Process from idea to implementation

 

Background: due to the popularity of computers and the widespread use of software, the public has a conceptual understanding of what a software project is. Many people have been able to come up with some ideas about where the company will apply a software system. However, in the process from the idea to the application of software, the software project must undergo a number of hard changes in order to gradually turn the previous ideal into reality. As a person who has been working for many years, it is necessary to share with you some insights and experiences in this information sharing age.

 

At the beginning of the project, there will always be one or several people who will have an idea about the company's business or potential market product requirements, we think that we can use software to build business information systems or a new generation of products, which will bring considerable benefits to the company. This period is called the project idealistic period. People who consider this software often see the positive side of software. Cerebral Cortex brings considerable benefits to the company and the market around software projects. The project idealistic period promotes the assignment of an important person at the company's top level to demonstrate the project's background, feasibility, scope, risks, costs, time, and commercial value. This important person, in the subsequent development of the project, will generally realize that he is probably a project manager.

 

So far, the sprout of the project has been bred by a few people. The Project Manager starts to collect high-level project ideas and objectives. In China, policy-based influences often account for a greater proportion of other project impacts than those of foreign market-oriented standards. For example, if a leader wants to build a passenger tracking service system, the project manager is meaningless in collecting and demonstrating the feasibility. No matter the objective aspect is not feasible, the final conclusion is always feasible and easy to implement. For example, the project manager's argument must be feasible because the project manager must develop the project independently. It is true that, with high-level ideas and goals, subordinates have the direction and motivation of their work, but on the basis of the objective fact of project construction, not fully and objectively considering the feasibility of all aspects, the project construction will spend a lot of energy in the future to make up for the problems caused by the lack of preliminary work.

 

As a qualified project manager, you need to understand that the initial stage of the project is the most important stage. When taking over a new project, the project manager should first learn as much about the project as possible.

1.Accurately understand the project objectives.What is this project, what is it about, who proposed it, and the purpose is to solve the problem. When many customers in China are not mature, never imagine the project's goals based on the project name. A project named "office automation" is likely to find that the customer needs a computer production management auxiliary information system one month after the project enters the market. The more detailed the previous work is, the less surprised it will be. The less risky the project will be. In September 2010, a parking lot lifting bar system will be established to meet the customer's construction needs. When in-depth understanding the customer's needs, we found that a parking lot passenger guiding service system should be established, the content will include the parking lot lifting bar system, air display subsystem, broadcast subsystem, and SMS service platform, which directly leads to a significant increase in project construction costs and a long project cycle.

2.Collect project stakeholders.Who are involved in this project, such as investors, specific business teams, operators after the project is built, and technical supervisors. In many projects, apart from the complex structure of the owner unit, some other organizations will also be involved, such as the project supervision company and the owner's Industry Authority. The project manager needs to understand the views and expectations of each person on the project. By understanding your views and expectations in advance, you can analyze what people will support you when you encounter problems in your project, who will oppose you for what purpose, so as to prepare friends in advance to fight against the enemy and let things develop in the direction you want. There are no friends forever, no enemies forever, and only consistent interests. This sentence must be remembered as a project manager. In 2010, I met a project where the system to be built was the customer's core business system. In the early stage, I had already planned to do a good job in requirement research plans at the department manager and company manager levels, the result is that you have never been in touch with several department managers of the other party, let alone the company leadership level. One of these consequences will lead to business disagreements in subsequent projects, and I don't know who to find for approval.

3.Measure the test taker's understanding about the degree of support supported by all parties.After learning about the customer's situation, the following things are to understand the opinions of all parties in the company on this project. The first is whether the senior leadership attaches importance to it. This determines whether the company will provide the most powerful support as required when you need resources. Leaders say yes to their support. What you need to do is to understand the company's actual expectations for this project. Do you want to increase the project or make money? Whether you want to do a model project or simply want to be perfunctory, the attitude of the company's leaders to the project determines the project manager's strategy for this project, this strategy will have a direct impact on PM project planning. One of the headaches of PM is the verbal support of the leaders, but the employees at all levels of the company are not very cooperative: the personnel cannot be transferred, the company's resources are insufficient, and the procurement department delays project procurement. The company's investment in this project is much lower than the project manager's expectation.

4.Volume your own strength.With the active cooperation of all parties, at least the project will have less external and empty pressure during the construction process. Before you make the overall project plan, you need to roughly calculate your resources. The first is time. Nowadays, market competition is fierce, and many projects are usually required to be completed within an almost impossible time range. For this purpose, you must fully consider the risk control plan of the project. The second is personnel. Based on the project budget and past experience, roughly calculate the number of roles in the future project team, whether or not each role is owned by the company, and whether it can be fully used by the project, whether or not you need to recruit other personnel. The recruitment preparation should be started as soon as possible. Finally, we need to prepare some equipment. We need to reserve the key devices for the project as soon as possible. In the future, whether the devices, people, or other devices happen, your time is wasted. In a project made in 2010, due to the procurement of external resources from some modules, after the construction of the main modules was completed, we started the procurement of sub-modules, seriously dragging the project's progress. In addition, the interface design of the project submodule should be defined during the overall project design period to facilitate parallel project work and save the project R & D time.

5.Pay attention to the project manual.It is time to make the project manual. A good project description not only clearly describes what will be done (mainly about what to do, rather than how to do it), but also describes how to check thoroughly. That is to say, it not only shows what to do, but also lets the customer's business personnel (generally do not know the technology) Know what the project is done. Simply put, the project manual describes what the project does and how much each task is done, and how to check each result. Many people think that the project plan is the project manual. I can only say that the content of the project description is described in the previous chapter of the project plan, but the project plan also includes how the project will be implemented. The project description here will be the basis for both parties to understand the project content and indicators. Deliverables and project acceptance in subsequent project phases are considered as important references. In addition, the project manual will be the consensus basis of both parties on the fair value of the project. In addition, many customers want to establish project data standards when proposing project requirements. As a project manager, they should understand that data standards and project construction are two types of things, in the project manual, we cannot add a large amount of data standardization work to the project scope, which will increase the difficulty of project construction.

6.Analyze project opportunities and risks.Is it time to make the overall plan? No, you now know the customer's goal and the resources you have. Before you plan, you need to fully communicate with your manager and the customer about the resources. Because many resources are unclear, you need to write a report to analyze the risks of the project and the resource requirements in detail. What will happen if some problems cannot be solved. If the resources are insufficient, you need to change the policy at the top to increase investment in this project. Some companies even give up the project with the conditional permission. In short, no one can complete an impossible task. If the project manager cannot detect risks as soon as possible, then he can only become a martyr.

7.Select Team members that meet the project requirements.It is time to set up a project team to understand what to do, what chips you have and the overall strategy for your project. Many project managers do not have the right to select their own team members, so try to exert your influence to find the people you want. The composition of members varies greatly depending on the project, and it is difficult to have specific requirements. However, there must be people who are proficient in customer business. In many small projects, this person is the project manager himself, the big project will be equipped with industry experts, so that they can communicate with customers without talking to them, so that they can understand each other. In the enterprise, some technical staff were full of technical terms when talking with the customer, and the customer was confused. In turn, he also accused the customer of not understanding the technology. In fact, customers who know what they want to do are already good customers. customers who do not know what they want to do, or who do not know how to do it, or who want to give instructions are everywhere. But you need to understand that the customer chooses you, rather than you choose the customer. If you have a customer, you will get a salary. Just be calm. The customer's criticism and discussion should be appropriate. As a project manager, you must actively select team members that meet the project requirements.

8.Focus on project communication management.Now you have to face three groups of people: Your leaders, your team members, and your customers. Communicate with these people to let them know what you are going to do, it will be your main task to ask them to prepare for these tasks. Since communication is so important, it is also important to define the principles of communication in advance. Many communication principles are hidden rules. If you have been working in a department for a long time, it is a legitimate thing to apply these rules. However, you are facing multiple departments or even multiple units. If you do not clarify the communication rules, you will suffer losses in the future. The following things seem boring, but they are still very useful: the first is to define the information flow mode and media, whether to push or pull. The promotion means that the project manager will actively publish information, whether by phone, email or written, to ensure that the information is delivered to everyone. This situation is suitable for small projects with fewer people. The project manager is a Web server, and you need to ask him what information you need. Of course, if the project manager isn't so tired of posting himself, he will publish the information to the public media. What's simple is the whiteboard, what is more complex is the public information interaction zone of the project,Potential rulesIt's just that I didn't tell you if you didn't go there. It seems boring to say that it involves incomplete information communication responsibilities. Of course, these are general methods, and they should not be absolute. In general, active communication and passive access exist at the same time, especially for leaders, the project manager should take the initiative to communicate with the leadership. The second problem is the document problem. Many people are afraid of writing documents, but the project manager must remember the principle that "good memory is not as good as bad writing. Why can't I tell you why? It is because there is no evidence. At the beginning, the project manager should clarify with the customer that some documents must be signed. For example, the project log of the project manager should be signed by the customer at least every week, and all other things that reach consensus should be discussed, for example, the meeting minutes and even the speech records of leaders must be written into documents and signed by both parties, so that they can be well documented in the future. Remember: What you say is the same as what you did not say. It is only after you write it down and sign it. There are still some questions, such as the report you submitted and a multiple-choice question for the leaders (including local leaders and customer leaders). The result leaders are overwhelmed, making you feel at a loss and delaying the progress. At this time, you can wait, but pay attention to keeping a record indicating who is responsible. In addition, if you are at the beginning, you should negotiate with the leaders: if you do not receive a response from the supervisor three days after the instruction is submitted, you will take the initiative. For example, the approval process for different events: what level of events are recorded in the project log, what level of events require both project managers to sign the Memorandum, and what level of events require both leaders to sign the contract annex. The more thoughtful you think, the more active you will be in the future.

The project agrees and you have already made a lot of preparations for the project construction. The next step is the specific nature of the project. Work of this specific nature, including the plan, project requirement acquisition, design demonstration, technical solution application demonstration, project development, project testing, project implementation, and project ending type for the development of the project system.

1.Compile a project plan.I have done a lot of preliminary work and defined some game rules. Now is the time to sit down and make a plan. First, find several key team members, such as customer business experts and system analysts, and divide the project modules. A project is divided into several parts, each part is completed, and information between modules is exchanged. What is the requirement definition, and how is the requirement defined here. Here, we need to emphasize that there are many ways to accomplish a goal. You need to choose one that you are most familiar with, rather than the one that looks perfect. This idea will reduce a lot of risks for your project. Sometimes the customer will be moved by a new technology and insist that you adopt the new technology, you should tell him: you choose me to do this project, I should allow myself to do things in my favorite way. The new technology is tempting because there are not many people who suffer, and I don't want you to be the first victims. Using a plan will make your work clearer. For example, using Microsoft Project software, after you fill out the form, you can know how many things the project has to do, what resources are required for each task, how is the relationship between them, how long it takes, and what marks are there after completion. All the results are shown in the form of 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 the end time of your plan (the contract owner will never ask for your opinion first ). Of course, people who have studied project management will talk about WBS, optimization paths, and other things. However, my experience is that you cannot optimize these things until the end of the plan. If you haven't encountered this problem, please confirm whether you have listed all the things to be done and correctly evaluated the time they need before I congratulate you on selecting a simple task. At this time, you have to consider sacrificing time for some tasks (which also means quality. What are the criteria for sacrifice? The experience is that if you catch up with everything, the result may be that you have not done one of ten things well. Think about how failed it is. Therefore, if you invest your resources in something you are familiar with and have a certain grasp of, the final result is ten things. You have made three excellent products, three finished items, and four delayed items for some reasons, is there a lot of beautiful transcripts? Strategy determines the priority, and the priority of correctly arranged tasks is the main embodiment of a Project Manager's ability. As a PM, the project plan is very important to the company's leadership, customer leadership, and internal project management, so that everyone has a unified focus on each time node. In addition, after completing the project plan, it is necessary for the project manager to provide a project training to the project team members according to the plan. The training content includes: reiterate the project objectives, assignment of tasks of project members, description of project communication interfaces, unification of project document templates, understanding of project work standards, description of project progress and milestone deliverables. This training aims to unify the thinking and understanding of projects.

2.Implement project plan-Manage project requirements.PM spent a lot of energy in the early stage, considered all aspects of the project, and made a lot of preparations for the project's substantive progress, the next step is to organize the project resource execution plan, regularly report the project, and solve the actual problems faced by the project. In the project demand stage, the project manager needs the support of business experts and demand analysts to quickly obtain system requirements. The most taboo point of the project manager is that the customer's senior management summarized the construction content of the project in one sentence, and therefore determined that this is all the requirements of the project. I participated in the construction of an internal review control system proposed by the Audit Department in 2011. At that time, the customer proposed the internal review Control System Requirement: according to the audit object, the review indicators should be set, the review indicators should be compared to the review indicators to calculate the Sub-item score, and the overall score of the Audit object will be given. When I refine the research requirements, the customer cannot tell me what other requirements are and provides me with a large number of documents on the review indicators, asking me to have a deep understanding of the system requirements. In the face of such a demand, I directly gave the conclusion that the system could not be built. In addition, customers may frequently change their requirements during project construction. For customers whose requirements change every day, PM must follow the rules in advance: 1. Unify contacts and designate a person to communicate with the project team, no one can say a few words to both Zhang and Wang. If their opinions are inconsistent, you will have to offend the leaders. Therefore, the project should first set the rules, my project team only recognizes one opinion. What do you need to unify your internal team before talking to me? I don't want to be involved in the conflict between your internal business departments; 2. All demand changes must be written. Remember this! In this way, there is a lot of work to do: * There is written evidence, and he wants to change it later. You have the evidence he asked before and tell him: you said so before; * It is easy to manage demand changes. You can see clearly how the demand evolves to better understand the purpose of the customer. * for the customer, it is most convenient to get started, he is not responsible for not spending his resources. However, if he wants to write a written request and sign and seal it, he will be more cautious. As soon as he writes something, his mind will be more profound, and many unreasonable requests will be lost. For systems with a large number of requirements, PM should set up full-time demand management personnel to collect and sort out customer requirements, and make reasonable acceptance and rejection for a large number of customer changes.

3.Implement the Project Plan-complete design demonstration.Project design is the first step to recognize the project requirements, or the bridge from project requirements to project implementation. In this process, the project manager should pay attention to the functional design, database design, and interface design of the system. According to the project size, it is necessary to complete the outline design and detailed design step by step. The organization and implementation of these jobs completely lies in the project manager's overall control over the project. Design arguments are essential. I have encountered an example before. The project manager fully trusts his team members, assigns design personnel for each module of the project, and asks the design personnel to communicate with the demand analyst and Project Development Engineer. In the project stage, the design scheme demonstration work is omitted, which leads to the subsequent development stage. The development engineers do not approve the design scheme of the designers at all, and the development engineers cannot enter the development stage, some development engineers directly drill down the module design work to catch up with the project progress, and the subsequent development system completely does not meet the project requirements, and the customer cannot accept the project. Therefore, project design scheme demonstration is a step that must be completed.

4.Implementation of the project plan-it is necessary to demonstrate the application of the technical solution.Some projects require the use of advanced technologies to solve thorny problems. The project manager must organize expert demonstration meetings and technical application guidance conferences, emphasizing how the important part of the system can solve some important problems through advanced technologies. This phase of work depends on the project situation, can be shortest.

5.Implement project plan-Manage Project Development. Project development is not just about Project coding. In the early stage of development, the project manager must organize and prepare a well-prepared project R & D environment, use appropriate project R & D tools, collect project progress information and coordinate and solve project problems at the Development weekly meeting. It is necessary to emphasize that the project manager should pay attention to project version management, develop version management systems for documents and source code, and emphasize the importance of version management to project team members. In a project in 2012, I went through the R & D of a project. At that time, there were only two project developers. The project manager and senior leaders thought that such a team was more conducive to management and development, development engineers are responsible for independent module development, and all Members do not consider file version management. When the project requirement changes, the development engineer is responsible for following up and revising the project module. In addition to the project implementation scheme, the development engineers overturned the previous scheme, as a result, the actual situation of the project seriously deviates from the project plan. The project manager is confused about the time at which the problem occurred. The project manager does not know when the file was modified or why it was modified. The project had to be re-launched. How to manage project development is a key task for the Project Manager in the development stage. Generally, we have a lot of version management software, such as SVN and VSS. During the development process, the internal management should pay attention to the idea of taking acceptance as the goal at all times. The final deliverables of each task must be checked. For example, [interface requirements: elegant and concise]. I don't know how to check this requirement. Therefore, when assigning tasks to the development team, we need to consider how to check the results. For example, I have met a plan with a task [developers are familiar with EJB programming, in addition to asking these people to take some professional certification exams, the results are hard to be checked. Therefore, it is important for the project manager to always consider how to check the results and deliver the results to the customer. I have heard that some old project managers plan projects in reverse order, that is, first, we should look at the acceptance and acceptance criteria, and then decide the work plan. Many projects have started for a long time and do not know how to accept them, so there is a high possibility of problems in this project. The project is designed for acceptance. Our role is not a research institution, and our goal is to get results after so much effort is paid.

6.Implement project plan-Manage Project tests.Many people do not pay much attention to project testing and think that the project process can work, so that the project can handle the customer's business and meet the needs. This is terrible. Project testing is to discover all kinds of defects hidden in the project and reduce the risk of disastrous consequences to the customer due to the project quality problems. The test result is not that the project passes the acceptance test, but that the project is not robust. For a lot of software, the basic requirements for achieving customers are the functions required by the software, and the ability of the software to handle emergencies, such as data backup before power outages, the software is automatically restarted after the crash, and the error-free processing capability of the software boundary, high-density data processing capability, and system fault tolerance capability for abnormal process operations are also provided. As a project manager, you should manage all aspects of project testing. You can designate a test Manager to take charge of the test work, or you can assume the responsibilities of the test Manager on your own. Project testing includes deployment of test environment, selection of test tools, management of software test versions, design and execution of test cases, and preparation of test reports. When the system's functions and performance do not meet the requirements, such work will be carried out repeatedly. The IBM products I know have a very powerful test team. One Product has hundreds of thousands of people in many countries. It not only covers functional testing and performance testing, even fine-grained tests in different operating system environments will list detailed test plans and be handled by dedicated test engineers.

7.Implement project plan-Manage Project Implementation. This is a very difficult job. After all, most of the previous jobs are for internal team members. A lot of work can be done through project instructions, and the current implementation work is a practical practice, you have no chance to make mistakes and save your face. Complaints and dissatisfaction from customers will come one after another. To implement the project, you must submit the implementation plan to the customer in advance and ask the customer to prepare and cooperate with the customer. In addition, assign people who are familiar with the project products and will communicate with each other to form an implementation team to implement the products at the customer's site. If the upgrade and transformation project is involved, the project implementation work will focus on protecting the normal operation of the original business system, so that the system can be switched in time when an accident occurs during the implementation process. During the project implementation process, the implementation records should be kept strictly in accordance with the established implementation procedures, and the running status of the deployed projects should be tracked and observed. When the project runs to the agreed time point, remember to report the operation status to the customer in time and request the customer to sign the confirmation. After all, this is an essential part of project acceptance. There is also a question in project implementation that tests the skill of the Project Manager about how to mobilize the enthusiasm of the customer. Generally, the customer is lazy, which is why he spent money to ask you to do things. The success or failure of a project is closely related to the degree of cooperation of the customer. According to my analysis, customers in general projects can be divided into three types: Support, passive wait-and-see, and conflict. The distribution of the number of people is generally a spindle: the number of people who support and conflict with each other is small, and the number of people who are waiting to watch is large (if you pick up a project where everyone is in conflict with you, you should not do it ). First, analyze why those people support you and conflict with you. It's easy. Yu Gong analyzes the two aspects of the public and private, and who's workload has changed since the new system was launched? Whose potential interests are threatened? Whose position disappears because of the new system? What changes have taken place in the traditional interest structure due to the use of the new system? These things must be understood by the project manager so that you can unite those who support you, cut down those who contradict you. A project manager is a very strange role. It is a typical role with large responsibilities and small Powers. All he can do is to exert his/her strength, whether in his own company or in the customer, you must rely on others to accomplish your goals. Only by knowing who will help you and who will conflict with you can you ask the customer to work with you. For example, in some internal computer-aided management systems, the inevitable consequence is that some of the benefits that may have been lost when the management was originally chaotic. In this way, some people must be confused, slander the system everywhere. At this time, you will be able to spread arguments like "whoever is resisting the new system will prove that there is shit in your ass" to suppress them and weaken their influence.

8.Implement project plan-Manage Project Training. To use projects for customers, you must teach them how to use them. The project manager should plan the project training and assign the engineers who are good at communication and understand the products to be responsible for customer training. At this stage, the project manager should pay attention to the following issues: 1. Make sure that all processes are correct when providing training versions to the customer, pay attention to the layout, words, and links of each interface. In short, do not let the customer see something he should not see. For documentation, prepare at least two documents: user manual and training manual. Many of these two documents share the same content, but they have different perspectives. User Manuals are often used by system designers to explain system operations and functions in modules based on their own ideas. training manuals must be conducted by the customer's business personnel, based on how each role handles different services, how to achieve the goal by using a series of functions of the system. In addition, training may be conducted in different departments, which requires the preparation of training manuals of different content and versions. Therefore, before the first training, whether the system interface is complete and correct, and whether the training documents are complete are critical factors. If the first shot fails, it will be a lot of trouble in the future. 2. seize all the opportunities to instill your implementation methods into your customers and prepare them. They will not feel new things are too sudden. 3. The training and trial run process should not be too long to avoid fatigue on both sides. From Code Completion, training, new system data preparation to trial run, we must be compact and let everyone go online in a busy schedule. Otherwise, it will take a long time to pick out a few bugs for the customer. the morale of the project team members has gone down and the hearts of the people are scattered, so the team will not be able to bring it ....

9.Implementation Project Plan-management project closure. When the project ends, the project collects money. Project managers are usually the most motivated and busy at this stage. The project manager must prepare the acceptance documents, periodic acceptance reports, and understand the customer's actual acceptance requirements and deliverables in the shortest time. In China, many enterprises often have some differences with the acceptance criteria set at the beginning of the project when accepting Party B's deliverables. A large amount of work done by the project manager is to meet the customer's acceptance requirements. In addition, some enterprises prefer to adopt industry standards to constrain Party B's acceptance process, which is bound to increase the work of the project manager, but the project manager cannot implement these requirements. Once both the deliverables and acceptance reports are completed, the final task of the project is the summary of the project experience. This is not only a review of the entire project construction process, but also an important reference for the subsequent project construction work, which is conducive to the project manager to control more complex project development. Generally, the project summary should be carried out in the project team. Some companies that focus on project team building usually hold project summary meetings to provide a platform for project celebration, so that project team members and internal and external personnel can understand each other, to achieve the maximum effect of project closure.

 

From the idea to the implementation of the project, the process described above is generally involved. Each successful project cannot omit these processes. Otherwise, the project is a failure on the whole. As the actual controller of the entire project, the project manager must face many practical problems and work out effective methods to solve them one by one.

Process from idea to implementation