Project Management - an essential skill

Why should a consultant learn project management when a ‘project manager’ is assigned to a project? I had this question in mind when I started my career as a consultant in IT industry. As I went on executing projects as consultant, I started realizing the importance of knowing what project management is all about.

Project Management involves managing all the aspects of a project from inception to closure using a structured delivery methodology . It involves planning, organizing and managing resources provided by both customer and service provider.  It includes: identifying requirements, establishing clear and achievable objectives, managing expectations of different stakeholders. It is not a normal day to day activity that we perform. It involves dealing with Timeline, resources, tools & fellow team members.

Scope management: Each project revolves around interpretation of scope. The scope could be defined in terms of project scope and product scope. As a consultant, we must understand "The service that needs to be rendered to deliver a product or service with the specified features and functions" is appropriately considered as project scope.  It is necessary for a consultant to understand agreed scope and all stakeholders are made aware of the scope. Projects are expected to meet strict deadlines with resource restraints, and unapproved changes in the scope can affect project success. Scope creep sometimes causes cost overrun.  As a consultant, one should bring any such request to notice of manager and work on additional scope only upon approval.

Schedule management: When we execute a project, we work on timelines based on past experience. Each activity to be performed needs to be meticulously planned and executed to ensure that we complete assigned task in time. As a consultant one need to plan assigned activities well ahead of time and track progress. This can be achieved by having regular review of tasks to be accomplished and tracking schedule adherence. While project manager is looking at overall adherence, a consultant should be tracking tasks associated to him/her. Alarm should be raised in case of schedule slippage.

Quality management: "Quality" refers to the ability of a process, or product to satisfy both stated and implied needs. Often, project quality is decided by quality of the solution provided and documentation generated for future reference. Quality of solution, documentation and test results have direct bearing on customer satisfaction and effort, schedule and cost of a project. A consultant, we must understand cost of quality.

Risk Management: A risk is something that may happen and if it does, will have a positive or negative impact on the project. "That may happen" implies a probability of occurrence is less than 100%. If it has a probability of 100% - in other words, the event is certain to happen - it becomes an issue. A consultant must be in a position to differentiate between Risk and Issue. A risk must also have a probability something above 0%. It must be a chance to happen or it is not a risk. A consultant, is responsible to observe and bring to notice of project team and stakeholders, any event or activity that may jeopardize project. An early warning will help is working towards mitigation plan.

Communication management: With projects being executed from multiple locations with people aligned to different cultures; dealing with coalitions of people coming together with multiple loyalties, intersection of the organization needs to be managed. It is recommended to understand communication plan and escalation matrix ahead of time. Managing communication, escalations can effectively be done with good understanding of project management.

Does it mean that consultants who do not know project management are unable to execute the projects? It is not about just executing the project; it is all about executing project effectively.

In conclusion, Project Management has become indispensable to the consultants and they form the basis of project success.