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Project Planning and Control

Project basics, requirements, WBS, schedules, risk, quality, change control, stakeholders and reporting.

17 chapters · About 184 minutes · Free to read

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KEVOS® LibraryPROJECTSProject Planningand ControlLIBRARY COLLECTION17 CHAPTERS

Inside this book

Chapters

  1. 01Project management basics for small businesses: five phases and ten areas to controlWhat makes something a project, the five phases from initiation to closing, and the ten areas to manage, from scope and schedule to risk, procurement and stakeholders, at small-business scale.
  2. 02Predictive, agile or hybrid: choosing how to deliver engineering and product projectsPlan-driven delivery suits stable requirements and costly change; agile suits uncertainty and cheap change. How to read a project, combine the two deliberately and avoid empty rituals.
  3. 03Requirements that can be traced and tested: from business need to verified solutionMany project disputes trace back to requirements nobody wrote clearly. How to elicit needs, write testable requirements, prioritise them, trace each to an objective and evaluate the result.
  4. 04Building a work breakdown structure: deliverables first, product descriptions and the plan that followsA work breakdown structure turns a goal into defined, ownable pieces. How to decompose by deliverables, apply the 100% rule, describe products, map their flow and build the plan from it.
  5. 05Keeping an assumptions log that tests the plan, not just records itEvery plan rests on things believed to be true. How to identify the assumptions that matter, rank them, test the critical ones early and set signposts that tell you when the plan needs to change.
  6. 06Critical path scheduling explained: building the network, calculating float and keeping the schedule honestA schedule models how work depends on other work. How to sequence activities, run the forward and backward pass, read total and free float, and keep the critical path credible.
  7. 07Schedule compression and recovery: crashing, fast-tracking and bringing a late project backWhen a project slips and the deadline cannot move, panic costs money. How to reschedule first, crash the cheapest critical work, fast-track with care and know when recovery is not worth it.
  8. 08Finding project risks before they find you: workshops, structured prompts, assumptions, scanning and blind spotsYou cannot manage a risk nobody identified. How to run risk workshops that find more than the obvious, use structured prompts, test assumptions and interfaces, and correct for blind spots.
  9. 09Learning from project risk: lessons learned, risk audits, risk culture and the limits of predictionMost organisations repeat the same project risks because lessons are filed, not used. How to run reviews and audits that change practice, build a reporting culture and prepare for surprises.
  10. 10Managing quality on a project: acceptance criteria, quality registers, reviews and concessionsProject quality fails at handover when nobody agreed what good meant. How to plan quality, separate assurance from control, track checks in a register and handle shortfalls openly.
  11. 11Issue, change and configuration control: keeping project baselines true while the project changesProjects change constantly; the danger is change nobody decided. How to classify issues, assess impact, route decisions to the right authority and keep drawings and code current.
  12. 12Stakeholder analysis that changes what you do: registers, power and interest, salience and engagement plansA stakeholder list is not a strategy. How to find everyone who can affect or is affected by a project, map power, interest and urgency, assess engagement and plan communication.
  13. 13Leading virtual and global project teams: trust, communication, culture and working across time zonesDistributed teams give access to scarce skills, but distance magnifies weak communication and trust. How to set up and lead project teams across sites, firms, cultures and time zones.
  14. 14Planning a data migration between business systems: scope, mapping, cleansing, trial loads and reconciliationMoving data to a new system is where many implementations go wrong. How to scope, map, clean, rehearse, reconcile and cut over so records arrive complete and trusted.
  15. 15Running a data-modelling workshop: capturing what a business system must record, in the business's own wordsMany system failures start with a misunderstood data model. How to run a workshop that captures the things, rules and history a system must handle, using real examples and plain language.
  16. 16Restarting a stalled project: diagnosis, a smaller plan and rebuilding stakeholder trustWhy large projects stall and how to restart one: diagnose the real cause, appoint one decision-maker, shrink the plan to deliverable stages, fund it and win back customers, suppliers and staff.
  17. 17Writing a project report or business case that gets a decisionWhen you need a project report for lenders, investors, grants, approvals or clients, what each audience looks for, a standard structure, and how to write an executive summary that wins.

These topic-based reading collections are organised alphabetically; chapters may be read in any order.

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