Fewer than a third of all projects were successfully completed on time and on the budget over the past year.
Keeping projects on track when handling continuous change requests is a project manager’s greatest challenge. From the beginning, if the objectives are not clear, and right expectations are not set with executives, the client, or the team, deadlines can suffer.
Project delays are frustrating and costly but can be easily avoided with a little foresight and planning. If we look into the reasons, missed deadlines, unclear objectives, and lack of communication are some of the common causes that can sabotage successful implementation of a project.
Here are a few suggestions to avoid unforeseen project delays and efficiently handle large project portfolio programs.
1. Pay a lot of attention to project planning
Planning is an essential component of project management and the biggest defense against cost overruns and delays. A well-developed plan in place lowers the overall uncertainty and risks.
It would be a good idea to have customized Project Plan templates like Agile Development, or Software Development, specific to organizational standards, and detail out the complete project scope before starting the actual work. Once the scope is defined, get a sign-off from the client and the stakeholders.
2. Keep all information/ assets organized with a single workspace
Ensuring that the team members working on the project are organized from start to finish can help in cutting down unnecessary time spent in finding out project related information. Have a central workspace that acts as a portal to store all your documents, track, share and collaborate. Customized project workspace for better tracking, information sharing, and collaboration.
3. Simplify best practices and automate project processes
Setup custom process templates to increase standardization, help project teams and set the stage for the upcoming project. This ensures best practices across all projects and saves time and effort which can be invested in other critical project tasks.
4. Constantly track and measure the progress
To govern the level of success achieved, the measure of progress attained is necessary. It is imperative to have quick access to all relevant project information and summarized weekly project status for informed decision making. Easy to create BI dashboards for team members, project managers, and executives, can help the entire team stay on track with their goals.
5. Notify stakeholders about overall project status and change requests
Giving stakeholders adequate knowledge on the projects health status, team’s achievements and concerns can save the project from trouble in the long-run. The status reports help to raise important matters, discuss them freely and find a solution to issues before they get out of hand.
Also, the stakeholders should be notified of any new change requests, the scope of the change, and information about what it will take to implement it. They can decide and take the required action to accommodate the request, without impeding the overall project schedule.
Fast track your project schedule with AdValue.
Advaiya has designed AdValue pack for project management to help you and your team use standardized processes, and quickly visualize and analyze project data to make better-informed decisions, faster.
AdValue is a package you can install on top of your Project Online tenant that instantly helps you to get the most out of your deployment. Here are some of its many benefits:
- Insightful Power BI dashboards customized for Executives, Project Managers and Team Members
- Customized project workspace for better project tracking and collaboration
- Built-in workflow to standardize project management phases
- Alignment with PMBoK tools to manage projects better
- Quick and easy deployment to make you look like a superstar
- Extensible solution that can later be customized to specific needs
Need more guidance on project and portfolio management? Write to us to discuss how we can help you and your team become more efficient.
