Effective interaction with people is probably the single most important part of managing a project. If the project team are kept focused with the tasks they need to perform for the project to be a success and stakeholders are kept informed to maintain a positive attitude to the project, then this is a big step forward to delivering a successful project.
A good project manager will always be conscious of cost and will always look for the best value-for-money solution, which is not necessarily the cheapest option. Everything on a project costs money, from peoples time, to premises and even stationery. A project manager cannot be frivolous when it comes to cost, as even a small leak can sink a ship over time. If costs are controlled on a day-to-day basis, then there will be no surprises when it comes to reporting on cost, but rather a formality. Reporting should be frequent enough to satisfy stakeholders that the project is on track in terms of cost.
Time management is another key area for a project manager to monitor. As the project manager, you could be working 24 hours per day, but if you have a project team of 10 people who are not clear on what they need to do, then no amount of hours you put in will help deliver the project if the 10 project team members are not being fully utilized. Scheduling to a resource level helps project managers keep track of team members deliverables, but if the project manager is not keeping their finger on the pulse and managing these people on a daily basis, then they could find themselves in a world of pain when milestones are not met because of slippages in task completion dates.
“A good project manager will always be conscious of cost and will always look for the best value-for-money solution”
For software projects in particular it is imperative to not only track scope to ensure changes are logged for items not scoped, but also to track to ensure items delivered are delivered to scope. For this reason, it is important to ensure sufficient time is devoted to scope at the beginning of the project to minimize the amount of “grey” areas during implementation, as well as ensuring everything the business wants done is addressed. The project manager needs to ensure that the scope is identified and documented up front in enough detail so as not to cause future confusion, as well as manage the delivery of these scope items in the scheduled timeframe and to the budget cost, or dare I say it, less.
Another area commonly overlooked by project managers is the delivery of a quality product. If a project manager delivers on-time, on-budget and to scope, the project could still be a failure if the quality of what is produced is not up to standard. You could even take a step backwards if what has been delivered is of poorer quality then what was there beforehand. Project Managers need to ensure that the appropriate quality gates are put in place and also that the business is involved in the acceptance of the product at each of these gates.
Change Management is not only concerned with change requests for out-of-scope items, but more importantly the managing of the business change that a software project can cause. Particularly for ERP projects, this is quite often a “whole of business” change, so making sure that the business is positive about the change is essential. Good project management in all the above areas will go a long way to ensuring this positivity. Negativity can spread through an organisation like a virus and quite often can lead to a point where the project is doomed, even though everything has been done right. Negativity can be avoided by making sure everyone is one board, particularly stakeholders, and should be addressed immediately when identified to stop its spread.
The identification of project risk and implementing appropriate mitigation actions is also important to a software project. As an example, during a software implementation project there is always something more important to do in the business then “playing” with the system. However, after go-live project team members always wish they had more contact time on the system to get to know it in more detail. If this was identified upfront as a risk, then the mitigating action may have been to have a set time for project team members to “immerse” themselves into the system.
Hopefully the above shows the passion Prize Solutions have for effective project management. For more information please don’t hesitate to contact us and feel free to share this article on your social media pages using the share icons at the top of this page.
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