The Mini Project Framework

In his book,?The Project Revolution: How to succeed in a Project Driven World, internationally-acclaimed project guru,?Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez,?states, “From our personal to our professional lives, corporations to governments, individuals to nations, projects are the new reality. Welcome to the Project Revolution!”

While I agree with his sentiment, Antionio’s book did not provide a useful guide for laymen such as you and me to codify our work and lives as projects. So, I developed my own method to take ordinary tasks and turn them into projects.

I call this concept the Mini Project Framework because – well, who doesn’t like a framework?!

Your job is filled with things to do that we will call tasks. Even though you may not think of tasks this way, there is a reason you need to perform a task (we will call this reason the requirement), you carry out the task (we will call this action the execution), and you complete your task that accomplishes something (we will call this something the outcome).

With a little bit of thought and a minimal amount of documentation, you can turn almost any task into a project, no matter how small the outcome.

There are a few simple concepts that define a project. First, it has a beginning date/time and an ending date/time. Second, it consists of three basic components:

• Scope
• Schedule
• Cost

Let us use a modest example. You have been tasked to write a standard operating procedure (SOP) for one of the processes you perform at work. Before diving into this task, create a document that will be the project management plan (PMP) for the task – which has now become a project!

In the PMP, identify the purpose for the task. The purpose may be for continuity or for training. These factors become part of the project charter.

You were tasked by your supervisor, who becomes the executive sponsor for your project. You are the project manager. You may need assistance from other personnel. Jot down the name, contact information, and role of each person. Identify who will use this SOP. All the above-mentioned people are your stakeholders.

Your supervisor may want a status update every day until task completion. You may determine you need to meet with certain people on a regular or ad hoc basis to get the information you need for the SOP. Perhaps you should send an e-mail to a group of stakeholders to keep them informed of the project’s progress. Include all these actions in the PMP. You now have a communications plan.

Now to the meat of your task – sorry, I mean project. You could just dive in and write the SOP. You have probably done so before, without thinking too much about the individual phases involved. Just step back a moment and plan. List everything that goes into producing this product, which is the scope of the project:

Research

• Request for information (RFI) from others.
• Ensure you know all the laws, industry regulations, company policies, etc. that may impact or be impacted by what you put in this SOP.
• Identify other processes and documents that may need to be referenced.

Preparation

• Choose your word processing tool.
• Grab the template used by your organization for SOP’s.
• Gather graphics that will be used in the SOP.

Create

• Develop the outline.
• Write the text for each section.
• Add table of contents and index.
• Embed graphics.

Proof

• Read your text out loud.
• Use spell and grammar checkers.
• Assign others to read the SOP draft and to comment.

Submit

• Sign off the final draft.
• Send through the approval chain.
• Present to your supervisor.

The above bulleted list is your work breakdown structure (WBS). The end result, the completed SOP, will be the project’s deliverable. Definition of done for your project is when your supervisor, the executive sponsor, accepts the product.

Once you have the WBS in front of you, estimate how many hours it will take you – and any accomplices – to complete each item. Add these hours up. This number of hours is your level of effort (LoE). Imagine the total number of staff hours you predict is twenty. Now you must forecast the schedule.

You probably have other work you must do throughout the day. Same for anyone else contributing. So, assuming a normal 8-hour workday, it will probably take considerably longer to complete the SOP than three days. Be realistic. Calculate the time needed for other duties. Identify events that may disrupt the moments you intend to work on the SOP: things like upcoming medical appointments or unanticipated work emergencies. These are risks to your schedule. Build in extra time based on analysis of these risks. Identify another person to carry out the project if you are unable for whatever reason. These actions define your risk mitigation strategy.

You decide it will take ten workdays to complete the twenty hours of work in the WBS. You now have a schedule forecast. You can use any tool to create a Gant chart, a calendar plot, or less informal visualization to add to your PMP. Depending on how complex the project is, you can identify milestones (completion of each major section of the SOP, for example). Add the milestones to your visualized schedule. This extra step will help you monitor the progress of the project.

Based on the LoE and the schedule, you can now forecast the cost of completing the SOP. In larger, more formal projects, there would be a monetized value pegged to all the hours of work (the resources expended), which would become your budget. In a Mini Project, you probably do not know the cost associated with the LoE. You most likely do not know the true cost of others involved because you are not authorized to know their salaries. And – surprise! – you probably do not know your own true cost to the organization. It is not just how much you are paid by the hour. There are indirect costs, fringe benefits, and other factors to consider.

For a Mini Project, it is sufficient to use the actual LoE (expressed simply in labor hours) as the cost forecast. If there are additional costs such as the purchase of supplies, you could count those as well, but it probably is not necessary for the purpose of documenting this Mini Project.

Your project plan is now complete with the identified scope, forecasted schedule, and forecasted cost (LoE).

Now you can get to work!

Through the duration of the Mini Project, you will monitor the progress. Compare where you forecasted you would be – in terms of schedule time and LoE hours – with what has actually been expended, known as actuals.?The milestones will help you with this analysis. Decide how often to check your progress. Document the percentage of the WBS items completed and determine whether the SOP will be finished by the end of your forecasted schedule. Are you on track? It is critical to communicate any anticipated delays with all stakeholders. This requirement is true no matter how small or how large the project.

We now fast forward to the end of the project. You have successfully completed the SOP, the project’s deliverable. As part of closing your PMP, compare the forecasted schedule and cost with the actual completion date and the actual number of LoE hours expended (the project’s cost). Did you complete on the day you forecasted using the exact LoE you forecasted? That would be extremely rare.

The difference between forecast and actuals is the delta. You can represent the results in this way:

• Project completed?n%?later than forecasted in the schedule.
• Project completed?n%?under the number of LoE hours forecasted.

If you did not meet your forecast, do not despair. Most projects go beyond the predicted schedule and cost. The purpose of monitoring the progress and analyzing the end results is to learn from the experience. Next time, you know to factor more time for the schedule. Maybe you needed more resources (additional personnel) to complete the SOP than initially anticipated. If the SOP had to be revised multiple times because your supervisor found errors, then you need to perform more quality control on future projects (the Proof part of the bulleted WBS above).

You probably believe the above exercise added a lot of unnecessary overhead to a relatively simple task. Why go to all this fuss? Even your supervisor thought the extra fanfare for such a modest effort was – well, a bit silly.

But you do not execute Mini Projects for the benefit of your boss or your organization. At least not at first. You do this for your own development, to build a project management mindset. The purpose of documenting tasks as projects is multifold:

• To practice with smaller projects so that you are familiar with the concepts when larger projects come along.
• To hone your skills at forecasting schedule and cost.
• To add details of your skillset for the resume when looking for new opportunities.
• To include with performance appraisals to advance at your current place of employment.
• To prepare for the Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, or any other professional certification program.
• To prove that you are a project manager, even if the label is not in your title.

As you finish a few Mini Projects, improving with each effort, your supervisor will eventually notice. One day a true project opportunity will arise, and all those “silly” preparations you went through the past year now make you the best candidate for the job.

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