10 Tips for Project Success through Process Management
Project success is not just about hitting milestones. It is also about the seamless integration of an efficient process into the stages of the project.
When process management is not adequately defined, a project may conclude with uncertainties, reliance on guesswork, and reduced transparency.
As the project becomes more complex, a lot can happen within a project and things could become more complicated.
There will be more things to track and more things to do.
If there is a lack of strong process management then the transparency about the progress may suffer.
So here are my 10 tips for defining strong process management for project success.
10 Tips
✓ Tip#1: Tracking should be seamless
The defined process should help project managers to track the progress without intervention.
Following up with team members for updates becomes a painful task over time.
Hence, conduct stand-up meetings to get an update on the progress without going into solutions for blockers and issues.
✓ Tip#2: Process cannot become an overhead
Sometimes project managers and team members spend so much time updating JIRA or some Excel sheet or confluence pages instead of focusing on the task assigned.
This should stop.
The process should be seamless and it should not be a bottleneck. So use one tool that will serve most of the purpose.
✓ Tip#3: Process should be independent of the tooling used
Irrespective of which tool is used for project management, the process should not have a tight dependency on the tool.
Whether it is JIRA, Asana, Excel sheet, or something else the process should indicate how to plan, track, execute, and perform change management.
The tool should be a means of adhering to the process agreed upon.
✓ Tip#4: Clear documentation about the steps in the process
Not documenting the process in detail is a mistake many project managers make.
The documentation will be very high level and it will be left for interpretation.
Make a clear process documentation with flow charts and steps to handle deviations. This will help to create awareness of the process to the team members.
✓ Tip#5: Process management should be objective oriented
The process in general is a set of steps to be followed. This is a good start.
As a project manager, if you want to see success consistently then the process definition should have one or more objectives. This will help in measuring the success or effectiveness of the process.
Objectives could be,
a. On-Time delivery,
b. Lower bug rate,
c. Lower sync-up meetings,
d. Lower effort deviation,
and so on.
✓ Tip#6: Keep your customer in focus
Many times the processes are defined keeping the team in perspective.
But Customer focus is also needed. The process should be flexible enough to make adjustments as the priority changes.
This will help to deliver the required modules or features on time.
Customer stakeholders tend to change priorities. This is an open truth.
So the process should expect changes and provide steps to handle such a situation.
✓ Tip#7: Use of automation
As project managers, don’t assume you are a non-technical person hence automation is not your accountability.
Every opportunity for automation should be utilized.
It could be sending release notes to stakeholders, release summary generation, report generation, etc. If there is an opportunity for automation, utilize it.
This improves efficiency and brings consistency.
Most importantly time is saved as you don’t need to perform repetitive tasks.
✓ Tip#8: Must enable coordination between teams
Dependency management is one of the aspects that must handled with care.
At the start of the project, dependency should be clear, and by when which team has to deliver what.
The process should facilitate the coordination and tracking of such dependency seamlessly.
This will ensure delays will not occur due to a lack of tracking and coordination among different teams.
✓ Tip#9: Approval flow for deviations
Any deviation in the process should have an approval process.
The approval process should be documented and the approvers should be mentioned in the process document.
This helps to clarify the steps to handle deviations and the related approval process that must be followed.
✓ Tip#10: Review regularly and update
If the process works for a few customers, don’t assume there is no need to change.
Every process needs some adjustments once in a while.
Look at the deviations and delays during execution, and perform a root cause analysis to check whether it is because of the process.
Doing such exercises regularly will help you to keep the process up-to-date and meet the current needs.
This will ensure the regular success of project management.
Final thoughts
Involving the team members and stakeholders while defining process management will ensure clarity on the steps and most importantly acceptance.
With strong process management, the project execution will be seamless toward success.
With a transparent and easy-to-use process, the team will adhere to it without hesitation or doubts.
This will ensure higher process adoption.
Happy project management!
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