Project Management for Small Teams – Part 1

By Guest Blogger Adam Bullied

Projects can be extremely complicated – especially on small teams. There can be a seemingly insurmountable number of tasks to complete, several people (or groups) dealing with a ton of different things on any given day, priorities changing, and of course deadlines, estimates, and a ton more.

The trick is to keep things as simple, and as clear, as possible.

At every turn, you need to look for ways to streamline the planning and management of the project to make sure everything stays above water. I’ve found there are a few key things you can do to ensure project success.

Image: istockphoto

Identifying the Goal

Everyone may have their own idea of what the project actually is, so it’s important the goal is identified and communicated right up front. Why does the project exist, and why are people working on it? It seems so simple, yet so many things fall to pieces by not having this clearly documented up front.

Some teams may choose to write a project charter to communicate this information, but even that’s a bit formal. Ideally, a simple e-mail will suffice with a brief kick-off meeting so the team has a chance to ask questions and get a feel for what’s expected of them.

This shouldn’t be complicated or a burden – it should actually be fun. If you find the team is dragging to even do this, or stakeholders are unclear about why the project exists in the first place, that should set off some warning signs.

It would be wise to sit down and talk with your management team right away in order to clarify some basic objectives so they can be referenced regularly. Then the project starts off right – with everyone on the same page as to why it’s important.

Picking the Right Tool

Everyone will have their own preference about what tool is best to manage the project plan, but ultimately the project manager has to be the one to assess the situation and choose what’s best.

Speaking from long hours of experience, while working with a smaller team, stay away from mammoth beasts like Microsoft Project. They will only end-up hurting you in the end if you can’t use them effectively. It may sound lame, but Excel is probably your best bet.

Really, regardless of team size, you want to be selecting a tool that will still make your life easier and help with:

• Tracking when something was supposed to be done and when it will be done (variance)
• Communicating status to key stakeholders in a clear and efficient way
• Making sure all resources are loaded accordingly
• Having a clear picture as to when larger work packages will be complete

Some great packages to check out include: Omniplan, Basecamp, your existing bug tracking software used by your development team, and yes – everyone’s favorite, Microsoft Excel. There are plenty out there. Do your research, talk it over with your team, and make a choice.

Tne Plan, One Schedule

You only ever need to have a single place that details an ongoing plan / schedule. If you have more than one, roll everything in to a single location. If this fails to happen, even two copies of a single plan will fall out of sync extremely quickly.

For example, imagine you have a team of 4 people. You have the de facto standard plan. Then, 2 folks on the project team decide to go and replicate that document in another capacity that they are going try and keep maintained alongside the master. Now, they have to waste time updating that document – and chances are, they are going to put something in there you don’t know about, causing a breakdown in communication.

Get everything that may exist within your organization now down in to a single place and a single tool (if feasible based on the size of your company or business unit).

Small Teams: Leverage One Project Manager

There is a caveat to this – being that smaller teams only require one PM. But in reality, even larger teams are split apart, with each group working with one PM.

This presents a particularly ugly scenario if it’s not adhered to, which I (and many others) refer to as “too many cooks in the kitchen” syndrome. Before you know, you don’t have a single person responsible for maintaing a day-to-day plan of action, you have four.

Can you imagine the complexities of having a small team of 15-20 people, with about 7 or 8 of those people all trying to manage the entire project? It would be absolute chaos.

Like having a single schedule and plan, you need to par the team down so there is one single voice that controls gathering the priorities, and making sure the trains are all running on time. If your organization (or your corner / piece of a business) does not have this, you are surely headed for a mid-air collision that will end-up delaying the project a great deal.

Get Back to Basics – What to Track

The project planning can really be pared down. And usually, it’s better for everyone if it is. When creating your plan and managing it on a week-to-week and day-to-day basis, you probably only need to look for some key pieces of information:

• The task itself – what needs to actually be done
• The estimated date of completion
• An estimated sense of effort (days / hours / etc…)
• The priority of the task
• The completion percentage of the task (0, 50, 75, 90, etc…)
• The resource assigned to the task

Again, with a small team you are trying to make sure work is being estimated in a reasonable amount of time. Also, as due dates approach you need to validate they are going to be hit, and if they won’t be, you will need to ascertain why.

Tomorrow, we will continue with the rest of this two-part piece, finishing up with thoughts on ongoing planning, status reports and other details.

Adam Bullied has more over 8 years of experience working in start-ups and maintains a blog on product management at WriteThatDown.com.