Sjinnovation’s Project Management Process

What is Project Management?
Project management is the methodical application of techniques, knowledge, skills, and tools to project activities from start to finish. It is the discipline to plan and guide the processes of projects so as to meet the requirements of the project.

What are the process checklists?
Project management process checklist shows the 5 phases of projects, and explains the responsibilities and actions that must be fulfilled if the project must be successfully completed.
The 5 basic phases of project management are:

• Project Initiation
• Project Planning
• Project Execution
• Project Monitoring & Control
• Project Closure

What is a lead?
A sales lead should not be confused with a sales prospect because further work still has to be done to understand interest and intent. A sales lead generated by the sales team is created when a business or an individual who indicates interest in either a product or a service or both makes available his/her contact details. Sales leads are gotten by businesses via advertising, direct mailings, trade shows etc.

Lead follow up
After the generation of leads by the sales team, it’s the responsibility of the project manager, if given the nod, to follow up on the leads. It’s also his responsibility to convert these leads into clients. Every of his activity must be logged properly on the dedicated action item. If a lead could not be converted to a client, the project manager is expected to write proper reasons on such so the sales team can update it properly on CRM.

Once a project is acquired, what are the next steps that follows?
After the project has been approved, the following steps must follow:

• Preparation for the project
• Development of the project initiation plan
• Confirmation of approval for the project to proceed

What are the process to follow once a project starts i.e. agile process?
Agile process in project management is an iterative means of planning and guiding processes involved in a project. It’s a value-driven means that affords Project Managers the opportunity of delivering high-quality and high-priority work.

Agile process involves the following steps:

• Vision
• Product roadmap
• Release planning
• Sprint planning
• Daily scrum
• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospective

What does the deployment process entails?
The deployment process is made up of many interrelated activities with transitions or conversion between them. The activities can be at the consumer side or at the producer side or both. Due to the uniqueness of each software system, the exact procedures or processes within each activity may be hard to define.
The activities are:

• Release
• Install and activate
• Deactivate
• Adapt
• Update
• Built-in
• Version tracking
• Uninstall
• Retire

Live Deployment Process
Process for site going live:

• It’s the PM’s duty to confirm date with client
• PM should let the whole team know, including QA lead, about site going live by email and/or workboard action item with due date
• PM is to set reminder to team a day before
• Relevant team (developers) are to work on making the task or project live as the first thing during the day.
• PM team are to get timeline to make task/project live and keep QA team informed.
• QA Lead will plan their team for live task/project testing. When QA Lead is informed in advance, team can be planned in such a way that they can stay late hours because they are mentally prepared for it and not a last minute surprise.

How should clients be billed?
In project management, choosing the right billing system is very essential. There are some things that must be considered before determining whether the billing system should be based on time and material costs, or by project using a fixed amount.
The following facts should be considered before arriving at a pricing model for your clients:

• The common practice in your industry
• Your business’ fixed costs
• Your business’ variable costs
• The salary you desire
• The number of projects you get yearly

Sj Billing Notes for PM

• If a task is on Odesk or other medium, it must be submitted Hours on Sj billing
• Small one time tasks are added to billing as soon as they are complete.
• For projects that are fixed cost/monthly, additional team members’ hours is reported, approved and billed by end of the month.
• In case of design hours we do bill them hourly for fixed cost projects at the beginning of each month.

What are the post project completion steps?
Project completion is surely the last stage of a project’s life cycle. After the delivery of what was promised, and all stakeholders in the project are well pleased with the outcome, the project doesn’t have to end there. Packing things up and swinging to the initiation stage of the next project is not the best thing to do, because there is still more to be done.
For better project management practices, the following activities should be considered:

Contract closure: It has to do with the settling and the completion of the terms of agreement set for the project.
Releasing the project team: after the completion of a project, project team members should be released to go back to their duties or to a new project.

Final payments: After the completion of the project, the contract is sent to the department of accounting for final payment to be made.

Post-project evaluations: Before the dissolution of the project team and before the commencement of another project, a review is carried out to show the lessons learned from the project.

Alignment effectiveness and trust: The effect of trust or a lack of it on the project is reviewed.
Schedule and budget management: The initial schedule of activities and the network diagram are set side by side to the actual schedule of events.

Risk mitigation: After the completion of the project, the risk estimates should be compared and reviewed with the events that took place.

Procurement contracts: The performance of vendors and suppliers should be reviewed to know if they will be included in the qualified vendors and suppliers list.

Customer satisfaction: Clients relationships are reviewed and the decisions as to whether or not the client should be included in alignment meetings and in project decisions should be discussed.

Senior management: The project report should be submitted to the senior management.

Archiving of document: The documents related to the project should be stored in a secure and safe location where it can be gotten back for future reference.