As a project leader, you must understand that the most important thing in this work is to understand what is to be adapted to local conditions and to make the most of the situation; there is only the most suitable, nothing is right or wrong. The most taboo of the project leader is the tendency of perfectionism, especially those who have been a technician, like to find standard answers, which delays the work progress and loses themselves...

The early stage of a project is the most important stage of a project. When the project leader takes over a new project, he must first learn as much as possible about the project from all aspects, such as:

1. what is this project? What are you going to do? Who brought it up? What problem is the purpose to solve?

The more detailed the understanding of the project in the early stage of the project, the more meticulous the work done, the less “surprise” in the back, and the smaller the risk of the project;

2. Who is involved in this project? Such as the investor, the construction party, the operation, and management party after the completion of the project, the technical supervision party, etc.

The project leader needs to understand the views and expectations of people in each aspect of the project. Knowing all aspects of the project’s views and expectations in advance will allow you to specifically analyze each matter who will support you in what aspects and who will oppose you for what purpose when you encounter problems with the project. Prepare in advance to unite your friends to fight the enemy and let things develop in the direction you want.

There are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only consistent interests. This sentence must be remembered as a project leader;

3. After getting a basic understanding of the customer’s situation, the next thing is to understand the views of all parties in your company on this project.

The first is whether the senior leaders pay attention to it. This determines whether the company will provide the most powerful support according to your requirements when you need financial, human, and other resource support. Leaders must verbally say support, but what you need to do is to understand the company’s actual expectations for this project. Do you want to make the project bigger or just want to make some money? Do you want to do a model project or just want to be perfunctory?

The attitude of company leaders (especially high-level leaders) towards the project determines your strategic goal for this project, and this strategic policy will have a direct impact on your project plan;

4. Before making the overall project plan, you should also roughly calculate the resources you have on hand.

The first is time. The market is now very competitive, and some projects will require completion within a time frame that is almost impossible to complete. For this, you must fully consider when making the project’s risk control plan.

The second is personnel. Based on the project budget and experience, roughly calculate how many roles the project team will have in the future, whether each role is currently in the company, whether it can be fully used by the project, whether it needs to recruit some additional personnel, and the preparation for recruitment should start as soon as possible.
The last is the preparation of some equipment. The production cycle of the large key equipment required by the project is very long, so order as soon as possible. In the future, no matter what happens to the equipment or people waiting for the equipment, all your time is wasted;

5. Is it time to make an overall plan? No, you already know the client’s goals and the resources you have at your disposal. Before making a plan, you still need to fully communicate resource issues with your leaders and clients.

Because many resources are not yet clear, you need to write a report to analyze in detail the risks of this project and the demand for resources. If some problems cannot be solved, what will happen. If the resources are not enough, the senior management must change the strategy and increase the investment in the project. Even when conditions permit, some companies will abandon this project. In short, no one can complete an impossible task. If the person in charge of the project cannot detect the risk as soon as possible, then he can only become a martyr.

6. After you understand what to do, what you have in hand, and your overall strategy for doing this project, it’s time to set up a project team.

Many project leaders do not have the right to choose team members, so try to use your influence to find those you want. The composition of members varies greatly depending on the project, and it is difficult to have any specific requirements.

7. Now you have to face three groups of people

Your leader, your team members, and your customers communicate with these people and let them know what you plan to do and when you want them to prepare for these things will be your main job.

8. Well, I have done a lot of preliminary work and defined some rules of the game. Now is the time to sit down and make plans.

In this section, any project management book will be better than mine, so I will write less and just talk about my own experience. The first is to find a few key team members, such as water supply and drainage professional engineers, HVAC professional engineers, electrical professional engineers, civil engineering professional engineers, data personnel, etc., to study how to complete the project, for example, the project can be divided into several individual projects? Every single project can be divided into several important project nodes.

I want to emphasize here: there are many ways to accomplish a goal. You have to choose the one you are most familiar with, not the one that looks perfect. This idea will reduce your project a lot of risks. Sometimes a customer will be moved by a certain new technology and insist that you adopt that new technology. You should tell him: If you choose me to do this project, you should allow me to do things in my favorite way. The reason why the new technology is tempting is that there are not many people who suffer. I don’t want you to be the first victim.

Adopting a plan will make your work more clear. For example, with Microsoft’s Project software, after you fill out the form, you can know how many things you need to do in this project, what resources are needed for each thing, and how they are related to each other. , How long is the time consumed, what signs are thereafter completion, etc.

All the results are finally presented in a form called a Gantt chart. After you finish this table, you will be surprised to find that the end time of the project on the Gantt chart will be far behind your planned end time (the person who signed the contract will never ask for your opinion first). Of course, people who have studied project management will talk a lot about WBS, optimization paths, and the like, but my experience is that you can’t optimize these things until the end of the planned time. If you have not encountered this problem, before I congratulate you on choosing an easy job, please make sure that you have listed all the things to be done and correctly assessed the time required for them. At this time, you have to consider sacrificing some task time (which also means quality).

Sacrifice according to what standard? The strategy of this project! The strategy we mentioned in Section 3. My experience is that if you catch up on everything, the result may be ten things you didn’t do well, think about how failed it is. So, invest resources on things you are familiar with and sure of, and the final result is ten things. Three of you have made excellent products, three have been completed, and four have been delayed for some reason. Is your transcript beautiful? A lot? Strategy determines priorities, and the correct prioritization of things is the main manifestation of the ability of a project leader.

Good, now the project has completed the preliminary work, understood the project’s goals, figured out the resources at hand, formulated the project strategy, and then compiled the overall plan of the project, and the project entered the implementation stage. Entering this stage is when the project leader is relatively free. Unlike the previous period, the project leader has to contact different people like reporters to figure out what they are talking about and try to guess what they are thinking and their true purpose. , That’s the most tiring thing.

Of course, the project leader of a small project is often a resource himself and has to do a lot of things, but at this time it is harder than anyone else. The main job of the project leader during this period is to maintain communication with client leaders and their own leaders. Pay special attention when communicating with client leaders. Unless you need the other party to support you, then you need to be more specific. Otherwise, just tell him that everything is normal and have a positive attitude. Don’t say that some leaders don’t understand. For example, “Manager Wang, the progress of the project is fairly normal recently, but some finished products are often damaged…”.

You should pay attention to this issue when reporting to your own leader. Unless he is a technical expert and you need his technical experience, you should generally report whether the progress is normal and your countermeasures and plans when there are problems. Some require his support. Places, such as resource calls, need to be more detailed.

In meetings with project team members, in addition to some project progress tracking meetings, there are also many discussion meetings, which require everyone to use brainstorming methods to solve problems. Many of the participants are technicians. They are characterized by attention to detail, lack of overall view, a bit of negative pessimism, and strong self-esteem (if the conclusion is not correct, you are welcome to take a picture). Therefore, as the host of the meeting, you are only responsible for raising questions. And record their opinions and never play the role of a judge.

A question has many aspects. From different angles, the phenomenon is completely different. Think about the story of the blind man touching the elephant. These technicians are often proficient in one aspect and express opinions from their own point of view. Unless there are some very special circumstances, you should think that the plan they propose is the most reasonable from their point of view. Your strength is to grasp the priorities of things, evaluate the priorities of all aspects, and then come up with a suitable (not correct) plan based on their opinions.

Therefore, in the meeting, you must fully respect everyone and his opinions, praise those who have put forward better opinions and don’t bring the meeting into endless disputes (you must let everyone know that things are not black or black. White, but diverse, alas, our education is to blame…).

After the meeting, you write your own document and make a decision. At the meeting, everyone’s face has been taken care of. Naturally, there will be less resistance to implementation. If you still have comments, you can talk to him in private. If you can’t convince him, you have to let him understand because you are in charge of this project, You take the risk, so this priority should be judged by you. The senior level in the organization is not necessarily higher than the average member, but he has to bear the risk of the organization, coupled with the asymmetry of information, so the judgment of the priority of things must be better than the subordinates.

During the construction process, the internal management should also pay attention to the idea of ​​always emphasizing the purpose of acceptance. The final deliverable of each task must be checked. It is the project’s responsibility to always consider how to check the results and how to deliver them to the customer. People always pay attention to things, I heard that some old project leaders get the project in reverse plan, that is, first look at how to check the acceptance and the acceptance criteria, and then decide the work plan. Many projects have been started for a long time and do not know how to accept them, so the possibility of problems with this project is very high. The purpose of doing projects is for acceptance. Our role is not a research institution. Our purpose is to get results after so much labor.

For customers who need to change every day, you must make rules in advance:

a) Unified contact: The construction party appoints a person to communicate with the project team. Leader Zhang and Leader Wang cannot say a few words. If they disagree, then you have only the choice to offend the leader. Therefore, the project will start at the beginning Set the rules. My project team only recognizes one opinion. If there is any requirement for you to unify internally before talking to me, I don’t want to get involved in the contradictions between your internal departments;

b) All changes in engineering quantities, construction techniques, materials, construction period, etc. must be signed and certified in writing. Remember! There are many benefits to this.

For customers, it is most convenient to move their mouths, one will ask to do so, and the other will ask for that. Anyway, it is you who do it. At this time, you must leave the written documents and sign and seal them. Only when you get the written documents, you can get back the part of the money you deserve when the project is settled. Otherwise, you will have to pay for the many changes that the customer verbally promised. Not coming back.