Technical project

A technical project is one that includes engineering elements, technical hardware

components, software elements, and or data management requirements. Actually technical
component management seems to be a part of almost every project.

What Is Technical Project Management?

All project managers must possess organizational prowess, leadership capability, and
communication skills to be successful. When it comes to IT projects, you can add
technological knowledge and expertise to the equation. Technical project management is a
unique branch of the field that comes with its own challenges and opportunities.
Technical project management is the process of managing IT or IT-related projects.
Technical project managers are critical to the conception, development, and execution of
these projects. In addition to understanding the technical content of the project, they must
handle all the duties normally ascribed to project managers, such as:
 Planning
 Scheduling and timeline maintenance
 Execution
 Managing the budget
 Communication with stakeholders
 Ongoing maintenance
Anyone interested in technical project management will need to balance a high level of
technical capability with soft skills such as leadership, time management, and big-picture
thinking.

What special skills are needed for technical project management?

Anyone in technical project management will need to have some training and experience in
hardware and software installation, upgrades, and internal and external site maintenance.
Experience in the development and rollout of new websites, upgrades, and features would be
helpful. Familiarity with popular and relevant technologies, applied methodologies, and
development models within the organization’s context are also critical to a technical project
manager’s success.

Certifications in technical project management

Obtaining a certificate can help IT professionals move into the technical project management
space. Some relevant certifications include:
 Project Management Professional (PMP)
 CompTIA Project+ certification
 PRINCE2 Foundation/PRINCE2 Practitioner
  Project Management in IT Security (PMITS)
 Certified Project Manager (CPM)

How to Effectively Track Project Progress for Success?

1. Make it a team effort

Everyone on your team wants the same thing: a successful project. With that in mind, get
everyone involved by holding a kickoff meeting, sharing your vision and the client’s
motivations, and soliciting input from your team. It’s especially important that your project
team members contribute to establishing your goals since it is largely up to those individuals to
meet the project goals.

2. Utilize reporting tools to monitor project progress

It is extremely helpful to utilize a project management software to generate automatic reports

on your progress. Rather than you assessing progress toward deadlines individually or
attempting to calculate percentages of completion, a project reporting feature in the project
management system can give you accurate information in just a few clicks.

3. Establish good goals

You can’t track what you haven’t established. Good goals are realistic, clear, and measurable.
Write down a rough sketch of your project objectives, and then examine them to see if they
meet the following requirements:

Realistic– Having lofty goals is good, and stretch goals can be a great way to challenge your
team, but always keep things realistic. You don’t want to make promises to your clients that
you can’t keep. Ask yourself: Can we accomplish this goal with the allotted time and resources
available to us?

Clear– Many project managers cite a lack of clear goals as the most common cause of project
failures. Ask yourself: Do we know exactly what is being asked of us? Does everyone on the
team understand?

Measurable– It’s not enough to say “finish phase one in a timely manner” or “increase
capacity” for example. You need numbers. Decide what date phase one should be completed
and establish your baseline, acceptable, and ideal numbers for capacity. Ask yourself: Are there
quantifiable indicators with which we can judge each goal?
4. Make the project visible

One of the best ways to promote success is to make the project visible to everyone on your team.
It’s extremely motivating when your team can see the goals they’ve helped establish as well as
the progress being made (or not made) toward those goals. The Kanban method is a simple and
effective visual system for organizing workflows. It helps prevent bottlenecks, encourages
incremental improvements, and balances demands against available capacity. Kanban
boards can be physical in the form of sticky notes placed on an empty wall, or you can go
digital with online workplaces shared around the globe.

First, identify the steps or project phases of your workflow and create a column for each one.
Second, create a card for each task or project element that needs to be completed. Third, put
your cards into the columns that represent where each task or project stands in the workflow.
As tasks move from one phase to the next, move the card to the next column until it has passed
through all the phases of your workflow. Everyone on the team can see at a glance how tasks
are moving through the phases. This lets each team member know who’s waiting, who needs
help, what tasks are late, and what needs to be done next.

5. Check-in with your team regularly

Be consistent. Don’t be tempted to “set it and forget it.” Create a project schedule for yourself to
check in on the goals you’ve created with your team. Deadlines are obvious points, but if you
wait until the deadline, it will be too late to course-correct. Instead of taking this reactive
approach, be proactive.

Set appointments for yourself to measure progress at regular intervals throughout the project.
Then you can address issues early on and keep your project on track.

What Is Cost Estimation?

In project management, cost estimation is the summation of individual cost elements, using
established estimating methods and valid data, to estimate the future costs of a project, based on
what is known today.

It further defines the basic characteristics of credible cost estimates as including:

Clear identification of tasks

Broad participation in preparing estimates

Availability of valid data

Standardized structures for the estimates

Provisions for program uncertainties

Recognition of inflation

Excluded costs
Independent reviews of estimates

Revision of estimates for significant program changes

Why Is Cost Estimation Important?

Cost estimation and cost management are an essential part of project management. The project
manager is responsible for making the most accurate project budget possible by using a work
breakdown structure (WBS) and cost estimation techniques to visualize the project scope and
then assign costs to each project task. Knowing the project scope will help not only in the
planning phase but throughout the project life cycle, especially during executing, monitoring
and controlling a project.

Having a cost estimation process is how project managers are able to achieve the goals and
objectives of the project set forth by executives and project stakeholders. The project
budget will collect indirect costs and direct costs as it estimates the overall cost of delivering
the project on time and meeting quality expectations. That means, whatever you’re going to
need to make the project successful will be thought through during the cost estimation process.

Cost Estimation Techniques

All of these factors impact project cost estimation, making it difficult to come up with precise
estimates. Luckily, there are cost estimating techniques that can help with developing a more
accurate cost estimation.

Analogous Estimating

Seek the help of experts who have experience in similar projects, or use your own historical
data. If you have access to relevant historical data, try analogous estimating, which can show
precedents that help define what your future costs will be in the early stages of the project.

Parametric Estimating

There is statistical modeling, or parametric estimating, which also uses historical data of key
cost drivers and then calculates what those costs would be if the duration or another of the
project is changed.

Bottom-Up Estimating

A more granular approach is bottom-up estimating, which uses estimates of individual tasks
and then adds those up to determine the overall cost of the project. This cost estimating method
is even more detailed than parametric estimating and is used in complex projects with lots of
variables such as software development or construction projects.

Three-point Estimate

Another approach is the three-point estimate, which comes up with three scenarios: most likely,
optimistic and pessimistic ranges. These are then put into an equation to develop an estimation.
Reserve Analysis

Reserve analysis determines how much contingency reserve must be allocated. This approach
tries to wrangle uncertainty.

Cost of Quality

Cost of quality uses money spent during the project to avoid failures and money applied after
the project to address failures. This can help fine-tune your overall project cost estimation. And
comparing bids from vendors can also help figure out costs.

Dynamic Tools

Whenever you’re estimating costs, it helps to use an online software to collect all of your
project information. Project management software that can be used in congress with many of
these techniques to help facilitate the process. Use online software to define your project teams,
tasks and goals. Even manage your vendors and track costs as the project unfolds. We’ll show
you how.

How to Estimate Costs in 10 Steps

The U.S. government has identified a 12-step process that results in reliable and valid cost
estimates for project management. Those twelve steps are outlined below.

1. Define Cost Estimate’s Purpose

Determine the purpose of the cost estimate, the level of detail which is required, who receives
the estimate and the overall scope of the estimate.

2. Develop Estimating Plan

Assemble a cost-estimating team, and outline their estimation techniques. Develop a timeline,
and determine who will do the independent cost estimate. Finally, create the team’s schedule.

3. Define Characteristics

Create a baseline description of the purpose, system and performance characteristics. This
includes any technology implications, system configurations, schedules, strategies and relations
to existing systems. Don’t forget support, security, risk items, testing and production,
deployment and maintenance, and any similar legacy systems.

4. Determine Cost Estimating Techniques

Define a work breakdown structure (WBS), and choose an estimating method that is best suited
for each element in the WBS. Cross-check for cost and schedule drivers; then create a checklist.

5. Identify Rule, Assumptions and Obtain Data

Clearly define what is included and excluded from the estimate, and identify specific
assumptions.
 6. Develop Point Estimate

Develop a cost model by estimating each WBS element.

7. Conduct Sensitivity Analysis

Test sensitivity of costs to changes in estimating input values and key assumptions, and
determine key cost drivers.

8. Conduct Risk and Uncertainty Analysis

Determine the cost, schedule and technical risks inherent with each item on the WBS and how
to manage them.

9. Document the Estimate and Present to Management

Have documentation for each step in the cost estimate process to keep everyone on the same
page with the cost estimate. Then you can brief the project stakeholders on cost estimates to get
their approval.

10. Update Cost Estimate

Any changes to the cost estimate must be updated and reported on. Also, perform a postmortem
where you can document lessons learned.

What is a project schedule?

A project schedule provides a general overview of your project, including the timeline,
project tasks, dependencies, and assigned team members. Essentially, a project schedule
should be able to tell you everything you need to know about your project at first glance. By
outlining all the high-level details and components of your project, you can track project
progress in real-time and ensure that you’re on track for success.

Steps to create a project schedule

When you begin planning and drafting your project schedule, you want to include all project
activities. At first, the project management scheduling process may feel a bit foreign to you—
that’s normal! By following these steps, you can get more comfortable creating your own
process for project schedule development, and use it every time you plan a project.

1. Define your project goals. Write down key milestones or deliverables that will make this
project successful in the end.
2. Identify all stakeholders. Make a list of every person that needs to interact with the project
team, even if their role is a simple sign-off.
3. Determine your final deadline. Decide when you need to be completely finished with the
project. Be sure to give yourself enough time to account for conflicts or changes that might
come up later during schedule management.
4. List each step or task.Take those milestones and deliverables you defined in the first step and
break them down into smaller tasks and subtasks to be sure all bases are covered.
5. Assign a team member responsible for each task. Decide who will take on each task and
subtask, and be transparent with deadlines. Remember that your colleagues likely have other
projects going on at the same time. Be mindful of their workload so they don’t feel
overloaded.
6. Work backward to set due dates for each task. Figure out how long each task will take to
complete (its start and end date), knowing that delays are inevitable. Sequencing is important
to consider as well since certain tasks will need to be finished before another can start.
7. Organize your project schedule in one tool, and share it with your team.

What Is Project Evaluation?

Project evaluation is the process of measuring the success of a project, program or portfolio.
This is done by gathering data about the project and using an evaluation method that allows
evaluators to find performance improvement opportunities. Project evaluation is also critical
to keep stakeholders updated on the project status and any changes that might be required to
the budget or schedule.

ProjectManager is a robust project management software that has all of the tracking and
reporting features you need for your project evaluation process. Our real-time dashboard
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Project Evaluation Methods

There are three points in a project where evaluation is most needed. While you can evaluate
your project at any time, these are points where you should have the process officially
scheduled.

1. Pre-Project Evaluation

In a sense, you’re pre-evaluating your project when you write your project charter to pitch to
the stakeholders. You cannot effectively plan, staff and control a new project if you’ve first
not evaluated it. Pre-project evaluation is the only sure way you can determine the
effectiveness of the project before executing it.

2. Ongoing Project Evaluation

To make sure your project is proceeding as planned and hitting all of the scheduling and
budget milestones you’ve set, it’s crucial that you constantly monitor and report on your
work in real-time. Only by using project metrics can you measure the success of your project
and whether or not you’re meeting the project’s goals and objectives. It’s strongly
recommended that you use project management software for real-time and ongoing project
evaluation.

3. Post-Project Evaluation

Think of this as a postmortem. Post-project evaluation is when you go through the project’s
paperwork, interview the project team and principles and analyze all relevant data so you can
understand what worked and what went wrong. Only by developing this clear picture can you
resolve issues in upcoming projects.

Project Evaluation Steps

Regardless of when you choose to run a project evaluation, the process always has four
phases: planning, implementation, completion and dissemination of reports.

1. Planning

The ultimate goal of this step is to create a project evaluation plan, a document that explains
all details of your organization’s project evaluation process. When planning for a project
evaluation, it’s important to identify the stakeholders and what their short-and-long-term
goals are. You must make sure that your goals and objectives for the project are clear, and it’s
critical to have settled on criteria that will tell you whether these goals and objects are being
met.

So, you’ll want to write a series of questions to pose to the stakeholders. These queries should
include subjects such as the project framework, best practices and metrics that determine
success.

By including the stakeholders in your project evaluation plan, you’ll receive direction during
the course of the project while simultaneously developing a relationship with the
stakeholders. They will get progress reports from you throughout the project’s phases, and by
building this initial relationship, you’ll likely earn their belief that you can manage the project
to their satisfaction.

2. Implementation

While the project is running, you must monitor all aspects to make sure you’re meeting the
schedule and budget. One of the things you should monitor during the project is the
percentage completed. This is something you should do when creating status reports and
meeting with your team. To make sure you’re on track, hold the team accountable for
delivering timely tasks and maintain baseline dates to know when tasks are due.
Don’t forget to keep an eye on quality. It doesn’t matter if you deliver the project within the
allotted time frame if the product is poor. Maintain quality reviews, and don’t delegate that
responsibility. Instead, take it on yourself.

Maintaining a close relationship with the project budget is just as important as tracking the
schedule and quality. Keep an eye on costs. They will fluctuate throughout the project, so
don’t panic. However, be transparent if you notice a need growing for more funds. Let your
steering committee know as soon as possible, so there are no surprises.

3. Completion

When you’re done with your project, you still have work to do. You’ll want to take the data
you gathered in the evaluation and learn from it so you can fix problems that you discovered
in the process. Figure out the short- and long-term impacts of what you learned in the
evaluation.

4. Reporting and Disseminating

Once the evaluation is complete, you need to record the results. To do so, you’ll create a
project evaluation report, a document that provides lessons for the future. Deliver your report
to your stakeholders to keep them updated on the project’s progress.

How are you going to disseminate the report? There might be a protocol for this already
established in your organization. Perhaps the stakeholders prefer a meeting to get the results
face-to-face. Or maybe they prefer PDFs with easy-to-read charts and graphs. Make sure that
you know your audience and tailor your report to them.

Annexure and Appendix

An appendix can be understood as that section added at the end of of the book or report
which contains subsidiary matter relating to the main idea of document or book. It contains
data which is not very essential to explain your findings, but it supports the analysis, assists
the user to understand the research work and provides background material.

On the other hand, an annexure implies a set of legal documents or proofs which are
attached to the main document, so as to confirm the details provided in the main body.

The basic difference between annexure and appendix is that while an annexure is an addition
to the document, the appendix is an extension made at the end of the research work. Further,
an appendix is much more concerned with the main document in comparison to an annexure.
 References

A list of references is where detailed information about the various research sources
mentioned in your document are itemized. This list allows readers to learn more about your
sources and use the information to validate your research. A list of references contains the
author(s), year of publication, title, publication information, along with the URL for each
source.

Format Guidelines for Setting up a REFERENCES List

Here are some general formatting guidelines for setting up your references list:

 Create a bold heading called References, aligned with the left margin. If you are using
headings, make this heading consistent with other first level headings in your document.
 The author’s last name should be flush with the left margin, and the second and other lines
of the entry must be formatted using the “hanging indent” function.
 Give all authors’ names (up to five), but only use the first initial. The last name of each
author is written first, followed by the author’s initials. Separate names with commas, and
include the ampersand (&) before the last author.
 Capitalize only the first word (and the first word after a colon, as well as proper nouns) in
titles of articles within journals, magazines and newspapers, chapters in books,
conference papers, and reports. Only use ALL CAPS for acronyms.
 Capitalize the first letter of all main words in the titles of books, journals,
magazines and newspapers.
 Add a space between references if you single space each reference.

Copyright

Copyright refers to the legal right of the owner of intellectual property. In simpler terms,
copyright is the right to copy. This means that the original creators of products and anyone
they give authorization to are the only ones with the exclusive right to reproduce the work.

Copyright law gives creators of original material the exclusive right to further use and
duplicate that material for a given amount of time, at which point the copyrighted item
becomes public domain.

Acknowledgement

The meaning of acknowledgement in project is simply a section where the writer

acknowledges and shows appreciation to everyone who has helped in the project.
Acknowledgement is also included in research project writing to recognize and thank
everyone involved in the research. With acknowledgement, you can express gratitude to the
people or institutions whose contributions were valuable to the project's success.

How to write acknowledgement for project

Many people keep asking, how can I write an acknowledgement for my project? The truth is
it is very simple. Writing an acknowledgement requires you to carefully consider the people
that need to be mentioned in the acknowledgement and the order in which you will mention
them. Another important thing is that the writing of acknowledgement depends on the type of
project you want to write an acknowledgement for. For example, when writing a final year
project acknowledgement, the people you will mention in your acknowledgement will be
different from the people you will mention when writing a research paper, etc.

Your acknowledgement must express your thoughts and must be very concise. You must use
personal pronouns such as I, me, my, etc. Examples of people you should mention in your
acknowledgement include: The main supervisor of the project. The second supervisor of the
project, if any. If in a school environment, you should mention the academic staff in your
department that was helpful. The support or technical staff in your department. Then you can
mention other academic staff from other departments. Organizations, institutions, or
companies.

Correspondence

Definition: A Correspondence is a written form of communication between two parties. In

other words, it is way to pass on ideas in writing.

What Does Correspondence Mean in Business?

Correspondence is a commonly used form of communication in business. In the past,
correspondence was mostly exchanged through written physical letters or telegraphs. In
today’s world, the definition of correspondence has expanded by the inclusion of digital
media. E-mails, text messages, documents exchanged through social platforms and digital
agreements are new ways to deliver correspondence.

The formal element embedded into these written methods of communication makes them
appropriate to transmit important business information between businesses or from
businesses to clients. Written letters, bills and invoices are still sent physically sometimes but
many companies are migrating their correspondence to digital since it is cheaper and easier to
track. Business correspondence also helps as evidence to solve misunderstandings. By having
a paper trail, any of the parties involved in a transaction can review the previously stated
information to ensure who misunderstood the situation. This is particularly important in
conflict resolution procedures or legal disputes.

Elements of professional project making

Creating project reports is an integral part of evaluating project success. Documenting the
lessons learned and sharing them with a larger team in an organized way can help with future
projects. You can use different tools to put together your project report. Here are 7 basic steps
involved in creating a project report -

1. Know Your Objective

Sit down, evaluate your objectives, and understand what you want to describe, explain,
recommend, and prove with your report. Having set goals will not only help you proceed
with your project report but also help readers understand your point of view.
 2. Recognize Your Audience

Your audience plays an essential role in making your project report a success. A formal
annual report differs from a financial report: the language, representation of data, and
analysis changes per your target audience.

3. Data Collection

The chances of you having a solid report is when data supports it. Data plays an essential role
in making people believe in your derivations. Also, support your claims by citing sources
such as case studies, surveys, interviews, etc.

4. Structure the Report

A project report is further divided into certain sections. These 4 are the most common
divisions of a project report -

 Summary - The summary gives the reader a download of all covered in the project report.
Even though a summary is placed at the beginning of a project report, you can only write it
once your entire report is complete.
 Introduction - Mention the outline of the report, give context and mention the scope and
methodologies used in the report.
 Body - This is the lengthy section of the report as it contains background details, analysis,
data, and graphics.
 Conclusion - This section brings the entire project report together.

5. Edit and Proofread

Once your project report is ready, read it multiple times with some time gap. You can ask
your co-workers to review it.

Results and Discussions

In the results section of your academic paper, you present what you found when you
conducted your analyses, whereas in your discussion section you explain what your results
mean and connect them to prior research studies. In other words, the results section is where
you describe what you did, and the discussion sections is where you describe what this means
for the field.
The results section should include the findings of your study without any interpretations or
implications that you can draw from those results. Here, you present the findings using text
supported by tables, charts, graphs and other figures.