am. After grabbing a Café noir and booting up his computer, Gerard reads and responds to and gets in any quick blog reads from his RSS feeder before other people start filtering in at 8:30am. Gerard typically has one to five meetings in a day which are usually followed up with action items. He has two this morning which are both project team meetings that cover status reports for tasks, project schedules, and any other updates (for two different projects). After each meeting, Gerard

2 writes the meeting minutes, sends them out, and updates the project plan. These reports help him create a more formal status report for the client and upper management that's due on Friday which also includes budget and time perspectives. Gerard accesses Renovations' intranet site daily. In the morning he uses it to gain access to his project planning tools which he uses throughout the day. He also uses it to get to other internal sites and to check on corporate communications that are posted there. Occasionally Gerard will meet a client or co-worker for lunch, but usually he just has a quick half hour lunch in the canteen at noon. He'll also try catching up on or getting in some RSS reads before the rest of his afternoon starts. After lunch he focuses on any outstanding to-do's from action items assigned in the status meetings. He also does his planning and writing documentation for the projects. From two o'clock on, Gerard is in more meetings. Today he has another status meeting and then a funding approval meeting to review the projects that are going into the initiate and solution scoping phases. These two meetings will be held in a conference room to accommodate the team members who are co-located as well as those who are remote workers and dial into the conference call. Before leaving the office for the day at five o'clock, Gerard will spend the last hour of his day checking and responding to and dealing with any other business issues that have come up. At home, Gerard spends time with his family before eating dinner and then it's off to the gym for a couple of hours. After watching TV for a bit, Gerard will check his one more time before going to bed by eleven o'clock. Normally, Gerard doesn't work at night, but there are cases where there might be a problem that he has to attend to at a client site in a different time zone or if a special project is going on that he needs to manage. Detailed information Demographics Age 1. Gerard is 43 years old. Language spoken 1. His native language is French, but he speaks English, German, and some Italian. Certifications 1. Gerard does not have his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification and doesn't see a strong need for it at this time; however; he does occasionally check in with the PMI website for any relevant or interesting articles and has taken classes from them in the past. Previous positions 1. Gerard's past positions have included other project management roles and analyst roles as well as consultant. Time in current position 1. Gerard has been in his current role at Renovations for six years. Time doing project management 1. He's been doing project management for 11 years.

3 Interests 1. Gerard enjoys reading but has a hard time fitting in recreational reads these days. Almost all of his reading is done on-line either though specific websites or RSS feeds he's subscribed to, but he will occasionally get in a book or even an audio book. 2. Gerard likes to stay active. He tries to stick with a regular exercise routine and often is part of sports league. A lot of his activity is done outside. Some of these activities include: biking, running, swimming, taking walks, playing soccer, and the occasional round of golf. 3. Gerard's most important interest is his children. He loves spending time with them and participating in any activity they are a part of. Work Characteristics Works with 1. Internal clients 2. External clients 3. Stakeholders 4. Human Resources 5. Information Technology 6. Application development 7. Architecture 8. Support 9. Corporate Systems Work environment 1. He is part of large multi-person project teams who often contain remote members. 2. His clients and team members are located in France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. 3. Reserves conference rooms, uses his office, and occasionally works from home. 4. Uses his laptop to be able to communicate with team members, keep up with , assist with meetings, and travel to client sites. 5. His greatest pressure is making sure things stay on track and when they don't he is required to make sure they get back on track. 6. Gerard has managed as many as 15 projects at one time. Preferred communication methods Gerard knows that communication is the most important factor for success and he understands that everyone communicates differently and has different preferences. By understanding this, Gerard makes every effort to communicate in the way that works best for the person. It also depends on the situation since he works with many remote people. Gerard feels that face-to-face meetings are best and prefers them whenever possible. His experience has proven that in-person meetings and even less formal chats help build relationships. Whenever possible, Gerard will make the effort to go to a team member's cube to chat even if it means he has to walk to another building. He also uses , chat, web conferences, video conferences, and the telephone to communicate with his teams. In addition to personal preferences, time and money constraints play a factor in his communication choice. For example Gerard has weekly meetings with a team in another region, so he opts for a video conference instead of traveling there. He also often switches to using the phone if an instant messaging session becomes to detailed and decides it would be better to talk on the phone. Technical environment Gerard needs to stay connected and he mainly uses his laptop to accomplish this. For status meetings, he uses his laptop to take notes and/or present the meeting agenda and topic along with Sametime Meetings in addition to a conference call number to connect to remote team

4 members. Lotus Notes is the software that's most important for him in getting his job done. Gerard doesn't have one program that allows him to accomplish all that he needs as a Project Manager, so he feels that he would choose one that best accommodates his need for communication. Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Project would be second since he needs something to help him manage his work. From either of these programs he is able to build the project schedules and use that to work from and guide meetings and manipulate the dates if necessary. The program he spends the most time using is Lotus Notes for . Microsoft Excel would be next followed by Word and Powerpoint. His web browser and Microsoft Project are also at the top of his list. Gerard stores all of his documentation for his projects in document repositories on servers. These servers are backed up and also allow the client access to the documents pertaining to them. He accesses these repositories as well as other tools he uses daily from the Renovations intranet site. Tools Software Hardware 1. VPN connections 1. Desktop computer 2. Lotus Notes: mail, calendar, contacts, 2. Laptop computer to dos, databases 3. Wireless connections 3. CA Clarity (formerly Niku) 4. Telephone: land line and mobile 4. Microsoft Project 5. Pager 5. Open Workbench 6. Blackberry ( , calendar and 6. Microsoft Office 2007: word processing, Sametime IM) spreadsheet, presentation, templates 7. Multi-function device (for scanning in 7. Sametime Instant Messaging expense reports) 8. Sametime Meetings 8. Company credit card 9. Audio Conferencing 10.Video Conferencing 11.Web Browser - Internet Explorer 12.Visio 13.Quickplace 14.Concur (for expense reporting) 15.Mindjet Responsibilities Main responsibility 1. Create the schedule and identify resources to guide the project while managing issues and risks through the project's completion. Responsibilities Initialization of Projects: The planning stage 1. Set up the kick-off meeting 2. Identify and document requirements, goals and objectives 3. Allocate resources and put together the teams 4. Schedule meetings 5. Start brainstorming 6. Plan assumptions, constraints, what things to be aware of, conflicts 7. Define deadlines and milestone dates and set project schedule 8. Know the clients and their restrictions and environment. 9. Provide cost estimates and develop budget 10.Cost benefit analysis

5 11.Complete risk assessment Managing the Project: Being on top of everything on the project 1. Track and hold weekly meetings to collect status information from various team members assigned for the tasks in the project plan 2. Write and publish progress reports every week for upper management and/or client management. 3. Reports include objective status information 4. Client and internal management reports are separate 5. Update the project plan on a weekly basis to drive metrics 6. Create purchase orders 7. Work around schedules and vacations/holidays 8. Work though time zone issues 9. Manage budget 10.Manage the tasks between teams and clients 11.Track the project to the schedule, to the plan, and to the spec Managing Issues and Risks 1. Being aware of and identify delays, obstacles, scope changes, client changing their minds, team issues and challenges, dependencies other higher level things like availability of systems, third party, etc. 2. Deal with escalated issues 3. Determine how to fix problems/issues and reschedule the work if necessary 4. Work with subject matter experts for solutions 5. Present issues and risks to client 6. Make the owner aware of cost related to a decision Completing a Project 1. Getting formal approvals from client Goals End goals 1. To minimize risks to my go live/end date 2. Be on time 3. Stay within budget Experience goals 1. Be successful Pain points 1. Being able to find stuff when you need it is my biggest challenge 2. Not one program to accommodate all his needs 3. Working across cross-cultural teams and time zones 4. When things don't go as planned 5. Not being given the support of the organization and being at the mercy of other people 6. Delivering on time 7. Irreconcilable demands from two projects/clients Skills 1. Highly organized 2. Detail-oriented 3. Communicates well within the many mediums used 4. Accountable and responsible