Project Management Best Practices
Most major studies have shown the failure rate for technology-related projects is more than 70 percent. This is an astonishing number and is only tolerated because these projects, no matter how unsuccessfully executed, are critical to the running of organizations today.
Here's a quick snapshot of the things that usually go wrong and some corrective action.
- Business/IT Expectations Differ. Be sure the project is addressing your business pain points. This can be accomplished through the development of Use Cases to define the context of the system, clarify goals, and narrow the scope of the project. Use Cases define what the system or project will do from a user perspective. Specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time-limited (S.M.A.R.T.) goals clarify the priorities in purpose and scope of the project. Eliminate as many assumptions as possible. Lastly, hold weekly status meetings and review status reports to keep the project on track.
- Scope Issues/Business User Changes Mind. A project plan is never perfect coming off the drawing board. The only thing you know about scope issues is that it will happen and be prepared for it when it does. Document the change and the impact it will have on your project, get approval from the project sponsor to proceed with the changes, update the plan's impacted activities, and communicate the results to the project team.
- Resource Constraints. This comes in many different forms. Unplanned vacation time, sickness, turnover within project team or management team, end user resources can't find the time in their daily schedule to allocate time to your project as you had planned or they committed…the list goes on. These are events that, as a project manager, you can't control but can plan for as you develop a project plan. Build slack time into your project plan to allow for the unexpected. Keep a running track of all planned vacations, times off, and heavy work loads for staff, and load them into the project plan. Today, people are taking longer vacations-from two up to five weeks. Assume a dead week prior to time off and a dead week upon the return just to be safe.
- Budget Doesn't Address Contingencies. In most projects, there'll be some additional changes in scope as the business users find some additional key features not originally in scope, and in many cases, there'll be a technological challenge that was unforeseen. The executive sponsor should set aside additional money in case there are changes. Losing time to run a small dollar change is wasted energy for all parties and will cause missed deadlines.
- Role of Executive Sponsor. Every project should have someone at authority level for funding and changes. The executive sponsor must stay engaged monthly on a project to identify issues and obstacles and remove them. Most projects involve more than one department in a company, so only someone with clout can resolve the obstacles that come along both internally and externally. IBI