Tasks for Project Manager >

You are responsible for preparing and presenting the information to the Decision Gate review and dealing with any issues that arise relating to your themes.

Manage the delivery of all documentation associated with the Close report.

You may well need to support the Executive Sponsor with presentation material if they have to present to the Exec Board, or additional information about the project.

Once completed the Programme/Portfolio Office will advise the result of the gate and any issues or recommendations that will need to be dealt with.

You should focus on formal sign off that the objectives of the project have been achieved so far.

The major parts of the project are now completed and there will be a stabilising period.

Once signed off, you should be looking to re allocate staff to other projects or releasing them back to the business operations. 

Ensure that appropriate HR procedures are being followed and records relating to staff are updated.

Structured closure of the project and effective communication is an effective way of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, so proceed with care.

All lessons should be documented and included in the closure report.

Manage the elements of the transition plan that remove the legacy systems and ensure that they are disposed of appropriately.

Your role in this is to schedule the decommissioning and disposal of resources.

There may be issues to consider in relation to the way certain materials are disposed of - check with the corporate risk and environmental teams to ensure the disposal is compliant.

There may be financial issues to do with accounting for capital assets which will need to be written off. 

The suppliers will be keen to remove the legacy equipment as it may be of value.

Manage the activities to develop the design with the inclusion of appropriate expertise.

The business capability will provide you with requirements against which the options will be appraised.

The design will largely be put together by the Senior User in collaboration with the programme BCMs so your role is to work at turning this design into a coherent set of requirements that can be used to design and deliver the project.

If a Programme Manager exists then they may well have details from the programme blueprint which will help with this.

Manage and support a structured approach to appraisal and selection of potential solutions.

Your role is to facilitate this step. There should be a structured approach to the appraisal.

The appraisal should be linked back to the requirements with each option being assessed to see how well it achieves each of the requirements.  

Using some sort of numerical analysis will help to make it more objective.

At this moment in time, it is still quite conceptual but you are looking to remove non-runners from the process. It will also help to understand where the gaps and risks are that may provide challenges going forward.

Manage the preferred option selection process and ensure that there is a documented audit trail to justify the preferred approach.

You should maintain the audit trail of how the recommended approach was selected, including the issues that were identified with each of the options. 

Be careful about communications, this could have commercial sensitivities that shouldn’t be made public.  

You should now be able to update the business document with information about the requirements including how the options have been assessed.

There will have been issues and risks that have emerged or changed so ensure that your documentation is up to date and your plan will also need to be revised to reflect the clearer path ahead of you.

Check with the Programme Manager if there any issues that will need to be considered with regard to achieving the programme requirements, the capability in the blueprint or their timescales.

Log concerns and actions as part of the issue management process and ensure that they are responded to timelines.

You may well need to support the Project Sponsor with presentation material if they have to present to the Portfolio Board or additional information about the project.

Once completed the Programme/Portfolio Office will advise the result of the gate and any issues or recommendations that will need to be dealt with.

It would be sensible to have a review with the Programme/Portfolio Office and the Programme Manager to plan the next stage of the project and the issues you will face as the Project Manager.

Ensure that the Business Operating Model is within the scope of what the project is required to achieve, it may change the scope.

If the project is part of a programme, this operating model should be aligned to the programme blueprint, so ensure that you liaise with the Programme Manager on any specific requirements that the programme may have from this Business Operating Model.  

Develop or co-ordinate the development of the technical design and requirements to enable procurement and supply to take place.

You should lead the process of specification, it is not your role to be an expert in the product and this expertise should be provided by the relevant business area.

The more detailed the specification the less risk there will be when acquiring and building the products. 

Manage the procurement activities to achieve the timescales in the Project Plan. 

You must make sure that the procurement department is fully advised on what you are intending to do and that their advice is taken - wherever possible include their specialist resources as part of the project team.

If this is a large procurement, then plenty of time must be allowed.  EU regulations prescribe certain timescales that you will have to adhere to.

There are many pitfalls in procurement that cause projects to run late, so seek out lessons learned and ensure you allow plenty of time between the stages of procurement, in particular, allowing the suppliers’ time to develop their approach and provide coherent responses.

Work out the process and stages that will be required up front - this will save time and money and make the process more transparent to the project team as well as the potential suppliers.

Receive the recommendation from the review, provide any additional information and ensure the schedule to address recommendations is agreed.

You may well need to support the Project Sponsor with presentation material if they have to present to the Portfolio Board, or additional information about the project.

Once completed the Programme/Portfolio Office will advise the result of the gate and any issues or recommendations that will need to be dealt with.

It would be sensible to have a review with the Programme/Portfolio Office and the Programme Manager to plan the next stage of the project and the issues you will face as the Project Manager.

Focus on putting in a detailed schedule to show the stages that the contract negotiations will go through.

Without a timeline and a clear path this step could be very difficult to control and cause significant knock on effects on delivery.

Try to find examples of similar projects or contracts and build the plan around the lessons from that.

Your focus should be on facilitating and controlling the process to ensure that the organisation gets what it needs.

Undertake a gap analysis of the impact of any changes and revise the Project Plan accordingly.

Changes to the model may well change the scope of the project as some of the requirements may not be met or additional capability is going to be available and will need to be included in the transition planning.

Change control should be applied to all aspects of the project to ensure the implications are being understood.

Manage the activities within the testing and ensure quality plans are clearly allocated and delivered.  Manage and resolve any issues that result from testing.

Depending on the type of project, this could involve a lot of work offsite by a contractor or it could be an in-house team working on it which will be more visible.

Your priority should be on ensuring that there is a clearly defined plan to deliver the capability and that you are tracking it carefully.  Focus on any milestones which could affect your dependencies with other projects, as these delays may have knock on effects.

You should also be focusing on evidence based reports to support progress reporting.  Visits and inspections are important if the work is being undertaken at a contractors premises.

Co-ordinate the testing and resolution of issues and advise when testing has been satisfactorily completed.

Your focus should be on having a detailed schedule to deliver this. 

The Quality and Testing plan should now be completed and should provide the evidence that the capability can be accepted.

A key success factor to achieving this step successfully is to ensure that there is very open communications with the supplier and the users so that issues can be explained and resolved quickly.

The issue management process should be used to ensure that there is transparency about what has been accepted and what hasn’t.

Check the transition plan and ensure that any performance issues are being tracked and resolved as part of issue management.

Your priority should be maintaining momentum and alignment with the plans.

There will always be issues arising, some will be tangible and others will be emotional.

You need to focus on maintaining control of the schedule and ensuring that slippage is justified based on genuine issues rather than resistance to change.

The key to success will be having a robust approach to managing issues and most importantly, resolving them through change control.

Update the transition plans to timescales and ensure that any issues can be resolved easily.

The transition plan is your main focus at this stage, controlling the various elements to ensure the operations get what they want with minimum disruption.

Changes to the transition plan should be carefully managed.

Focus on the acceptance criteria being achieved in the operational areas.

Ensure that any asset performance issues are being tracked and resolved as part of issue management.

The quality plan should be referenced to ensure that the criteria for completing implementation has been achieved.

You should focus on formal sign off that the objectives of the project have been achieved so far.

The major parts of the project are now completed and there will be a stabilising period.

Once signed off, you should be looking to re allocate staff to other projects or releasing them back to the business operations. 

Ensure that appropriate HR procedures are being followed and records relating to staff are updated.

Structured closure of the project and effective communication is an effective way of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, so proceed with care.

All lessons should be documented and included in the closure report.

Manage the delivery of all documentation associated with the Close report.

You may well need to support the Executive Sponsor with presentation material if they have to present to the Exec Board, or additional information about the project.

Once completed the Portfolio Office will advise the result of the gate and any issues or recommendations that will need to be dealt with.

Organise the structured final testing, bug and defect resolution to the satisfaction of the Project Sponsor.

You should ensure that all issues have been tracked through the issue and change management processes.

There should be clarity about what has been delivered and what is outstanding.

The levels of outstanding issues and their relative priority will be the key element of the sign off decision so ensure there is transparency for the Project Board. 

A plan to resolve outstanding issues should be in place with clear responsibilities.