Sunday, September 24, 2017

Five Basic Phases Of Project Management

By Scott White


Projects by nature are not systemic. They do not involve repetitive work and processes. Every assignment is unique and requires widespread team players. They have a fixed start and end schedule. This makes systemization and management all the more daunting. These challenges typically surround assignments not being finished within the planned date, exceeding the budget and going out of scope. Various issues lead to an IT project failure. This article delves into some project management failures in the IT industry provides solutions for them.

Inability to acquire information on time: In a fast-paced environment, assignment managers may not be able to update the schedule as he might get busy with managing other assignment related problems and resource allocation. Resources are also shared across multiple assignments. All of this leads to incomplete updating of the task schedule.

The relevant stakeholders and the course sponsor come on a common platform to determine the course feasibility. This tends to depend upon the industry involved as in case of information technology, requirement gathering and analysis are performed here. Collaboration at the initiation assignment is quite important.

Task definition and planning - A comprehensive assignment management plan is developed, and individual plans for the resource, cost, and risks are formulated. The scope of the course is undertaken in writing specifying the work that needs to be performed. At this stage a team tends to segregate the course on the important areas of priority, craft a budget along with a schedule. In the final analysis what resources are needed for achieving the same needs to be defined.

Closing: Closing an assignment is as important as starting one. Apart from giving a sense of completion, formally closing an assignment gives start-ups an idea of the amount of time that they take to finish a task. It also helps them formally allocate resources and plan for the next assignment.

Requirement analysis techniques should be strong enough for assignment scoping and delay prevention. Not gathering the correct set of details may lead to failure. The unrealistic delivery schedule may further lead to poor requirement. Besides, aiming to do excessive changes in a short time span, instead of realistic schedules for small and iterative delivery, can mess up a assignment.

Improper Communication: Communication is essential for a assignment's success. Lack of proper meeting and communication between various team members may lead to poor schedule maintenance and may not keep stakeholders on the same page. This may result in goal disorientation. Regular communication ensures the team goals and assignment goals are in sync with each other.

Emails are the norm for maintaining communication between various stakeholders. Many times, all members do not get covered in the information loop or miss out on a piece of information due to the sheer volume of information sharing involved. Precious time also gets lost when team members are sifting through heaps of email.




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