Don't forget.....we have moved!!

Yes, we have moved to a brand new site full of downloads and new blog posts.

You will find us here or on www.ronrosenhead.co.uk

See you there!!

Yes, we have moved our blog site.....

I mentioned in a previous blog that we would be moving....Ahead of schedule we have moved. You can now catch me blogging at:

www.ronrosenhead.co.uk where there is lots of free stuff - downloads and a list of services.

So, over to you. Click here or go to www.ronrosenhead.co.uk. See you there and thaks for reading and all the emails.

Olympics - another tale...

Today's Guardian newspaper has a story that Designs for the London 2012 Olympic aquatic centre broke its original budget of £73m more than three years before games organisers admitted that the true cost had tripled to £242m.


Cost of the games are a real political hot potato. We must not forget that the games are clearly linked to a massive regeneration programme however I wonder how many stories like this will appear before the games start in just over 4 years time.

You can read all about the story here

Look out; we are on the move soon

Please note that this Blog will soon be on the move.

The Gantt chart says it will be delivered by no later than 29 May 2008. There you are, a public commitment!

I will point you to the new site soon!

The story that simply will not go away.

Yes, it’s back: the Olympic story.

Headlines in today’s papers and on the TV and radio are the comments from the Department of Culture Media and Sport: who suggested that the organisers of the 2012 Olympics are “willing to spend money like water”, as costs for the event soar.

A very important statement is shown on the BBC web site: “But the government insists it has rigid cost control measures in place”.

Now, look at your projects: what cost control measures do you have in place to ensure that projects do not go over time, over budget and that they are delivering the right results?

This is a very high profile project. Look at high profile projects in your company and examine what monitoring and control processes are in place. The Olympic project is like a beacon; it shows what you should be doing in your projects. In this instance, monitoring and control; make them essential and an integral part of your projects.

Project Management Roles - let's get them right

I was watching a police ‘soap’ TV recently and during the programme great play was made of organising the structure for the enquiry. An investigating officer was appointed and a team established. While this was a TV programme it showed that the roles and responsibilities were clearly of importance, worthy of taking time to identify and develop.

This led me to think about project management roles which people tell us are often unclear. This they tell us leads to problems of decisions making, governance and obtaining the right resources at the right time among many other issues.

On project management events we ask people to look at the role they play in a project. It is interesting that a lot of people find this activity difficult. Why? Because the person carrying out the activity is not clear who does what.

It is even more interesting for those that think project roles are clear. Some people have sat back and smiled saying all is well; until I ask a series of questions such as:

1. Do the named individuals know that the role you have given them is theirs for that project?

2. What do they actually do in the project?

3. Do they carry out the role of (say project manager) effectively?

4. What authority do these people have within the project?

I usually end up suggesting that people go back and start to ask some questions about roles and do this quickly. The questions are not easy to ask and the answers sometimes really difficult to come by.

If you are not clear about your role in a project how likely is it that the project will be delivered on time and to budget with the right results? Spend time up front identifying the role you play, make life easier for those trying to deliver projects and if you are one of those who is faced with not knowing what your role is then I suggest you raise your head above the parapet and ask some tough questions, and keep on asking until roles are clear AND documented.

Those Olympic estimates will not go away

The row about the cost of the 2012 Olympic Games goes on. Today a report by the Public Accounts Committee (click here for the full 40 page report) criticises the government for the escalating costs of the games.

Costs have risen from a bid price of just over £4 billion to a revised estimate (March 2008) of £9.325 billion! Now my guess is that the arguments around the true cost of the games will continue for many years up to and beyond the games themselves.

I am not going to try and argue which side is correct or who made big errors, if any have been made, I want to use this as an example of what can happen if your estimates are wrong - time, money or resources.

We work with many professional staff who in their words estimate poorly or use guestimates. So what can be done to ensure you have more accurate estimates?

*break it down - on our courses we stress the need to break down the overall project into manageable chunks. We encourage people to use work breakdown or product breakdown techniques. If you are going to put estimates against an activity the activity needs to be small enough to put an estimate against e.g. if you are carrying out all of the administration for a conference it is easier to estimate how long it will take to hire 4 projectors compared to organising the whole conference.

*who has the skills to provide you with the knowledge of what is involved in the project and how long each task will take. Use financial experts to help you identify the financial estimates.

*you are not alone - sometimes you are working on a project which someone within your organisation has worked on before. Ask them how long the project took. Ask them for the work breakdown; look at the cost estimates and actuals.

*documentation - the above point highlights the need for project documentation. Keep up to date records

*post project review and project meetings including lessons learned reports - these should include the level of accuracy of your estimates (of all your estimates - money, time, resources), what you have learned while working on the project. Share this information with others.

Make sure you spend more time estimating. Avoid the poor publicity or the consequences of spending too much money, delivering late with the wrong results.