1. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016Fredericksburg Regional Business12
News
Project Management for the Small Business
Use selected knowledge areas to keep your business on track
By Charlie Herbek
The prevailing
interpretation of the
project management
process is that it applies
strictly to large company
projects, particularly
extremely complex ones. Although larger companies
certainly employ the project management process to manage
complex tasks there is certainly a place for the process at the
small business level.
According to the Project Management Book of Knowledge
(PMBOK) Guide-Fifth Edition, a project is a temporary
endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service,
or result. The temporary nature of projects indicates that a
project has a definite beginning and end.
The PMBOK further defines project management as the
application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to
project activities to meet the project requirements. Project
management is accomplished through the appropriate
application and integration of the 47 logically grouped
project management processes, which are categorized into
five Process Groups. These five Process Groups are: Initiating,
Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing.
Additionally there are 10 Knowledge Areas which apply
across the Process Groups that include: Integration
Management, Scope Management, Time Management,
Quality Management, Cost Management, Human Resource
Management, Communications Management, Risk
Management, Procurement Management and Stakeholder
Management.
These knowledge areas can be used by the small business as
a guide to manage across the full spectrum of small business
operations. This paper will limit the discussion to nine of
the ten knowledge areas and includes much of the specific
verbiage from the PMBOK as well as liberal paraphrasing of
the PMBOK to describe the knowledge areas.
Proper Scope Management ensures that you include all the
work that has to accomplished and have a method to control
what you want to include and exclude. Every small business
has a multitude of small on going projects that without some
type of scope management, quickly grow out of control.
Proper Time Management ensures the small business,
regardless of the task, define the activities they want to
accomplish, estimate the time and resources necessary to
accomplish these activities and develop a master schedule
with controls to stay on track.
Quality Management requires that what your business does
meets you own established standards as well as methods to
validate compliance.
Human Resource Management for a project is somewhat
different from the normal Human Resource definition but
helps the small business define roles and responsibilities for
a task or daily operations, find people
with the right skills, define who reports
to who, acquire the right people and
develop the skills of those people as
they accomplish the task or operate
on a daily basis. You must also “track
performance, provide feedback,
resolve issues and manage change.”
Communications Management
requires the small business owner to
have a plan to keep all stakeholders informed of the business
status. A stakeholder is anyone with a vested interest in the
business from the bank loan officer to all your employees.
Each has their own information needs. You should manage
and control all the internal and external communications
to ensure consistency and that information goes where you
want it to and not to unwanted locations or persons.
Risk Management requires the small business to identify
and think through all the possible risks incurred with an
anticipated action, analyze those risks, have a plan to
mitigate those identified risks and deal with new ones that
may arise.
Procurement Management requires the small business to
have a comprehensive plan to acquire outside resources,
monitor the acquisition and use of those resources and close
out the use of outside resources.
Stakeholder Management requires the small business owner
to identify, “the people, groups, or organization that could
be impacted by the actions the business will take, the
stakeholders. Clear, concise and consistent communications
with your stakeholders will go a long way towards successful
daily operations and acceptance of whatever changes the
small business owner may implement both internally and
with customers.
The knowledge areas of project management can be used
to manage small business operations on a daily basis. They
provide a good checklist to ensure the small business owner
is closely watching these nine critical areas regardless of the
task or ongoing operations. Using the knowledge areas
does not guarantee success but ignoring them will certainly
lead to failure.
Charlie is well-recognized as a Civil War historian, with over 15
years of experience in conducting leadership training exercises
on Virginia’s pivotal battlefields for business and government
groups. Charlie served in the U.S. Army for more than 20 years
at increasingly responsible levels, including key roles in the Office
of the Inspector General and Operations Staff. He later joined
CSC, where as a Project Manager he trained more than 1,000
Information Management Coordinators worldwide. He is president/
owner of LearningFields in Fredericksburg.
Charlie Herbek