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Published on
October 13, 2020
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Updated on
December 30, 2020
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Read time
8 minutes
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The project management paradigm is a complex paradox. Every project that graduates from the project development process is unique with many different qualities and problems attached to it, but one thing that all of them have is a Project Design.
Project Design is such an important element of a project that without it there is no structure for the project development process to stand on and make the project a success in the future.
Most of the project managers in the industry rush the design process and little they know that by neglecting the proper execution of a project design phase, their project is going to be an absolute disaster without any hope of recovery.
Harsh words? Let’s see how that is true.
Project design is basically an outline of the different factors related to the project, that are going to be discussed and tracked by the manager and the development team.
A general project design consists of the following entities:
One thing you have to make sure as a manager is that you have to include your key stakeholders, upper-management, and the team members involved with the project, in the project design creation.
This will help you avoid any obstacles in the project development process in the future and also reduces any confusion in understanding the project vision for everyone involved in the project.
If the whole development process and the ultimate success of the project are dependent on the project design then you can imagine how tough and important is the structure of the project design itself.
Here are the contents of the project design structure that you need to familiarize yourself with.
The vision statement or the entire vision document is probably the most important text, related to the whole project, as it defines the different entities that have to be worked on in the future.
Naturally, when the document or the text is so important, the information in it must be immaculate and captivating enough for the stakeholders to understand the severity of the shindig.
Generally, this vision document consists of the problem that you are going to solve using the project or the product under production, and it also provides important information about the project’s potential to do so.
One other important thing about the document is that it can be presented to the stakeholders that are connected to the project, to make them understand the need of developing the project in the first place.
The document itself is not that comprehensive but its importance is amplified when the project goes under development and the team is not following the designated path, they can always revert to the true path by following this vision document.
A general rule to write a captivating vision statement is to envision a world where your project is a success, where it’s helping a lot of people, and transcribe that thought into words.
To support the vision statement or the document that you created, you first need to identify and understand the problem that is present in your project domain.
When you see pinpoint the problem, you will get a broader perspective of the obstacle that is forming in the way of your business growth via this problem.
What this investigation will do is that it will align the stakeholders, team members, and the manager on one simple task and that is the eradication of those obstacles. And what better way to do that?
Developing the project.
When you study the problem and understand it completely, you are better able to gather the relevant information you need to find a permanent solution for those problems.
When you start to gather this information for the solution, the first thing that you need to make sure is to confirm the type of information that you are gathering.
Next is to confirm that the sources that you are gathering the information from, are reliable and trustworthy.
You need to collect this information and document it.
Related: 10 Steps to Writing an Awesome Scope of Work Document
The next step is to identify and gather the relevant resources that you might need to get the whole project development process up and running, and then finally completing it all the way.
Resources are not just tools and people; they can be any number of things relevant to the project development process.
For example, the mechanical equipment, working facilities, the personnel, and the tools both software and hardware can all be relevant resources for your project development process.
If you are unsure about what the relevant resources for your project development process are going to be, then you should follow the process that journalists use to approach a new news story.
This technique is called the Five W’s.
What this technique is that you need to ask the “who, what, where, when, and why” related to your project.
For example,
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The next step is to make sure that you identify the milestones, outcomes, and project goals, because if you haven’t figured out what to achieve, what is the point of the project development process?
What is the goal? Well, it is a measurable entity that you can achieve through the project development process and whose impact can later be measured by the team members and the end-users.
A goal is something that coincides with the solution of the problem that you are having. In other words, the goal or output associated with the project development process is the solution to the problem.
When you have defined the project goals that you want to achieve via the project development process, the next step is to envision the perfect strategy that will help to achieve those goals.
What a strategy is that it is a way you achieve the goals, milestones, and outcomes associated with your project.
This strategy keeps track of some other things as well, like the schedule, budget, resources, and many other elements associated with the project, so that you can complete the project at the appropriate time and within the agreed-upon budget.
So how can you create the perfect strategy to do all that?
There are a couple of things that you can do to make sure that you have a working strategy that you can use to achieve your goals in the agreed-upon time.
The next step is to create a contingency plan or a backup plan which will be activated if you are ever in some trouble regarding your project development process.
This plan is created by the manager after monitoring the resources, project goals, and the risks and scope creep that can affect the project at any stage of the development process.
To create this plan, you can study the different projects that are similar to yours and have been developed in the past. This will help you figure out the risks and scope creeps that they faced and how you can shield your project from the same risks and bugs.
These risks and scope creeps can be many different things like:
The next thing that you need to include in your project design is the creation of the perfect budget that needs to cover the expenses related to the elements included in the project development process.
For this, you can study previous projects that have been developed in the past, and find out the best working budget which you can follow to achieve the goals and milestones associated with the project.
You need to make sure that the budget you choose covers everything from the smaller tasks to the behemoth ones, because most of the projects that fail in the project management paradigm, do so, as a result of more attention to bigger milestones and not the smaller ones.
If you want to structure your project design efficiently, you need to use a task management/project management software like nTask. This software is going to help you achieve the goals and milestones that are connected to your project design creation and in the project development process.
Here are some of the features that the software provides.
nTask can help you with project planning, designing, execution, and monitoring your projects. Try it now for free.
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