外文翻译项目管理的原则

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1、The Principles of Project ManagementYouve already got an understanding of the basic project life cycle, and weve just talked through some of the underlying principles of project management. But I bet youre itching to actually do something. In this chapter, which is taken from SitePoints new title, T

2、he Principles of Project Management, well talk about the work that comes before the project life cycle - finding possible projects, working out which projects are worth pursuing, and getting to know the different groups of people who will be involved in any project. Finally, well discuss the process

3、 of actually initiating a project.In each of the sections that follow, youll find a discussion of what the process is and why it matters, followed by tools and best practices that will help you get your project off to a flying start.Discovery: Finding the ProjectsProjects dont just spring from nowhe

4、re. Although many project managers only get involved when its already been decided that a project will be undertaken to achieve some end, there is, of course, a phase before this: discovery. Discovery is the process by which the organization reviews the available opportunities and decides which of t

5、hem will become projects in due course.Ideally, the discovery process should ensure that the best opportunities are pursued - not just those that were mentioned first, or those that have the loudest supporters. Where this process is undertaken, its usually combined with some sort of portfolio planni

6、ng through which the potential projects are matched against the resources or capabilities of the organization itself. The eventual result is a list of projects that are truly the top priorities.The sad reality is that in many cases, theres either no process at all for discovery and portfolio plannin

7、g, or the process thats in place doesnt result in the selection of projects that will deliver the most value. Its also true that as a project manager, your influence may be very limited at this stage - after all, in many cases, you wont even know about the potential projects until one is assigned to

8、 you!However, understanding what has been discovered, and how the project that youre managing came to be started, is very important. It can tell you whether the project is truly of high value to the organization for which youre working (either as an employee, contractor, or service provider) or whet

9、her its potential value still needs to be ascertained. It may also give you early insight into the complexities you might have to face during the project.If you find that little or no discovery work has been done, dont despair - do it yourself! Find out why people in the organization think your proj

10、ect is important. Understand what theyre expecting the project to deliver - try to focus on what it means to them, not the nuts and bolts of what will be built. If their answers suggest that they dont think the project matters, find out where they think the time and effort would be better spent.Your

11、 first instinct will be to protect your project, but you might find an opportunity for another project that will deliver even more value. Even if you dont end up jettisoning the original project and taking on the new one instead, bringing it to the attention of the stakeholders within the organizati

12、on will make you stand out as a project manager who really cares about the good of the company, not just your own projects.Example 2.1. Choosing the Wrong OptionsImagine theres a team at a company youre working with that deals with customer orders. The team members have identified a number of opport

13、unities:Remove manual work from current processes.Many in the team feel that they spend almost all their time shuffling paper, rather than actually dealing with the customers.Speed up inventory checking.When a customer places an order, the team members have to call up the inventory team to find out

14、whether the goods are in stock or not. Making this process faster would improve their efficiency greatly.Improve tracking of customer orders, queries, and complaints.Currently, all tracking of customer interactions is done manually. Theres actually one person in the team whose full-time job is colle

15、cting the information and putting it in an Excel spreadsheet!Allow customers to interact in more ways.A number of customers have signalled that theyd like to be able to email the team as a whole, or to input queries and complaints online.As you might have guessed, the opportunities above are ordered

16、 in terms of importance. The team feels that reducing their manual work is most important, with the inventory tracking improvements and customer tracking automation coming a close second. Once these fundamental issues have been fixed, the team feels that it can start work on items that will really b

17、enefit the customer - introducing a web site and email addresses so they can log orders, queries, and so on.When people from elsewhere in the organization get involved, however, they get very focused on the web site for the customers. Marketing can see that this will be a real selling point and the

18、sales teams think that it will delight their contacts. They dont realize that in order for the customer web site to be successful, the team needs to have all the other opportunities addressed first.The first you know about any of this, however, is when youre brought in to build the new customer web

19、site. You get started working on it, but are finding that the people from the team who deal with the orders are very difficult to work with: they wont answer questions clearly, dont turn up to meetings that youve organized, and dont answer emails unless theyre reminded to again and again. Youre sens

20、ing hostility, but you have no idea why - youve only been there a week. Surely you cant have offended them already?You get in touch with some of the IT guys that you know from the last project you worked on for this company and ask them whats up. They explain about the other projects that this team

21、identified . and that the team actually thought those other projects were more important. However, someone in the marketing team, having heard about the possibility of the web site being developed, promised one of the big customers that it would be ready soon, so management decided to prioritize thi

22、s project over the improvement of the systems.Now you understand why the team is so unresponsive! Theyre upset because their own needs have been ignored, and now youre working on the project that theyve been forced into prematurely.At this point, it can be very easy to get depressed or start panicki

23、ng. What if the team continues to sabotage the project and you get blamed when it isnt delivered? You dont have the power to go back and work on the project they really wanted to happen, so perhaps you should just give up now .The point, though, is that now you understand what was causing the team t

24、o be unhelpful and unresponsive. Armed with that knowledge, you can do something about it!As weve already discussed, often the project manager wont be involved in deciding which projects will be undertaken. In this particular situation, however, you can try to mitigate some of the impacts of the web

25、 site project being prioritized over that of updating the existing systems.Firstly, you have a discussion with Pamela, the team member whos been the main cause of friction so far. You explain that you understand there were originally other projects on the cards, and ask her to clarify for you what t

26、hey would have entailed. As she talks, you realize that some of the elements of the existing manual process are going to be problematic for your project as well - for instance, it wont be possible to determine whether or not an item is in stock without someone making a phone call.In this particular

27、example, theres an obvious route forward - help to identify the modernizations of the existing system that are required for the web site project to be a real success. Then push either for these to be brought into the scope of your own project, or for a separate team to be set up to deal with those i

28、ssues in parallel.However, even if you wont be able to influence the organization to work on the productivity improvements as well as the site, just having spoken to Pamela seems to have improved relations immensely. She commented that you were the first one of the techie guys who had taken the time

29、 to really understand why the team is so frustrated. She has started responding to your queries and emails and even seems to have told the rest of the team that they should help you out as well.The point is that without understanding where your projects roots lie, youre flying blind. By investing so

30、me time to find out a little more about how the discovery work was or wasnt done, and how the decisions were made, you can gain a valuable insight into the challenges you might face, day to day, on the project. This approach can also give you an early warning of any office politics that might make y

31、our life difficult!Picking the Best ProjectsChoosing the best projects to work on involves a three-step process:Identify the opportunities.Compare the opportunities.Rank them and decide which to undertake.Identifying the OpportunitiesThere are many approaches to identifying opportunities, some of wh

32、ich are more sophisticated than others, so lets start by considering some of the basic tools that youll probably already have come across.The most obvious option is a brainstorm. Get people in the organization together, and ask them to think of anything that annoys them, anything that could be done

33、better, or things that arent being done yet that could be started.The Stop, Start, Continue ApproachOne model that you can use to get people to focus called Stop, Start, Continue. Here, you essentially ask the people in the room to name one task they want the organization to stop doing, one task tha

34、t it should start doing, and one task that it should continue to do.If its obvious that a particular business process or set of processes is causing a lot of pain, manual work, or rework in the organization, it might be worth charting that process. You can do this using any tool - from the good old

35、marker and whiteboard, through to bespoke process-flow mapping tools or UML diagrams. (UML stands for Unified Modeling Language, and constitutes a set of standard formats for creating flow diagrams of processes, data, etc. UML tends to be popular with usability professionals and software engineers.

36、As always, think carefully about the tools you choosethey need to be understandable and accessible to everyone involved.)Once you have drawn out the business process, look at each step and ask, Why do we do this? If there isnt a good reason to take the step, remove it! If the step is necessary but c

37、ould be done more intelligently, ask how. If the question of what needs to change isnt answered easily, a project to fully investigate the options and create a solution could spring from your analysis.Example 2.2. Innovate or ImproveOne example of the need for innovation is made clear by the anecdot

38、e about an early 20th-century buggy whip manufacturer. The organization was focused on making whips (used on horses that drew buggies and carts) faster, cheaper, and better . at a time when horse-drawn carts were rapidly being replaced by motor cars. Making the buggy whip cheaper was not going to in

39、crease sales, since price was not the problem.Remember, though, that sometimes the opportunities that are the biggest - the projects that will make a huge difference to the business - might be those that dont represent incremental improvements. In many cases, the real way to make a difference may be

40、 to realize that theres a completely new direction to take, product to focus on, or way to operate.From： The principles of project managementBy Meri Williams Published: March 2008 项目管理的原则你已经得到了一个基本的项目生命周期的认识，我们只是针对项目管理的一些基本原则进行了座谈。但我猜你渴望确实做了些什么。在这一章中，哪一节是摘自于SitePoint的新头衔，项目管理的原则，这是我们将谈论的工作是在项目生命周期出现

41、之前的，我们可能寻找的项目，并且是制定哪些项目是值得追求的，而且越来越认识到，不同群体的人们将会涉及到不同的项目。最后，我们将讨论这些进程是否能开启一个项目。在后面的章节中，您会学到一个有关此进程是什么以及为什么它重要的原因的讨论。采用合理的工具和最好的练习将会使你的项目有一个美好的开端。发现：寻找项目项目不只是春天的小草无处不在。虽然很多项目经理只当它涉足的已经决定，将采取项目达到某种目的，有，当然，在此之前一个阶段：发现，探索的过程，是该组织审查，并决定哪些可利用的机会，他们在适当的时候将成为项目。理想的情况下，发现过程应确保最好的机会。不仅仅是那些被提到第一个，或那些具有最响亮的支持者。

42、这个过程是在哪里进行，通常结合一些组合规划整理，通过它的潜在项目对资源或组织本身的能力相匹配。最终的结果是一个项目，是真正的最优事项清单。可悲的现实是，在许多情况下，有或没有发现和组合规划或过程，有些地方对于选择的项目没有提供重大的价值。这也是事实，作为一个项目经理，你的影响可能非常有限，在这个阶段-毕竟，在许多情况下，你甚至不知道潜在的项目，直到被分配到你。然而，了解发现了什么，以及如何将你的项目管理启动，是非常重要的。它可以告诉你这个项目是否对于组织所有你的工作（无论是作为雇员，承包商或服务提供者）是高价值的，还是它的潜在价值需要进一步确定。这也可能让你早期洞察到您面对的项目可能有的复杂性

43、。如果您发现很少或根本没有发现工作已经完成，请不要失望-自己做！找出为什么该组织的人认为你的项目是重要的。理解他们正在期待该项目提供什么-尽量把注意力放在项目对他们意味着什么这个层面上，而不是螺母和螺栓将建成什么。如果他们的回答表明，他们不认同该项目的事宜，找出他们认为的，这一部分时间和精力花在什么地方将会更好。你的本能反应将是保护您的项目，但你可能会发现另一个项目，将提供更大价值。即使你最终不会抛弃原来而用新的项目来替代，考虑一下组织内利益相关者所关注的，并且不把自己当做项目经理，谁真正关心公司，你要明白这不只是你自己的项目。例2.1。选择错误的项目想象一下，在你的公司有一个工作小组正在处理

44、与客户的订单，该小组成员已经确定了一些机会：手动删除当前进程的工作 在团队中很多人觉得，他们把几乎所有的时间放在文件处理上，而不是实际与客户打交道。加快库存检查当客户下单，团队成员必须调用库存找到货物是否在有缺。使用这个过程将更快提高其效率。提高客户订单的跟踪，查询和投诉目前，所有的客户互相追踪是手动完成的。还有的其实是在公司中有全职工作的人是收集信息并把它在Excel表格中试算的人！允许客户以多种方式进行互动一些客户已经表示，他们希望能够有一个整体的电子服务系统，输入网上查询和投诉。正如你可能已经猜到的，在重要性上，机会已经被提供了。该小组认为，减少他们的手工工作的最重要的改进是库存跟踪和客

45、户跟踪的自动化。一旦这些基本问题已得到修复，该小组认为，它可以启动项目，将真正有利于客户的工作做好就像上面介绍的：一个网站和电子邮件地址，以便他们可以登录订单，查询等。组织中的其他地方的人们积极参与活动，但是，他们会非常专注于客户的网站。从营销角度可以看到，这将是一个真正的卖点，销售团队认为这将满足客户最大需求。他们没有意识到，在网站上成功的为客户提供订单，整个团队就有其他的机会首先处理。然而当你建立新的客户网站时，这是你首先要知道的。你开始工作，但你也发现，与团队中处理订单的人很难接触：他们不会很清楚的回答问题，你组织开会时他们不会到这儿来开会，不回复邮件，除非他们被提醒了一次又一次。你显得

46、满是敌意，但你不知道为什么 -你只在这呆了一个星期。当然，你不可能得罪他们。对于你在这家公司的最后一个项目，你与IT家伙取得了联系，并问他们为什么。他们解释这个小组确定的其他项目.而且这个团队还认为那些其他项目更重要。然而营销队伍中的有些人说，关于该网站建立的可能性正在开发，并且承诺其中一些大的客户已经准备就绪，所以管理层决定优先在这两个系统改善工作。现在你明白为什么团队是如此的反应迟钝！他们不高兴，因为他们自己的需要被忽略了，现在你就被迫投入到新的项目中。在这一点上，你可能很容易沮丧或开始恐慌。如果该小组继续破坏项目，你会得到指责？你没有权力回到项目中工作，这也许是他们真的希望发生的，也许你

47、现在应该放弃。不过这一点，使你明白什么是导致团队没有任何帮助和响应的理由了。拥有了这些知识的武装，你可以做一些改变了。正如我们已经讨论过，往往是项目经理不参与决定哪些项目将进行。但是在这种特定的情况下，你可以尝试某种操作以减轻对网站的影响，将一些项目优先考虑到现有系统的更新中。首先，你要有一个帕梅拉，在讨论过程中，团队成员中谁之间有摩擦一直是造成问题的主要原因。解释一下你能明白计划上原来有的其他项目，并要求他为你澄清他们牵涉到的东西。就像她问到的，你认识到现有的手工工艺的一些内容给你的项目同样带来问题例如，不可能没有任何人的一通电话就能判定是否有项目上马。在这个特殊的例子里，有一个明显的方向

48、帮助找出现行制度，这对于一个成功的网站项目的建立是很必要的。然后把这些要么将其带进你自己的项目范围，要么设立一个独立的团队并行处理这些问题。然而，即使你不能够影响该组织对生产力的改善工作像网站那样的情况，仅仅有发言的帕梅拉似乎已经大大改善关系。她认为你是真正花费时间去理解为什么团队会如此挫败“技术人员佬“的第一人。她已经开始回应你的查询和电子邮件，甚至似乎已经告诉了团队他们应该帮助你脱离困境。问题的关键是，没有理解你的项目的根源在于什么，你是盲目飞行。通过投资一些时间来了解一些有关如何发现工作做了还是没做，以及如何作出了决定，通过一天天在项目上的努力您可以获得您可能面对挑战的宝贵的洞察力。给你

49、一个关于可能使你生活困难的办公室政治的早期预警。挑选最好的项目选择最好的项目上工作涉及三个步骤：（1）确定机会。（2）比较机会。（3）排列他们并决定按哪个等级进行。识别机遇有许多方法来寻找机会，那些比其他复杂，所以让我们先来考虑可能已经遇到的一些基本工具。最明显的选项是头脑风暴。使每个人都参加到组织中，要求他们想到所有使他们恼怒的东西，任何可以做的更好的事情，或者说还没有被做过的事情都开始做。停止，启动，继续进行一个模型，你可以用它来让人们关注所谓的停止，启动，继续。在这里，你基本上是让房间里的人说出一个任务，他们希望该组织停止做，一个任务应该开始工作，一项任务它应该继续这样做。如果很明显，一

50、个特定的业务流程或进程设置让人头痛，体力劳动多，或者组织返工多，但它可能是值得检查的进程。你可以使用任何的工具做到这一点从良好的旧标志和白板，通过对定制过程流映射工具或UML图表。（联合马列代表统一建模语言，构成了创建流程，数据流图的标准格式集等往往与UML的可用性受到专家和软件工程师的欢迎。一如往常，想想你的工具，慎重选择，他们必须能让所有人理解和参与。）一旦你已经制定了业务流程，看看每个步骤，并问：“为什么我们这样做呢？“如果没有一个很好的理由采取的步骤，删除它！如果这一步是必要的，但可以做得更聪明，问如何做。如果有什么需要改变的问题不容易回答，就对这个项目的选项进行全面调查，并从你的分析中得到一个解决办法。例2.2。创新或改善其中一个需要创新的例子是大约一个早在20世纪巴吉威普制造商的轶事。该组织的重点是使做出来的鞭挞（手推车，马车用）更快，更便宜，更好在当马车迅速被汽车所取代。使巴吉威普便宜不打算增加销售，由于价格已经不是问题。请记住，虽然，有时机会是最大的该项目将产生巨大的变化的业务可能是那些没有明显的改善。在许多情况下，真正有效地发挥作用、可实现的是向一个全新的方向走，把重点放在产品或生产方式上。来自项目管理原则作者Meri Williams 出版于2008年三月