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Project Management 101... continued from previous page
Consider quality control

Creating a thorough schedule based on project milestones is key to
quality control.

A big project is like a line of dominos: if you tip over one domino, the
rest will start to fall.

“It’s gotta be built into the schedule. It’s not; here’s my project
schedule of tasks, and then quality control’s off somewhere else,”
Tony said.

“Even if it’s one task, you gotta account for it. What I’ve learned in
projects is come up with a great plan. Stuff happens. And whoever’s
at the last third of the project that has to deliver, they’re already
screwed. Because the delays just impact them. And that’s usually
quality control comes at the end.”

Whether it’s securing the critical resources, you identified earlier, buying materials, or scheduling personnel, you need to help set up the
rest of your team for success in their own roles.
“You’ve got to know your vendors, and you’ve got to qualify them in advance. I think that’s part of quality control and risk assessment as
well,” Tony said.

‘When I think about risks, people sometimes confuse risks and issues. Risk is like a ‘what if’ scenario. What if this happens? What are we
going to do? And then are we going to try and eliminate the risk or avoid it? Are we just going to mitigate it, so it doesn’t have as much
of an impact?”
Ensuring quality control might look like a detailed onboarding process for vendors, so everyone’s in the loop and working towards the
same goals and expectations.

Glen said that there need to be clear signals planned out in his mind that signify you are leaving one milestone and heading into another.

“What are the things that I need to demonstrate verification to the overall requirements of that project at that phase of the program?
That’s where your quality comes in. Because they’re going to be part of those artifacts and making sure that you prepare those artifacts
in advance of the milestone, and then you document them after,” he said.

All of this activity is in service of demonstrating completion and showing compliance with the project charter and expected delivery
requirements.

Step 3: Project execution
If you plan your project well, the execution itself should be smooth sailing.

For Glen, execution is a matter of breaking tasks into chunks and ensuring the
schedule is moving according to plan.

Block your tasks
“There are lots of complicated artifacts that you can use: integrated master
schedules, integrated master plans, earned value management, all kinds of really
complicated things for big projects that once you’re in will give you an indication of
whether you’re on track,” Glen said.

“I really do try to keep this thing to simple blocking and tackling,” he said. “From
week to week, you can just keep certain things like an action tracker.”
By action tracker, he means keeping tabs on:

● Who is responsible for action X?
● What does action X involve?
● When is action X due?
● Who does action X impact?
● What happens if action X is not completed?
●
The real key here is knowing what needs to get done and when.
24 The Nevada Traverse Vol.49, No.1, 2022