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What's redundancy in project management?

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Question added by Alex Al Yazouri , General Manager , Al Mushref Cooperative Society
Date Posted: 2015/02/25
Deleted user
by Deleted user

Being proactive. Having a back-up plan.

Alex Al Yazouri
by Alex Al Yazouri , General Manager , Al Mushref Cooperative Society

Having lost your job because your employer no longer needs you.

  1. The workers are now facing redundancy.
  2. First Known Use of REDUNDANCY

 Synonyms circumlocution, diffuseness, diffusion, garrulity, garrulousness, logorrhea, long-windedness, periphrasis, prolixity, verbiage, verbalism, verboseness, verbosity, windiness, wordage, wordiness

Antonyms deficiency, deficit, insufficiency, undersupply

Elke Woofter
by Elke Woofter , Project Assistant , American Technical Associates

www.flyingintoprojectmanagement.com/2012/01/building-redundancy-in...

Redundancy is providing additional or duplicate systems (such as equipment) that function in case the primary system fails. We routinely see redundancy in important systems (although we may not realize it).  In aviation (especially the airlines and corporate aviation), redundancy is everywhere......

 

Sidrah Nadeem
by Sidrah Nadeem , Global Marketing Manager , Hill & Knowlton

Interesting insight by Mr.Vinod!

olivier vivien nwaha se
by olivier vivien nwaha se , chief carpenter and mason , sotrag /presonal activities

to repeat project manage,ent itsm,ean that  its do to be ,onotony  busness must be innovate

Vinod Jetley
by Vinod Jetley , Assistant General Manager , State Bank of India

Read the following story:

Having worked for the same organisation for five years I was informed I was at risk of redundancy and subsequently received scheduled "counseling" meetings leading up to eventual redundancy. At the time I was both shocked (what had I done wrong) and anxious (what will I do now) - after the initial feelings had subsided I was left with an outplacement consultant provided by my organisation and a cheque in my hand. I found the outplacement consultant didn't tell me more than I already knew - bring your CV up to date, polish your interview shoes and remember it's a "difficult" market out there (yeah, thanks for that!).   After taking a holiday to recharge the batteries I took to refreshing my CV and created a plan with a list of activities I felt were appropriate to secure my next position. My list included contacting local recruitment agencies and also national specialist agencies, I created a target list of suppliers and related organisations and began sending my CV with a tailored covering letter to contacts I had already made and began creating relationships with HR people etc through information I pulled off the internet. I soon found myself in a contract position which tided me over for a few months and gave me the much required experience outside of my previous employer - after five years it can be beneficial to take a short term assignment to demonstrate you can transfer quickly into other companies and products.   Once that contract was completed I was back looking for new opportunities - at this point the market was particularly poor with regard to relevant roles becoming available and after a number of interviews which found me questioning recruiters' understanding of project management I came across the Job Search Support Service supplied by Arras People through the Job Centre Plus. A completely free service (all I needed to do was seek a referral from the JCP), which takes a look at my approach to finding roles, a CV review and interview techniques. I was pleasantly surprised by the service I received - having gained a thorough review of my CV and an audit of where and what I had been applying for I was provided with tools and techniques on how to tap into the hidden job market (unadvertised roles). It quickly became clear that I had been pro-active at my approach to finding new roles and these skills could be put to effective use in obtaining a role through a more speculative approach. By taking this approach I found I was soon being invited into interviews by prospective employers and found I was also gaining much-needed commercial awareness.   The key areas I found to be effective when looking for a new role were:

  • Write an effective CV covering your understanding of the projects you were working on, your competency levels and key achievements. Seek feedback - from ex-colleagues, recruiters and specialist recruiters
  • Create a plan for activities such as timelines for chasing up agencies, applications, researching etc. Ensure each day is structured and varied - stay motivated!
  • Research all the available help out there and don't assume any one person's advice is necessarily right (including your own).
  • Make sure you distribute your CV to agencies and upload on the job boards (Monster, Total Jobs etc) and refresh it at least once a month.

On reflection I find myself actually happy I was made redundant - it gave me the push I needed to move on from an employer I had already given so much of my time and skills to, but could not provide a fast track to further my career at that point. I am now in a permanent position which has a better salary, continuous professional development (CPD) programme and location.

Deleted user
by Deleted user

Do we think with redundancy in mind?  This is similar to mitigating risks in "risk management" where we take action as insurance against something going wrong.

So what types of things need redundancy in our project management environments?  How about:

  • Skills: why does it always seem that losing a person with a key skill is detrimental to a project?  Would it not make sense to proactively build redundancies in our team's key skill sets?  This is like making sure there are always two pilots in the cockpit.
  • Statistics: sometimes we rely on technology to tell us how our projects are proceeding.  It is appropriate to use technology to communicate project information, but it is also wise to back this up.  For example, you may walk around and actually talk to people to confirm what the technology is telling you and identify hidden issues.
  • Quality Control: have you ever reached the end of the project and realized that a) the deliverables do not match the original design, b) the deliverables are of poor quality and need to be redone, or c) there are no deliverables.  You need to have a process of reviewing deliverables along the way.  This would be another opportunity for redundancy: having a secondary / backup mechanism to check the quality of your project deliverables in case the "primary" review mechanism just "isn't working quite right" (aka someone screwed up).
  • Customer Satisfaction: how are you ensuring your customers (internal or external) are happy?  Perhaps you have an account manager.  Should you have a redundant process to check in and make sure your customers are indeed happy?

The point I get out of this is to be proactive.  Your job as a project manager is not to plan your project, then sit back and hope it goes according to plan.  Your project will not go according to plan.  It never does.  So start thinking with redundancy in mind.  What can you do to be proactive?

 

Gaffar Riayaz
by Gaffar Riayaz , IT Manager , Majan Printing & Packaging

Hi Alex, Good Morning,  I could be very clear to explain in terms of technical aspect when you say redundancy,  very interestingly you have added "Redundancy in Project Management" I have googled through some explanation, what I found interesting is the following link.. just click the link when you have chance, perhaps it will clearly state your answers for your question that you have raised.

here is the link

http://nptel.ac.in/courses//8

 

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