The document provides 10 secrets for managing successful projects from an experienced project manager. It discusses the importance of having a detailed plan and schedule, daily stand-up meetings, managing issues and risks, clear communication, mediating team discussions, managing scope, addressing resource issues, and caring about the project's success. Project management fundamentals like scope, schedule, budget, risk, and issues are also covered.

1. The Art of Execution
Top 10 Secrets of Managing
Successful Projects
Crystal Taggart, PMP
Atlas Innovations LLC

2. About Atlas Innovations
• Founded in 2012
• Specializes in software prototyping, project
sourcing, and project management
• About Crystal Taggart
– Technologist and Entrepreneur
– 16 Years of IT Experience from development to
management
– PMP certified project manager since 2006
– Led projects onshore, offshore, nearshore

3. Project Management? Why bother?
• Why do you care about project management?
– Most projects fail in one (or more) of these
categories:
• Scope
• Schedule
• Budget

4. Project Management Basics
• There are 5 key measurements that I track as a
part of my projects:
– Scope: What is being delivered
– Schedule: When each feature will be delivered
and by whom
– Budget: How much will it cost
– Risk: Areas of concern within the project
– Issues: Problems within the project

5. The Triangle
If ANY one of these
change…they ALL change
Budget

6. Planning For Projects
• Procurement Strategies
• Handling Issues/Risks
• User Adoption

7. Procurement Strategies
Fixed Bid – Vendor provides services Time & Materials – Vendor is
for a fixed dollar amount paid hourly for services
• Beware of: • Beware of:
– Low quality – Scope changes
– Long Timeframes
– Inaccurate time tracking
– Scope Changes
– Inaccurate estimates
• How to Mitigate
– Find another Vendor for QA • How to Mitigate
– Payment based on % complete – Use a time tracking system
– Incentivize to complete faster – Track progress closely
– Heavily document your – Always write into the contract
requirements and plan for
change requests – it will
‘not to exceed’ a specific
happen dollar amount

8. Plan for Surprises
• In ALL projects, something happens to cause a
delay
– i.e. illness, resource issues, bad estimates, missed
requirements
• Be prepared to adjust
• Find ways to protect yourself
– If working with a vendor, write into the contract to
protect yourself from resource changes

9. User Adoption
• If you build it, they may not come
• This is often a huge failure point for many
projects

10. Agile vs. Waterfall
Agile Waterfall
• 1-3 week deliveries of • Figure out what to build,
working software called a are NOTthen build, and repeat
These methodologies mutually exclusive
Sprint • Developers work with
• Developers work directly analysts who design
with teams to deliver software (less business
• Looser requirements interaction)
• User Stories • Detailed Use Cases
• Daily scrum meeting

11. Waterfall Pros/Cons
Pros Cons
• Very clear scope definition • Can spend tremendous
• Very clear roles on the team amounts of time defining
(analyst, developer, QA, what to build only to find
business sponsor) that it’s cost prohibitive to
go build it
• Typically a much longer
cycle

12. Agile Pros/Cons
Pros Cons
• Rapid delivery • Easy to push scope into the
• Tight team communication “next sprint”
• Great for bundling minor • Often start with vague
enhancement/defect requirements and design
releases software on the fly
• If you have a developer who • Easy to miss deadlines if
understands both business someone is sick, on
and technology, Agile is vacation, etc.
perfect for this!

13. Top 10 Secrets for Getting Projects
Done

14. 1. Have a detailed plan and schedule
• Know who is doing what, when it’s due, and why
it needs to be done
• Allow the team to estimate their own tasks
• Ask questions/challenge the team
• Be aware of the critical path
– This is the shortest amount of time a project can take
– If a critical path task slips on the project, the entire
schedule is delayed
– Examples: Deployment to app store, infrastructure
setup
• The plan is the plan until you have a new plan

15. 2. Have a daily scrum
• Entire team meets 10-15 Minutes a day
• Cover what happened yesterday, what is the
plan for today, any “blockers” or issues that
are impeding progress
• Be consistent, same time every day
• DOCUMENT the notes

16. 3. Manage your issues and risks
• Don’t stick your head in the sand and hope it’s
not a problem
• Understand WHY something is a problem
– Sometimes a mountain is created out of a molehill
– Understand the probability something will happen
– There is usually manual workarounds that can be
devised
– Don’t automate solutions for blue moon scenarios
• Track and follow-up!

17. 4. Don’t Assume Your Developer
Knows Business Priorities/Strategy
• Collaboration is good, too much and you end
up at the beginning
• Most developers work on a mindset “I can
build whatever you want if you tell me what
you want”
• Focus on the Pareto curve
– There is a happy medium between focusing on the
80% vs. 20%. Developers are detail-oriented and
they focus on 20% of the scenarios

18. 5. Answer the tough questions up-
front
• Do NOT cross that bridge when you come to it
• Get advice and feedback on how to solve a
problem before you have your development
team begin

19. 6. Communicate, communicate,
communicate!
• Many people won’t start until
prompted, many people won’t communicate
when their task is complete to the next person
in the project. Don’t assume that people are
talking to each other!
• Find the ways that the team like to
communicate
• Things won’t get done unless you are
communicating

20. 7. Mediate, mediate, mediate!
• There are many ways to solve an issue and
often if you bring teams together to discuss,
it’s easy to come up with the best solution
• Discuss all the ideas on the table, pros/cons,
project impact and project risk, usually a clear
winner will emerge

21. 8. Manage your scope
• If you don’t manage your scope, it will
manage you
• Scope changes come from everywhere, even
your developers
• If you hear the words “refactor” you need to
understand why
– this means “rewrite” in Dev-speak
– this means “regression test” in QA-speak
– This means extra time and $$$ in PM-speak

22. 9. Address Resource Issues Head-On
• If someone is constantly encountering issues or missing
their deliverables, get rid of them! It drains the energy
of the team and costs you money and time
• Here’s some things that I look for in the team members
I hire:
– What was the most complex issue they solved? Did they
solve it or did “the team” solve it?
– What projects have they worked on with a difficult peer or
business customer? (Are they the difficult peer?)
– What project did they work on that was late? (Everyone
has had a late project.) Look for people who accept
accountability to deliver results, not people who blame
someone on the project for the results.

23. 10. CARE!
• If you don’t care about your project, noone
else will either
• Be excited about creating something awesome
• Celebrate every win! Create momentum every
where you can!

24. Some Resources
• The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management
– Amazon.com - Great resource, an easy read, and
lots of templates
• Paymo.biz: Time-tracking software at
$5/month per person
• The Software Planning Checklist
– On http://www.Atlas-Innovations.com/checklist

25. Questions?