Datasheet

Key Project Management Skills
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both positive and negative, that may impact the project. This means minimizing the probabil-
ity and impact of negative risks while maximizing the probability and impact of positive risks.
Some of the documents you’ll create in this knowledge area are a risk management plan, a risk
identification list, a risk register, risk responses, and more.
Project Procurement Management This knowledge area is concerned with purchasing goods
or services from vendors, contractors, suppliers, and others outside the project team. The activ-
ities and documents you’ll perform in this knowledge area include planning for purchases, pre-
paring bids and requests, selecting vendors, and writing contracts.
There is a lot of information covered in each of these knowledge areas and we’ll discuss
each throughout the remainder of this book. For example, the Project Integration Knowledge
area covers the project charter and project scope statement. We’ll talk about the project char-
ter later in this chapter and jump into the scope statement in Chapter 4, “Determining Project
Requirements.”
Organizing Time and Information
Another skill that project managers should have in their tool bag is solid time management and
organization skills. Each of us has eight hours or so every workday to accomplish our tasks.
It seems some people accomplish twice the amount of work in that period of time than others.
Time management is a process that you use to control the priorities in your day so that you
can work on the most important items. Organizational skills are particularly useful in project
management terms when it comes to organizing project documentation, organizing meetings,
and organizing teams.
Microsoft Outlook is an effective time management tool. It contains a calendar, a task list,
and a contact list all in one place. Most of you are probably familiar with its capabilities or
have used a product similar to it. You can set recurring project meetings, for example, create
tasks and give them specific due dates, and so on. One of the new features of Outlook 2007
allows you and each of your team members to publish your calendars to the Office Server,
making it available to others. This is helpful when setting up meetings or when checking on
someone’s availability. We’ll talk more about scheduling team members’ activities and setting
up resource calendars in Chapter 8, “Constructing the Project Schedule and Budget.”
Task lists are another feature of Outlook. You can set up customized views to see the status
of tasks by owners and due date and percent complete and so on. However, we find tasks lists
easier to create and manage in Excel. For example, in your role as a project manager, you will
have multiple team members and tasks to track. These tasks will roll up into project deliver-
ables. Again, we’ll look more closely at task lists in Chapter 8.
Tips for Managing Time
Remember that project managers spend up to 90 percent of their time communicating. This means
talking to people and writing project documentation and status updates and so on. If you don’t
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