Are Your Projects Meeting Expectations?

We frequently meet with clients to assess their business processes and evaluate the success of their projects.  During our project management and project management office (PMO) evaluations, we look at four criteria - scope, schedule, budget, and quality.  If projects are not meeting the expectations of the business – whether that means bad reviews from stakeholders or if the project teams struggle with delivery – it usually impacts more than one criterion.

If your projects are not meeting expectations, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• Do you have a development methodology?  Whether you are using an agile or waterfall approach or a combination of the two, decide on one standard methodology and ensure all your team members are trained to work with your methodology.
• Are you using a project management methodology?  We recommend using PMBOK as a foundation and customizing based on your specific development methodology, and your cultural and organizational needs.
• Do you have standard performance metrics? Success should be well defined and easily measured across all project teams.  You cannot improve what you don’t measure.
• Are your project management systems based on processes? Many companies want to implement a system to solve their project delivery issues; however, we always insist an established process be in place first.  The way a system is designed and supports your team should be consistent with the way you will be managing projects not vice versa.
• Are you addressing change management?  When implementing new systems and processes, it is important for team members, business users, and stakeholders to understand the changes and have buy-in.  We recommend using pilot projects to gain initial feedback and make any needed changes before a general roll-out.
• Do you reevaluate your guidelines?  We recommend, once-a-year, going back through your processes and guidelines to evaluate what is working and what is not.  An enhancement program will help ensure you keep tabs on your own performance and the effectiveness of your project management process.

As you evaluate your project management practices, make sure to recognize what you do well along with areas for improvement.  If you need an objective-third party to help evaluate your project management processes and PMO, contact us today.