63 PROJECT MANAGEMENT TIPS-PART FIVE

Closedown and Review

1. Agree well in advance a date to hold a post project review meeting. Put this onto the Gantt chart.

2. Invite key stakeholders, sponsor, and project team to the post project review. If the date is in their diary well in advance it should make it easier for them to attend.

3. Focus your meeting on learning – identifying what you can use on the next project. Share the learning with others in the organization.

4. Check whether you have delivered the original project objectives and benefits and not gone out of scope.

5. Make sure that you have delivered against budget, quality requirements and the end deadline.

6. Understand how well you managed risks and your key stakeholders. Use questionnaires to obtain feedback.

7. Prepare a list of unfinished items. Identify who will complete these after the project and circulate to any stakeholders.

8. Hand over the project formally to another group (it is now their day job) - if appropriate. You may need to build this into the project plan and involve them early in the plan and at different stages throughout the project.

9. Write an end of project report and circulate. Identify in the report key learning points.

10. Close the project formally. Inform others you have done this and who is now responsible for dealing with day to day issues.

11. Celebrate success with your team! Recognize achievement, there is nothing more motivating.

General Tips

1. But what is a project? Why worry whether something is a project? Why not use some of the project management processes, e.g. stakeholder analysis or use of traffic lights to manage your work? The key principle is to deliver the piece of work using the appropriate tools. We use the term project based working to describe this approach.

2. Get trained! Research points out that only 61% of people have received any project management training.

 

3. Ensure you have the buy-in of senior managers for your project. You will need to work hard to influence upwards and get their support.

4. What about the day job? Projects get in the way and the day job gets in the way of projects! Many people have found that by applying project based working to day to day activities and by being more rigorous on project work, more is achieved.

5. Identify early on in the life of the project the priority of your projects. Inevitably there will be a clash with another project or another task. Use your project management skills to deliver and your senior management contacts to check out the real priority of the project.

6. Discover how project management software can help. But, you will need to develop the business case, produce a project definition alongside planning what will go into the software. Many project managers use simple Excel spreadsheets or charts in word to help deliver their project.

Good luck in delivering your project!