PROJECT MANAGER S MONTHLY ROUTINE

PROJECT MANAGER'S MONTHLY ROUTINE

If a project manager has planned all of his projects using the Ten Steps, then each project will consist of a plan which is very detailed to the next milestone, probably no more than 46 weeks away, and as detailed as it can be thereafter.

The project manager's monthly routine involves the project manager taking a month-long bite out of each project and then trying to organize his time such that all the tasks in this month-long bite are carried out.

To do this, go through the following steps either at the beginning of a new month or the end of the preceding one.

1. For each project identify where the project has to be by the end of the month.

2. Identify how much effort is involved by you personally (not your team) in each of these projects. Include in your tally, time that will be spent on things like:

   • trips

   • pre-arranged meetings

   • training

   • annual leave

   • public holidays

   • personal tasks

   • quality issues

   • support

   • miscellaneous tasks, e.g. dealing with the in-tray , interruptions, general administrative things that can't be tied to any particular project

   Everything you do in your job needs to be accounted for in this tally.

3. Add up this effort required by all the projects and tasks, and convert the resulting figure to man-days.

4. Compare this against the number of working days available.

5. If (3) is less than or equal to (4) then proceed to (6). Otherwise, you need to determine how the shortfall will be made up. Basically, there are four choices open to you:

   • do less delegate it

   • do less drop it

   • work more hours

   • delay things and extend deadlines

   Note that the latter may have the effect of delaying projects. The demand, from (3), needs to be less than or equal to the supply, from step (4), before you can proceed. Once this is true you can proceed to (6).

6. Now schedule everything on a personal Gantt chart as shown in Figure 11.1. This can be done on paper, but a spreadsheet is very useful for doing this, and makes changes from month to month much easier.

   Figure 11.1. A personal Gantt chart

   

7. Now, when changes occur in the course of a month or new requests / demands are made on the project manager's time, he can schedule these into the overall monthly view using the options described in (5) above, rather than making unreasonable or unachievable commitments.