With project management being so huge in the IT Industry, let’s take a moment to review 5 things to ensure that you have in place before starting a planned project.
1. Outcomes are explained clearly
When you initiate a project with a client or have an internal initiative going, ensure that you start from the end goal (outcome) and work your way backwards. This ensures that each step will guarantee your progress towards your end goal.
2. Sketch out a preliminary plan
Ensure you have a rough idea of what the plan will look like so you can have the project built within your project tracker properly with everything flushed down to the details. This step is crucial once you have identified all the answers to ‘how do we get the outcome we want?’.
3. Communication to the team
Once you have a proper sketch of what to expect, have the project built out fully and communicate all team members’ roles and responsibilities and how their piece plays out to finish the project. This puts responsibilities clearly for each team member and allow everyone to ask questions up front to streamline things.
4. Regular Check-ins
Before I get too far, do NOT take this as an excuse to micro manage the project or team members. This step will vary in implementation based on the projects at hand, and will typically be emails or a standup meeting to discuss any roadblocks as a team. This is a mandatory step once you start a project to ensure that timelines are still valid and that the experience for everyone goes as smoothly as possible.
5. Project Review and Completion
This final step is probably the easiest of them all since you’re just reviewing all steps have been completed, along with ensuring that all outcomes have been met. If this is a client-facing project you’ll want to ensure that you’ve met the agreed upon result. If this is an internal initiative this is the perfect time to start the feedback loop of what went well, what went poorly, and also are there any modifications that need to be made to the process.
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