How to be a successful Telecom Project Manager

Telecom project management requires knowing how to communicate.

Managing any project requires a host of skills ranging from communications, product or service-specific acumen and project organization. Managing a telecom project requires these skills as well. In a telecom project, several teams often operate at the same time, requiring work synchronization. When you add to the mix anxious ownership and stakeholders, you realize that this job has some challenging elements.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Communications plan
• Project management software
• Scope statement

1. Meet with stakeholders early and often. Understand their expectations of the final product. Budget in a way that allows for complete stakeholder satisfaction with clear expectations. Discuss emerging technologies and include them in budgeting.

2. Define your project narrowly. Preventing the project scope from growing in a telecom project is a key part of your job. Include business analysts and subject matter experts in the discussion.

3. Choose your telecom installation team carefully. Provide a mix of tech-savvy individuals with business managers to balance potential with practicality. Verify both physical and technological aptitude when placing them because some project aspects can be especially demanding.

4. Define your communications plan. If you carefully script your communications expectations among your team, everyone will know to whom they are accountable and will take steps to see that information is passed. If you do not create a formal communications plan, information will tend to pool around a few employees.

5. Use project management and communications software throughout the project systematically. Your software provides you with the documentation you might need later and will keep you on target. Document the minutia of the project, not merely major points of emphasis.

6. Monitor telecom security throughout the project process. If telecom networks are not hardened adequately, they can be a point of security risk later that is much more expensive to fix.

7. Monitor expenses, billing and accounts carefully. If you have overruns, examine your scope statement to verify whether your scope is changing. Verify your number of seats, telecom and other switches and communications management modules to verify that you are not nearing capacity.

8. Evaluate staff and the project continuously. Provide feedback and ask for feedback in return. Track the good and the bad for use in future projects.

9. Require technical staff to test your telecom incrementally when possible. For example, test each phone as you install it if your infrastructure allows for it. This makes troubleshooting lines easier later.

10. Close the project completely and meet to discuss the results. Seek stakeholder input.

Tips & Warnings

• Require detailed maps and labeling with no exceptions.

• Consider emerging telecom technologies in the scope planning process, not later.

• Go to the stakeholders early with alternatives if you experience an overrun.

• Verify that security staff has secured communications manager modules to prevent physical intrusion or damage.

• Manage problem employees and stakeholders carefully, isolating them as needed to avoid poor morale.

References

• New York State CIO: Project Management Lifecycle
• OSS Telco: Telecom Best Practices in Project Management
• Virginia Technical University: Project Documentation Guidelines
• IT World: Project Management -- 4 Tips For Dealing With Problem Stakeholders
• Project Management Tips: Strategic Planning -- Part 3 -- Project Definition and Decisions; Brad Egeland

Resources

• University of South Florida: Telecom Operations Manager