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Wireless Networking Handbook
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Jim Geier
ISBN: 156205631x
Publication Date: 09/01/96

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Executing the Project

After completing the planning stage of the project, the project manager can begin work activities with a kick-off meeting and guide the project through the activities identified in the WBS. The project team should periodically hold status meetings to assess the progress to date and make changes to the plan if necessary to keep the project on course. Figure 5.10 illustrates these project management actions.


Figure 5.10  Project management activities.

The Kick-Off Meeting

The entire project team should have a kick-off meeting to review the project plan and officially start the project. This starts the team off together and avoids having people stray away from the primary objectives. Figure 5.11 is an agenda you should use as a basis for the kick-off meeting.


Figure 5.11  A Kick-off meeting agenda.

The key to an effective kick-off meeting (or any meeting for that matter) is to stay focused by keeping discussions within scope of the specific agenda items. Spend a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting to review the agenda and ensure everyone agrees the topics are applicable and see if anything is missing. It’s not too late at this time to make alterations to the agenda if necessary.

Periodic Activities

Periodically, the team should check the status of the project, perform technical interchange meetings, and report progress to upper management. The following list explains each of these activities:

  Status Checks. For most projects, a weekly or biweekly status check is often enough to review project progress. You can normally accomplish this at a project staff meeting. The project manager should at least review completed tasks and check whether the project is on time and within budget. It’s also not a bad idea to review risk factors and take action to minimize their impact.
  Technical Interchange Meetings (TIMs). TIMs address technical issues needing attention by project team members and customer representatives. A TIM is effective if the solution to a technical requirement or problem cannot be adequately solved by a single team member. In this case, schedule a TIM and invite the people needed to crack the problem.
  Progress Reports. Progress reports summarize the technical, schedule, and cost status of the project. The main idea is to show a comparison between planned and actual elements. Project managers should periodically send these progress reports to upper management to keep them abreast of the status of the network development. It is normally best to alert management of conditions that might impact the project as early as possible. This allows enough time for upper management to assist in countering the problems. Also, be sure to include tasks the project team still needs to complete, especially the ones that are planned to take place up until the next progress report. Figure 5.12 identifies the key components of a progress report.


Figure 5.12  The key components of a progress report.

A management report should focus on current accumulative costs and the schedule status, past and present resource utilization, negative impacts on the project schedule, identification of successful and unsuccessful tasks, as well as major changes made to the project plan. Major changes to the project plan should also be thoroughly explained. The progress report also should explain how the project team will counter all deficiencies.

Maximizing Communications

During the execution of the project, take steps to maximize communications flow among team members when determining requirements, designing the system, and performing installations. The problem with many project organizations is that they operate in a very serial form as shown in figure 5.13. As a result, they depend heavily on documentation to convey requirements, solutions, and ideas. In this case, the customer represents the needs of potential end users of the system or product under development. In companies that develop software products, sales and marketing staff typically express customer needs in terms of requests and requirements. Otherwise, requirements generally flow directly from the customer. Project managers are often responsible for managing the overall development, installation, and support of the product or system. Typically they produce the first specification the development group uses to design and code the system or product.


Figure 5.13  Serial communications flow through an organization.

There are several problems with this process, which lead to systems and products that do not adequately meet the users’ needs. The series of hand-offs between the different players in the process, for example, can take a long time, delaying the creation of a prototype for validation purposes. In addition, the process doesn’t engage the customer continually throughout the process, forcing developers to guess at missing or incomplete requirements. The process also dilutes the clarity of requirements as they flow via documentation and the spoken word from one element to the next.

The solution to this serial communications problem is to utilize team meetings that incorporate representatives from all organizational groups, especially when defining requirements. Sometimes this is referred to as Joint Application Design (JAD). This concept is described in Chapter 6, “Defining Requirements for Wireless Networks.”

Utilizing Project Management Tools

There are many tools available on the market that can assist in planning and executing the project. Here are a few software products you should consider.

Primavera’s Sure Trak Project Manager

SureTrak Project Manager is ideal for resource planning and controlling on small to medium-sized projects. With SureTrak, you can create schedules graphically and point and click to create relationships between activities, simplifying updates. SureTrak offers the following features:


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