Project Finishing, Is it Helping You to Drop the Hook or is it Just Tiring?Project finishing, that is for me means when the team is back in the environment they just are not ready for next steps projects anymore. Common thoughts might be there are too many projects to tackle in a day, that its hard to allocate resources, there are too many people in the project or at least not enough resources to jointly do the tasks presented to them by their sponsors, or we are just losing steam. You have to look at this in a different stepto find what needs to be done to get your project back to running like it should. As outlined on a prince2 courses and training ireland.
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Many of these problems seem to be solved by looking at the overall picture and working it out from there. However the project is generally not solved. Rather the project involves dealing with the one or more hand-offs of different projects with associated work and input from the different programs of the organization;
...and are you now starting to understand the intricacies that a project manager has to manage, and is not always as obvious as it seems to be.
In this article I would like to uncover some potential pitfalls to avoid in project management so that you can stop loading yourself down with improvement catch-ups.
Assuring good input and editing from the project team and their managers
Assuring the right input from the different stakeholders involved in the process and staying involved in the process until all who had input have contributed their work
Ensuring the right input is available on time before the work needs to be completed
Ensuring that the required documentation is available, available and meeting the right format as defined by the stakeholders, in a timely manner
Assuring that the time everything has to be spent for the document doesn't exceed the time the document has to be approved and issued
Assuring that the people that need to be involved in the document review or sign are available, if not available in the time frame that the document needs to be released
Assuring all objectives for the document have been clarifying those involved in the process.
Where possible, considering sub consideration to reduce the periods of manual work effort, and increase the accuracy of data and work flow recording.
Where accuracy of data and data collection records is not critical, improve the data collection process to speed up the overall processing of the project.
When data is critical but time is not critical or in certain cases is completely unacceptable, consider whether the data should be collected with data already collected or if a second data set needs to be collected.
This is where an online document management system can really come into play.
Data is cheaper to collect and keep than continuing to set up an offline document management system, even if you choose to keep it offline, having a system of record on your desktop to enable you to access these documents on future projects no matter where you are.
Its faster to get data into an online system than find a hard copy form or in worse cases a separate hard copy system to review
The data member set is easier because there is no need to file separately and give each data record its own individual file.
Single user interface, use multiple users has no additional cost to get them to comply with your input policies.
Standardization of data capture in forms allows data such as forms to be saved or imported as required by the user and then added back into the database.
Dates, Times and Names of forms are used consistent with forms review and sign off.
Older or duplicate data records are an embarrassment to anyone trying to make the data more relevant or consistent.
Everyone should be involved in the document and process and trained and made to understand where data is entered and for how.
The data member (user) and the manager must have a "go to" document that dictates a basic format around which data is captured that is used to process the document into the appropriate form.
Discuss the flows and escalation process for any documents that the user is doing before an issue to start a new process occurs becomes apparent. This will ensure the systems documentation meetings clear documentation specification.
Look at the frequency and patterns of forms that you produce.
Which forms are your most and least used?
6-24% is a common issue when compared to the actual data input. Understand that data input is not only an issue, its an annoyance to the user as well as to theproject management team if it occurs more than 2-3% of the time.
Regular audit will reveal ongoing deficiencies in the electronic processing of forms.
Look at where you might be using forms but the forms are rarely used.
If your forms are rarely used, analyze the reasons why.
Overseas forms are an additional talking point if the forms are a single one.
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