IT Project Management
Whether your enterprise is large or small, or even if you are self-employed, ensuring your IT project will be successful can be difficult, and depends on your IT project management strategy. Here are some steps that can be taken to help prevent problems, or reinvigorate an existing project.
1 Define the Scope
Defining well the scope of and expectations for a project at the start is essential to managing change. While planning instruments are essential, making sure everyone is singing from the same hymn-sheet is key to retaining focus as the project progresses. Communicating the scope, goals and targets should be step one, and they need to be continually revisited and re-communicated to keep all activities focussed on them. Avoid scope creep by monitoring the scope daily as the project progresses, and maintaining communication. Budget for scope enlargement, but fight to keep the sails trimmed…
2 Ensure Sponsor, Management and Employee Buy-In
Starting a project without the explicit support of the top brass is the cue for the death knell later—if you don’t produce results that astound them and/or put cash directly in the coffers, they’ll kill the project first chance they get. You’ll hear the usual ‘Told you it’d never work’ stories, and your reputation will be damaged too… Likewise, if that new software gives management some fancy figures but makes employees lives more difficult, you could experience foot-dragging as an Olympic sport. Make the project a business solution that is wrought by IT means.
3 Don’t Get Swamped
Overloading team members is a recipe for disaster—ensure correct planning of workloads and approval for workers to set aside quiet time (entire working days are best) for working on the project. Too many workers are expected to accept a raft of extra hours and responsibilities on top of a jam-packed workload. Keep an eye on sick-leave rates too to spot workers that cannot cope but are afraid of refusing work. Creating small project teams that work on six-month projects helps keep workers motivated and avoids project drift.
4 Communicate and Consult Often, Clearly, Briefly
90-minute-long status meetings where individual matters are thrashed out at length before uninterested colleagues are killers. Also, the Project Manager is the hub, the Communicator, and communication and consultation are the keys to spotting (and avoiding) stumbling blocks, delays or avoidable expenses ahead. Often someone sees it coming, but elects to say nothing…
5 Make Quality the Mission
Drive the project to meet and surpass goals by making quality the cornerstone of the project. Create milestones and benchmarks that allow those involved to measure progress and surpass expectations, and reward excellence. Also, devote one meeting after project completion to ask how close you got to your original goals. Post-project analysis can be of huge benefit to later projects…
At Green Cloud Computing we have experience in managing large and small projects for our customers, on time and within budget. If you need assistance rolling out a new server, setting up a network, or with PC Maintenance strategies, or simply PC Repairs. Please call us, we are a huge amount of experience with businesses in Ashbourne, Ratoath, Meath and surrounding counties.
