Speaker 1: OK, my name's Chris Croft. I run training courses in project management. I much prefer the APM process, that's the Association of Project Managers, to PRINCE. So I'm going to take you through the APM process really fast. It's a 12-step process that allows you to plan and deliver any project on time to budget and correctly to quality. So step one, define the project really carefully. Make sure you know exactly what you're doing before you start. Agree it with everybody, probably at a kick-off meeting, and get the agreement in writing. This document is sometimes known as a PID, a project initiation document. And in that document you will need to define what you're going to deliver, that's the quality, when you're going to deliver it, that's the time, and the cost that the project's going to be. Cost, quality, and time. Whatever you do, don't agree to a project you can't deliver, and don't even say maybe you can deliver it, because that will sound like a yes, and they will think they're going to get it when they probably won't, and it will end up badly for you and them. So define everything at the beginning. Final thought about step one, define the key driver. Which of the three circles is the most important? Okay then, step two, the planning begins. List the tasks. Make sure you don't miss any tasks, because that will really mess up the cost, quality, and time. So think carefully about listing the tasks, probably in three different ways. Have a big brainstorm meeting with your team and get a random list, then get that list structured down into a work breakdown structure, which is a tree diagram of tasks, and then maybe ask an expert if you've missed anything, or have a look at history, see what happened last time. Once you've got a list of tasks, you can go to step three, which is to estimate the tasks. Think about how long they're going to take, and what they're going to cost, and don't promise the average, because if you promise the average, there's a 50% chance that you're going to fail. Ideally, a good safety margin would not be just adding 10%, you'd add a bit more than that, you'd go halfway between the average and the worst case. So if you'd expect something to take four weeks, but it might take six weeks, then put five weeks as your estimate. Once you've got all the tasks listed and estimated, you can go to step four, which is to produce a network diagram, or critical path diagram. I quite often call this a post-it note diagram, because the best way to do it is to put all the tasks on post-it notes, stick them on a whiteboard or a big piece of paper, get them in roughly the right order, and then draw arrows connecting them, so you know what comes after what. This allows you to find the longest path, or the critical path, but also more importantly, it's the heart of all your planning, because this is when you decide how you're going to actually do the project. So this is a network diagram, absolutely essential. Do not jump straight to a Gantt chart, but do a network diagram first. Step five is to look at your network diagram and decide whether you're happy with how long it's going to take. If it's going to take longer, you'll need to speed it up, which is known as crashing, and this usually means either putting the money up on some of the tasks, or reducing the quality of some of the tasks. Although sometimes you can overlap some of the tasks as well. And by the way, the ones that you need to crash obviously are going to be the ones on the critical path, no point in crashing a floating task. You have to keep an eye on the floating tasks though, because if you shorten the critical path enough, some of the floating tasks may then become critical. So you've produced the network diagram without thinking about the total, and then you've looked at the total and reduced it if you have to. You can now move on to step six, which is to make it into a Gantt chart. The Gantt chart is the output that you really want, but it's very important to go through the network diagram stage first, because otherwise the Gantt chart is very difficult to draw. When you draw the Gantt chart, you put in the critical path first, just coming down in steps. You have a timescale across the top so that the longer tasks are just shown as longer bars. And then once you've got the critical path, all the floating tasks hang off that. You can look at what they come after and what they come before to put in the floating tasks. If we were doing a training course, we would do examples and we would practice this, of course, but you can probably see from this diagram roughly how it works. So you've got the Gantt chart. The Gantt chart is brilliant for three reasons. Firstly, it shows everybody what they've got to do and when. Each person can see their part of the project. Secondly, you can look vertically and see when you're going to be busiest. You can calculate the labour levels required, and you can slide floating tasks if you've got too much going on at once. And thirdly, you can use the Gantt chart to monitor what's going on by colouring in, but I'll come to that in a minute. So Gantt chart, completely essential. You have to have one. You can then go on to step seven, which is to think about resources in more detail, adding up vertically and possibly even adding up all of your projects, because if you've got a resource profile for each one, you can add up all the resource profiles to check that you are able to do all the projects that you want to do. And then finally, step eight, the last bit of your planning is to look at the risks. You probably would look at the critical path on the Gantt chart in particular and think what might go wrong? How likely are those things to go wrong and how serious would they be if they do go wrong? If something's reasonably likely and reasonably serious, then you need to have a plan for what to do about it, either to make it less likely or make it less serious. So that's the end of the planning. That's the end of step eight. You need to do all of this before you commit to a project. So there is a little loop back to step one and you may find yourself going back to the people who want the project saying, I can't do it and this is why. Very important to be assertive, but the good news is planning makes you stronger. So if you've got a Gantt chart, you can use it as an arguing tool which everyone can understand. Once the project's been agreed by you and the people who want it, you then start the project. And step nine is to monitor the project by colouring in the Gantt chart, check that you're keeping up with the schedule. You probably would have a monthly meeting, but possibly even a weekly meeting if necessary, based around the Gantt chart to make sure you're keeping up. So that's monitoring progress. The other thing that you want to monitor, which is step ten, is the finance. And you need to combine steps nine and ten really, because if you're underspent, you may think you're okay, but of course if you look at progress, it's probably you haven't done the work. By the way, if you're overspent, you probably are overspent. So comparing the progress and the money is very important and those are steps nine and ten. Step eleven is to reschedule. This is where you have to ask for more money and ask for more time. Step eleven is usually quite unpleasant. The main hope you've got of surviving step eleven is to put in some contingency when you do your estimating, way back at step three. And then finally, when you finish the project, step twelve is to do a review and to say what have we learned. Usually three questions, good, bad and better. So what was good that we must repeat next time? It might have just been luck, but at least we can make sure we repeat it next time. What was bad that we're going to avoid next time and that everybody else needs to know about so they can avoid it too? And what could we have done better? So there we are. That's the 12-step process done very, very quickly. I hope that's been useful. If you need to know more, have a look at my website or come on one of my courses. Thank you.